President Deby

Hi Everybody!

Wow, today is 6 mos at site. How nuts is that? I’m ¼ done! IST (in service training) was great – it was just the right amount of time to be away from Bol. It was so refreshing and reassuring to hear other volunteers express the exact same frustrations, concerns and self-doubt as I often feel. This training was only for our class (back in March, it was both classes) and it felt just like our pre-service training back at Darda. Everyone’s quirks reemerged and the same old personality conflicts fired up. We split into the same groups as we had during training. Oddly enough, it was (and always has been) along North-South lines. I like the southern vols just fine and in fact, 2 of my best friends are southerners, but I just feel more camaraderie with the other northerners. I’m sure “Team South” feels the same towards “Team North.” It will be interesting to see how the next group of trainees will be. They arrive in mid-September – only 3 months to go! Man, this time last year I had just graduated, sold most of my worldly possessions, and moved to Tucson with no idea when or where PC would be sending me. Crazy year!

Though it probably wasn’t even mentioned in the news back home, the Chadian President, Idriss Deby, just changed the constitution so that he can stay in power indefinitely. Oh sure, they had a referendum, but you can imagine how corrupt it was. When I traveled down to N’Djamena with Rick and Monica on May 24, every little village was plastered with “oui” posters and was having an MPS (the prez’s party – their symbol is a stalk of millet and a machine gun in an X) rally. The main campaign techniques seemed to be yelling over megaphones, giving stuff away, plastering everything solid with “oui” posters and using slogans like “”Vote “oui” for a better future,” “Vote “oui” for peace” “Oui” means democracy, ‘non’ means AIDS”. Of course, there was zero “non” advertising except one, very brave man in the neighborhood where we stay who’d written things like “Oui for dictatorship, oppression, and corruption” on a blackboard outside his shop. On the day before the referendum, planes flew over NDJ dropping fake “oui” ballots. We were out at Douguia on the day of the voting (June 6), so we didn’t get to see the actual voting. Of course, “oui” won and Deby will now stay in power until the next coup, whenever that may be. The word on the street (okay, our director told us) is that Deby was unhappy with the results. Voter turnout was very low despite all the rallies and giveaways. So, perhaps people only gave lip service to MPS out of greed or fear of retaliation. Perhaps, not voting was people’s way of supporting the opposition. Or perhaps everyone knew that the ballot boxes were already stuffed to the brim with “oui’s” and that the whole thing was a big charade. Let’s hope things stay stable. This poor country deserves some peace and stability after all it’s been through.

Oh man, what a trip back to Bol I had yesterday. I got to the taxi station at about 7:30 a.m. because the guy in charge had told me the day before that the “car” (an OLD land cruiser) would leave at 8, But, as is to be expected in Chad, we had to wait for various people and things and ended up leaving at 11. Looking around, I thought, “There’s no way they’re going to cram all these people into that Land Cruiser!” But as we loaded and people kept butting in line, I realized that “oh yes, they certainly are!” Finally, the driver grabbed my arm and pulled me around to the front of the car. “Oh boy!” I though, “I get front seat!” Nope. The driver had pulled the front seats all the way forward and put four sacks of rice in the gap between the front and back seats. I sat on one side, with one leg knee-to-chin and the other leg wedged in with all the others on the floor. A nice man named Adji, who I persuaded to join my Adult English class, sat across from me on the other rice sack and let me move my leg whenever it went numb. In all, we were 14 adults, 2 little boys and 3 babies in 1 Land Cruiser. As soon as we pulled out of the station, I noticed the car’s awful shimmy. I don’t know what car malady makes cars shimmy, but this one was gravely ill. Luckily, once we got off the paved road, the ruts and potholes were so jarring that the shimmy was no longer noticeable. Also, the windshield was cracked all the way across and a chunk of glass dangled from the corner of it by some kind of lining. Also, the doors seemed to move independently of the frame of the car. I’m not quite sure how the back door was attached. Also, I was sitting on a sack of rice! We made four stops to bribe gendarmes (police) before the end of the paved road. Then, outside of Massakory, another truck stopped to tell us that there was a gendarme roadblock at Massakory. The driver decided to cut off through the bush around Massakory, but ended up getting lost for 45 minutes or so. Finally, we found the road again and continued on toward N’bouri. I was shocked at how green everything was! When we’d come down 2 weeks before, everything was dead and brown, but now, there’s grass in some places and water standing in the previously bone dry oases. Unfortunately, the rains also resulted in a horrendously rutted and washed out road. I can’t begin to describe how bad the N’bouri –Bol road is. After N’bouri, we stopped for the 6:30 prayer. Hawa, who’d been sitting next to me, handed me Baby Mahamat Adam to hold while she prayed. In an admittedly incredible moment of Peace Corps Zen, I sat cross-legged in the sand with Baby Mahamat Adam on my lap and watched “boubou” clad men stream out of a mud mosque under the pale light of a crescent moon. Pretty wild. We finally hit the Bol turn off at 10:30 and I was so weary and sore I thought I would cry. There has always been a gendarme checkpoint at that corner, but I’d never been in a car stopped by them before. But, of course, this time they stopped us and proceeded to throw all the luggage from the top of the car and root through it, ostensibly looking for weapons. I was exhausted, sore-to-my-bones and furious, but the other passengers seemed to think nothing of the situation – they were totally accepting and calm. So, I willed myself to be calm and laid down in the sand to look up at the billions of twinkling stars (you really can see them twinkle here!). Finally the car pulled up to our concession at 11 pm 12 whole hours after leaving N’Djamena. I climbed off my rice sack and said goodbye to the other passengers. Sadly, I was too exhausted to sleep and spent a good portion of the night tossing and turning.

But now I’m back in Bol, well rested and happy to be here. I’ll only be here 2 ½ weeks. At the end of June, I’m hopping a ride down to NDJ with the mail run. Then I’ll go down south to my friend Josh’s site for a few days and theeen, it’s off to Benin for 2 weeks! Hooray!

Here’s a fun game: guess the English version of Old Testament/Torah/Koran people. Are the Old Testament and the Torah similar? Oh dear, for a social studies teacher, I’m woefully ignorant of Judaism, though I’m certainly getting a steady dose of Islam. Anyway, here goes! Answers are in the P.S.

a. ysuf f. Marriam

b. Suleyman g. Brahim

c. Daoud h. Hawa

d. Issa i. Adoum

e. Moussa j. issaka

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P. S. Game Answers!

a. Joseph f. Mary

b. Solomon g. Abraham

c. David h. Eve

d. Jesus i. Adam

e. Moses j. Isaac