The beginner's guide to driving in Chad

Driving in Chad is most definitely an experience and adds to the fun of living here!  In order to be adept at driving in Chad you need the following aptitudes:

- 360-degree vision

- 100% alertness at all times so that you can expect the unexpected

- High anticipation of the (sometimes strange) manoeuvres that everyone else around you is about to do

- Quick hand reflex to sound the car’s horn

- Previous 4x4 off-roading experience desirable (but not essential)

- A good sense of direction (alternatively, access to GPS)

Chad, like many countries around the world (except my passport country and a fair few others) drives on the right.  So the first thing I had to get used to was driving while sitting on the left and having the gear stick on the right.  Well, that and also remembering to drive on the right!

Chad does have rules of the road.  I’m not totally sure whether they’re written down, I guess they must be, but there are also many ‘unwritten rules’ that you just learn about as you go.

In N’Djamena, the capital, the few main tarred roads are theoretically mostly dual carriageways.  However, the unwritten rule is that the lane on the right is for motorbikes (motos), car/minivan taxis (the latter frequently stop to add or drop off passengers) and the lane on the left is for regular cars and bigger vehicles.  Unless the bigger vehicles are s-l-o-w like fuel tankers or heavily-laden lorries.  Then they are ‘urged’, by the sounding of horns of vehicles following them, to move over.  I mainly stick to the left-side of the dual carriageway to avoid motos and the start-stopping taxis.  Unless there’s a fast moving, often military, pickup tailgating me.  Then I’ll politely move over to the right.  Well, I am British after all 😉 Plus I’d rather the guys with guns are ahead of me!

Perfect example of moto on the right, bigger vehicles,
including the one I'm driving, on the left

This road is actually only a single lane each side.
But, you know, there's always room for a third lane
down the middle

N’Djamena boasts three flyovers (over-passes for my American readers).  All of them are over roundabouts.  The rule is that motos aren’t allowed on the flyovers, only cars are.  The motos have to go down to the roundabout and up the other side.  So that frees up some space!  It’s timely that I add in here that there are more motos than cars here in Chad.  They are far more affordable, and you can still fit a family of four on it.  Or yourself and two adult friends.  Who needs a car when a moto will do at a fraction of the cost?

Next we need to talk about roundabouts.  Ahhhh, roundabouts.  Chad loves a good roundabout and they like making features of them by building a small monument on them, or a piece of abstract art.  Many of them are used as landmarks when giving directions.  Most of them have two names, the official one and the colloquial one.  Chad has a strange, antiquated rule when it comes to driving around roundabouts and it’s one that takes some getting used to.  When driving up to a roundabout in Chad you have right of way and can drive straight onto the roundabout.  If there’s already a vehicle going around the roundabout, it must stop to let you enter.  That said, the rule never seems to apply to motos, and they rarely stop on the roundabout to let a car enter!   I guess they’re small enough to sneak through on the inside.

Here we are, entering a roundabout.  Note the ladies on the moto and
the car patiently (ish) waiting.  Also note the decorative roundabout,
with not-anatomically-correct hands holding a globe.  What you can't see is that the globe
contains a map of the outline of Africa, with Chad painted, very large and not to scale, in the middle

Entering another roundabout.  This one is colloquially called
the spitting cow roundabout, cos those are cows heads on
the building on the roundabout.  Sometimes they turn the water
on and water comes out their mouths.  Hence the name!  Note the
terrible car driver who is not giving way to me entering the roundabout. 
Tut tut.

Next we need to cover junctions.  They exist in theory, but in practice, people rarely stop at them.  I can be driving on the main road and there can be a feeder road on my left, for example.  In most countries, the vehicle entering the main road from the side road gives way to me and enters the main road once I’ve gone past.  This rarely happens in Chad.  They drive straight out of the junction and instead of coming across in front of me, they slowly drive up the wrong side of the road for a while, dodging any oncoming traffic, until they can safely cruise over to the correct, right-hand side of the road.  It’s motos that perform this manoeuvre most often but sometimes cars do it too.  If you’re a wary foreigner like me, and you’re coming out of a side street, wanting to turn left and you’re waiting until the traffic on the main road is clear, this will cause fellow road users behind some angst.  No need to wait!  They’ll pull up beside me and then pull out at the same time as me, creating a temporary two-lane system until we’re both on the main road.

Here I am approaching a main road from a smaller road.
I, and the car in front (using an indicator, rare occurrence)
want to turn left.  So does the silver Hilux approaching from the
main road.  A nice web of cars, but it all works out in the end

Car in front cuts across to the left, I wait for the Hilux and the next
car to turn in left from the main road, before I reach the main road and
dart across to the left before more cars appear

There are accidents in Chad.  But far fewer than I’d imagine given some of the unofficial rules.  I guess most people are aware of them and so it’s not an issue.  That helps.  As does the fact that people drive pretty slowly.

So there we have it, a little overview of driving practices in Chad.  Anyone want to come over and try it out?!

Disclaimer: I wasn’t taking these photos while driving, my wonderful friend and colleague Debbie did, from the passenger’s seat.  So all photo credits to Debbie 😊 Thanks Debbie for being my official photographer for this blog post!

Handbags and gladrags

Catchy title, eh?!  It's the title of a song by British group Stereophonics.  I'm not actually going to write anything about gladrags.....there are enough pictures on this blog of me wearing various Chadian outfits so we'll leave that part of the title there.  So why am I writing about handbags?  Well, I want to use my handbag as a simple (ok, very simple) illustration of how quick my life can change and what that looks like in very practical terms.

Ten days ago, my handbag and its contents looked like this:

• Small brick-like dual SIM indestructible phone 
• Insect repellent
• Hand sanitiser
• Sun cream
• Fold-able fan
• Tissues
• Purse with Chadian money

Today, my handbag contains:

• Tissues
• Smartphone
• Reusable bag
• Pen
• Umbrella
• Purse with British money

Yes, it's home assignment time and I'm back in the UK!  I will be speaking about the work of Guinebor II Hospital at various places around the country.  Feel free to come along and hear all about it.

Sunday 22 September - 3pm - Upton Vale Baptist Church, Torquay

Saturday 28 September - 1.40pm - BMS cafe event at the South Wales Baptist Association 'Association Day' at Bethel Baptist Church, Pontyclun.  More info: http://southwalesba.org.uk/news-events/

Sunday 29 September - 11am - Mumbles Baptist Church, Swansea

Sunday 29 September - 6pm - Moriah Baptist Church, Risca

Sunday 6 October - 10am - Redhill Baptist Church

Tuesday 8 October - evening - Desford Free Church, Leicester

Sunday 13 October - 10.45am - Abbey Centre Baptist Church, Northampton

Sunday 13 October - 6pm - Eastwood Baptist Church, Nottingham

Tuesday 15 October - 7pm - Griffithstown Baptist Church

Thursday 17 October - 7.30pm - South Molton Baptist Church

Sunday 20 October - Bluntisham Baptist Church 

Rainy season - the positives

Usually when rainy season hits, I’m blogging about increased mud, dodgy (ok, dodgier) roads and heightened malaria risk.  All that is still true and an everyday reality.  However, there are some positives of the rains hitting!

The first rain at Guinebor this year happened on 27^th May.  I did my traditional dance in the first rain of the year (ok, it’s actually a crazy run around with my arms in the air) – it is SUCH a relief to feel the rain after the drudge of at least 2 months of hot season, where it’s continuously over 35C by night and over 40C by day.  I get totally soaked and it’s fabulous!  This year I was joined by BMS short-termer Dr Jon.  Kudos to Dr Jon who arrived for a 4-month stint with us at Guinebor at the height of hot season at the start of April.  We were watched bemusedly by our friend Michaela, who watched the rain fall from the comfort of her veranda!

After dancing like a fool in the first rain of 2019!
Note the brown ground in the background

So 27^th May was the first rain since October 2018!  It’s amazing that after just a few rains, the brown, dry, dusty ground turns green.  The following pictures show the same part of the housing area of the hospital compound at three different times at the start of rainy.  It’s so cool that the grass seeds remain dormant under the ground all dry season!

19th May 2019

7th June 2019

29th June 2019

30th July 2019

We have gardens, of sorts, at our houses here on the compound.  During the dry season we work hard watering them to keep some sort of greenery around.  Every now and again a plant will flower in dry season, but not too often.  However, in rainy season – flowers abound!

Wildlife also seems to abound more in rainy season.  There are often small birds around our compound but this rainy season we’ve seen a lot of sunbirds.  Or maybe it’s just one that we’ve seen a lot?  Beautiful creatures that have iridescent colours.  The colours of their feathers change depending on the angle of the sun on them.  Totally amazing!  Unfortunately, they’re quite elusive and I’ve never had my camera around when I’ve happened to see a sunbird on a small tree outside my front door.  So you’ll have to do with a stock photo I pinched off the internet (thanks Google).

Finally, I saw something for the first time ever a couple of Sundays ago on the way back from church.  A rainbow behind clouds!  I’d heard about this phenomenon that happens during rainy season and seen pictures from a few years ago when it was last seen here.  It was great to witness it with my own eyes.  The picture below doesn’t do it justice really, but you get the idea.

Beauty in the desert and a privilege to see :)

Fête du Travail 2019 - Labour Day 2019

Today, 1st May, is a public holiday here in Chad as it’s Labour Day.  I am sat here in my house at Guinebor, early afternoon, reflecting on the fun (but VERY hot) few hours I just spent with my Chadian hospital colleagues.  All organisations are invited to celebrate Labour Day by marching in the streets of N’Djamena and into a stadium in front of dignitaries.  For security reasons in previous years, I’ve never done the march on Labour Day, but today I did!

As a hospital we all wore the same t-shirt with the hospital name and logo on the front and ‘1er mai 2019 fête du travail’ on the back.  We each had one of two fabrics to make a skirt or trousers from.  It was great to see how different people had come up with different designs and we all looked great marching alongside each other!

At 7am this morning, I drove into N’Djamena with a short-term doctor from the UK and six members of staff.  We parked up at the pre-arranged place and met other members of staff there.  We took a few photos as we waited for the staff who had started the march earlier to get to where we were, near the stadium.

Photo while we wee waiting for the others

Altogether, there were 45 members of Guinebor Hospital staff marching behind our banner, which was a great turn out.  It was a fun atmosphere!   As we joined the rest of the hospital staff, loads of people were trying to get in their organisations into correct order, which caused some amusement (to me).  Guinebor Hospital had been assigned to march in third place, behind a couple of other hospitals.  I think that’s where we ended up, but I’m not totally sure.  

Getting organised behind our banner

Lined up and ready to go!

After a few starts and stops on the road leading to the stadium, we eventually made it inside.  A guy on a loud speaker introduced us ‘et voici l’hôpital de Guinebor II’ (and here is Guinebor II Hospital).  We marched past the dignitaries who were sat on satin-covered chairs in a tiered pavilion with shade-cover.  Then we stood underneath some canopies as we watched everyone else file in.  There must have been at least 50 organisations altogether, so that took a while.

Watching the other organisations march in

By this point, it was starting to get hot.  But we had to listen to a few speeches first before we could head to a restaurant to eat a sandwich and drink a coke altogether.

Enjoying a sit-down with a coke, waiting for our sandwiches

Such a fun morning celebrating our work at the hospital with my work colleagues!

A Jacqueline* of all trades?

*I know this is usually Jack, but I’m female so I thought I’d make it a more relevant phrase for me 😉

I have spoken in previous blogs about some of the ‘other jobs’ I do here at Guinebor II Hospital.  Despite being a pharmacist, and that being the main reason I’m here, long term mission work always lends itself to opportunities for learning a whole gamut of other knowledge and skills.  Some of which I’d have preferred not to have learned, but you know, needs must.

·      Solar energy production and system maintenance

We’re not on mains power here, so the majority of our power is harnessed from the sun.  Including for my house, which is where I’ve learned the bulk of my solar power knowledge.  Panels, regulators, inverters, batteries are all words I’ve learned in both the languages I speak.  Is it a 12v or a 24v system?  Should we have an inverter?  How many watts should the inverter be?  How many watts are each panel? Which direction should we put the panels facing so they get the most of the sunlight?  Why is the inverter alarming?  Has it fried with the heat and dust?  Or is it because the regulator has died?  Or worse (because: cost) have the batteries died?  Slight panic arises when it’s cloudy for more than two consecutive days.  Especially when that’s in hot season, or rainy season, when it’s hot and/or humid and you could really do with cool water from the fridge and a fan.  Two or more consecutive cloudy days often means there’s not enough sunlight to charge the batteries, meaning a potential lack of electricity.  Cue lots of washing of the panels to try and harness as much of the cloud-blocked sunlight as possible!

·         Septic tanks

Whether it be the pit latrines at the hospital or the septic tanks for each house, I’ve learned a lot about how to ventilate them to a) dissipate the smell and/or b) stop a build-up of nasty gases that could theoretically cause an explosion.  I’ve also learned the process of finding a septic tank emptying service (process: go into N’Djamena, find where the tankers are parked, copy the phone number from the side of the tanker, call the number and arrange for the tanker to come to the hospital.  Be prepared to pay a high price for your pit latrine or septic tank to be emptied)

·         Construction terminology

My French vocabulary in this arena has soared.  Cornières, contreplaqué, ciment (ok, some of them are easier than others), vices, raccourt, perceuse, planches, sable, gravier, fils d’attache to name a few.  Not sure if this knowledge will ever become a ‘transferrable skill’ but you never know!

·         Chadian labour laws

With almost 90 members of staff, there’s almost always something cropping up from an HR perspective.  Some of the laws here are truly baffling to me but as a visitor to this country, I have learned to accept them, as there’s nothing I can do to change them, and we need to comply with the law of the land.  Basically, the labour laws here are extremely pro the employee.  Which if there is a rogue employer is great and needed.  However sometimes these laws can get a bit frustrating in certain circumstances!

·         Staff uniforms

We try and ensure each staff member gets a new uniform each year.  This involves asking someone to buy rolls and rolls of fabric in the market.  Arranging for one of four staff members who do tailoring to come and chop of a length of it and make scrubs for individual staff members.  Oh and don’t forget the yearly negotiation of how much we’re going to pay for each set of scrubs made!  Last year this literally took weeks to negotiate……

·         Management training

Now that we have department heads for every department in the hospital, it’s giving good opportunities to guide and coach some of our Chadian staff in both change management and staff management and empower them to take charge of the development and progression of their departments.  This is an exciting stage for the hospital as we develop our Chadian staff to be leaders and for me, learning to delegate to them.

I hope that’s given a bit more insight into some of the many things I’ve learned and continue to learn here in Chad!  It leads to a very varied life 😊

A patient update and something quite unbelievable (but true)

I thought people who heard me speak on my last home assignment would be interested in an update on Abderamane, the man who had a fractured leg and arm after a motorbike accident and who had sought 7 months of treatment with a traditional healer (which didn’t work) before coming to be treated at Guinebor.  When I returned to Chad last November, Abderamane had already left the hospital after receiving surgery on his leg and subsequently his arm.  Apparently, all had gone well.  It wasn’t until the start of February that I saw a guy on crutches at the entrance to the hospital and I thought to myself ‘I recognise that guy’…..It was Abderamane!  Full of smiles and walking adeptly on his crutches, he told me he had come for a check-up with the surgeon.  He welcomed me back to Chad (well, he wasn’t to know I’d already been back 3 months!) and asked if I’d had a good time in the UK.  A few days later, a Wednesday, we were going around the inpatient wards praying for patients as is our habit on a Wednesday morning.  We go around in twos or threes offering to pray for patients and I was with one of the male Chadian staff members.  There in one of the beds was Abderamane.  Turns out that he needed further surgery on his leg.  He was happy for me to pray for him and I did so.  The guy is amazing, always smiling despite his ongoing health issues with his leg (he broke it back in September 2017, so 18 months ago now).  Fast forward to today and I bumped into Abderamane in outpatients!  Zipping along nicely on his crutches, he told me he had come for a dressing change.  He thanked me for all we’d done for him and I told him it was no problem, it’s what we’re here for.  I’m so glad to have had these further brief catch-ups with Abderamane and to hear that he is on his way to recovery and is extremely grateful for the care he received here at Guinebor.

Early the other morning, I called across to Christophe, one of our nurses working in the emergency room, asking if he’d seen Kalbassou (my Cameroonian nurse-surgeon colleague).  ‘No’ he replied, ‘but I need him in the ER, we’ve got a young girl here who has been bitten by a panther!’ ‘Really?!’ I exclaimed.  Christophe shrugged his shoulders ‘I’m not sure if it’s exactly true but she’s been bitten by something’.  I continue on my way, find Kalbassou and ask him to go to the ER.  I then get busy in the pharmacy for a while.  A few hours later, I leave the pharmacy and am stopped by one of the guards ‘the local mayor and his team are here and want to see the girl who was bitten by a panther, can we let them in?’ I’m not sure that this is really a wise idea, that a hospital is not an entertainment theatre.  So, I do what I always do in these situations – I went to ask Kalbassou!  ‘Of course, they should come in’ he says and so I pass that message to the guard.  Fifteen minutes later I see a gaggle of our staff around the entrance to one of the wards, an unusual sight.  I ask one of them what’s going on ‘oh, the mayor was here because there’s a girl in there who was bitten by a panther’ (visiting officials always attract a crowd).  At this point, I’m starting to suspect that there’s some truth in the ‘bitten by a panther’ saga.  I ask one of the nurses if it really was a panther ‘oh yes’ he replied ‘the military killed it and brought it by the front of the hospital earlier in the back of a pickup and lots of people have photos of it.  Ask Allamine (another nurse) to show you’.  I find Allamine but he says he doesn’t have his phone on him.  I’m still inquisitive and curious and I think it showed on my face!  Bamon (another nurse) says ‘I’ll take you to the patient’s bed, her father has a video of the dead panther’.  Bamon asks the father to get his phone out and show me.  Sure enough, he has video footage of a soldier in the back of a pickup with a dead leopard.  I now believed the story!  I’ve been living here long enough now that I should’ve realised that it was probably true.  Stories that seem too far-fetched rarely are here!  News filtered out on Chadian online news outlets about the leopard attack.  It apparently hurt 10 different people in the next-door village to Guinebor.  I’m not sure why only one person ended up with us.  The rest all ended up in another hospital in N’Djamena.  The girl we took care of was taken to theatre to have her wounds (mainly on the back of the head) cleaned and packed and dressed.  As well as having a visit from the local mayor, she was also visited a few days later by the Minister of the environment, water and fishing (cue another crowd of staff around the ward entrance).  She left hospital a few days later.  I saw her this afternoon; her Dad had brought her back in to have her stiches out and all the wounds seemed clean and well healed.  None of those the leopard attacked died I don’t think.  This story could easily have had a worse outcome.

I know the question everyone will be thinking: why was there a leopard on the loose on the outskirts of N’Djamena?  There are two different stories circulating.  I will leave you to decide which (if any) is true.  I’ve got my suspicions as to the real answer!  One story is that an army general kept it in his compound and it escaped.  The other is that it came over the border from Cameroon.

For those of you who read French (or who want to take the time to put it through Google translate), here are a few of the online news articles about the leopard attack.  Don’t read them unless you’re happy seeing a photo of a dead leopard……

https://tchadinfos.com/faits-divers/faits-divers-la-bete-qui-a-blesse-une-dizaine-de-personnes-appartiendrait-a-un-general-de-larmee/

https://tchadinfos.com/tchad/tchad-faits-divers-les-victimes-de-lagression-de-la-panthere-sont-toujours-a-lhopital/

https://tchadinfos.com/tchad/tchad-la-panthere-arrive-certainement-de-kousseri-selon-le-ministre-de-lenvironnement/

There’s rarely a dull moment here at Guinebor II Hospital!

More questions about life (in Chad)

Welcome to my latest blog where I’m going to answer the questions that people have sent me about life and work in Chad.

How long do you see yourself working in Chad?

No idea!  I’m now into my fourth year of working at Guinebor II Hospital and in many ways, I feel like I’m only just getting to grips with life and work here.  There’s so much to learn in terms of language, cultural practices and hospital management (to name a few things).  To leave now would in some ways feel like a waste of all that I’ve learned over the last three years, as it’s now that I’m really putting that learning into practice – and obviously I’m continuing to learn.    As I type, I’ve no plans to leave but who knows what God will want me to do in the future?  It’s in His hands at the end of the day!

If you need help/advice, where do you go/who do you go to?

That depends on what it is I need help or advice on.  If it’s something related to cultural practices I will ask a trusted Chadian colleague like Audrey (the pharmacist I work with) or Allain (our administrator).  If it’s how to manage a sensitive personnel issue, where I need human resources advice and cultural advice all wrapped into one, I’ll ask my Cameroonian missionary colleague Kalbassou.  If it’s something personal to me that I need help or advice on I will ask either my parents or one of my close female friends (many of whom are not in Chad, praise God for WhatsApp!).

Have you seen many people come to faith since you have been at G2?  If so, do new Chri$tians get problems having become Chri$tian in a predominately Mu$lim society?

I obviously can’t write too much about this on a public website, but the short answer is yes and yes.

Do you think Manchester United will win the Premier League?

Haha!!  I have absolutely no idea, I don’t follow football apart from World Cups and I don’t want to risk saying the wrong thing on this subject, given that I’ve friends who support many different Premier League teams 😉.  I will say though that football is a universal sport and there are many Chadians who love playing and watching football.  They enjoy watching football matches from different European leagues (mainly Italian, Spanish and English).  The other day Allain, who I mentioned above, was looking a bit bleary eyed first thing in the morning (we start work at 7am).  I asked him if his 6-month old son was keeping him awake at night.  He replied ‘no, I was up late last night watching the Barcelona v Real Madrid match!’

How do you go about spreading the good news of Je$us in your everyday work?

My work is very practical – essentially helping to run a hospital that provides high quality, low cost healthcare to the local population.  When I was training with BMS to become a long-term mission worker, we were taught the principle of ‘integral mission’.  The Micah Network defines integral mission as ‘the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel’ and more on this can be discovered here.  What integral mission essentially means is that we can’t just tell people about Je$us but we must demonstrate our faith too.  You can’t have one without the other.  So my hope and prayer is that through my interactions with staff and patients in my day to day, very practical work, the love of Je$us will shine through.  This will, I hope, tie in with the work that our Chaplains do.  It’s a team effort!

How do your Chadian doctors, nurses and other professional staff gain their qualifications? Do they have to go outside the country for training or are there places at University within the country where staff are trained?

Great question!  It is possible to train as a doctor, nurse or midwife in Chad.  Medicine can be studied at the University of N’Djamena and it takes a minimum of 7 years to qualify as a junior doctor.  Nurses and midwives train at specialist nursing and midwifery schools.  The training for nurses and midwives is essentially the same and the only thing that defines whether you end up as a nurse or midwife are the practical ‘stages’ (internships) that you do while you’re training.  People can also train to be pharmacy technicians, lab technicians and physiotherapy technicians within Chad.  Other than that, it’s training outside of the country (e.g. to be a ultrasonographer or radiographer).  Our ultrasonographer at Guinebor II has been trained ‘on the job’ by visiting specialists from outside of Chad.  There’s always a hunger for learning here and in an ideal world, we would love Guinebor II Hospital to be a teaching hospital, to train local people in certain specialities, but that’s a bit down the line yet.

Those are all the questions I received, hope they give some more insight into my life and work here!

Here are some photos to brighten the blog and show you some of what I’ve been up to and helping with in the last few weeks and months:

At the wedding of one of our nurses

Enjoying a sunset over the River Chari

Helping to oversee the remodelling of the lab

Pharmacy remodel all finished :)

Remodel of old operating theatre into a new dressings room
and a new emergency room

Inside the new ER
(5 beds now, old one had 2 beds)