Road Trip! (Pictures)

This is the home of our host, Martin, in Gounougaya. The homes were pretty similar in all the villages - small brick rooms, usually round, with thatched roves, and woven grass sheets for courtyard walls. 

Also at Martin's house, when I explained to these women that I was taking photos so that my friends and family in Canada could better understand life in Chad, they smiled and insisted that I also photograph them with their cooking charcoal.  

This is our second flat tire of the trip.

And don't forget our meetings. This is a group of children in Doba ready to receive their new school supplies. 

There is a herd of cattle in the road. Classic.

On the way home, we stopped to buy all sorts of foodstuffs that are cheaper to buy in the villages than in the city. At this stop we loaded up with fresh sugarcane. 

Road Trip!

It’s about time I explained more about the work I’m involved with here in Chad. I should say that discovering the projects of my organization is an ongoing process. There isn’t a tidy file (at least not that I’ve seen yet) that I can read and get up to speed on the history of the organization or even the current peace and  development efforts, but I invite you to learn along with me – petit à petit. In this post, I’m going to take you along on my most intense week of learning so far – an unexpected opportunity to join the HIV/AIDS program team on a 6 day road trip to visit five rural villages in the South of Chad. We were meeting with partners to discuss the progress and future of a school sponsorship and a microfinance project. But before launching into stories from the trip, it’s worth taking a minute here to explain a little more about the organization I work for.

Ethics Peace and Justice (EPJ) is a division of a larger Chadian organization which has several projects sponsored by MCC. In my department at EPJ there are three full time staff: Boniface works on advocacy projects; Victor is in charge of peaceful conflict resolution training; and Adka oversees the HIV/AIDS support programs. I will be helping out with projects in all three areas throughout the year, but it was Adka’s HIV/AIDS programs that took me south. In these five villages, MCC and EPJ have arranged for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS to attend school and be provided with a uniform and school supplies. The sponsorship is part of a three year program, which has included raising awareness within local churches for how to continue this support program into the future. In some of the villages, there was also a microfinance operation for women living with AIDS. In Chad, as in many African societies, AIDS is considered a shameful disease such that those infected often hide their illness to avoid discrimination. The microfinance project is intended to help such marginalized women organize to support themselves and one another, both financially and socially.

My first journey to the villages began bright and early on a Monday morning. The team picked me up in an antique Toyota pickup; the canvas covered bed was full of school supplies and clothes for children in the villages. We bought some baguettes for the road and began a full day’s drive south. Despite the remnants of the rainy season in N’Djamena, things become greener as we left the city and the dusty Sahel region behind. The roads became gradually less populated, except for the occasional line of women carrying large plastic tubs of produce on their heads to sell in the market, and the odd bus (like a larger version of the van from Little Miss Sunshine) with all manner of things piled high on the roof: baggage, sugar cane, even a live ram! Gradually the population of potholes began to grow until we were weaving back and forth across the entire road to avoid the particularly treacherous parts. Even so, after several hours we found ourselves stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire and a faulty spare. Thus began a bumpy race against time – could we get to the next village on what little air was left? With no small amount of luck, when we pulled over beside a small roadside market we were nearly riding on rim, but there was no damage. We paid a young teen to patch our inner tube and on we went. All along the way, the truck was filled with cheerful banter in French or Ngumbay, as we traded stories and discussed the work ahead.

In the first village, the local language was unknown to our team so everything was translated into French, allowing me to follow almost everything as it happened. First thing in the morning we met with the children and caregivers regarding school sponsorship. Adka started by asking the villagers to recall what they had talked about in the very first meeting when they launched this project. After a long silence, people started speaking up, recalling many important details of the project and sponsorship. Adka reminded them that this is the third and final year of the project, and we then proceeded to check in on the children. Most of the children stood with pride to announce their passing grades and receive their new backpack. Some of the children were sick. Several of the girls had been married and were no longer attending school. Other children were singled out for having failed their studies – the public shame of the announcement intended to encourage them to study harder next year. After all the supplies had been given out and a few pictures taken, the meeting was over and the students dismissed. In the other villages, the meetings didn’t always happen in French but with the odd translated summary I was pretty sure that a similar scenario was playing out in each. In the evenings over sweet tea and boule with fish sauce, we debriefed our meetings and this is what I learned:

The biggest problem facing this project is the dilemma of passing the torch to local churches. In theory there is no reason why churches couldn’t serve as a sustainable institution of social security. Yet, in this village the churches were not likely to continue the program as originally intended. In some cases there was resistance from pastors, not giving Adka and her team the authority to raise awareness about the project. But perhaps a more systemic challenge is that churches in rural Chad don’t collect offerings like churches do in the city. In N’Djamena I’m told, money is donated by the congregation each week to support the pastor and other projects like providing food at church events or giving to charity. In contrast, pastors in the villages struggle just to get by, I’ve been told on as little as 500CFA ($1.00CDN) per month.

In this context, more than one Chadian has told me that “people in the villages believe they have no money…” Every time I hear that I have to wonder, why is that word “believe” in there? Surely for many of the rural poor, it’s true. They really don’t have money. But for others, one Chadian friend explained, they have assets such as animals and crops but they believe they can’t give to others because their assets are not in cash... To be totally honest, I’m not sure what to do with opinions like this. Rural Chad is not an easy place to make a living, and it’s only getting more difficult as climate change brings more frequent and more severe drought. The growing season in southern Chad is significantly shorter than previous generations have seen and this trend is not likely to reverse. Can we really expect our model of collecting offering in support of social welfare programs to work in rural Chad?

In some villages we also met with microfinance groups. Again in our first village, after meeting with the school children, a small group of 6-8 women gathered their benches in a circle under a large tree and the meeting began. This time it wasn’t all in French, so I didn’t get to hear all of the stories they shared, but it wasn’t hard to follow the tone of the meeting. The women in turn gave voice to their struggles and suffering, explaining the many challenges with their illness and entrepreneurship. Even through the language barrier, I started to feel awkward sitting there in that circle – what exactly gave me permission to plop myself down in such an intimate time of sharing and support, in a circle where there was already bonds of trust and friendship and I was so clearly an outsider? How did the women feel about my presence? I didn’t want to play the role of a distant observer, invading their meeting, swiping their stories and pictures without offering any gesture of friendship in return… No, I had to find some way of contributing empathy to this circle. After a while, I could tell that Adka had left business matters behind and was counselling the women about how to support one another, to live with hope, and embrace life despite illness. From my seat of privilege, what could I possibly say to these women that would be genuine and meaningful…? The circle reminded me of another cross-cultural experience I had in Canada, a guest in a different circle in a First Nations community. In that circle, we had traded songs in reciprocity and friendship… suddenly my heart knew exactly what I could share, just as Adka turned to me. “Michelle, isn’t there anything you’d like to say…?” So I borrowed a cultural tradition to bridge a culture, language, and life experience gap thousands of kilometers away. This is what I sang:

Peace before you
Peace behind you
Peace under your feet
Peace within you
Peace over you
Let all around you be peace.

I couldn’t remember the other verses so I made up my own that seemed appropriate…

Strength before you…
…Love under your feet…
…Hope within you…
…Let all around you be…

…Peace, strength, love, hope. Could these gifts of the human heart overcome, just for a moment, barriers of race and privilege? I sang the simple melody slowly, repeating each verse and letting the phrases hang in the air. The song was simple to translate and the women asked me to write down the lyrics for them. I can only hope that it leaves them with some small amount of peace, strength, love and hope. I’ve grown accustomed to lengthy handshakes, but after that meeting did the women hold on just a little bit longer? All my words felt inadequate so I just held on, hoping that a moment of lingering eye contact would carry a little more peace, strength, love, and hope.

Those were our first meetings in Gounougaya, and there were many more insightful and touching moments to come throughout the week. One woman in the village of Doba told about how she had just about given up on life in her battle with AIDS when this program started. She was bedridden in the hospital when she got word that her children were being sponsored to go to school and she would have the chance to start her own small business. She sat tall and proud and thankful as she told us this story. Another elderly woman in Bebidja simply expressed that she would never have had the means to send her grandchildren to school if not for the sponsorship. She wanted to give us something to say thank you, but had nothing to give. She said she hoped that God would bless us for this work. I think the blessing was in her words.

And so, after a week of putting faces to the recipients of our aid programs and pondering with the team the sustainability of the efforts, I was left with a pretty mixed bag of emotions. More than ever, “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing…” (Leonardo Da Vinci) and more than ever, I am aware that we have yet to figure out what exactly ought to be done. 

Powerless?

I write this post in the dark (under my mosquito net, sweat absorbing into my bed sheets…) on a laptop I charged with the generator at work. We haven’t had electricity for 2 weeks and counting. This length of outage is apparently uncommon, though certainly not unheard of here in N’Djamena. Water is also cut frequently for large portions of the day, at which times we (and several of our neighbours) depend on the well beside our home. That’s just how it is with services in Chad. For most people, even in the capital city, money can’t buy internet fast enough for Skype, taxis come when taxis come, and there is no way of knowing when basics like power or water will come back. It’s true, you could trace a general pattern that richer neighbourhoods will have more reliable power than poorer neighbourhoods; as well there seems to be a greater likelihood to be without power during the day and more chance of power at night… but beyond that, it’s almost impossible to predict. There is no news expected about whether anyone is making an effort to restore the situation. Life just carries on with what’s available. While we can always hope for the lights to come on, it seems nobody is holding their breath.

This attitude that Chadians take towards power outages is just one example of an interesting cultural difference that’s come to my attention recently (through my experiences and a book I've been reading).* African cultures tend to utilize resources in the moment to meet the immediate needs of themselves, friends and family. Then, they are prepared to do without until more becomes available. In managing personal finances, there is good reason why the culture has evolved this way. Personal relationships are the backbone of society, providing a social safety net to people who have seen more than their share of hardships throughout history. It is simply expected that those with excess resources will share the wealth with friends and family. Someone who keeps excess money to themselves is not seen as investing in a secure future, but rather selfishly failing to fulfill his/her relational obligations – the very relationships which would provide in the event of future needs. And so, Africans tend to spend their resources fairly quickly (either to meet their own needs, the needs of others, or to ensure that the funds are spent before any kin has the chance to ask for it) and as a result, they are accustomed to inconsistencies in the availability of resources. They're willing to wait in half-hearted annoyance about the inconvenience until the resource becomes available again.  

While this note-culturelle helps me understand the attitudes I encounter, all these black evenings leave me wondering - why is it exactly that there couldn't be enough power in this city to avoid cuts all together? People expect and tolerate shortages, but they would certainly prefer not to lose power. What is keeping this country from obtaining enough supply? Chad is an oil-producing nation. Surely there is a solution to be found in the wealth of black exports. Maybe it's a problem of politics... or what about solar? Surely if panels could be installed throughout a city like N'Djamena you could build a self sufficient grid right into the infrastructure of the city! So maybe it's an engineering problem... Or maybe... suddenly I'm reminded of a recent conversation with a Chadian friend, and I have mixed feelings about my brainstorming... 'Development in Africa,' he told me, 'needs to come from Africans.' I couldn't agree more. Real, viable solutions to development challenges in Chad are going to have to line up with cultural realities that I am still reading about in books. Perhaps the most promising solutions are those that will defy western business models and baffle development scholars. Much like how the willingness to sit in the dark for weeks on end and the preference to use rather than budget resources is baffling to a Canadian like me. 

Despite the inconvenience and inequality, I must say that I’m rather fond of evenings without power. It makes everyday life feel a little bit like camping, and I’ll do my best to paint the picture for you. Nights are cooler at this time of year, dropping to around 30°C. It is extremely hot in the house, so I put on some bug-spray and join the family sitting outside. The moon is bright and the breeze is refreshing. We sit in comfortable silence for a while – silent that is, except for the soundtrack of tonight’s feature film blaring from the cinema next door. Someone tells a story in French or Moundang (my host family’s language – pronounced “moon-dung”). I ask how to say a simple phrase in Moundang, get a lesson in pronunciation for the sounds that English and French simply don’t use, and sit for a while silently memorizing the new words so that I can greet my host dad (Papa) when he gets home. The mood seems relaxed and content, even though I know all the children (whether 6 or 24 years old) would rather be watching TV. Papa arrives, parks his work SUV in the back of our compound, and teases me about why I’m just sitting around when I could have gone back to Canada to find some electricity. We eat leftovers from lunch – reheated rice or corn-flour paste with a runny, flavorful tomato or peanut sauce. We watch the stars, slap a few mosquitoes  and trade stories about our days in between long bouts of comfortable silence. Mama is dozing on a wooden bench, only after having checked several times that everyone had enough to eat (especially me). Olga is texting friends; Junior is asleep on a plastic woven mat on the front porch, and aunt Odette is singing softly to herself a hymn from the family’s Lutheran song book. Deli, however, is bored and he's been eyeing his mother's cellphone, carefully nestled in the crook of her arm. He stealthily gets up and creeps behind his mother’s bench. Much to the amusement of everyone, he reaches over his mother to swipe his prize… but she senses something and reaches out to swat the mosquito – back jumps Deli! Mama hasn't noticed him, but the rest of us can’t keep our laughter in and his secret is out! …Back to our comfortable silence, and the night goes on.

Even across cultures and language barriers it’s amazing how powerful it is to just be with people. We’re taking in a shared experience – tranquil evenings, family time, more than a few stars and more than a few mosquitoes. Big questions on life and development will just have to wait until tomorrow. 

*David Maranz (2001). African Friends and Money Matters. Dallas: SIL