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.