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.
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| 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.
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| Getting organised behind our banner |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
