CHAD TRIP - DECEMBER 21, 2014 TO JANUARY 6, 2015

CHAD

December 21, 2014

to

 January 6, 2015

Bob Francescone

DECEMBER 21, 2014:  CHAD -  Day 1: N’DJAMENA-Farewells and Welcomes

Leaving Menge was hard and tearful. He dropped his head after hugging us. Ethiopia for us will always be Menge and Birhanu, unforgettable companions and friends. .and family.

Ruth appears a few hours later, bleareyed-eyed, but humor in place even after a marathon 30-hour trip from Manhattan (Newark-Reagan-Dulles-Ethiopia). Our team is complete, a bit wilted by the brain-confusing time zone hopscotching, or by goodbyes that came too soon.

At Chad's N'djamena. International there is the usual airport arrival craziness, prefaced by Ebola. precautions that look more proforma than effective. The same applies to the security check to enter the baggage area.  We survive. And meet our three trip mates from Austria (Elfie, Helena and Fritz) and Anna, our German guide. Anna is a theoretical physicist with a passion for the Sahara, all parts of it. The others are all wildly and widely experienced travelers.  Their passports are even more jammed than ours. Brains will be picked. Laughter all around bodes well for 17 days in cars and tents. Our crew is Aboussa, le cuisIsnier, and Omar and Alrahli, the drivers.

We'll pull over at 5 to make camp, says Omar, our driver in French, relayed in English and German by Anna our guide and understood by everyone in one or more of those languages.   We're all excited in the way newness hits travel junkies. The sun sets at 5:30 and we need time to learn how to put up the tents before it gets dark. Ruth reminds us we have promised to help her erect hers.

Two hours after arriving we leave non-descript N'djamena and drive into a profound and tense flatness as if the land has been pulled and stretched by the sky flat, flatter, flattest and held that way in great tension by the weight of the edges of the sky at the horizon. Maybe that's what sandstorm are. Great roll ups as the flatness springs on itself.

An hour later Chad springs a real surprise: we pull over in a long a row of roadside mud brick huts, Aboussa, the cook, scoots out and returns with...CHEESE! Cheese? Yes, cheese, a slightly salty and chewy fresh cousin of mozzarella. Gastronomically, things are looking up.

By 4pm we've been in Chad 4 hours and a new travel rhythm has already pulsed through our lives. We know we stop to make camp before sunset. That’s all we need to know about time.

Just south of Massakoury, Anna and the guys look for a level sandy spot without 'con-con', a grassy annoyance with tiny nettles. One passes muster.

Omar and the guys spread a mat on the sand for duffels, backpacks, our stuff. We grab a tent each, choose a house lot as if we know what we're doing. I face mine East so I can watch the sunrise from my sleeping bag. We get a lesson in house construction. Dennis and I know this style of tent:  8x8 dome with arching stretcher bars, your basic issue starter house, cozy and roomy, for one, at least. Den and I opt for separate digs. Anna demos the theory. It's a piece of cake. The wind however has not read that cake recipe.  The tent billows and rebels, threatens to turn into a mini Hindenburg. The one-person tents take 2, then 3, to erect.  The guys make believe they're not watching and taking notes to entertain folks back home. They spread a mat and unload our private gear; two small backpacks for us, a lot more for the others.

I've scoped the neighborhood for my private ‘loo with a view’, and aimed the door towards it, better for those midnight runs. Finally housed, I lay out the mat and sleeping bag, make a pillow using day pack, headscarf and padded jacket, all comfy. Decorating is easy:  put everything where I can reach it easily from the bag in the dark: Kindle, headlight, boots, headscarf cum sarong for coverage, toilet paper, and lighter for burning the latter.

Back by the cars, the guys have set up a table and chairs, started a campfire and laid open the rear of one car, our pantry and kitchen. Then they lay out another mat for their evening prayers.

Temperature and light have dropped, sun dragging both below the flatness. It’s quiet, though I think I hear kids' voices, or birds from far, far away, but perhaps its mosque sounds carried on the wind, nothing to stop it. Or the sound of the wind itself. 

Anna dishes Aboussa’s delicious couscous and veggie/beef stew from big cast iron pots onto tin plates. We eat in twilight then into the dark. The fingernail moon is no competition for the stars. We douse our single lamp and headlamps and bathe in starlight.

Fritz and Helena break out some Schnapps and we toast to our first night together, running through our shared and unique languages: English, German, and French.

Polylingual Anna and Ruth do all three. The rest of us have two or three in various states of comprehensibility. I have two useless ones unless we run into a Chinese or Taiwanese road crew. The toasts work in any language.

Tomorrow we can sleep in until 7, but for the rest of the trip reveille is at.5:30, with sunrise.

By 7pm we're tucked into our tents.  Sleep comes early.

DECEMBER 22, 2014: CHAD -  Day 2: We alles parlons English

.... ou Francais… oder Deutsch

Everyone but Dennis and I and the guys speak German. I resurrect some moribund Deutsch from German 101 in 1962, my ears more successfully than my tongue, and skew genders and cases, inventing past participles. Our French ranges from fluent down to 'merci', and 'bon jour'. My ears are somewhere above the middle of that range but my tongue is very sluggishly flapping at the bottom. The guys all speak colonial French, simpler in grammar and vocabulary, though accented and strained through their all-enveloping head scarfs.  For the rest of us, English is our common fall back language since everyone but the guys manages it well. Conversations hop, sauter, und gehen from one language to the other often in the same sentence. We're all convinced that by the end of the trip we will tous have vergessen 'how to speak well' our native language. We laugh a lot.

It's 4:26 am and I have to take a whizz. I can see stars, bright light smudged by the thin skin of the tent. Everything else is blackness. But not silence. There is the breeze, cool at night in the desert. Far off, the scrub trees catch it then let it pass, murmuring. Close in, my polyester cocoon stops it briefly, pulses, bellows, then, too, lets it pass, flapping complaints. I crawl out of my Walmart sleeping bag, snap on my headlight, barefoot it into my boots (there are stickers in the sand, hostages taken by the wind from the thorn trees), unzip the tent and crawl into the night, my first in Chad.

By 5:30 pink slowly drives the stars back. Coffee, tea, banana, Nutella, and tent demolition entertain us until about 7. Goats, always welcome, come by for left overs.

The asphalt road disappears in a few kilometers. We're on sand, fine like deep dry winter snow. It's a road only because someone has driven on this patch before. It's our road because we're heading up thatway. We follow tracks in the sand.

Bathroom breaks get their own code from Omar, in French. It's 'telephoner'...as in 'I need to make a telephone call'. Bathrooms are wherever some hint of privacy can be cajoled from the, desert, rocks, or the occasional bush.

Our first desert lunch is simpler than dinner. A room sized mat on the sand replaces the table and chairs. We gorge on a fresh salad with luscious mustard dressing in the shade of huge acacia tree. Baguettes and fresh fruit lead to demitasses of sweet hot tea. Aboussa gets another star.

Desert travel where there are no roads and very few people is a gamble. We travel in two roomy Toyotas, Africa's workhorse safari vehicle of choice.  Tents and other equipment and bags are stored under tarps on the roofs.  We carry water in huge jerry cans, and basic food that can survive without refrigeration. We replenish water from local wells and vegetables wherever we can. There's no way to call for help other than iffy cell phone coverage.

Our wheels leave little trace behind us. There is no track ahead. Omar orients by experience and instinct. The desert is a language to him, and he is fluent.

Late in the afternoon Omar can't see the other car in his rear-view mirror and drives back down our track. Ruth sees Fritz's silhouette against a dune and the car just behind. The guys are on their bellies changing a very flat tire. We haven't seen another vehicle for hours. The guys dig, jack, attach, wash their hands. Our bag of peanuts makes the rounds. As we drive off two cars sand-plow by. They've missed our adventure. We don't know it but these are the last vehicles we will see on our track for days. Far off a white camel baby munches and watches. Those flat-tire-free desert vehicles we see in great numbers every day.

Already we sink into a new rhythm, the sun's time now ours. The sun moves westward, kisses the horizon briefly then leaves it by a few minutes after 5.  We stop by 5 and make camp while it is still light. And are eating by a single gas lantern by 6. Tonight, it's pasta with meat sauce, another star for Aboussa

The world is silent except for us, the breeze transmitting the sound of trees across the flatness. The air cools. The sliver of moon rises. By 7 we're all in the tents.

DECEMBER 23, 2014: CHAD -  Day 3: The Wind from Hell!

The wind is eternal today. It disassembles the flatness of the land whipping it into the air.  And the tents with it, turning them into great flapping pterodactyls, refusing to be caged in their little tent bags.  It takes four of us to tame and roll and store them

Sky and land merge in the wind whipped dust. We pass some straw and mud houses and camels, stripped of thickness and color and clarity, shadowy silhouettes, flat things, edges whirled away, tucked into the dust.

Nothing moves but the dust. There are no trees now. The horizon is an illusion, just a place where there is more sand flat than rising in the air.

We drive out of dust into grass the color of pale wheat. The land is a yellowed shade of white like old tissue paper and so dry I think I'd crack it If I stepped on it. Surely the whipping sand must heat the air. It looks hot, but is cool.

Camels are here in great number, living and dead.  Flat-topped acacia trees, are leafless as far up as camels can reach. Everywhere there are the hard pellets of camel spore, dried and odorless. Their bones, dismembered and strewn in the dust are stark white, fossils to be.

Anna suggests we try camel milk but our first supplier charges too much for his plastic water bottle of the white liquid. We get it later from 2 boys, wrapped in white scarfs, faces of a light absorbing blackness, dots in the dusty white air.

The camel milk is in old plastic water bottle white, too. We wait too long to drink it and it spoils. We never get another chance.

By lunch we know we need shelter from the wind if we want to eat. Villages are tiny and scarce, rare blips in the flatness, but Omar knows this country.  A village appears through the dust, low and rounded by the wind. We stoop and crawl into a lozenge of straw and mud, sealed from the dust and wind, and stretch out on a landscape of carpet and straw.  I lean against the thin poles that curve upward to create the rood. We can hear the wind as it rushes towards the house then slides over its smooth sides and roof, but are sealed from the dust.

After our salad, we walk with the wind through the village. Children and women hunkered at the entrance to a house show us that photos would not be refused, the kids by holding their hands up to mimic a photographer in action, and the women by not retreating into the house. We shoot, the women retreat but the kids crowd to see themselves on the screen. This, they know. Our tiny prints are something entirely new. The kids stare at them then laugh and laugh and laugh. An older boy takes the prints of the women and delivers them himself to the women peeking through the straw and mud arch of the doorway. Rules already broken once, the women flutter out in their great yards of cloth and pose again for the unrelated...and unknown...males. I wonder what story they will tell about this day.

Driving north, still buffeted by the wind blowing sand and dust from Niger to the west we find proof that this was once a great ocean: great outcroppings of white limestone, the ocean bottom revealed by geologic upheaval and sculpted by the wind. Soon after the sand has overtaken the rocks and we come to our first real sand dunes. We are in the Sahara.

More camels spot the dunes, great beige, brown, black or white hump drops.

We make our first camp in the real desert.

The guys set up a table, build the campfire and do their magic---again--- over wood in two black cast iron pots. Tonight, it's veggie stew and rice, perfect camp food, in metal plates, but worthy of china. Aboussa deserves all the stars above.

The wind defeats the skimpy tent pegs. The tents flap, soar, and sag, noisily, in the cold night. Most of us don't get much sleep.

Everything is upstaged by the stars.

DECEMBER 24, 2014 - Chad Day 4: Everyone Out and Push!

I crawl out of my tent. The wind that swept warmth away last night sweeps soft light over the dunes. It whispers the arrival of a new day. The dunes sit, quiet and waiting. I walk away from camp, over dunes. I see only sand and am alone, only my tracks a link back to camp. The light grows, changes color, heats the air. The desert sun in these latitudes does not arrive and depart in magisterial procession, a Celestial Queen Victoria. It has no time for fanfares. It bursts out of the East, like Genghis Khan. The sun invades horizon and with great sweeping arms gathers in and devours the night. The dunes, lines in the dark, grow shapes in the light, then scimitar edges slicing the horizon.

Today we are in total desert wilderness. Stone cairns mark some strips of the trail. In others, spent artillery shells, left over from1984-1987 war with Libya guide the cars. It's not a precise system. There are huge stretches of unmarked desert. The drivers follow a track of tire marks or improvise routes up and over the dunes.  We get stuck once on a steep slope, even Omar fooled by the vagaries of the sand. 'Descendre et pousser' requires no translation.

Lunch on our mat is a yummy carrot salad. Our only neighbor is a car carcass riddled with bullet holes. Way, way, way off we see our first camel caravan.

As we approach Faya, largest town in the north, rocks appear through the sand, adding substance to the town. There in an airport with iffy flights from Marseilles. And a market. Ruth and Fritz and Helena want heavy blankets for the cold nights, but they're too expensive and haggling gets them nowhere. People in the market are not easy with smiles or responding to ours. But, then, a guy sails a friendly ‘how are you' at us as he drives by

The wind persists. A comfortable campsite will be a problem. The guys have a solution. Their company has a 'campement' in Faya. So, we stay there. It's a walled compound with windowless rooms. We all sleep outside, but sheltered in the covered arcade that runs in front of the rooms. I do it tentless. The cold shower feels like a luxurious spa...a wonderful Christmas present.

Helena and Fritz, always full of gastronomic surprises, bring out homemade Viennese cookies, special for Christmas! Vanilla Kipfel, a blessed marriage of flour, sugar, vanilla, butter, salt, walnuts. Light as air, they soar us up into gustatory heaven.

DECEMBER 25, 2014: CHAD -  Day 5: Christmas Day

Sausage, Liverwurst and Blankets

The Three Wise Men and their gifts never show up, but we have Helena and Fritz. They surprise us again with goodies: cabanossi sausage, a thin, pepperoni-like wonder, chewy and a perfect companion for our 'La Vache Qui Rit' cheese. Anna adds leberwurst and herb spread. We have a wonderful European Christmas morning feast.

And then there is the market and shopping. Ruth and Helena and Fritz buy their blankets: Korean immensities labeled 'Spainish' and ‘Mink' and weighing 12 pounds. In lavender. They cost 30,000 francs, $60. I buy 4 meters of cloth for my head and face covering head scarf, or seshe, for 2500 francs, $5. For a context: a pile of firewood enough---and necessary--- for a few days cooking cost between 3000 and 16000 francs, $6 to $32. On the 3 occasions when we had a cold soft drink they cost 500 to 1000 francs, $1 to $2. Most of our trip is far away from towns and markets. The rare isolated and tiny settlements we see probably do not function in a money economy.

The wind has cleared the air. We lounge and lunch on the sand in the Bembeche region under a sky so intensely blue it has weight, measured in karats, like sapphires.

But sand, gold sand, is victorious here. And has been for millennia. Millions of years ago this was sea. There are still white patches, memories of life as sea bottom. We're camping in a delta of the sand river, in squeaking, dry golden sand and watched by red-brown rocky cliffs.  6000 years ago, this area was green and wet and fertile. Giraffes, elephants, ibex shared the land with some ancient tribe of artists. They left a time capsule of their brief sojourn here, painting and etching images of their life on cave walls in those cliffs. We climb up to the caves, just rock overhangs, but deep enough for the cliffs to guard these messages from the past. The giraffes and elephants have been gone for millennia, their green land long buried under the voracious gold sand.   The images leap from then to now, giving a life to this place, over-writing the erasure of the sands. This was their place, rich to them, with game, cattle, goats, even a dog, with big ears and an erect tail. Know of us the images say, and know we, too, celebrate this place. Respect it.

The sun drops at 5:30, on schedule, dragging the heat with it. Bundled in fleece, quilting, wool, and polyester, we warm our hands on our metal cups, heated by peppermint tea. The Nescafe (non es caffee, we all agree) goes unopened. (Well, to honestly dismount from my gastronomical high horse, in the morning I use it along with chocolate powder and ersatz milk to indulge my cappuccino fantasy.)  The guys build a fire and work on dinner. It is 'pommes frites mit Fleisch', in our mishmashed lingua franca de campement.

Chad has been our Christmas gift.

DECEMBER 26 and 27, 2014 - Chad Days 6 and 7: Onianga Lakes: Les cameras are kaput

Today we begin our time in the sand and blue water world of Onianga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We're most looking forward to a swim in fresh water, a wash, and laundry...tomorrow.

To get there we cross a plain of tiny wind polished stones. It feels like a plateau high above the tree line but we are fooled by the sere and treeless desert. We are only 400 meters above sea level.

Our Great Adventure takes us to yet a more remote place.

By late afternoon we are camping in paradise. The lakes are even a deeper blue than the sky.  The sand is golden or red, the palm trees green. The weather is perfect, windless and cool. The dust has disappeared. The air renders the views painfully clear and sharp and carries the high-pitched yips of jackals to the camp. We see them in the distance, delicate and shy. Shyness is lessened at night because in the morning their tracks are all around the campsite, but avoid the tents.

We wake knowing today we bathe. The bathing lake is hours away from this one, our lunch stop. Gold sand becomes red, then gives way to gold again, now studded with black rocks. I think of an immense chocolate chip cookie.

There are few people in northern Chad and we are at the far edge of even this thinly populated area. We see no other vehicles,  of course, rarely see people. Camels are everywhere though that can be miles from their village. We are on our own. Ten people in two cars,  carrying our water and food.

Then we drive into a village with a school. It's a holiday and the kids close around us for a photo op. They know 'Galaxy' and can rapid finger flick through the photos. They laugh at photos of themselves...or camels they recognize,  stare at photos of other people, and draw a blank on photos of scenery.  'De quoi?, they say, 'Of what?' And then 'Ciao' as we leave.

One says ‘How are you’, trying out his English probably for the very first time. I answer...and am awash in a big smile, another galaxy, of surprised joy.

The kids want anything we have. Our brochures are big sellers.

The wind and sand have their victims. My camera, then Dennis', then the printer, then Fritz's. one by one grind to a rasping halt, sand-logged. Kaput. Only our cell phones, having no moving parts, work.

All the cameras are on the fritz, even Fritz’s!

December 27, 2014 - Chad Day 7 - Wash Day at Blue Lakes of Onianga

The water is cold, clear, and fresh, the view across the lake to the red sand dunes phenomenal. The view of us swishing in the lake is less so. We wash away enough sand from our sandy selves to create a delta. Careful not to pollute with soap, we lather up, and rinse, onshore. I wash shirt, pants, underwear, socks and hang them all on mini palms. The dry, dry air sucks the moisture out in 30 minutes.

Lunch is veggie salad, this time with beets, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and Aboussa’s wonderful dressing.

We leave the blue-gold-green of the lakeshore and head across a gentle saffron sea. The sand reaches high up valleys between purple mesas, all evenly flat topped, remnants of an ancient sea bottom, islands now in a sand sea. In the far distance, a shape moves up a slope, resolves into a 3 camel sand serpent, robed man atop the head. Omar supposes it's a salt caravan. Perhaps. We pass at a great distance, more comfortable and faster, but on the desert, not of it.

Then we get stuck. Descendre et pousser. Get out and push. Not enough. the guys unscrew the sand grate from the roof rack, place it under the rear wheels, drive forward, stop, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat. A half hour of repeats and then the wheels catch and the car climbs diagonally up the dune. Somewhere behind us the camels move one ripple at a time. Camels don't get stuck.

To the left and north the Erdi Mountains cross the horizon. We could follow them to Sudan. Few people do. There is no water for far too many kilometers.

We head away from that desolation, somewhat eastward judging from the sun and the shadow of the car. By late afternoon we reach the oasis of Degede where is water in another of the Onianga lakes, and a grove of date palms. The air is cooling. We'll camp beyond.

Again, the land changes. Now it's a flat dune-less pan, scrubbed clean of sand, dribbled with many-colored pebbles polished round and smooth and tiny by the wind, morsels to become sand. I pick up one, the size of a pea, soft yellow-pink, transparent, a sunset between my fingers. The pebble plain is short lived. There's more sand now. It has filled the spaces between the tiny sequin stones, then covered them, then swirled into waves. The dunes grow and fill the horizon. The line where gold dune edge slices into the blue sky is a thin patina of green, long-lived and distant cousin of our Florida elusive green flash spawned where ocean and horizon meet at sunset.

‘The sun will set at 5:06’ says Anna. Omar finds a spot, between dunes and wind-free. It is silent.  There are no people for dozens of miles in any direction. We are the world. Tiny, insignificant in an immensity of pure, clean space and light. This is why we come to the desert.

Rice with ratatouille, pineapple slices, tea, and Schnapps from Helena and Fritz remind us we are only visitors.

We're in our tents by 7.

DECEMBER 28, 2014 – CHAD - Day 8

Dunes. Mesa and Chinese hats in the distance. Grey purple across the pale gold.

There's a perfect cone of a Chinese hat on the horizon.  Clumps of grass maybe a foot apart rumple the view then grow denser, then more sparse, then disappear, proof of spotty rain. Our heading is due north. Low but heightening sun warms me through the right window. Flat plain folds into dunes again bare black stone streaks through the sand, like water silk moiré.  We do a long circular route because there is no way to cross the dunes directly. The windward side of dunes is hard enough for wheels but the soft leeward side swallows them.

The sand reddens, bruised by the sun. Beneath is red salt, a gift from the ancient sea.

Above, in a watery oasis, is a tiny village of salt miners, maybe 100 people, who dig the salt and send it away in small camel caravans. I taste the salt and think I detect a sub-flavor, not salt alone. Neolithic grinding stones, pottery pieces, stone tools are common on the surface, reminders that 2,000 years ago this area was green and fertile way beyond the oasis. Salt, dust and flies endure.

We begin a slow descent below sea level into the Mouridi Depression.

Passing the sharp chinese hat peak of Demie we pick up the trail of a small camel caravan and follow it northward. The landscape turns black up close but the distance is ringed with great mesas. Flat-topped, like all their kind, they sit stoic victims of wind and sand and time.  The track drops into a rocky gully and passes through the crumbling remains of an avalanche from the mesa above, already slowly becoming sand. Hungry, great tongues of gold sand lick hundreds of feet up the side of the mesas.

Through the gully, we bounce onto a flat pan again, all gold sand, streaked with black, then devoured by it. This landscape is a chimera, part rock, part sand, like none other.

Omar, He Who Knows Everyone, now tells us He Knows a Place. Indeed, he does. It's La Musee. Neolithique d'Omar: a spot in the sand where he has collected a few grinding stones (Les. Moules). and other stone tools, remains of life around a lake long gone. He laughs then offers us a treat right from his sister's grinding stone: balls of dates and peanuts ground into a luscious paste. The secret ingredient is sand. It rates many stars.

Omar knows of a place with paintings...and etchings of very big women, but we pass.

A gazelle spots our car and races it in flattened leaps, the only movement in the wide landscape. It beats us then cuts across in front of us, triumphant. In the distance a leap of a dozen gazelles soar at impossible speeds, airborne without wings above this great flatness.

There has been no rain here for 15 years, then for two years the rain came. The desert, ever ready, and thirsty to ooze life, has responded with trees and peroxide blond grass and leaping gazelles. A big-eared fennec pops out of its hole and races away then stops to watch us. It can't have seen many cars in its furry, foxy life. The grass attracts camels, humpy stick figures against the pale blue-gray sky.

Lunch (rice salad with corn, tomatoes, green pepper, cheese, peas, onion) and a lie down are in the shade of an acacia.

Later in the afternoon the landscape changes again and we bump over black lave boulders and what we think are ancient lava tubes, immense black cannoli stuffed with an amber filling of sand turned to stone. After hours of African massage Omar asks us to get out because we will ‘get knocked around'. We walk following camel tracks, never a bad choice.  Back in our bucking Toyota bronco we have a rodeo-worthy and wild ride to a cave gallery with an engraving of a cow and calf, another reminder that this land has had another life. Anna and I find fossils of plants lying on the surface, evidence of an even earlier life-filled time, hold them briefly then return them to the desert for others to find. But who? We have not seen other people for at least a day.

The late afternoon light fires the landscape as we get our first view of the mountains and stone arches we have come to Chad to see. The Arch of The Twins,  L’Arc des Jumeaux.

Aboussa does his cooking magic again with his ziti and meat sauce. Dennis' belly is sending him messages so he misses, settling for plain boiled potatoes.

As we sit in the silent darkness we smell bread baking on the cooking fire. There's extra wood today so Omar and Alkarli build a campfire. It's almost windless and acacia burns without smoke.  I find my spot, lean against my back pack, feet towards the fire, butt chilling against the sand and watch the stars. They'll leave soon, chased by the waxing moon, already nearly half. 

The night challenges the tents with persistent winds that spin and gust from all directions turning the tents into great flapping whirling dervishes.  My tent folds over on top of me, groans, but does not apologize, then complains and does deep knee bends in the opposite direction. No one sleeps well this night.

DECEMBER 29, 2014 – CHAD -  Day 9: The Temple of Time

The tents continue their protests in the morning, refusing to fold and roll and pack away. We hate them in 3 languages, all of them rude. But the taste of delicious fresh bread baked on fire and lightly toasted gets us going.

We are in a magic place. It is Ennedi, an immense archipelago of mesas, and exquisitely eroded rock islands, elephant-skinned humps and pinnacles. They don't defy descriptions but yank them in droves from my imagination. Here is a tower wrinkled like a massive elephant foot. The islands are feet of gigantic beasts hidden by the blue sky, or leather boots forgotten during an ancient migration. Or maybe footprints pushed up through the sand from geological nether regions, an upside-down world of trudging giants.

I imagine the march of some great beasts, but I am seeing only the march of time.

We climb to a wall protected from the erasers of the sun and sand to see white paintings of camels 2000 to 2500 years old and paintings of stick people a thousand years older. The paintings come alive in a salt caravan of several dozen camels that passes in the distance.

More camels, many more camels, and people greet us when we stop at an oasis well to draw water.  Omar seems to know everybody.  They launch into the traditional long greeting conversations, alternating formulaic questions and answers about their health and the health of kith and kin, chanting in sequence, a rhythmic dance of civility and respect.

The guys drop a bag, rescued from its previous life as an inner tube, way down into the well, pull it up and pour the water into our huge white plastic jerry cans.  Anna is at the ready and measures in her magic powders that make the water safe to drink.  Camels look offended that we don't share, but, then, camels always look offended, perhaps because they have to share the water with herds of goats and sheep, the first we've seen in Chad.

In the distance is a particularly lovely group of monster feet, appropriately named Les Trois Jolies, The Three Beauties.

Later in the day we come to a real road, gravel, but a real road, not a track in the sand. And are on it only long enough to cross it, two car lengths, leave it behind. It connects 2 towns we will visit later but we will reach them across the desert.

Today is another first. We see a lone dog running along the road. Everywhere else we have been in Africa dogs are ubiquitous, omnipresent and lazily holding down the dust, often in the middle of the road. Not so in Chad.

By 3, the landscape is all great wrinkled knuckles and toes, rounded with great spaces between. And then it changes. Softness yields to sharp angles. The mountains seem to stand up, become sculpted pillars. It looks like the great temple complex in Karnak, but infinitely older and so immense it holds up the sky.

We are in the temple of time. Not the temple TO time, where we come to worship time, but the temple OF time.... where time comes to worship itself…where it says, 'this is what I do'.

I walk a distance and sit alone for the first time in days, in total silence. It is so quiet I think I hear the blood moving through my ears. The columns cast long shadow fingers, gathering in the light....and the sand for its next soft abrasion of the present.

DECEMBER 30, 2014 -CHAD -  Day 10: 10,000 Francs…

…seems to be the price for everything.

We're in Fada, the capital of this northern region. There is an airport with occasional flights from Marseilles based on passenger count. Only dusty tracks lead here from anywhere in Chad. Fada is a city by default only. Small one-story mud brick houses peter out into the dust a few hundred meters in any direction from the dusty track. There is of course a police station and we're supposed to do the passport check, but resourceful Omar knows the affable young recruit and once again the passports go back into the bags unvisited.

There's a market and we look for the colorful cloth that the women wrap in. I look for better flip flops than the ones I brought with me, too flimsy for sand.  No matter what we look at the price is the same, 10,000 Francs ($20) and no bargaining. Nothing changes hands until we find a shop selling drinks. A cold guava drink is a bargain at 500 and worth the full 10,000.

We stock up on water and bread but there are no veggies. The garden has only trees.

Driving on, Anna leads us to the remains of a 2000-year-old blacksmith village. As in many parts of the world, blacksmiths here were a class apart, living on the outskirts of villages 2000 years ago and even now. Some researchers have suggested that their work transmuting black lumps into useful tools links them to mysterious forces and renders them suspicious or dangerous.

Wadi Bashike narrows the track and squeezes us into a valley with a deep pool, covered by green pollen but clear beneath. It's cool here and filled with camels and donkeys, water seekers. We lunch on tabouleh with a hint of sardines, campfire bread, and cantaloupe… with a side order of camel grunts and a hint of donkey bray. A tiny girl manages her camels herd. Her head and hands shake 'no' to our raised cameras but her posture suggests 'maybe'. Cameras drop. Body language and languid trajectory vaguely in our direction now telegraph 'oh, please do'. We oblige. The camels pass on the cantaloupe rinds.

Later, near Deli, ostriches and men with axes romp in red cave paintings. Exposed to sun and sand they will not still romp in another 2,000 years. Maybe rain will add its erosive moisture. There has been rain in the last two years. ‘Golden grass and shrubs were not here 8 years ago when it was all dunes’ says Anna. Goats and sheep are here now and there are more people...but very, very few. Near Afasso we see a village of 2 houses. Kids run out with things for sale, old things mostly, and lovely. They belong in Chad. And the price is 10,000 francs.

In our whole trip we only once saw another group of tourists so these kids and the other people who brought things for us to see cannot do a very good business. Maybe that's why the asking price is so high?

Near Wadi Akshe there are horses, the first since N'djamena 9 days ago. Then, way off in the distance, we see a car...also a first!

We find a place to camp. We share it with immense stone pinnacles, rock people having an endless conversation, a million years between words.

DECEMBER 31, 2014 – CHAD -  Day 11:  Crocs on The Rocks.

Today we are heading for Archei, an improbable deep, deep gorge with water and camels at one end and crocodiles at the other. These are the only desert crocodiles on planet Earth, marooned here ages ago when their watery world shrank and they booked the wrong tour. There may only be 4 or5 of them left. It's these rare remnants and photos of Archei that seduce to Chad many of the 500 travelers who get to Chad in a year.

First, we need a guide. Omar stops by a solitary reed wrapped mud and straw hut and out flies a whirling bundle of white that levitate onto the back bumper and waves us on deeper into the rocks. This flapping apparition is Ibrahim, mahogany-faced, 14 years and 50 inches (maybe) of fitness and energy. He has more of both than he needs...and a lot more than we have. ...as he leads us (except for Ruth, who does not do mountains) up a mini-Alp and over and through the debris of millennia of landslides and erosion. An hour later we drop down into a narrow gorge and sprawl over a hippodrome sized boulder overlooking a narrow stream, a ribbon of moisture guiding water into a small deep green pool. On the far side of the pool an even narrower gorge leads to a clearing filled with the overlapping grunts and roars of hundreds of camels.  From this distance, they are tiny, their sounds merging into a rhythmic repeating chant, an echoing camel Kyrie of the rocks. We are stunned into silence, our sounds an affront to such magic. Ibrahim gestures unnecessarily for us to be silent. 

Reeds blur the edges of the stream. If we are to see the world's rarest reptile it will be here.  We wait. Our own breathing is intrusive. There are a few false sightings, a real one that I miss. The crocs blend so well with the water and reeds that we can't spot them. Ibrahim is on it. In a flash, he figures out how our cameras work, snaps a photo and shows us in the photo where the croc is. Then, as if rewarding our reverential silence, a large croc climbs onto a reed wrapped rock and bellows a sound we recognize from our lake alligators in Florida. It's a bull and he's looking for love. Lady Croc appears and they lie close in their granite bower, noses almost touching.  Perhaps there will be more than 5 desert Crocs next year.  The camels' chant continues.

We're stunned out of our voyeuristic reverie by loud clambering, and louder voices. Over our boulder surges a pack of Earnest Hikers, booted, laced, wrapped and done up for an assault on a major Himalaya. They ignore our finger to lips gesture and ask in imperious tones ' Where are the crocodiles?' Long gone, of course, in a flash of green tail, perhaps leaving behind the hope for a new crop of crocs. We ignore them. These are the first and only group of other foreigners we have seen and are not impressed. 

We saddle up our high horses and turn to follow Ibrahim out. 'Andiamo' he says with a wicked grin. This kid knows he has surprised us and knows we like him. We follow the indefatigably leaping imp, up the gorge and down the slope. Ruth has some pithy comments about 'those other people' who passed her without a word of greeting on their noisy way up their Himal. They pass us a few minutes later, appropriately disappointed in their croc quest. They ignore us. We are appreciative.  And dig into our lunch.

Women appear… from where we have no idea since we've seen no houses since picking Ibrahim up...selling old and used baskets and jewelry. It's lovely, but there are no sales. The Himal Hikers appear and fix that. I'm glad they do something useful.

As sublime as the day has been so far, the afternoon brings us even closer to traveler heaven. We drive into the gorge where the camels sing. Huge herds mill about the water then line up and pass us almost single file as they leave, adding a grunt or moan to the endless chorus still behind by the water.  Their graceful rippling barely disturbs the sand.  Their sound, echoing in that beautiful place, has added permanently to our personal camel wonder.

A beautiful little girl.... Atim is her name.... flirts with our cameras. We suspect she is Ibrahim's. sister or cousin but never find out. She could be of the Touareg, a people who trace ancestry and property through women, and known to be more outgoing and independent.

Before we camp we need to renew the water supply. Omar knows where all the wells are, must know if he wants to be a success driving in the desert. This one is camel-free but rich with the tortured gear-grinding wheezing and choking bray of scores of donkeys, the volume out of proportion to the tiny size of the fuzzy instrument producing it.

The late sun burnishes an immense granite elephant, stories tall, rising with a single great arched eye out of the rock.  It guards more paintings. We never get enough of them, messages about the abundance that once was, from the people who celebrated it.

It's New Year's Eve. Fritz and Helena pull another treat from their bottomless bag of Viennese goodies: smoked venison. It's enough to replace pastry as Vienna's main temptation. Aboussa has prepared a New Year's Eve special: grilled meat and pommes frites. It's delicious and there is a lot of it. Aboussa seems disappointed that we don't eat more.  We decide 7pm is our midnight and all haul off to tents and pads

The moon has moved beyond half full.

JANUARY 1, 2015 - CHAD Day 12: The Night of Crom-crom

Bonne annee, my ass!

I've been crom-crommed.

Crom-crom is a weed that dispenses disaster in the form of teeeeeny, thorny thistle like land mines of pain and agony. Much of the time we spend looking for a campsite has our eyes aimed at the ground, looking for signs of The Damn Weed. Once stuck with even the tiniest hair of crom-crom you stay stuck while it festers, inflames and swells. My toe falls victim. Red and nastily complaining with every step I take; the toe puts a serious damper on this new annee. Omar and his tweezers, and Elfie's.  antibiotic salve set things right. I will limp into 2015 but there will be no more bitching.

We are deep in the rock arch country of Ennedi. Everywhere there are huge towers with eyes, mouths, arches eroded out of their centers. At Aloba, the arch is120 meters-400 feet--of rock rimmed space. All the arches are frames for immense views beyond them, lenses that insist you look through them. At Geoula the arch is oddly twisted, thin and lopsided, a lens melted by the sun.

We've seen no village nearby, but a few women appear and spill out their offerings. They have a special craft we never see anywhere else: they fold shiny colored bon-bon. wrappers into flat beads, then string them into necklaces. They're charming and get a vote of approval from Ruth, our Swiss/New York fashionista. As do the necklaces of folded pieces of leather.

This region is Basheetelay, easternmost point in our trip, verging towards the border with South Sudan and Darfur. Here it is quiet, empty, peaceful.

Lunch is in a palmy wadi.  We share it with some very noisy camels belching basso profondo notes from a very misguided Concerto for a Complaint of Camels. Do not look for them on some future 'Africa's Got Talent' show. Very busy, they hold a meeting and decide to not come for the melon peel dessert we offer.

We get our water, and pass inspection by the local cattle.

We get mixed messages about our presence in the wadi from the people, however. Two toothy kids request and pose for photos until a scowling teenager sets them straight. He stares at us from then on. Our welcome in the wadi. is partially due to the good will of a local headman.  To return the favor we give him a ride to his village. We see only 2 houses.

A motorcycle rider, truly an apparition in this unpeopled and unvehicled wilderness, stops us for fuel but we have only diesel. He put- putts on.

Anna leads us to an ancient burial ground. These are not graves dug into surface but mounds of black rock piled on the surface. They've never been excavated, probably never will be, secrets safe, protected by extreme remoteness, resting in peace. I like that. Chad is not a place that needs churning. Its gift is quiet, the untouched silence of time.

I savor that in the afternoon light. We drive through grass, shorter than the more famous grasses of the Serengeti, but as golden and as lovely and endless. There are no invasive caravans of 4x4 game drive vehicles walkie-talking and noisy, just the occasional caravan of camels, slow-rippling and quiet, of the place… oh, so of the place.

Our first day of 2015 is just a day like any other here, but here is Chad, one of the least visited and most remote places in Africa and we are having a Most Excellent Adventure.

The filling moon tells us we have few days left here.

JANUARY 2, 2015: CHAD -  Day 13: A Giant Cow and A Desert Breakdown

Sunrise is a ball rising through the dust. Today we slowly leave the fantasmagorical mountains of Ennedi. I want to hold onto them. Like watching clouds, I make of them what I will or need. I see ante-diluvian giant animals abandoned by Noah, great leathery toes and feet that disappear skyward, into the haze, temples, and slow-conversing rock Popes, pointy canonical hats piercing heaven ward. And sometimes I just see a landscape, open, aged, untouched.

As we leave, the mountains unwrap another surprise: the giant cow at Kerkei. Life size, red ochred and leaping with life from an overhanging rock wall, the 'big cow' is a major work of art. Her descendants wander the villages, look just like her, but, though living, have less life than she does. She shares her gallery with women with Princess Leia hair buns, running and leaping animals, light as air, and so fleet I can feel the air move around them, and a characterful camel, full camel-hood captured in a few white finger-painted strokes. As is so common with rock paintings the humans are stick figures but the animals leap and soar. These do more than that for me. I mourn the artistic awareness of the people whom painted these. I wonder what they could tell us about these animals, long gone and mourn the loss to all of us.

Through the fuzz of a disturbed nap I hear Anna say ' This is serious'. We are stopped dead in the dust. The car has broken down, innards recalcitrant.  We are in the desert of Chad miles from any other people, a mechanic or a garage are mirages beyond the horizon.  Omar, ever smiling, semi shrugs: 'Nous avons les pieces de changement'...we have replacement parts. The guys tie the cars together and tow us over the bumps and through the dust. If this had happened in the dunes we would be toast. But we're not, so we stop to have lunch, equal parts carrot salad and apprehension.  These are desert guys.  They know what they're doing. A few hours later we drag...literally...into a small town.

Kulait is a crossroads but not much more. The Swiss have an abandoned station of some sort where we can stay. There is a fence all around a compound corralling assorted tiny buildings. There is a shower we think! We're wrong. Anna suggests we stay here and not go into town until tomorrow. By then the guys will know more about who is here, and our welcome.

The guys have the needed spare part (something that goes clang-clang when it's not working) but need a garage to lift the engine out so the part can be replaced.

It's Friday, Moslem Sabbath, and we have no high hopes that any help will be available as Omar drives into town. Hah!  This is not the USA or Europe. In ten minutes the car is back with a crew of 5, none in spiffy work overalls shouting, 'Abdullah's Auto and Camel Service: We do It While You Wait', though one guy is wearing a Raul 7 soccer shirt.

First things first:  they turn on Music to Mess Around By. Then they pile rocks next to the wheels so they can reach up into the hood. Raul 7 is the hood man and climbs on the rock, up the fender and into the hood while the others crawl under, over and into any other inviting orifice. No crane to elevate the engine? No problem. The driver's seat comes out with a clang. Other parts follow. There is banging. There is laughter. Seat Number 2 comes out. Flip flopped feet protrude in the dust from under the car on one side.  We think they match the heads protruding from the other side but we've lost track of whom is doing what to what and where. They laugh a lot. Aboussa sits briefly on the driver's seat...in the dust, then goes off to make dinner. There is no hanging around 'supervising'. Everyone is working.  Yes, this is clearly not the USA or Europe. Raul 7 crawls in and out of the hood with reports, switches sides. I do not hear any 'ca va's, surely not a good sign, but the car is fixed within three hours, perfectly. It costs $100. We're not toast, or even singed.

Our depleted water supply is replenished by donkey express and travels from bags on the donkey to pails to a big blue plastic tank. We are impressed. The donkey has no comment.

The flat, windless, and crom-crom free courtyard is perfect for the tents. It's quiet and clear. There is a toilet, in a building even! We are in camper heaven. Until......

JANUARY 3, 2015 - Chad Day 14: Concerto for Complaining Camel and Motorcycle

.... a baby camel gets locked into the compound with us.

After 2 weeks with camels we are sure we know their vocal repertoire.  The baby, alas, does not. I give him/her points for creativity as arias of accusation, arpeggios of anguish, cadenzas of castigation, travel the entire 8 tone scale, explore several other musical systems, and finally settle on one with a strong hint of nail on blackboard. Somewhere about the fifteenth hour of the performance the solo becomes a duet as Mama finally realizes she has misplaced Her One and Only, little Screecherina. On the other hand, I suspect she has dumped the noisy brat inside the fence to give her ears a rest. About then a motorcycle revs up... and revs up... and revs up... and drives around... and drives around... and drives around, hiccoughing basso notes and whining high notes in a Z List Sonata for Motor Cycle not even Screecherina's vocal excesses manage.

This goes on all night. The kid is also a walker. I hear it walk right by my tent. Ruth is concerned it may be blind and walk over her.

No one sleeps well. Or sleeps at all. Town life has not been a success except for the car.

We pass on spending any more time in town. All the shops are still closed and no one is about when we drive through a bit past 7. Preparing sauté of baby camel perhaps?

The Swiss have indeed been here. The road is not paved, but it's smooth and spews no dust, for a while. They've posted road signs warning of upcoming curves... in a landscape endlessly flat and where we can see for miles. A motorcycle churns dust as it passes on way to town, ignoring a speed limit sign. Too late I think to warn him that motorcycles might not be welcome after last night's performance.

As we head further south and west into the populated part of the country, more changes than the terrain. The herds are bigger and there are more of them. One has a robed and head-scarfed horse riding cowboy in attendance. A big goat herd mills across the road protected by a guard dog...the first dog we've seen. We ask Omar why there are no dogs and it's clear he doesn't quite get the question.  There have never been dogs. We tell him about our Western fixation on dogs as pets, their special food, doggy doctors, doggy daycare, and doggy psychotherapists, and doggy beneficiaries to estates. His looks at us, and ekes out the kind of laugh that suggests he is seriously considering whether he is safe among such lunatics.  Why dogs, he says: you can't eat them, they don't give milk, and they're useless. We tell him about service animals, but are now clearly beyond the pale.

The police wave us through the checkpoint in the town of Arada. It has large herd of cows. And a gas station. Civilization approaches. We're losing something of the wildness.

But we see another face of Chad. It's hardly crowded but feels claustrophobic after the empty northern spaces.  The road is a paved, a major route through the south, and signed and we move faster. There are villages, plural, and they're bigger.  By the village of Mime flat roofed mud brick houses and rounded straw huts of the north mix with pointed straw roofs.

The big town of Bertine has a soccer stadium, a public park, and tuk-tuks spewing oily black fumes. Shops grill butterflied goat carcasses at the edge of the road. Innards char beside them. One has a sign: Restaurant! Shops line the road, all the produce adding color, the tomatoes startling. There is windblown paper and plastic rubbish everywhere.

We become characters.in someone else's digital memory when a guy takes a picture of the group in the market.

Abeche is a city of mud brick buildings, tuk-tuks, solar-powered street lights, women covered in black, or wrapped in colorful cloth, power lines, and shops selling mobile time on the AirTel network, a gas station with a car wash...and shops with bottles of cold guava juice. Shop keepers are casual and friendly. We can take photos. Ruth buys a black and red dress she’ll wear on the beach, surely not a typical destination in excessively land-locked Chad.

A behemoth bus, the biggest vehicle we have seen, towers over us and disappears on its 12-hour journey---with 'one pee-pee stop' (according to Omar) in the 900 kilometers between Abeche and N'djamena. No wonder it's in a hurry

Civilization encroaches on our Great Adventure here in the south. It has been abandoned off to the east where Chad borders Darfur.

The moon is full. Its growing light has been the calendar of our trip. Full, it means we're at the end. After 2600 dusty and sandy kilometers, almost all off road, we have 900 asphalted kilometers to go. Tomorrow is our last night in the desert and in the tents

Aboussa 's pasta with white sauce is my first nausea free meal since I stopped taking the anti-malaria medicine that my system hates. I practically roll in it.

JANUARY 4, 2015 – CHAD - Day 15: It Was a Dark and Thorny Night

Com-com revenge!

I wake up to bright light and chilled air seeping through the thin fabric of my tent. It's about 40 degrees, a precipitous drop from yesterday's flirtation with 90 degrees and too cold for sunrise, even in the desert. It is not early sunlight filling the tent but the moon's second hand light, brilliant and without heat, but so brilliant it empties the heaven of stars.  Our prima donna lone satellite rules the night and will for hours yet. I step out of the tent to wash in the light, free of the pollution of human activity.

Big mistake. My feet embed in a carpet of chom-chom. I hop and drive the beasts deeper. Stunned, I fall headfirst back through the tent flap, my feet on fire. For the next eternity, I carefully pull the thorny little bastard land mines out of my feet before they fester. Still sore by sunrise, my poor feet may be widely perforated but I can walk and they never do get inflamed.

The asphalt road means little or no dust and open windows once it warms up. The town of Batha is prosperous. I see private cars that are not Toyota 4x4s. Those drivers can never leave the asphalt in those Wimpmobiles and will miss the glories of their country. The town is prosperous because the South is relatively well off. Chad's development projects are all in the South. There is also oil in the South. And Chinese everywhere to scarf it up and leave little benefit for Chad.

Three sleek and silky dogs chase a car down the road, the first local village dogs we have seen. Derived from Siloukis used to hunt by the northern nomads they are fast, but I suspect road kill in the making. Omar shakes his head.

We pass a long string of cattle and goats and 30 or 40 donkeys bulging saddlebags or people, a nomadic family on the move to a new location with better pastures for their animals. They carry metal pots and pans, straw mats, carpets, bags, all the stuff to create a village on the spot, wherever that spot will be. They have followed the rains north and are now heading south again. Later today we see nomad caravans going in the opposite direction.

Towns on asphalt roads look very different from those on dusty roads or pistes, less interesting, less wild. We pass through many. Mangalme is a brief market stop. At Mongo, there is a gas station with a Bonjour coffee shop (home, in Cameroon last year, of decadent cappuccino, regular or 'intenso'), not yet open, if ever.

The guys shop for our last road meal and we head for the market. I spot shops selling lengths of colorful waxed cotton cloth, the real thing, even if from Nigeria. In two hours, they can be tailored to fit. No one bites but we all agree that a snazzy ready-made number is perfect for Anna and she succumbs.

The salesmanship is laid back and friendly, pressure free. A woman touches Ruth to tell her that her purse is open. People smile for the camera. Elfie has no luck with a dashing mahogany blade wrapped in white. He demurs, even after she tells him he is beautiful. He is. Exceedingly so. She and I agree he is among the most handsome of men. He's a nice peg on which to hang our memories of Mongo.

Late in the afternoon the dusty air filters out the colors in the landscape. The volcanic mountains to the west slip into shades of grey, deeper up close, shadowy on the horizon.

Omar heads off the asphalt to find a campsite. For the first time, it's not easy. There's crom-crom. There are many villages. And cows. And camels. And goats. Camping within sight of any invites visitors, two and four footed. We'd prefer privacy.

He's finally satisfied and we set up our tents for the last time.

JANUARY 5, 2015 – CHAD -  Day 16 - Hotel Chef Wou

It's our last day. Tonight, we sleep in the improbably named Hotel Chef Wou. A Chinese hotel in Chad is rich with possibilities.

The landscape urbanizes, becomes littered with ugliness. The French military base and airfield are large and obtrusive. Their screaming jets are all that and teeth rattling. A garden center and taxi cabs suggests a middle class...or a diplomatic community...with resources. Multi story houses sprout air conditioners. Roads run past gas stations under street lights (solar powered!), and power lines, around traffic circles and past walls with rolled barb wire on top. No city can be lovely after what we have seen. N'djamena doesn't try.

As we drive through the city and further from our Great Adventure we grab onto what we remember, not what we see, holding the goodbye to Chad at bay.  We grab onto each other, too, planning another trip: Oman. (In fact, we join Fritz and Helena in Oman a year later in winter 2015/16)

But a goodbye comes at the hotel when we see the guys for the last time. Omar and Alkahli. have been superb drivers. Aboussa prepared two delicious meals every day and never repeated. They have made our Great Adventure.  I get elected to give them their tips and to thank them. In French. We all survive that. I don't think I liken them to a dead animal or cast aspersions on their manhood or ancestry.

Then, it's to the showers. Hot showers. Long hot showers.

Scrubbed, deodorized, fumigated, primped, and coiffed we gather for cold beers by the pool. Cold, cold, cold beers. Several.

Dinner offers the possibility of pastas, stews, hunks of meat, and a few Chinese goodies, named with great cultural, linguistic, and gastronomic impreciseness: Chinese ravioli (I BEG to differ.) Lurking at the back of the menu are pages of dishes in Chinese, several of which appear on the English, where they are cheaper. Go figure.

I'm delegated, make suggestions. We come up with half a dozen dishes culled from the English and Chinese sides, but all Chinese.  We'll share. The affable and toothy waiter glazes over when I point to the Chinese menu, but I scribble/copy the names in my awful calligraphy and we get through eventually. Against all, and spectacularly high, odds---we are in a Chinese restaurant in CHAD---the food is delicious. If the 'Cantonese fried rice' is a bit underpowered and over-Westernized, the Fish Fragrant Eggplant' and 'Gung Bao Chicken’ are very, very good, passably authentic...in the Chinese restaurant… in the Hotel Chez Wou… in N'djamena…in Chad…in Africa. The many beers may be a factor, but I doubt it.

There is no tent to put up, just a keyed door to navigate. Sleep comes easily.

JANUARY 6, 2015 – CHAD -  Day 17 - Departures

We are promised an hour in the 'artisans craft market' and think it not enough. It's 55 minutes too many. It is an awful place of pushy, aggressive, borderline offensive, and in at least one case, threateningly nasty, sales-hungry poor representatives of Chadian mercantile manhood. It is so different from our other experiences anywhere in Chad that we discount it. But we do leave.

Some of the goods on offer are appealing. The tactics are not. Most of us walk through quickly, then out away from the sellers. We get unfriendly looks. We're the only customers.  Prices are astronomical, but a few seriously haggled sales come with the group (though not with me or Dennis) back to Chez Wou. Fritz und Helena have a wonderful wooden chair, and Ruth, ever the fashionista, a superb old dress.

We leave clothing and other items for the crew, praise them all to Musa, their boss and put in an extra, and genuinely felt, plug for Aboussa. A new employee, he is also odd man out, a Touareg among the Tubo in the company, and deserves a chance.

The airport procedures are chaotic, with much hand-written documentation and repeated security checks right up to the last on the tarmac as we get on the bus to the plane.  The Ethiopian flights to Addis, then overnight via Rome to Milan are smooth. By 8am I've showered off the travel grunge and we've decided to abandon plans for a daytrip to Lake Como in favor of a big breakfast and a soft bed.

I drift back into this trip to Ethiopia and Chad. Ethiopia is geology as time. Chad is beyond time, or, time covered with sand. It’s geology reduced to its elements...grains of sand. In Ethiopia, the landscape is time made visible. I cannot see time in Chad. Ethiopia is landscape of water, rain and rivers etching out great spaces and depths, exposing roots. Chad is landscape of the wind, carving away at the rocks reducing them to sand, filling spaces with sand, reconstructing the land as flatness. What appears above the flatness is an archipelago, islands of fantasy, rock as sculpted, artifacts of the wind. Our planet is truly glorious.  I sleep.