The Illusion of Control.

I am out of control. Well, not really…don’t get worried. But I have been thinking a lot about control…and the control and structure that we build around our lives. Surprises and uncertainties have no place in our boxes. We know the cause and effect of all things, we have a solution for all problems, and we have tamed the world around us and built our own controllable world within it…wouldn’t want anything messing with our five year plan. Our lives are our own and we will sustain them.

Now…I’m not saying that all control is bad. Just a little jest about our propensity to become our own gods. Our western world “control freak” disorder has led us into this illusion of total control. It’s like the reckless teenager whose youth gives him a sense of invincibility. The invincibility that, in the western world, we never seem to grow out of.

Contrast. I have lost the illusion. Being dropped in the middle of a completely new and different cultural milieu helps, but Chad really isn’t a place where one maintains an illusion of control. For instance, I’ll be surprised if I make it through this year without getting run over by a moto. Sometimes I think they drive straight at me on purpose…like one has said to the other, “let’s play chicken with the Nassara* on the velo*…see what she does.”

I’ve also heard that Moundou is the third worst city in Africa for malaria. My host mom says that malaria is the welcome for all strangers who come to Moundou. I told her it’s not a very good welcome. She laughed. Now, I haven’t fallen* sick with the fateful palu* yet…and I am taking prophylactics…but really, it’s only a matter of time. Sickness in general is something to be concerned about here. Lots of microscopic creepy crawlies that want to get inside you (and I don’t suggest hosting them in your liver.)

Death happens often. “La place mortuaire” was one of the first French phrases I learned. A few weeks ago my host mom had to choose between two funerals that were happening at the same time. If I had to guess the amount of family members or close friends that someone in my host family has lost since I’ve been here…it would be upwards of fifteen. I’ve been here three months.

All this to say...safety and danger, sickness and health, life and death…here…are much more acute. And I find myself in the realization that I am not my own sustainer…and I cannot hope to be. I am out of control. With this new realization, this heightened sensitivity to a need for a sustainer, I have found myself seeking my God and my sustainer with a more genuine depth of need. I realize that each day, moment, each sortie* it is God that grants me safety, health, and life…because on my own, I would not survive.

…Which gives me pause…

Does this mean I have less need of a sustainer in my US life? No. It only means that I am more blind. The depth of need, the intensity of vulnerability is consistent. Which is why our illusion of total control is so dangerous…our need is not as apparent. But who has sustained us? Who has thought well to situate us in a place where we have the knowledge or means to cure disease, or to organize a safe and healthy public sphere? And who protects us in our planes, trains, and automobiles? Our God, creator, sustainer, and life-giver. Chad has taken away my blinders. I see more clearly the need to be grateful in all instances and more conscious that I am not my own god. It is this realization that I hope to carry prayerfully throughout my time here in Chad and my life when I return. Be thankful to God for the life he gives us, and seek his blessing, healing and protection in all circumstances.

Nassara: white person

velo: bicycle

fallen (sick): in French, you fall sick…or tomber malade

palu(disme): malaria

sortie: going out

Daily Life.

Life in Tchad starts at 6:00am. Well…actually earlier for most people but 6:00 is when I get up. Waking up has never been my strong suit…and I still entertain the idea of staying in bed for fifteen more minutes…but it is a little easier here. At 6, the sun is up, the roosters are crowing, dishes are being washed, fires started, and my host mom is shouting instructions across the courtyard. It’s enough to remind me that I need to get up…can’t be lazy while everyone else works.

Once I drag myself out of bed, lave ma figure, and throw on a pagne I search for things to do. Everyone seems to have their tasks and I am still finding my niche in the morning chores. It is my job to set the table for breakfast, sometimes I help sweep the courtyard, and one time I almost got make the eggs…but my sister did it for me when I didn’t know where to find a bowl, frying pan, or whether to cook them over the fire, the coals, or the little gas stove. I’m still learning…hopefully cooking the eggs will be my job soon.

I eat breakfast around 7:00 with my host parents. Guests, older siblings who are visiting, and sometimes my little brother Roland will join us, but it is not typical for a Chadian family to eat together. The children share their part and the adults share theirs. Breakfast consists of a thermos of hot water to be mixed with your choice of: Nescafe, tea, Nido (milk powder), Matinal (chocolate milk powder), or all of the above. I take my Nescafe sans sucre which my host parents always like to point out to all of their friends. My non-sugared instant coffee is very peculiar to Chadians who usually put at least five sugar cubes in everything. Food in the morning usually consists of Chadian baguettes, jam, laughing cow cheese and eggs. Sometimes we have avacado salad, beignets, or some kind of fish or meat soup.

My mornings, lately, have been pretty uneventful. After breakfast I usually sweep out my room and tidy up a bit. Dirt/sand gets everywhere in Chad so tasks like sweeping and cleaning shoes are very important. For the first month we had Ngambai lessons in the morning. Now that they are finished and English classes are in full swing, I spend the mornings at home preparing for class. My lack of teaching experience, and my effort to supplement the book’s endless grammar exercises with a few lessons and activities of my own make lesson planning very time consuming. But this is only the first term…ça va aller. If I’m not preparing, I hang out with whoever happens to be around, I help in the kitchen if needed, do my laundry, and sometimes entertain my two year old friend Bonté while her mom’s at work.

Lunch happens anytime between 13:00-15:00 and usually consists of la boule and la sauce. Boule is the traditional and preferred Chadian dish. Everyone always begins any conversation about boule by telling me that, “la boule te donne la force!!” or, boule gives you strength!! Boule is a cooked mixture of flour and water…but not flour like we would think of flour. There are many types of boule: rice boule, millet boule, corn boule, and manioch boule made from their respective types of flour. It is cooked in a large kettle over a fire and stirred with a large wooden spoon. Once it is ready it is placed in greased calabashes which are placed upside down on a plate. The boule takes the calabash’s dome shape and can be cut in slices or eaten communally with your hands. Eating with your hands from a communal dish is the traditional, and preferred way of eating in Chad. While I have eaten this way on occasion, I eat much slower than anyone here and my host mom worries that I won’t get enough to eat. There are many different types of sauce that are served with boule. My favorite sauce is made from peanuts and mushrooms…my least favorite sauce is gumbo which is made from ocra and has the consistency of snot. While it’s still not my favorite, I think I am growing to like it a little.

Once lunch is over, there is usually only about an hour before I have to go to school. I spend this hour resting, looking over my lesson, or doing last minute prep. Around 15:30 I jump on my bike and head to school. English classes are in the afternoons from 16:00-18:00. I am teaching two different levels this term: Beginner 2 and Intermediate Low 1. They meet twice a week for class and once a week for combined lab. Each of my classes has about ten students of all different ages but mostly in the 18-35 age range with a few exceptions. When the power is on class usually lasts the full two hours. When the power is out we have to end early because it is too dark in the classroom to see anything. It’s better for me when the power is out because I get to bike home before it is completely dark.

When I get back after class I say hello to the family, use one of the sentences in Ngambai that I know well…ma kaou kila bbol lem kei…to tell them that I’m going to put my bag in my room, and then I join them in the courtyard or salon. Dinner happens right after I get home from class. We typically eat rice with some kind of meat or fish soup to go on top, pasta, or fish.

After dinner is la culte familial…or bible study. At my house we have a family bible study everyday except Sunday. It used to be at 6:00am but now that classes have started it got moved to the evenings so the kids have more time in the morning. Like everything else in Chad, our family bible study is very formal. We have a set schedule for who will preside, do the reading, and give the message. We start off by singing two or three songs, reading a scripture, my host parents interpret the passage, we have a time for prayer requests, and then someone prays. The time ends with a song while each person walks around the circle to shake everyone elses hand.

After prayer it is usually 20:30 and I am already exhausted. I take my shower, take my doxy, do some reading, blog writing, or paper grading, and go to bed by 22:00.




Some new things…

*I spent the past two weeks in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso on MCC retreat.

*I got my long term Chad visa!!!

*I got a “sonnerie” or bell for my bike…maybe now I won’t run into people anymore

*I had a bout with a liver amoeba…or at least that’s what we decided it was. I had a strange, sharp pain in my right side for a few days and it really hurt to breathe…which is kind of important. Luckily I was in N’Djamena and Naomi (who is a nurse) diagnosed me with her “medicine in developing countries” book and gave me a pill that took care of my little friend. But he put up quite a fight and caused quite a bit of pain the day he was dying.

Some Pictures

In an effort to avoid the typical American tourist image I haven't had the chance to take too many pictures. I do have a few though...and I might as well share what I got.

My mosquito netted bed












The other side of my room...with the ever important water filter!










Eglise Evangelique au Tchad numero 8!










Speaking in church












My new mode of transportation












Getting my hair did












Looking African in my new outfit
















Sitting with my host Mom and two year old Bonte in the house

Sinks

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sinks. I really miss sinks. They are very practical…they are nice to wash your hands in, or your face, or to brush your teeth, and water is always neatly collected in the basin and drain. I’m perfectly happy, not lacking in anything, and do not need sinks to be happy…but I will definitely appreciate them more when I get back to the states.

It’s amazing how quickly and completely the human mind is capable of adapting to a new concept of normalcy for everyday life. It’s normal to wear a skirt and cover my head when I leave the house. There is nothing strange about dirt roads and the necessity to seek out the most compact, firm looking mud when navigating said dirt (mud) road after it has rained…and I seem to be developing a sixth sense to know when a moto or bicycle is coming fast behind me to pass through on the same narrow strip of passable road that I am walking on. I have learned to bike following the rules of the road Chadian style: if you are bigger and faster, you have the right of way. I bike around the women carrying peanuts or tomatoes on their heads to market, I bike around the boys pushing large wheel barrow type things down the road, I bike around the slow bikes….save for these reasons, I stay as close to the edge of the road as possible. I yield to let the motos pass and we all move aside to let a vehicle or truck pass through. If there are two cars at once going opposite directions sometimes we even stop. I have replaced traffic lanes, stop sign and stop lights with one general rule: if something bigger and faster is coming at me…move…..fast. Yet, this now seems very normal. It is normal to shake everyone’s hand when I enter a room. It is normal to leave for an event when it is time to be there. It is normal for the power to be out more often than it is on. It is normal to sweat.

I find myself thinking about things in the “developed” world almost as if they were dreams…and never reality. From time to time pictures of things like interstates and sidewalks pop into my head. I consider them like a child considers an imaginary world…they seem very foreign now because I have a new normal. While I may miss sinks, it’s only because I still encounter them on occasion here. There is a sink at Rose’s house. Until I used it I didn’t think about sinks. Similarly, I hadn’t thought about how my appearance might have changed to fit my new normal…until I saw my picture on my MCC prayer card. I looked at it, then showed it to Rose. We were both shocked at how clean I looked…not that I’m not clean here…maybe polished is a better word. I’m already so removed from the normalcy of my US life it is interesting to consider what I will feel like in ten months when I am heading back to the states.

All this to say, Chad is quickly becoming my home. There are things here that could be helped…like the lack of sewers, and lack of any type of public sanitation, but there are also things that are simply a new normal. I might miss sinks when I am reminded of them…but I don’t need them. I think we in the “developed” world look at a place like Chad and see a disaster. It’s not a disaster. It’s just a place with some problems, some differences, and a lot of incredible people living their lives in the normalcy that they know….and now, the normalcy that I know.

Some new things…

*I acted as a human food processor and helped my sisters pound meat, some kind of grain/flour, and vegetables together in a life-sized mortar pestle type thing

*I started teaching English Classes. I am teaching two classes: Beginner 2 and Intermediate Low 1. It’s exhausting…but going well so far.

*I had an outfit made…and I think it’s pretty legit :)

*I successfully biked home, in a skirt, after a three-hour-long rainstorm…I wasn’t even that muddy when I got there

Love you all.

La Chorale

Rose and I joined the church choir. It kind of happened by accident…not that I didn’t want to…I’d been planning on joining sooner rather than later. But I was sitting in the yard one day and heard my mom and sister talking about going to church later that evening. I’ve figured out over the past few weeks that I usually will not be told about things that are happening…until right before they happen. The week before I had missed out on attending a Saturday evening church service with my family because I was in my room for a few minutes and they didn’t want to disturb me…needless to say I’ve learned to ask. So, when I heard my mom and sister talking about going to church I made a point to find out what was going on….Mama informed me…

«C’est la préparation pour la Culte…et Annie va a la chorale. Est-ce que tu veux aller a la chorale avec Annie? »

La Chorale!! Yes of course I want to go to choir practice with Annie! So naturally I called up Rose, told her that we were going to choir practice, and at seize heure Rose and I hopped on the back of Motos with my host mom and sister Annie to go to choir.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to sing right away. We had to be visitors first…but in the process of visiting we got all the details from Annie about the choir and she presented Rose and I, told them we wanted to sing, and told them that in order to sing we needed les notes musique (I had made a comment to her about how none of the hymnals have music in them.) The next Tuesday we showed up at rehearsal, were quickly welcomed, and provided with a hymnal with actual written music in it…not just words…the first one I’d seen since I’ve been in Chad. The following Sunday we sang in church.

Some things about la Chorale…

1. Traditional Chadian singing does not have harmony. There is one melody and everyone kind of sings around it…or whatever they want…especially the older women. The choir we joined is made up of mainly young adults and sings in four parts. We are never on key. At least the “belt it out” strategy covers up my mispronounced French words.

2. One of our choir directors looks a whole lot like Barak Obama. One day we’ll have to tell him. It would probably be a huge compliment since everyone in Chad is obsessed with Barak…as evidenced by the fact that there are always at least three or four girls at church every Sunday wearing Obama Girl tee-shirts

3. The songs we practice at choir practice are not the only songs we will be singing at church on Sunday. I found this out while standing in front of the church, blindsided by a song that I had never heard before that we were leading the congregation in singing…and dancing. First things first: we already stick out…enough said. Second: it is difficult in any circumstance to mouth the words and pretend to sing a song you don’t know. Third: it’s even harder in a foreign language. Fourth: Add dancing to the mix and it is a recipe for disaster. Somehow I kept my cool and I don’t think anyone really noticed that I had no idea what I was doing

4. I immediately regretted the decision to join the choir when I realized that long sleeved choir robes are hot. Church is hot to begin with…pack enough people into a building in Chad and it is going to be stifling. On the plus side, the choir has its own supply of small plastic fans for each member…but I don’t think plastic fans will suffice in March and April when it’s 120 degrees and we’re wearing hot robes. Maybe we’ll have to take “heat days” from choir.

5. The robes may be hot…but they’re legit…and have a sweet looking graduation style cap to match, complete with tassle.

Life.

Hello all!

I had written a nice long blog entry about my life here in Chad...and then the internet cut when I was posting it. Thats how it goes I guess :) Instead I will post a few random updates...

I have freckles. It seems that the hot Chadian sun is causing my skin to freak out. All of a sudden I have LOTS of freckles on my arms. I mean I've had some in the past but not like this. They keep multiplying.

Some things that are supposed to make life easier make it harder...we got bikes today. They are hard to pedal and I ended up really muddy and sweaty. Haha...I will learn, and maybe get my bike adjusted a bit!

We joined the church choir. That's right BRH...I replaced you :)

I'm hoping to get some pics up soon. Love you all and miss you!

Learning to sit…

Two weeks have gone by since I have been living here in Moundou with my host family. It truly has been an incredible experience so far, but I am quickly discovering how much of a task based, fast paced North American I am. Life here moves at a different pace. For those of you who have studied African culture or have visited here yourself, you probably have an idea of what I am talking about. In fact I had an idea about what I am talking about…but it is different now that I am truly living it.

After we arrived in Moundou on Wednesday, Pastor Sem, the supervisor of CENTRAM told us that we would have Thursday to settle in, Friday he would come to take us to see the school, and Saturday we would begin language lessons. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday came and went with no word from Sem. We found out later that someone from the church had died and everyone was busy with the funeral. Death here is common. Since I have been here two people that my host family knew well have passed away.

The rain and infrequency of electricity are also factors to contend with. We are in the midst of the rainy season…which, much to my surprise, has allowed for a few cool mornings. I even wore long sleeves two mornings this week! The rain also makes leaving the house very difficult. There is one paved road in Moundou. The rest are dirt/sand and sometimes impassable because of the water and mud. Two days of language lessons have been cancelled because of the rain.

I can’t remember the last time we had electricity. Haha. Actually I can…it was Thursday, the day after I got here, but that was two weeks ago. The whole of Moundou has been in the dark since then…save for the use of small generators and an hour here and there when the lights come on and tease us. Luckily my family uses a generator for a few hours every night. It’s a nice luxury to have. From what I understand, my host mom works as some kind of secretary. She has left for work all week only to return a little bit later having been sent home. For her, there is no work to do without the power.

There is no doubt that these factors contribute to the pace of life here…but they do not make it. People make the pace of life. Over the past two weeks I have been learning how to sit with people. I sit with people on the veranda, I sit with people in the yard, I sit with people in the kitchen. This is something, as North Americans, we are not very good at. We always need a task. And sitting with people for the sake of sitting with people is rare. We always make it awkward. I amazed at the number of people who have come to visit my family since I have been here. They are various friends and family who usually show up unannounced for no particular reason but to visit. We share water, tea, peanuts, and conversation. I am learning to love this slower pace of life and all that comes with it. Being with people shouldn’t require tasks or distractions. People are valuable and interesting enough on their own.

This past week Rose and I started language lessons. We are learning Ngambai…the local language here in Moundou. Right now, it’s very slow going…especially since we are working from French to Ngambai. Learning an African tonal language is hard enough, but learning said language by way of another foreign and still difficult language is another thing entirely. I’m loving it though. It’s a good challenge! I am anxiously awaiting the start of English classes which begin the first week of October. I think I will enjoy teaching…and having a tangible task to focus on! :)

That’s all for now. Thanks to all who are praying. I miss and love you all!

Peace.

Send me mail at:
Amy Roberson
c/o Pastor Sem Beasnael
Universite Evangelique (ISETAER)
BP 59
Moundou, Chad AFRICA