Africa Vision 15

Africa Vision 15

Bebedja, December 4, 2007

Chicken on the roof

Today it became perfectly clear to me why Chadians travel with their chicken on the roof of the car. As we slugged our way to the south every 100-kilometer a bag dropped of the roof. Clearly the chickens are confused and guard the bags as if they are eggs. As you notice I am not in N’Djamena. Here in St Joseph’s at Bebedja there is a 90-bed hospital where tomorrow I shall plunge into service. I live in a little bungalow and despite the electricity being turned of at 21.00 all else is brilliant. The sisters received me with a late night salad and a warm conversation. We talked about their experience of Chad since 1977. One sister told me that over the last years since the oil has been found a laisez-aller has developed. Somehow with the mineral richness in their environment and yet for many no improvement in their day-to-day life something has snapped. To quote a sister: ‘People say we are poor and have been so for so long it does not matter if we die early’ She clearly talked about a change of mentality for the worse.

A certain dependence attitude I need to find out more about this. For now I need to plunge back into the tropical medical textbooks as well as create a mini medical wordlist to understand the patients when they speak their local language or Arabic. Luckily I shall be working with the aid of a nurse translator who speaks French. It has been a while since I saw patients but with the patient load it will not take long to be in full swing again. And of course common things are common. What happens here a lot is that patients present very late in their illness. When a baby comes with an anemia of 3 (severe) and in coma and convulsing it is difficult to treat. My last visit I saw many children and adults with progressed disease and then HIV is a bi issue in this area.

In short a lot of work cut out for me here. I shall return to N’Djamena to give my first class at university and lobby for funding of course. The journey today was with 10 staff members of World Vision. They are to be found all over the south. As we drove around N’Djamena the last two ladies managed to pile up an impressive number of 21 bags and suitcases to be taken their home. The whole trip this sheer endless luggage was the cause of a lot of hilarity. On many occasions when yet another bag dropped of the top of the Land-cruiser proposition were made to chuck of some luggage or to send someone up to the top of the car to guard the valuables. Our queen of the vehicle was a lady of my size. A true queen as traveling light meant our car’s axels almost broke.

As N’Djamena - Mondou is 700 kilometers there is the obligatory flat tire. Today one exploded and it took a great team effort and two Rambo knives to carve it off the axis. Three other heavyweights and my self mounted the back of the vehicle. This is usually the place for 1 or 2 golden retrievers. Truly sardines have a better deal. One thing about my Chadian friends no matter what comes on the path there is always something to laugh about. The easy and well felt laughs in Chad ring well in my ears.
From tomorrow I shall be writing about the activities in the hospital of St Joseph. For now sleep well. Perhaps I can post this from Bebedja and otherwise you shall have to wait a bit.

Harmony,

Ashis