Bol Kate Role

Hello all!

I am finally back at site after 3 ½ weeks away. It feels so good to be back where I know people and where I have my own routine and bed. Living out of a suitcase ( or in my case a monstrous backpack) gets very tiring. The people of Bol are glad to have me back. Several people have said, “You were gone 25 days! That’s too long!” and the teachers and students at school were kind of starting to believe the rumor that I’d left for America because of all the fights at school. It is very heart-warming and slightly amusing that people were counting the days til I returned. I had a great time hanging out with America 20-somethings for 25 days, but it feels great to be back in my Chad home. (Funny how even “home” can be relative).

Training was great, but I found that I had difficulty transitioning from my Bol self to my American self. My Bol self is kind of a half me, a censored me, simply because of the language and cultural barriers. There are many things I still can’t express in French or Arabic (emotions, etc.) I’ll never really understand the culture, so in Bol I’m a censored version of me. On the contrary, I don’t know of anyone who would describe American me as censored. Anyway, both Bol Kate and American Kate are cool and I’m happy in both roles, but it was slightly unnerving to find that I couldn’t transition between the two at the flip of a switch. It took about a week before I felt like my American self again and lest ye think me schizo, when I tried to explain the feeling to my PCV friends, they said, “Oh, I am so glad to hear you say that too!” But oddly enough, I fell instantly back into Bol me when I got here yesterday. Being with Americans was like using muscles that I hadn’t used in three months (namely the sarcasm and poo joke muscles), and I had to get used to using them again. But as with real muscles, it’s easier to stop using them than to work them out after a long period of inactivity. So I guess that’s why it was easy to slip back into my Bol Kate role.

Earlier I promised descriptions of the Bol cast of characters. That’s a tall order because there are so many characters. Sometimes, walking down my street, I find myself singing that “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” song from Sesame Street. There’s the guy who studied English in Pakistan and only says, “Hello! Do you understand me?” There’s the Kanembu woman with a screechy voice who drags me into her little boutique to show me the poster with George Bush on it. The heading on the poster is some poorly translated phrased like “Daily Terror living”. I don’t know what exactly it’s supposed to mean, but it sure isn’t pro-Bush. There’s the three little girls who sit in the road and sell peanuts all day and ask me for my bracelets. I learned the words in Arabic for “That’s mine, I won’t give it” specifically for them. They’re very cute and are my main peanut providers. And then, of course, there are the madrasa boys. These are village boys whose parents have sent them to Bol for Koranic school. The boys live and travel with a marabou, a Koranic schoolteacher. At the madrasa Koranic schools, the marabou chants a section of the Koran and the boys chant it over and over and over to memorize it. It’s incredibly eerie and creepy sounding. The boys don’t really know what anything in the Koran means, but they have it all memorized. So, anyway, these boys have no homes in Bol and have to beg for food, to teach them humility. These skeletal, baldheaded boys in shabby filthy clothes rove in packs of two or three, stopping at each house to yell “Sha’an Allah” or “alla rho” – both of which mean something like “give me something to eat in the name of Allah.” If the kids don’t bring back enough food in their little bowls, the marabou beats them. Because these boys have no supervision and are on the edge of starvation, they turn to hobbies such as throwing rocks at white people, mobbing around white people, and stealing from white people. I’ve never had any problem with them, but other volunteers have some real horror stories. The madrasa practice is all through the Sahel in Sudan, Niger, etc. but is not actually ordained in the Koran anywhere.

Kate originally intended this next section to be the family part of the letter, but I obtained her permission to share it with all of you. - Marilyn

Blah, the honeymoon is over. I am very happy to be back in Bol, but I’m frustrated. First of all, the majority of my students aren’t really learning anything and if they were, what good would a bit of English do them in the long run? The education system is so broken. The whole damn country is a broken down mess. These kids need a lot of things, but English is not high on the list. I know that the only way I’ll have a real impact is through AIDS and gender equality type work. I really want to start a girls’ club or English club to use as a vehicle for dealing with these real social problems. The thing is that I don’t know how to start it. I don’t know what I’m doing. Plus, now with the school year almost over, a lot of the students will be leaving for the summer, so I have to wait until October before they all come back. I feel like I’m not doing enough and I’m not working up to my potential. I know it takes time to get really into the community, etc. but I feel like I should be doing something now. My time here is so limited. I only have twenty months left, you know? I’m sure these are very typical feelings for someone 4 months into their service. I just don’t want to leave here knowing that I didn’t do my best. I don’t want to have any regrets. What if, when it comes time to leave, there’s a girl who gets AIDS because I didn’t try hard enough? That’s a big deal! This country is so desperately poor, so completely corrupt, so hopelessly, totally screwed up. Sometimes it makes me angry and I want to blame every Chadian I see and sometimes, the poverty is heartbreaking instead of angering, and it makes me hopeless for the future of all my friends and students here. Man. It’s hard sometimes.

(A few hours later) Man, if things don’t always seem to work out! A girl from the high school, who I’d never talked to before, just came by my house. She has an idea for an AIDs project and wants me to help her and her friends put it together! How great is that? I swear, every day this country teaches me over and over that I just need to chill out and trust myself and let the minutes come.

End section

…..I think I’ll get around to character descriptions in the next letter. This letter will have to be kind of short because the PC doctor is coming up to Bol tomorrow just to visit and he is taking my mail down with him. I should probably describe how I spent the last three weeks! The trip down was quite an adventure. I rode down with the Bol missionaries in their l988 land cruiser. And to make a long story short, the trip involved oil sprayed all over the engine and under the car, a 4 hour wait under a thorn tree in the howling Sahelian wind, good luck in the form of a trucker with extra oil and an 11:30 p.m. arrival in N’Djamena. It was one, big 14 hour long adventure that left me exhausted and too sore (like I’d been tumbled in a dryer for 14 hours) to sleep. But, it could have been a million times worse, and we all still had a pretty good time.

During my first week in N’Djamena, I stayed at my PC director’s house. All of the white people houses in N’Djamena are walled in by heavy, thick cement walls with razor wire and prison type lights on top and guarded by Chadian guards hired by the embassy. The PC Bureau is similarly walled in, only more heavily fortressed and with more guards. Nelson’s (my director) family’s house is a 10 minute walk from the bureau and both look out on the Canal St. Martin. Referred to as “Lake PeePee CaCa” by volunteers, Canal St. Martin is a low spot, natural gathering place for water and is actually a giant cesspool surrounded by heaps of trash, and shanties. Because no one else was in town (no other volunteers) I just went from walled in compound to walled-in compound, which engendered a very weird, cloistered, slightly scared feeling. I realized that I much prefer being able to get out, go to restaurants, the market, on walk etc, which I could safely do in other neighborhoods.

During week two, we all (all 26 of us PCV’s in Chad) headed to Dougia, the French hotel, for our In-Service Training. The hotel was right next to the river and was a very peaceful place. The swimming pool, great food and air-conditioned rooms were all luxurious and slightly surreal. Though I don’t feel like I learned anything at the training, it was very good to vent and discuss and share stories with other volunteers and I think maybe that was the actual point of the conference.

I spent the first bit of the third week in N’Djamena, growing increasingly weary of nasara food (pizza, hamburgers, French pastries) and certain other volunteers. I was itching to get back to site, but had to go to Massakory, another volunteer’s site, for a conference this other vol put together. It was supposed to be for Chadian English teachers and us to come together and talk about how to teach about AIDS and other social issues in the classroom, but only 5 Chadian teachers came. The week was pretty much a waste of time except that it made me realize how much prettier Bol is than the majority of northern towns in Chad.

I’ve been taking pictures of friends around Bol and it always turns into such a big deal. I went tot the Proviseur’s house to take of photo of Josephine (proviseur’s wife, good friend) and her two youngest kids, Jessica and Mikael. Jessica is about 4 years old and possibly the cutest, most animated, most impish little girl I’ve ever seen. Mikael is 6 and very into acting like an adult, but he still clings to my hand at the market when we all go together so that he won’t get lost. Mikael wasn’t there when I came to take the picture today, which made Jessica cry. So in the photo, she’s kind of hiding behind Josephine’s leg and pouting. After the photo, she went into the house and came out with a big headscarf thrown dramatically around her neck and holding a mango to her ear like a telephone. Crazy kid.

I then went on to CaCa’s house. She is my carpenter’s wife and speaks great English because she went to school in Nigeria. When I asked if I could take a photo of her and the family, she beamed and ducked into the house, returning with a sparkly new voile. Her little niece hurried behind to change from shabby dress to shabby dress. I had originally meant for the photo just to be CaCa, AlHadj (husband) and their two sons, Jakob and Moussa, but CaCa yelled a string of names and soon all the extended family members who live with CaCa and AlHadj were assembled on a mat in straight-faced poses. Chadians never smile for photos, - they put on their most serious, dignified faces until the shutter clicks and then erupt in happy talking and laughing.

Okay, time to wrap this up. It’s hotter than hell and I am dripping sweat. The electricity in Bol has been cut for three days now so that means no cold H20 from the fridge. I can only say, “Ugghhhhhh”.

Miss you and love you Mom and Dad. Hope all is well.

Love,
Kate