day 3 in NDJ

Went out with another intern today to a local expat hangout. We ordered pizza (ah, cheese - though i don't crave it yet, i can totally imagine craving it very soon) and I drank a castel beer on tap. Skinny, ill-looking cats weaved between tables begging for scraps, and at the table next to us a frenchman had brought his well-fed gleaming white dog along to dinner. The pizza (3 cheese) was quite good, but the ice-cream for desert was excellent. Topped with pieces of mango, passion fruit and guava - it was delicious. And, i am sure that tap water never touched this fruit. It just looked parasite free.

Like I said though, I don't crave any of this food - yet. But, I have been hearing horror stories about the food at camp almost since the moment I arrived.

I got into the airport on Sunday evening. i was exhausted but buzzing with excitement to be back in Africa. I happily brushed off the gendarmes with their inappropriate comments, chatted with the customs and immigration officials and had a pleasant conversation with a very pushy baggage handler (all of this is completely atypical. in other similar situations i would be rude and brash - as a basic defense mechanism. in fact, though it did me no harm, being so cheerful and friendly is not necessarily the best move in an airport such as this). The driver for the organization I am working for eventually found me and told me I could meet other expats at a local restaurant. So, off we went. While they didn't have "33" (my fav cameroonian beer) they did have Castel (which, truthfully, I avoided in cameroon. it has the distinct ability to bestow a hang over before one has finished the 2nd beer). And there I was, so close to cameroon, i could have been there in 30 minutes, drinking a normal sized beer (nearly twice typical US size), and chatting with a diverse group of expats about life in general. The girls had just finished mainlining what looked like platefuls of very unfortunate looking veggies. They had arrived in NDJ from the refugee camp a few days earlier and had been doing their best to get as many fruits and veggies as possible. empty coke bottles cloudy from repeated use littered the table, and plates were wiped completely clean. Food often found its way into the conversation. The general message being: eat what you can now, because once you get to camp you will subsist on rice, spaghetti, and canned tomato sauce with donuts (a charitable description, from what i have heard "small balls of lard covered in sugar" would be more accurate) for breakfast.

For now my life, though constrained, is quite nice. The compound is air conditioned, electricity and internet are near constant due to a well functioning generator, and there is cable TV (2 episodes of Miami Vice in French every night, baby!). Due to security, I can't leave the compound myself to wander the town, so my understanding of NDJ is limited to what I can see through the window of the car. I did make it to market to exchange money (ah, to hand a stranger with a calculator $300 and watch him walk off, disappearing into the crowd, hoping he will come back with CFA, but having no way of knowing if he actually will, it is a special moment) and bought myself a snazzy pair of Nigerian flip flops (where would we be without Nigeria? really, the best kitchenware and flip flops in the world come from Nigeria.) NDJ looks a lot like Maroua: it is sandy with big huge trees and men in boubous and women in pagne. There are motos everywhere and children, too. The streets, mainly dirt roads deeply rutted and uneven, are filled to over-flowing with cars, bikes, motos, children, men pushing carts filled with unlikely objects (goats, mattresses, water cans, etc.) and the occasional rangy dog. The buildings look old and well used - even the soccer field is under construction. Though French is widely spoken, the language you hear most on the street is Chadian Arabic. The only words I have been able to pick out thus far are the simple greetings, Nasara (white person) and a lot of phrases referring to Allah. Everywhere is dusty, and sand creeps into shoes and clothes and the folds of your skin - even when you are just sitting in a car in market waiting for a man to come back with all your money.

Most of my day, though, is spent in the common room in the compound. I have been reading reports these last few days - trying to get an idea of what life in the camp is like. Today I had the opportunity to talk to one of the main health coordinators from camp - i am told that he, a Chadian who actually lived in Cameroon for a while, knows more than anyone else working for the org as he has worked at the camp for longer than anyone. This guy was amazing. Not only was he able to interpret my very shoddy french, but he was knowledgable, sensitive and well informed about health matters, political matters and life in general in the camp. Talking with him for only 30 minutes, I feel like I got more information that I could have from all the hundreds of pages of reports that I have. I also was able to speak with one of two pharmacists from the camp. he was a very sweet young man - we talked medicine delivery and world cup soccer (chad doesn't stand a chance, senegal could make it, as could cameroon, and he thinks cote d'ivoire looks good).

I have been learning more and more about the security situation in Chad over the last few days (for the best news check out Reuters Africa service: http://africa.reuters.com/) and am both comforted and surprised by the expats view of the situation. Everyone is hyper aware of the possibility of violence, and very strict measures are taken to ensure that everyone is kept safe, but on the border where the camp is, there is a strong presence of Chadian Rebel Soliders (JEM) and they are the targets of 'accidental' bombings by the Sudan government. (Sudan can't actually out and out bomb a location in Chad as that would be a cause for war, but they occasionally 'accidentally' bomb on this side of the border.) The remove is compounded by the way other, more seasoned expats talk about the bombings, the previous evacuations, and other security risks. They are incredibly blase, and though I recognize that the security situation is simply another layer of daily life here, it is hard to get used to. I get daily emails updating me on the security situation, and have had a security briefing about my activities here in NDJ, but it still all seems very removed. Which is not to say I am doing any chance taking at all. nope, none of that. I am all about following the rules in what is essentially a very unstable society.

This is all just so different from my life as a Peace Corps volunteer. I mean, in every way thus far. not bad different, just... maybe the stakes are higher here? I don't know.

will be attempting to update this bog regularly... do check back for more - and let me know if there are specific things you want to hear about!