SOCKBALL...a light read

Here are some recent pictures of the big Dogdore Sockball Championship. Team Anglophone Funny Looking White Guy VS. Team Dogdore. Needless to say, I kicked some 8 year old butt! Kids...ppphhht.


THE CROWD OF ORNERY ONLOOKERS GATHERS, ROOTING FOR THE HOME TEAM. LITTLE DID THEY KNOW, TEAM SISSY HEAT SENSITIVE FUNNY LOOKING WHITE GUY HAD A PERSONAL SOCKBALL VENDETTA.





STEP ONE...THE RULES OF THE GAME. Discussing the RULES and REGULATIONS with the competitors, they didn't stand a chance!:



STEP TWO...FINDING THE GAME BALL. I present to you, The COMPETITION (sock)BALL :



STEP THREE...MERCILESS SOCK BALL ACTION AGAINST THE UNSUSPECTING CHILDREN OF DOGDORE! Wusses!



STEP FOUR...MUTUAL CELEBRATION AT THE FACT THE WHITE GUY DIDN'T DIE OF HEAT STROKE WHILE MERCILESSLY PUMMELING THE UNSUSPECTING CHILDREN OF DOGDORE AT COMPETITION SOCKBALL!


A GOOD DAY.

Eat this Hallmark!

This is the post that is the post I never thought I'd be writing, at least to all of you from Chad. But so it goes, life defies us, and often times when it does, it's something beautiful:

A while back, oh, let's say about 3 days after arriving in the luxurious wonderland that is Chad, I was dragged along on a 'training' flight by our (now ex) French Chief Pilot. He had me sit in the back as we flew a rotation to the north, so that I might just see how things were done on a regular, daily basis. We visited the lovely towns of Bahai, Iriba and then finally Guerada, before returning to Abeche. Upon our arrival in Guerada (the warring faction capitol of Eastern Chad) Monsieur Peuvion handed me the passenger manifest and instructed me to go practice my incorrigible French with the awaiting NGO passengers.

I walked towards the crowd of dusty, anxious looking onlookers with the paper in hand, scanning it looking for a name I could actually pronounce. Mahammat Ahmet Muhammed, Ndjkour Hissembbkabye, Nelebaye Djimbe Kjousmanete, shit...

Finally I hit on one...Elizabeth Spess. Nationality: American. Organization: CCF.

Alright! I was relieved to find an American on the list, someone who spoke English and whom I could relate to. I checked in the first phonetically impossible individuals, and finally came back to the Elizabeth Spess name, yelled it over the humdrum of ensuing Francophone conversation, and watched as the beautiful girl with really wacky looking sunglasses approached. She didn't smile, she just handed me her American Passport.

"Hi there. So where are you from, Elizabeth?", I matter asked making small talk.

"America.", was the response.

"Umm, yeah, I got that much thank you. Really though, where are you from?"

"Aah, Abeche?" she quasi-question-stated.

"Ok, look, I know you're not a native Chadian, and I know you are from the United States, because you handed me a large blue passport that says United States of America all over it. So, more specifically, where are you from in the United States of America? How bout you just give me a State...I know most of them...I swear"

"Michigan...well, New York."

Who is this girl? And why won't she give me a straight answer to a ridiculously easy question. CIA? NSA? IDIOT?

I harassed her a bit more before handing her the pen and allowing her to sign in the space allotted. One more passenger was checked in and then I was allowed the joyous pleasure of screening all those I had just checked in with the metal detector. This can sometimes be a great time. You wave the detector over a pocket and it beeps. You stop and look at the individual inquisitively, they smile. You make it beep again on the pocket. They smile again. You pat the pocket, before making it beep. They pat the other pocket and smile. "Argh...what's in your bloody pocket?????!?"

So when it came to Elizabeth Ann Spess's turn, she beeped all over. Knives here, bullets there, a grenade(which we do not count as a weapon, because the Chadians argue they are not all the time. They even think it's funny when we point at the picture of a gun with a X over it. "silly white guy...that's a gun, this is a grenade!"), more knives...Ok, I'm kidding. Little did she know though, there's also a button on the metal detector that makes it beep whenever one feels like making it beep. He..he..he.

The flight back we shouted to each other over the hum of the Otter's low pitched engines and air whistling by. I learned she was from Saginaw, Michigan originally, and then spent the past few years in New York City. She had lived and worked all over the world which intrigued me, and she had a nice ass, which intrigued me equally. My voice became hoarse, and soon we reached Abeche which ended the introductory conversation.

Well, I won't bore you with too many more details here and we'll fast forward to last week, more accurately Valentines Day. It was hot, really, really freaking hot...about 47 degrees Centigrade actually. We finished early and Elizabeth and Asa (pronounced Oh-sa) came over mid afternoon to use the internet and so that I might talk to Elizabeth about something that'd been pestering my consciousness. I hemmed and hawed and made all sorts of really weird noises and motions. I asked repeatedly whether Elizabeth might want to go for a walk or go to the market for something. She questioned whether I'd taken up a drug addiction. Finally I succeeded at dragging her for a walk outside the razor wired compound in the 115 degree Fahrenheit blazing sun...and what a beautiful walk it was. 'Oh, look, a goat skull honey!....Mmm, still stinky too!'

I hemmed and hawed some more, and finally came to a resolute decision...in a clearing 1 Chadian block away from my compound, I sat her down on a crumbling mud brick wall. The lizards scattered and the plastic bags rustled in the faint breeze that did little to cool our smoldering bodies. I looked around for onlookers...none. I listened for onlookers...nothing. There was nothing but the sound of scampering lizard claws, the occasional rustle of the Chadian National Flower (plastic bag) and a slightly eerie sounding Arabic tune wafting in from some mud hut who knows where. I knelt down.

"Elizabeth Ann Spess, will yo.....THWUMP!!"

A large dirt ball blew up next to me, followed by a chorus of laughter from a group of 40 or 50 children and adolescents nearby. Next came the tsunami of Cadeaux (gift en francais) requests, as the mob of ragged kids came running at us. I shoved the object in my hand back down into my pocket. The inquisitive group arrived and I had to answer many questions in broken French as to why I, a white guy, was out walking around in these ornery 8yr. olds' soccer fields, with a white woman, nonetheless. 'Ooooooh' washed over the crowd about the time that one of them made a kissy face and imitated me making out with Elizabeth. I got sucked into a quick game of soccer with the duct taped soccer ball they had brought over before Betsey and I were allowed on our way. More laughter at the kid making the obscene kissy faces....I swore revenge on the boy.

We arrived back at the romantic retreat compound and I, for some reason, decided that it still must be done. So, on the hood of a broken down vehicle I sat Elizabeth, in the blazing Sahel sun, once again. The generator gurgled and burped next to us, belching noxious black smoke our way. We were sweating profusely and neither had showered for at least 2 days. We both, in all likeliness, stunk enough that we did not smell each other. The growing mass of yelling kids still sat outside the metal gate and our guard was growing irritated with the attention that we had garnered. The wind quit making feeble attempts to stir the air, and so she sat and baked non convection style as I slowly kneeled again.

And in this extremely romantic fashion, and in this extremely romantic place, while we both looked so beautiful and smelled even better....I asked her to marry me. And she said yes. Obviously the effects of heat stroke were beginning to affect her decision making.

Sudanese 'Strategery'

Everyone screws up here and there...everyone. No matter how perfectionist, how focused, how inspired, impressive, or impeccable, sooner or later the individual or individuals will balk, and screw the proverbial pooch. That's why I had to laugh the other day, in a sick, twisted kind of way, when I heard about how those silly, genocide crazed, ethnic cleansing enjoying, blissfully bloodthirsty Sudanese Air Force bombers, working in conjunction with ground militias and (most likely) the Janjaweed, kinda pulled a 'oopsy'.

In Bahai, over the past couple of months, it's been a recurring and common knowledge problem that the Sudanese Air Force, on their day to day bombing runs, trying to eradicate the opposing rebels (who for some reason don't agree with this whole genocide thing), and the opposing rebels' supply routes, have time and time again crossed over the border into Chad. In our morning security briefings it is sometimes thrown in for good measure, and it often arises at UNHCR security meetings orchestrated for the other NGOs, that these aircraft have been sighted again doing these illegal maneuvers and have scared the bejeezes out of a bunch of already paranoid and vulnerable refugees. For its part, and on a different note, I believe the UN has failed to follow it's own rules when dealing with international refugees by leaving them in a camp only about 1 mile from the country that wishes to wipe them off the face of the planet. But anyway...

So on this particular, shining morning, not too long ago we got another report of the mischievous, trespassing Sudanese at it again. This time it came with a sad twist for quadruped lovers around the world.

It would seem that the airplanes came in and targeted a large area just to the east of Bahai, in an effort to accomplish what I had mentioned above regarding the rebels. They bombed and bombed and bombed to their little hearts contents, and then bombed some more for good measure. The dust and smoke mixed together and blew around, presenting the already sand storm prone area with even more condensation nuclei to lower the visibility. The dust settled (a bit) the smoking craters, barely discernible from the rest of the void sand box around, quit smoking. The ground forces moved in to count the dead and review the carnage.

For it's part the government of Sudan on this particular day did a lovely job using it's bombs to kill a total of 142 rebel....(drum roll please!).... goats! Damn terrorist goats, newest members to the international axis of evil. The bombing did produce countless more happy soldiers, however, with the abundance of fresh and piping hot brochettes. Pass the pepper Mahammat, s'il vous plait. Mmm, mmm, good. Strategery at it's finest!

Battin Zero

When the phone rings at 5am, its not a welcome noise to me. And so it was last weekend when at 515 or so my little Nokia began singing electronically to me. First instinct: grab the alarm clock and stare absent mindedly at it trying to gauge just what is happening here. Second instinct: grab the phone and answer.

"aaaarggh, Hello?"
"Jesse, this is Joseph with IRC in Bahai, aaaahhh, look, go back to bed..."

With those last 4 words that tumbled out of this man's mouth came a wave of relief for a brief moment. Excellent, I get to crawl back into bed and cuddle up to her again for another hour and a half. The relief was soon drowned in a flood of guilt.

The evening before, while Lauren and I were at the French military base rubbing elbows with the Francophone elite, quietly making fun of them and their silly short shorts, I received a call from Sheri at IRC (International Rescue Committee) . She stated that one of her Bahai based employee's children, a small boy, had been caught in a grease fire at one of the camps. He suffered serious burns and required immediate evacuation in the morning...could we help? Definitely, you know we can always be counted on for such things (a statement I soon wondered if I should regret). A plan for an early flight to pick up the child and his mother was completed and my sleep would be greatly reduced, a miniscule tradeoff.

"...yes, go back to bed, the boy is dead. Thank you for your help though, we greatly appreciate it."

What kind of monster am I to have the first wave of emotions after learning of an innocent child's death be: 'Sweet, I get to go back to bed.'?

A few days later IRC called in yet another Medevac request from Bahai, this time for a young man with a perforated abdomen. We were exhausted from flying nonstop for 6 days, moving from our old house to the new one, and sorting out personnel problems but we said 'no problem' again. Upon arrival the young man, about 21 years old, looked at me with anguish contorted eyes. A primitive IV bag lay on the colorful mattress we loaded him in on, and he smelled of sweat, urine and feces mixed with isopropyl alcohol and iodine. His father, an elderly man in his 60s, with a Sahel sun wrinkled face and deep brown eyes, watched helplessly as we tied the son down gently and began closing the doors. Every small movement we made seemed to send the otherwise staunch and emotionless face of the young man into an abyss of pain. I taxied slow down the gravel and rock airstrip to a spot where the piling sand dunes make it to bumpy, turned around and took off. One hour later, after flying as gently as possible over the arid desert below we landed in Abeche. Ten minutes later, the young man was dead.

Yesterday, after flying to the north yet again, making our rounds thru Bahai, Iriba and Guerada, and evacuating unnecessary UNHCR staff from Guerada due to the escalating tribal vs. militia warfare we returned home to our compound to have lunch. Five minutes after the feast of PB and J began my phone rang. Guess who. The number on the caller id told me it was a satellite phone, and I could think of only one reason why someone from the field would be calling me on their sat phone right now: another Medevac. Answering with a mouth full of crunchy peanut butter (an absolute jewel of a novelty here), my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, I heard Sheri again on the other line. Sounding as if she was standing in a hurricane, she shouted thru the microphone piece that they were treating a fourteen year old boy who had, very unfortunately, found a landmine. It seems there are a few unexploded devices left in the dunes along the Chadian-Sudanese border left over from a war 20 years ago which the Libyans played a major role in. Back to Bahai.

When we landed the IRC trucks pulled up to the double doors at the Otter's rear. The Land Rover's doors opened up revealing a boy who looked as if he were 10, not 14, who was bundled in bloodied bandages. His face was torn and swollen, his hands and feet were just wadded clots of red gauze.

'He may not make it' one man said in broken English as we gently loaded the fragile cargo onto the airplane. I noted the pool of blood sloshing on the plastic stretcher and agreed silently in my head. Seven months ago my head may have been spinning at the amount of gore that lay in front of me, and while I cannot say I am in immune to it, my skin has thickened. Another weather beaten old man climbed the flimsy aluminum stairs to join us onboard as we all stared at the unfortunate boy, it was the father. From a lasting side glance I took in the man's expression and found that he too, was Chadianized.

The day before, while refueling the aircraft in Abeche, I was joking with one of our employees, Remy, about a certain love potion root he was chewing on, a renowned Chadian aphrodisiac. "Why are you chewing that dirt covered shit???" I asked.

"Aah, to make jiggy-jiggy with his femme! To make more petit Remys!" answered Deni, another local worker standing beside him. We all laughed and took cheap shots at Remy.

"But you already have 2 Remy! Why have more????!! Why do you want anymore than that?"

"Ooh, aah, because you have two annnnnd one die, you have only one. You have tree or four and one or two die, you still have two. Its ok."

Cold statistics. Something that our ancestors living 150 years ago thought about while living on the frontier, but that none of us in the westernized world can truly fathom.

I watched the father as he sat down next to his bloodied boy. A look of concern was in his eye, there was no doubt of that, but that was all I could visibly discern. In a land where death is all around, potentially waiting around each corner for those who call this home, thick skin is a must, and looking at things from a cold statistical point of view might be the only way to survive. Physically and emotionally.
I awoke this morning to another early phone call. This time it was Elizabeth, who was suffering from a nasty bout of food poisoning. I dressed quickly and hopped in the car, loaded with a bottle of Ciproflaxin and some re-hydration salts aimed at fixing the girlfriend. When I neared her compound I had to slow and stop as a Muslim funeral procession crossed the road in front of me. Carried atop the heads of a few mourners was a small coffin, bound for the sand nearby.

Shit, I'm 0 for 3.