Standing on the Border: A Chad Diary
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DAY 6
To Have Not: Saturday March 17, 2007 7:50 am
N’DJAMENA — Three things are ubiquitous in Chad this time of year:
- The sun
- Dust
- French keyboards
I can handle the sun, even the dust but the French keyboards really drive me nuts. My boss rightly pointed that he was just in the Sudan and the keyboards were Arabic (left to right and non-English characters) so I have nothing to complain about.
It is our last day here and we leave at midnight. I am already dreaming of a soft pillow, playing with my cats, sushi. I need some time to digest all that I have seen in the context of the world I live in. The world I know with paved roads, garbage collection, 24 hour electricity, flush toilets; American politics. It is hard to compare this with Chad. Here there are only a couple of major paved roads, gasoline sold on the street in reused bottles, but always (and I mean always) a friendly hello and a smile.
The overall picture of Chad is hard for me to pin down. It can be as narrow as people displaced in their own country due to inter-ethnic conflict combined with some spillover from Darfur (connected or not connected depends on whom you talk to). Or it can be as wide as international power struggles between nations such as Libya, Sudan, China, the US…the list goes on. After this trip I am inclined to think everything and know nothing.
Today we have a meeting with the US Ambassador to Chad followed by a trip to the craft market. What a dichotomy! We will be exposed to the biggest “have” in town, the US embassy and then transfer our minds and bodies to a large collection of “have nots” trying to sell their wares to buy bread and water.
Things here just seem to come in pairs and contradictions. One of the highlights was meeting an extremely intelligent and thoughtful Sultan who was recently deposed by the Chadian government. Ironic considering that being a sultan is a birthright and one cannot be deposed. There are beautifully dressed women driving motorbikes with no roads and NO traffic laws. I see Chadians wearing turbans with only their eyes exposed but talking on their cell phones. Tanks and guns and radio towers but no good internet!
I wonder what will become of Chad, which way will it go. Will the oil they are drilling here help or plunder it further into disarray? I suppose I will just have to return to find out.
