It Could Be Worse

Our flight of fancy finally ended as we touched down at the airport in N’Djamena. The door opened, and we descended a set of stairs that were rolled up to the side of the plane, not unlike the president and first lady when they leave Air Force One. Here, though, there was no marching band or red carpet to meet us. There was, however, a bus that looked relatively new at the bottom of the stairs, which would drive us thirty yards across the tarmac to the terminal. I have no idea why we were driven that far. Maybe they thought the poor white foreigners would be exhausted if they had to move their flaccid, pampered bodies over that long of a distance. More likely though, the reason was the possibility of us getting lost on the way. Seriously. See, it was absolutely pitch dark there. You could stumble around in the darkness all night long if you headed off in the wrong direction. I was told that only five years ago there had been no lights in the entire city. It seemed clear why Africa had been called the Dark Continent. We left the bus and climbed the short set of steps that led us to the customs and immigration officials inside the airport building, where we were glad to find working lights. One drawback of this modern convenience was that it attracted enough insects to fill a feature-length program of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Bugs were absolutely everywhere. Not a good sign, boys and girls, particularly since Suzanne hates bugs. They flew around us in the night air, landing in our hair and on our clothes. They were on my back, they were on other people’s backs. They were crawling all over the ground, some dead and crunching under our footsteps. If we were in Asia, I would have said it sounded like we were stepping on fortune cookies. But this was Africa. So I used my passport as a fan/fly swatter as we stood dead last in line. Well, more accurately, just last in line. Finally it was our turn, and we stepped forward to hand our papers to the immigration officer. He didn’t speak any English. Not even Frenglish, or Engrish, for that matter. No surprise there. Now, for the past month, I had been studying a bit of French in my spare time and so I tried to explain who we were and why we had come. He looked at us with an expression that seemed to say I wasn’t going to get a passing grade on this oral exam. Lucky for me, James had written a letter of invitation in French, which I had handed to him with our passports and that seemed to satisfy his questions more than my linguistic foibles did. I don’t recall if he rolled his eyes at us as he stamped our passports and handed them back as another officer pantomimed that we needed to register with the police within three days. (Yes, I can count all of the fingers you are holding up, officer, thank you). OK, fine. We promised to turn ourselves into the police within three days so we could be questioned and bribed beyond all recognition. Thanks. At this point in time, it was so late at night and the language barrier was so high that I think they just waved us through because they were tired. We were the last people on the last flight in and were the last obstacle they needed to negotiate before getting off work and going home. This turned out to be exceptionally fortuitous for me because I had forgotten my yellow fever vaccination documentation. Had they remembered to ask for it, they could’ve denied me entry into the country. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be good. ... James negotiated a price we could afford. Afterward, we somehow managed to pile all our luggage in the back of the truck bed, cram a total of seven people in the truck’s cab, and five people on top of the luggage. They clung on for dear life as the truck jostled over the “road” toward Bere, while the rest of us inside the cab, at times, did a fine impression of pop corn in a hot air popper. Truly, it was African-style transportation at its finest. One advantage the rutted roads do afford the weary traveler is a slow panorama of absolute wilderness and pristine beauty. This usually occurs as the truck slows to enter, traverse, and then emerge from pot holes the size of kiddy pools. It’s wild country, just like I remembered seeing in National Geographic magazine when I was in grade school. It’s raw nature, with the sky as your limit. Eventually, as night was just starting to fall, we came to a river crossing. This was the last obstacle (that we knew of) before we arrived at the hospital in Bere. There was a bridge being built nearby, but for now, we would have to be taken across by barge—actually, a pair of large pontoon-like floaters with various scraps of planks and tree branches forming a platform onto which one might even dare to drive his vehicle. If he were really desperate. Like I was. At that moment. After the truck was onboard, we began our trip across the river, about a hundred feet. This was accomplished manually by a couple of strapping young African men pulling on a rope that was tied to the far shore. Like most technology on the continent, this mechanism was slow, needed no electricity, had no moving parts, required no advanced training and education to operate, and broke down only underneath a lack of human will (or, how shall I say insufficient funds). But it was a nice start to a storybook adventure. Now, don’t get me wrong. For several reasons, this wasn’t the Jungle Adventure ride at Disneyworld. For one, the snakes, hippos, and crocks in Chad are real. And unfortunately, sometimes you do have to get out and push your own ride. This happened well after dark had descended around us, about thirty minutes after we left the barge behind us for the last leg of the journey. The driver made a rookie error in wilderness driving, and before James could prevent him from doing so, he landed the front left tire nearly axle deep in mud as he swerved to try to miss one of the numerous ruts the rain had left in the road. While this was all very irritating, it didn’t surprise me one bit. I got out of the car and sized up the problem with the other men, who also had the foresight to bring flashlights. The mud was wet, slick, and had clogged most of the tire treads . We needed dry dirt that would give the wheel more traction as it drove out of the rut. Dirt we had. Dry dirt, though, even though we were near the Sahara, was a problem. I started looking around for some other ideas (cue music from MacGyver here). As I walked in front of the truck, I noticed a short palm tree nearby. The dead fronds near the base were hardened, dry, and coarse. Just what the doctor ordered. I whipped out my Swiss Army knife and proceeded to cut off as many as I thought could be stuffed under the car tire before we half pushed, half drove the car out of the soft mud. And though I do admit that the twelve men who wandered out of the night and onto the scene and helped us push the truck from behind had something to do with our successful extrication, I remain unconvinced they were angels. This is largely because they demanded payment for services rendered and were pretty angry when we refused to give them any.