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The Return

It had been a long seven hours on the plane. Two of them were spent on the runway at Charles de Gaulle waiting for the snow storm to pass and the plane to be de-iced. We spent a not-so-silent duration of the flight listening to rowdy French soldiers in front of us and a Nigerian business man and American evangelist and pilot behind us. The plane was brand new and had I been on a flight from LA to New York, I would have been pleasantly surprised at the up-to-date movie selection and fancy new LED overhead reading lights. But in fact, the French in front, the accented English behind me, and the now black as night Sahara whizzing by below us, reminded me that I was on a journey back to the middle of nowhere. When the fancy new cabin lights dimmed to dark it kind of freaked me out, and I thought that the LED lights actually cast a rather creepy glow over the foreign faces. The French Camembert didn’t taste quite so pleasant this time, and in our haste to make it to the airport in time, I had neglected to pack something in my purse to occupy my time. So, instead, I had plenty of time to sit and ponder our decision to return. As the pilot announced our imminent landing, my heart started to pound and thoughts of “you idiot, what were you thinking?” started to race through my head. Small lights, signs of some sort of civilization in this vast wilderness, started to appear on the horizon, and all around, you could hear the conversations fade, and all eyes were glued to the windows. It’s always a sobering experience landing in that place. At that moment, the majority of the passengers who are there, having committed to a several month term in Chad, are beginning to let their fear seep out. As the wheels touched the ground, I began to cry. I don’t really know why…partly out of fear of the thing that had just begun, and partly the feeling of utter isolation and loneliness that can only be understood by those who have made this trip. The only thing you can see as you look out the windows is blackness…But I realized also that a part of me was crying because I realized that we had finally made it. Come what may after this moment, but God had finished that battle. We had actually landed in Chad.
The next three hours were a whirlwind of feelings and experiences and recollections. After riding the 300 feet from the plane to the “airport”, we waited in line to have our passports checked and our yellow fever card stamped by a tall man in a dirty white lab coat. I’ve heard that if you can’t find your certificate of vaccination that you will be given one at that time, and a shuddered at the thought that it would be given by this man. We collected our bags and were waved through customs on account of our speaking Arabic instead of French. We were then met by the throngs of people waiting outside the metal gates -- for whom, I don’t know, since we were the last flight in of the evening and the last people off the plane. It seems, as we passed through the revolving doors into Chad that we passed through a time machine – not to a different year, but to a previous era of our lives. Instead of feeling like returning, it felt like rejoining our life where in left off. Writing now, six days after arriving in country, I still have this sense, that when we left Chad last year, time stopped, we carried out our travels and business in America and when we went through those doors, it started moving again. And it’s not because everything is the same. Quite the contrary. The two paved roads in the capital have multiplied to be innumerable. There are street lights on every paved road – so many that one gets the sense that you are at some sort of theme park where there must be enough light for business to carry on like normal. There are new statues in all the round points (roundabouts), the dry fountains now have water flowing out of them (even when there is none in the wells), and there are even things like, well, Christmas lights. That is using the term loosely. They look neither like Christmas, nor do they come in shapes or forms commonly found during this season. But they are indeed colored lights on strands that are up during Christmas, so we will call them Christmas lights. There are also multiple multi-story buildings being erected throughout the city, a new stadium being built and the biggest surprise: ”Tchad Nadif” which means “Clean Chad” and is the name of the city’s new municipal sanitation department. There are actual trash trucks that make rounds every week to pick up trash cans from various locations, mainly the wealthy houses, since the other are still burning theirs. There are also Chadian women in traditional dress with fluorescent orange vests with “Tchad Nadif” embroidered on their backs that are sent out to sweep the streets. It is an interesting juxtaposition of old and new and the great ideas and the ridiculous. I’m not sure sweeping the streets of dust is going to actually make anything sanitary. Dust is the least of their problems…but I suppose you have to start somewhere.