Get Out and Be Seen

December 20, 2004

Hello, my family!

So how are things in Bol? Things are hard but things are good. I think my first week was pretty good as far as first weeks go. On Tuesday, Lori, a volunteer who is posted in N’Djamena and also works with CARE International came up to do some AIDS work on the islands in the lake. She stayed with me for 2 nights and what a difference it made to have her here! She’s a 4th year volunteer and has also served in Cote d’Ivoire and Madagascar, so she’s very experienced. She had to go meet with some higher-ups at the hospital and I went with her. They just happened to be kicking off a polio vaccination campaign, and with her help, I got myself involved. It was so so helpful to have someone to speak English to – it really softened the blow of leaving everyone.

But back to the polio campaign. They told me to come to the pharmacy at 7 the next morning. So I left the house at 6:45 (without breakfast) in order to get there on time. The gate was still locked and no one was there. So I sat down against the wall and waited…and waited…and waited…finally at about 7:45 some other workers showed up but still no supervisors. Anyway, it was about 9 before everyone showed up and we got started. I passed the time speaking broken French with the other workers and smiling and nodding at all the things I didn’t understand.

I was on a team with Ibrahim and Fatima. Fatima seemed to be a potential friend, but she turned out to be the loudest, most abrasive and condescending Chadian I have met. We went from house to house and if there were kids under 5 there, Fatima put two drops of vaccine in their mouth. It was my job to carry the little Styrofoam cooler of vaccine, open it, hand the bottle to Fatima, wait to have her give it back to me, put it in the cooler and shut the cooler. I was an integral, indispensable part of the team. In short, the day sucked. I was hungry, Fatima was bossing me around or not speaking to me, the kids kept shrieking when they saw the scary nasara (white person) and I didn’t understand a word of the hundreds of little conversations in Kanembu. But it was good to get out and see the town and have people see me. I really did meet a lot of people and I’m pretty sure they were all named Mohammed, Ali, or Ibrahim.

So that’s kind of been my strategy – just forcing myself to get out and be seen. I went to church with the school secretary on Sunday and it was so cool. The majority of the 3 hour long service was singing and dancing. There was a little bit of scripture mixed in -the Luke story about Gabriel and Mary- but that was about it. Maybe there was a sermon and I just tuned it out – sometimes I just get French/Arabic overload and have to tune out. Anyway, the music was incredible – so many drums, so many crazy rhythms. It made me feel so joyful and reminded me of all that had gone well or not terribly this week. The American missionaries work there but they weren’t there Sunday. There’s also a Swedish woman who is here learning Buduma, the language of the island people, very similar to Kanembu, so that someone can translate the Bible. But can someone be literate in Buduma? I think it’s only a spoken language. Anyway, she’s kindly and old and speaks English, so I like her.

Another good thing that came from the day is that I realized I’m not the only stranger in town. Chad has this inefficient and terribly unfair system of appointing and allocating civil servants. All of the government reps, nurses, doctors and teachers in Chad are sent to new posts every 2 years or so. So that means there’s a whole community of people (mostly Southerners) who don’t know the town, the people or the languages. That’s incredibly comforting to me. Since most southerners are Christian, that means that the majority of people at church are southerners new to the area. Bam! Built in support group!

I am also very lucky to have this family. I spend so much time with my sisters and their friends. I would be so sad and lonely if not for them. I spend most of every afternoon and evening hanging out with them in their house. They sit around and braid each other’s hair and talk and laugh and joke in the fastest Arabic you ever heard. Sometimes they switch into French for my benefit and they love to teach me Arabic and Kanembu. It’s so fun and relaxing. They’re my sanctuary from the rest of Bol. Sanuba (the 19 year old) just came in and told me that she might be going to N’Djamena for good to study medicine next month! That’s so great for her, but it makes me really sad that she might leave.

I am doing well considering the circumstances. I try really hard to think of this as another move. That makes it easier in a way because it’s somehow less stressful than moving to St. Louis was. I made a little calendar of the days until I go to Mao for Christmas and each night, I tick off that day. I figure I’ll just keep ticking off days until I start forgetting, which will mean that things aren’t so hard anymore. Even if I’m sitting on my rug bawling my eyes out, the minutes are still passing and eventually I won’t think of the minutes but of the months. I’ve just forced myself to get out and go and see and I think it will eventually pay off. I hope to create a community of people who will notice if I’m absent. People who’ll say, “Kate! You weren’t at church/market/school, etc – How are you doing” I think I’ve made a good start and that makes me feel very proud of myself.