I need to go catch a trout...

Each time I leave this corrupt sandbox I find it harder and harder to muster up the motivation to come back. I find myself tired of experiencing and shrugging of the recurring problems that mire Chad, in fact I struggle greatly now not to lose my patience in a violent way when they occur. I'm both ashamed of this and also cognizant that I'm not alone in feeling this way. Elizabeth and I spent many an evening recently discussing the many reasons why we'd never miss this landlocked pit of despair.

If I were reading this right now I'd be thinking the same thing. The two of us are feeding off each other's negativity thus compounding the problem, one-upping each other's annoying story to a degree that we both are at a fevered pitch of aggravation, right? Well maybe, just maybe. However, the problems that we moan to each other about are I think worth moaning about.

About a month ago it became obvious that if either of us wanted to take vacation before our contracts were up we'd have to do it quickly. We planned an impromptu trip to Egypt, a place we mutually longed to see. I was put in charge of tickets. AirFrance...$3,456,234.97 for a roundtrip. Ethiopian...$450! Sweet! Let's go...click! After pressing the BUY button on their website, Ethiopian drops on you the taxes and surcharges, the highest in the galaxy I might add, turning a $450 ticket into a $950 ticket. All well we thought, at least we'll get out of here for a week and unwind. All we had to do now was pick up the tickets in N'djamena and we were free to explore. Two days before departing a colleague went to retrieve the tickets only to find that the reservation had been cancelled. We arrived the next day and spent hours arguing for the seats, and thankfully finally won, just as the power cut out, causing the system to crash and forcing me to return later for the papers.

I returned 4 hours later, parking with other cars along N'djamena's dusty and busy main street, a gravel covered road surrounded by dilapidated archaic buildings and hordes of beggars and peanut selling children. Weaving my way thru the throngs of beggars and falling prey, as I do every time, to one of the peanut selling girls who is absolutely the cutest little girl I've seen here, and who remembers me and hunts me down each time I visit the capital, I finally made it to the Ethiopian Airlines office. I emerged minutes later victorious and gleeful, text messaging Elizabeth that we were on our way to a great vacation. Little did I know, while I was in the airline's office, someone had written in black ink across my forehead, in big letters I never got to see most likely because I sweat them off, the words "Please, Please, Fuck with me!!!"

Hopping thru the traffic and clouds of blue smoke belched from exhaust pipes I came alongside my truck, keys in one hand, airline tickets in the other. A deafening yell came from 3 feet behind me, startling me and causing me to turn around quickly to find a man in full camouflage uniform, a blue beret, and a large automatic rifle strapped across his back, angrily gesturing at me as he stomped his feet. I ignored him, turning my back, knowing all too well that what he wanted was a quick buck. He chose to ignore the fact I was ignoring him, and kept on screaming in my ear, forcing me to turn around and scream back at him. My French is far from adequate, but I understand more than I can vocalize, and so I understood his claim that I was parked illegally, in a spot marked by white lines, alongside 20 other vehicles all parked exactly the same way. 'Hmmm, how strange' thought I. I told him in English to 'Go piss off and find someone else to fuck with', to which he responded 'what is this???!!! what is this????!!!' pointing at my tickets, and before I could do anything else he'd snatched them from my hand and shoved them down his shirt front. The inner voice began begging for calm, and for the most part I followed it's suggestions.

The uniformed bastard went with a smirk plastered across his face and sat down with his fellow cronies, who wore equally impressive corrupt smiles, on a bench in the shade. I followed close behind directing in perfect American English all of the most insidious insults I could muster, at this shithead. When this failed to produce results I moved on to broken French, demanding that he return the tickets that he had no right to, while throwing in an occasional F-bomb for good measure. He laughed and told me the cost for the tickets, which I had already paid for, was 75,000 CFA, or $150. My face grew red and more red and even more red still. I desperately wished a piano would fall from the tree above and kill every one of the soldiers sitting below. It did not. After waiting for about 10 minutes I removed 10,000 CFA from my wallet, had him arise and show me the tickets, and then snatched the tickets from him while throwing the money on the ground beside us both. This, in retrospect, was not the most cool headed thing to do, but I was beyond caring for some strange reason...something inside me had become tainted or broken.

As he screamed and gained the attention of the other soldiers I went for the truck, which was locked. It was then, and only then that I came to the regrettable conclusion that though the truck does lock, it does not unlock with the keys provided. Shit. I did finally get into the truck, but not before half of downtown N'djamena saw a white guy prying a back window open, sweating profusely, as belligerent soldiers with guns yelled at him in broken a mysterious slur of languages. I hopped in, smiled at them, muttered a few more combinations of F#$% you to them, and was off. It was then that I decided I am officially done with Chad.

Elizabeth, that day, also had an anti Chad epiphany. Her organization has taken on an amazingly challenging project, one that she is managing, to retrain and repatriate ex-child soldiers who were captured in last year's rebel attack on the capital. In a center just outside of downtown, 30 something adolescent boys, ranging from 11 to 18 are being taught, thru international pressure, to become normal functioning parts of an abnormal and corrupt society. CCF is trying to help these boys be boys again, helping them to salvage some type of a childhood, or in many cases, trying to teach them a skill that'll help them merge back into the masses peacefully and profitably. While their retraining is to be done by CCF and UNICEF, their nourishment is to be looked after by the 'Ministry of all things fucked' in the Chadian government, which ironically, does anything but keep them nourished. The boys, who are therefore hungry, do what they can to procure food, and consequently disappear, sometimes turning up a night or two later stabbed and mortally injured, which is just what happened the day before we departed. When queried the Ministry OATF shrugs it's shoulders and lets it be known that they care nothing for these small boys who have been enslaved into a war they know nothing about. In all likelihood, many of the boys have actually served on both sides of the conflict as well, being captured and forced to fight their former captors.

Days later, this topic came up in a press conference with the Chadian Minister of Defense or Interior. A woman in the audience of press members started by saying something like "Sir, it is a well known fact that the Chadian military uses child soldiers for its..." at which time she was interrupted and corrected by the Minister. "Madame, Madame, we do not use child soldiers. We do, however, have many midgets in our armed forces." Midgets. Midgets? Dear sir, could you not have come up with anything better than this as an explanation, or at least ignored the comment...because now you look depressingly inferior. Where is the piano dropping from above when you need it, damnit???? The woman was however ignored when she completed her question which she intended, inquiring where the masses of young girls who had also been enslaved as child soldiers by the rebels, and then captured by the government, had disappeared to? Its a morbid and depressing thought for me to consider what has become of these little girls, knowing what I know about Chadian men.

Before moving to Chad I held most fellow members of my gender in high esteem. I will admit that maybe I could have even been considered a bit sexist when I compared abilities of the sexes. I have always considered myself open minded, but when Elizabeth would talk of women running the world and why it would be a better place I would scoff it off as a bit silly. Chad has taught me something though that I'll never shake off. The male side of the human species is capable of some of the most despicable and shameful actions. I often look around me here in Abeche, at the way women are treated by ignorant and imbecilic men who claim their inborn dominance and feel angry, disgusted and embarrassed. 'Maybe her idea isn't so bad after all' occasionally pulsates through my brain.

I'll be posting some pictures of Egypt soon, along with something maybe a bit lighter.