Standing on the Border: A Chad Diary
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DAY 5
Let’s Play Risk: Thursday March 15, 2007 11:00 pm
N’DJAMENA — Back in the capital today there was a sandstorm and the whole city of N’Djamena has been covered in this slightly yellow haze all day so far tonight. It feels like a strange trick my eyes are playing on me, what the world might look like in funny yellow sunglasses. I don’t even want to think about what it looks like on the inside of my lungs.
Last night in Abeche we pushed the limit and left the Oxfam office after the 7 pm curfew. The car drove a little faster and the black seemed somehow more foreboding. It was only five minutes after curfew but something shifted in my head and a smidgeon of worry crept in.
When we saw the car full of uniformed men with Kalashnikov guns driving in our direction I felt scared for a few seconds, actually scared that they were going to take our car, or worse. Uniforms here can mean Chadian army or rebels and frankly one is not necessarily better then the other. Everywhere you go there are men with large guns; it is a way of life. So seeing a car of uniformed men with guns is a common site and would normally not garner my attention, but now, five minutes after curfew, for a few seconds I felt just an inking of what the refugees and IDPs I saw over the past days feel all the time.
But that was last night and I arrived back safely. After a shower, a scorpion check of my shoes and clothes, and a late night meeting with a public health promoter I finally went to bed.
Transit from Abeche to N’Djamena this afternoon was also a little bit ad hoc. Due to a small administrative issue we had been traveling without our proper papers and today was the last hurdle. If we could get on the plane to N’Djamena without being asked for our papers we were home free. The plane left at nine am and at 8:50 the prefect (the guy who would want to see our papers) showed up, but too late to look at papers! We got on the plane and made it safely back to the capital. Of course, as soon as we landed we got our papers.
Now I am in a large room with the AC going (it doesn’t actually seem to be producing cool air, but it is at least blowing it around the room). I am sharing a large bed net with a single mosquito and I have a lot of information and images to digest. Tonight I hope for a full night’s sleep but I am sure it is still not cool enough; anyway, I need time to work things out in my mind. Always at night I have time to think of what I have seen and learned.
This country is like a big game of "Risk" (you remember the game—when a player tries to take over the world with cards and dice and little fake armies). The difference is the board game doesn’t have little pieces representing the people who live in the countries the fake armies control. Maybe I will make a new board game that actually portrays war and conflict with civilian pieces, IDPs, refugees, aid workers, UN employees, governments, armies, rebels, more rebels, warlords, child solders, reporters... There will be no more pleas of “I want to be the boot” replaced instead with “I want to be Christiane Amanpour.” It is all about power and ownership and political will (or the lack thereof). The goal will be to get control of all the nations with resources and create camps of displaced people in all the other countries, the one with no resources. I think it will be a big hit.
I get to be the public health specialist!
