Dear Grandpa Chad,
We’ve been through a lot together. And you’re a nice guy...as far as friendly house spiders go... Your hunting habits keep my room insect free and your gimpy leg reminds me of Finding Nemo...But if you keep splaying yourself out by my closet (or on my toilet paper) you’re gonna meet my shoe.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Goat,
Please look both ways before crossing the road. This will prevent any further instances of being caught between three speeding motos and my oncoming bicycle. My brakes don’t work and I don’t have the money to pay for you if I run you over.
Dear Mr. Cow,
I’m not quite sure which end of you is safer..the front..or the back..but since I have chosen the front, please do not buck me off my bicycle into the well.
Dear Mr. Cow’s Brothers,
Please stop chewing your cud in the spot where I park my bicycle. You’re in my way and I’ve got to get to class..my students are waiting.
Dear Christmas Goat,
I’m sorry we ate you. Although you were delicious. I just wish I hadn’t walked into the kitchen that morning to see the young boy clutching your severed head...and I wish equally I hadn’t eaten severed goat head sauce two days later.
Dear Very Pregnant Goat,
You look like you swallowed a tire.
Dear Momma Duck,
Please keep your ducklings in line and out of the road. I couldn’t bear to run one over with my bicycle. They’re very cute, but they remind me too much of my pet duckling Zaccheus that Kassy and I rescued from the suspension bridge last year. Kassy killed him with her laptop and I can’t bear another tragic duckling death. It’s just too soon.
Dear Camel Herd,
Please limit your road crossing to days when I am not taking a bus trip. Going from 60 to 0 in a middle row jump seat isn’t good for me when I’m folded over sleeping...or for the guy sitting in front of me that I head butted.
Dear Mr. Rooster,
I will not feel bad about eating you. In fact, I can’t wait. STOP CROWING OUTSIDE MY WINDOW...IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON...WHEN I’M TRYING TO TAKE A NAP!
To the Over Abundance of Flies,
I give up.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Visitor from the States.
In January Dad bought a plane ticket...and last week he came to Tchad. It was a crazy colliding of worlds...something that I still haven’t completely wrapped my mind around. But he was here. There are pictures to prove it.
I went to N’djamena on Thursday. Dad arrived on Friday night around 9:30, and after some strategic talking and friend making at the airport, I made it to the back where he was and got him through customs with no problem. We took the bus to Moundou the next morning. Which was a pretty uneventful trip (especially in comparison to his bus trip back...but you can ask him about that one.) We arrived in Moundou around 3:30 in the afternoon and were greeted at the bus station by my brother Roland and sister Larissa. A moto for me, one for my Dad and a moto taxi for my dad’s two suitcases and we were home. Over the next few days we went to church, went to school, visited the market, visited the artisan shop (where I met a new friend and had a sitar made for my Dad in two days), walked around town, ate lots of food, and of had a lot of good time to talk...in the moonlight...because the power was cut the whole time he was here. It was a great visit. Dad stayed well, got to meet my family and friends here, and got to see Tchad. This year will be hard to explain...it’s not something that is easily put into words...so I’m grateful that someone has at least spent a few days here and seen it for themselves.
Tchad is more like a desert than one would expect. There are camels. There is sand. There is dust in the air...and it sticks to you when you sweat...so...all the time. Now we are in the midst of the hot, dry season. The water is cut a lot. Everything is dry. But there are the mango trees. Mango trees amaze me. They bear fruit in the midst of the drought. Right now they are heavy with mangoes...almost ripe. And they’re everywhere. I don’t have any philosophical meditations on the desert and the mango trees. No insights to share. Just an observation...and a window in the world I find myself in at this point and time. Last week http://sacredspace.ie’s homepage had a meditation on the desert. I enjoyed it so I’ll pass it along.
The scholar John L. McKenzie SJ describes how the roots of Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) faith grew in ‘the desert wastes of Syria and Arabia, which seem to stretch into infinity’. The Chosen People were in those wastes for forty years. Jesus himself recapitulated that experience of his people, by going into the wilderness for forty days. And Christians, following him, starting out on the forty days of Lent each year enter that desert experience too. But, in truth, our own day-to-day mundane lives often have something of that desert reality about them. What happens out there, in the real, or in the man-made deserts of today? Between the desert floor and the desert sky, life is stripped of all its artificial props, brought down to its essentials, in the effort to remain alive and avoid death. Vulnerable and exposed in that setting, we might also feel particularly threatened or tempted, as if surrounded by malignant forces in the swirling windswept sands. Such was the actual desert experience. But, more than this and above all, it was the place where the Chosen People experienced God: at Mount Sinai they were drawn into a Covenant relationship. They could never forget that. In the desert - our illusions taken away, leaving us exposed and vulnerable - we find, not nothingness, but the living God. God before us, God with us, the God of fidelity, and truth, and love. ‘Lord, you have found us in the wilderness, you have surrounded us, lifted us up, and kept us as the apple of your eye’. (cf Deuteronomy 32: 10)
I love you all.
I went to N’djamena on Thursday. Dad arrived on Friday night around 9:30, and after some strategic talking and friend making at the airport, I made it to the back where he was and got him through customs with no problem. We took the bus to Moundou the next morning. Which was a pretty uneventful trip (especially in comparison to his bus trip back...but you can ask him about that one.) We arrived in Moundou around 3:30 in the afternoon and were greeted at the bus station by my brother Roland and sister Larissa. A moto for me, one for my Dad and a moto taxi for my dad’s two suitcases and we were home. Over the next few days we went to church, went to school, visited the market, visited the artisan shop (where I met a new friend and had a sitar made for my Dad in two days), walked around town, ate lots of food, and of had a lot of good time to talk...in the moonlight...because the power was cut the whole time he was here. It was a great visit. Dad stayed well, got to meet my family and friends here, and got to see Tchad. This year will be hard to explain...it’s not something that is easily put into words...so I’m grateful that someone has at least spent a few days here and seen it for themselves.
Tchad is more like a desert than one would expect. There are camels. There is sand. There is dust in the air...and it sticks to you when you sweat...so...all the time. Now we are in the midst of the hot, dry season. The water is cut a lot. Everything is dry. But there are the mango trees. Mango trees amaze me. They bear fruit in the midst of the drought. Right now they are heavy with mangoes...almost ripe. And they’re everywhere. I don’t have any philosophical meditations on the desert and the mango trees. No insights to share. Just an observation...and a window in the world I find myself in at this point and time. Last week http://sacredspace.ie’s homepage had a meditation on the desert. I enjoyed it so I’ll pass it along.
The scholar John L. McKenzie SJ describes how the roots of Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) faith grew in ‘the desert wastes of Syria and Arabia, which seem to stretch into infinity’. The Chosen People were in those wastes for forty years. Jesus himself recapitulated that experience of his people, by going into the wilderness for forty days. And Christians, following him, starting out on the forty days of Lent each year enter that desert experience too. But, in truth, our own day-to-day mundane lives often have something of that desert reality about them. What happens out there, in the real, or in the man-made deserts of today? Between the desert floor and the desert sky, life is stripped of all its artificial props, brought down to its essentials, in the effort to remain alive and avoid death. Vulnerable and exposed in that setting, we might also feel particularly threatened or tempted, as if surrounded by malignant forces in the swirling windswept sands. Such was the actual desert experience. But, more than this and above all, it was the place where the Chosen People experienced God: at Mount Sinai they were drawn into a Covenant relationship. They could never forget that. In the desert - our illusions taken away, leaving us exposed and vulnerable - we find, not nothingness, but the living God. God before us, God with us, the God of fidelity, and truth, and love. ‘Lord, you have found us in the wilderness, you have surrounded us, lifted us up, and kept us as the apple of your eye’. (cf Deuteronomy 32: 10)
I love you all.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Time measured in a Doxy bottle.
Time is a funny thing. It passes. Quickly. Slowly. Bit by bit. I’ve been watching my time in Tchad pass through the lens of my Doxycycline bottle. Doxy by Doxy the days go by. It’s actually been a nice, tangible measure of my time. Two bottles. Half a year in one. The other half in the other. I’ve been watching, and anticipating the day that I would finish bottle one and move on to bottle two. Not that I’m waiting for my time here to pass, but half a year is like turning a corner, finishing a chapter, and turning the page.
It turns out that half of a year of Doxycycline was more momentous than I expected. And in fact, I will never have the satisfaction of finishing the single lonely pill that is left in bottle one...and bottle two will never be touched. But I digress.
I got sick on Wednesday. Well not really sick sick. But I came home after my evening class with a headache. Nothing too concerning. Just annoying. Thursday morning I woke up with a headache. It was a little worse...so I took some advil and went to school...and the pain continued. By Thursday evening my head was pounding. Thursday night I didn’t sleep much. And Friday I found myself at the local clinic for a malaria test. I was convinced that my pounding head...unlike any headache I’ve felt in my life...had to be cerebral malaria. And then the malaria test came back negative. But sometimes tests are wrong...so I was started on a malaria treatment. And then I got worse. Painkillers really didn’t do much for my pounding head and I started vomiting anything I ate. By Saturday the powers that be decided it was time to take me to N’djamena. So a vehicle was rented and Sunday morning Rose and I left Moundou. Unfortunately, the doctor in N’djamena couldn’t give me a diagnosis either. But he said...sometimes Doxy can cause headaches...and he’d look into it.
So I waited. And I actually started feeling a little better. Turns out, Doxy can cause headaches. And in rare cases Doxycycline can cause intracranial hypertension...or increased pressure in the head. Symptoms: headaches, nausea, vomiting. We’ll never be 100% sure but it’s the only thing that seems to fit. Intracranial hypertension can also cause vision loss. So I am blessed and grateful it did not get to this point. So I stopped poisoning myself, continued to get better, and returned to Moundou. My head’s not normal yet (not that it ever was!) and I am now on day 17 of my headache. It is MUCH better, but pray that we have solved the problem and that there is no chapter two to this story.
In spite of my unfinished Doxy bottle, half a year has passed. Half a year sounds like a long time. And it is actually a little over half of my time here. Sometimes I feel like I have lived in Chad much longer than that. And sometimes I feel like I just got here. But like I said, time is a funny thing. In the past 23 years of my life, my body and my mind have grown accustomed to measuring time by the change of the seasons...and for the first three months in Chad I was busy trying to convince said body and mind that we’d made it out of August. Rose and I always joke about what month we think it is now...in January we had almost made it to October (because the weather cooled down a bit) but now it’s hot again. So I’m not sure if we’re back in August or if we’ve jumped ahead to May. Regardless of my seasonal confusion, time is passing. And it is bittersweet. I miss my life, family, friends that I’ve left behind and I look forward to the day I will see them again. But at the same time, I feel a bit rushed...trying to soak up every minute, every experience, every interaction because I know my time here in Chad is limited...and growing short.
I hate the questions...when are you coming back...and...why don’t you stay two or three years. They’re becoming more and more frequent topics of conversation. One year in a place is long...and yet so short at the same time. I want to explain that I would love to come back someday...if I find an extra 2000 dollars lying around. Or that I would love to stay...if it weren’t for my friends and family that I miss and would like to see again sooner than that. I just don’t quite know how to answer these questions...or what really to think about them...sometimes they make me feel very selfish...
All this to say, I have less than five months here. To live. To learn. To love. To teach. To experience. I have present and I will think about future later. Pray for the rest of my time here. Pray for my health. And pray for stability and peace in this part of the world.
Love you all.
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