Some New Sights, Sounds, and Tastes

I've now been in Chad for nearly a week. Right now, it is all rather strange and different – not entirely new, since I’ve been here twice before; and someday, it will all seem normal, and I won’t even think twice about it. But while it still seems new and strange to me, I’ll do my best to describe it for those of you who haven’t yet visited Chad. Maybe the best way to do it is to talk about some of the things I saw and did today, my first Sunday here since arriving almost a week ago.

• First on my list of things to do today was a shower. This isn’t really much different from taking a shower anywhere else, except that the water is cold - we don’t have water heaters here. This was hard to get used to my first time in Chad. It never gets extremely cold in Chad, but in January the mornings are still cool enough that cold water feels really cold. I could heat up some water over the stove and take a bucket shower, but that takes so much extra time and I couldn’t be bothered. Anyway, this time I’ve surprised myself by finding cold showers not nearly so unpleasant as they were the first time I had to do it. In a way, it is rather nice, because a cold shower means a fast shower that doesn’t take much time out of my day. :-)
• Breakfast is next: bread followed by cereal. The cereal is usually a multiple-step process:
  1. Pour the cereal in the bowl;
  2. The only kind we can get in Sarh is unsweetened corn flakes, which are bland by themselves, so I usually add a spoonful or so of sugar (today, however, I have a bag of one of my favorite American breakfast cereals that came in a care package, and it is presweetened, so I skipped this step today);
  3. Spoon some powdered milk over the cereal and sugar;
  4. Pour cold filtered water over the top;
  5. Mix until the powder is all absorbed … and voilà! A tasty bowl of corn flakes and milk, all ready to eat!
  This process might sound strange, but it works just fine. The powdered milk (which is the only kind of milk we can get here) is fortified whole milk and is pretty good stuff. It ends up tasting almost the same as a bowl of corn flakes anywhere else in the world.
• Soon we head off to church in the nearby city of Sarh, stopping on the way to pick up a couple of friends who ride with us. There are French church services in Sarh, but this isn’t one of them; this church’s service is held entirely in the local Sara Madjingaye language, which I don’t speak yet, so my coworker translates for me. 
• During the singing time, I try to follow along as best I can in the songbook. Though the words are all in Sara Madjingaye, I try to sing along too, especially when I realize that one of the ones we are singing is a song I know in my own language (“Nothing But the Blood”). For those of you who are musically inclined, Chadian music uses a 5-note scale, without sharps or flats, so even familiar tunes sound different here, with a distinctly African flavor in the melody that is not at all unpleasant. 
• Offering time is different too; I remember it from my previous trips to Chad. Instead of ushers walking up the aisles and passing a plate around, everyone files out row by row and comes up to the front to drop their money in the plate, walking slowly to the tune of a Chadian hymn. 
• On the way back from church, we stopped by a friend’s home for a chat and a cup of tea. There’s nothing unusual about the tea, but what is different from the USA is that it is served in glasses and not in mugs. I have to hold the glass very carefully near the rim so I don’t burn my fingers, but with a little practice this isn’t too difficult. 
• Before I close this off, I must say a little about driving in Chad. It is always an adventure. Four-wheeled vehicles are kind of a minority in Sarh – not a rarity, just not the primary traffic on the road. Both sides of the street are lined with people walking, riding bicycles, mopeds and motorcycles, and various animals including goats, chickens, dogs, sheep, and cattle, even once this morning a herd of cattle that took up half the road. Chadian cattle are fierce-looking creatures with their long, sharp horns, but thankfully they aren’t aggressive, they just like to think the road belongs to them. :-) Driving here looks at first glance like total chaos, but in fact it is more like a complicated ballet dance, with everyone moving past each other while somehow avoiding running into one another.

There is so much more I could say about life here, but I will leave the rest for another time. My internet connection here does not allow me to upload photos, but hopefully with my description you can imagine a little what things are like here.