arrival - 30 Jan

I don’t know exactly how long it took to get from Cambridge to N’Djamena, but it seemed to go on forever. My cab picked me up in Cambridge at 3:20am on Saturday. I flew from Boston to Washington DC to Addis Ababa (yes, I flew 2000 miles across the continent of Africa only to retrace my steps) before landing in N’Djamena, Chad. When in Addis I met the parents of one of the volunteers, Mayline, at the hospital. They were coming to visit her after hearing that she had had malaria twice. Mayline’s Dad said to me, “I am hoping to bring her home with me.”

We got off the plane in NDJ, on Sunday afternoon, and were greeted with a wall of heat and sunshine and dust. Immediately, we became the target of every single official that thought they might be able to get a bit something extra from us. I made it through immigration with no problems, but Mayline’s parents got held up. They spoke no French and the immigration officials didn’t seem to speak any English. I went back to help them. The official noticed me and asked what I was doing. I explained that we were together, and that while I spoke French, they didn’t. He said there was a problem with their visas. I looked at their passports. Their visas were identical to mine. I said as much. He said, “But you have been here before.”
“Yes.”
“So, your visa is different.”
“...”
Then he handed me their passports and led me over to the far side of the room. He explained that there was a fine for their visas. I pretended not to understand, and said that we must be moving on, that we had friends to meet. He held out his hand. I shook it. He said, “no, no. Your friends must pay the fine.” I pretended not to understand, said thank you, took the passports and told the Mayline’s parents to follow me, and quickly. Luckily, this worked.

Next it was time to fight with the baggage handlers, who wanted only something, “very, very small” to help with the luggage. I refused all their advances, and Mayline’s Dad was able to find us a luggage cart. Miraculously, given all the medical equipment in my bags and theirs, we made it through customs with not so much as a raised eyebrow. And 2 hours after arriving in NDJ we made it into the airport lobby, where we found Mayline and Marcy. A broken down taxi ride later we arrived at the mission hotel where we were to stay the night. We were there for only about 30 minutes before we were ushered out the door along with Norberto and Beatrice (two nurses from Switzerland), to go find the NDJ golf course for a camel ride.

That's me on that camel.

The golf course is no verdant expanse of green, is just more dusty, sandy desert with scrub brush everywhere. But! There are holes in the ground every so often. We were not there for the golf, however, but for the camels. CAMELS! We rode camels! It was awesome. My camel was very blasé. There wasn’t any spitting or bad behavior. These were nice camels. The guide told me this in the beginning, and I didn’t believe him. But, it seemed true. Besides not being a particularly comfortable ride, it was pretty fun. The best part was going down hill. This was incredibly scary, as the whole camel tips forward in this very disturbing way and there didn’t seem to be any way that the gangly legs in the front and the back would be able to distribute the weight of the head and neck (and person tilted way forward) but the beasts managed. It was a pretty neat experience.

Also, it was a great way to stay awake. When we arrived back at the hotel that night, I managed to eat some pineapple and shower before falling into bed, exhausted.