Day 5

Day five. Is it only day five? It feels like I’ve been here forever. Maybe it’s something to do with the way we’re living out here.

To describe my sleeping quarters as a prison cell would almost be charitable; at least prison cells have ensuite plumbing. The place is tiny – maybe eight feet by ten feet – and consists of concrete walls and floor within which are crammed a rickety wooden bed frame, a straw mattress covered with sheets of straw-like consistency, and a “pillow” that was clearly constructed by the same guy who makes the mud bricks people build their compound walls out of. There’s a wooden chair that looks like a junior high school shop project, and a foul-smelling wooden box that is apparently meant to be some sort of wardrobe. Welcome to our guesthouse.

Speaking of foul smells, the place reeks of squashed cockroaches and toad shit. N’djamena is plagued by grasshoppers; in Abeche it’s toads. Don’t ask me how the little buggers survive in the bloody desert; it must be something to do with the end of the rainy season. Anyway, you can’t open a door, a bag, a toilet lid without finding one. And as anyone who has ever had reptiles or amphibians for pets can attest, they stink. Bad.

It’s a real eye-opener to see how my colleagues in the field live. For one thing, they can’t get out of each other’s faces. They sleep, eat, and work in the same quarters. Curfew is at nine, and anyway there’s no place to go. They can’t even go to and from work on their own schedules, since we have to travel in convoy and there are only so many vehicles. The part that really blows my mind is that this place is technically a sub-office, not even a field office -- those guys live in tents. I’m telling you, humanitarian workers are the true saints of this world. Whatever they’re in it for, they lead incredibly difficult, stressful, uncomfortable, dangerous, heartbreaking, fascinating lives, an existence I’m only just being introduced to.

The greatest thing about these people is how diverse they are. We are few in this guesthouse, but we represent the globe: an Ethiopian, a Frenchmen, two Italians, a Brit, a Mauritanian, a Belarussian, an American, a Venezuelan, and of course one wide-eyed Canadian. It’s like the Real World in a war zone.

And a war zone it is. (Mom, maybe you should stop reading here…) The razor wire on top of the compound wall apparently isn’t good enough, so there’s a row of broken glass shards embedded in the cement, running along the top of the wall like the spines of a stegosaur. No one goes anywhere without his or her radio, and at 7:45 every night UNHCR calls out to agency after agency, including the NGOs and the International Committee of the Red Cross – everyone the UN will evacuate in case of need:

“Medecins Sans Frontieres, controle radio.”
“Alpha Charlie One, check.”
“Alpha Charlie One, bien recu.”
“Alpha Charlie Two, check.”
“Alpha Charlie Two, bien recu.”

The radio chirrups through call sign after call sign, making sure every staff member of every organization is accounted for.

Funny thing is, the odds are far better of being a victim of crime than a victim of war. For example, yesterday the rebels attempted a coup right here in Abeche. Sadly for the would-be usurpers, however, the president wasn’t in town, so their glorious assault on the empty palace was probably a touch embarrassing. (Not sure who is in charge of their intel, but I bet whoever it is felt really silly. He probably got some serious ribbing from the other guys in his unit.) And just in case the rebels ever get organized enough to make for the capital again, the French are around to make them think twice about pushing the matter too far.

There’s a lot more to say about the French presence here (stop smirking, Don), but it will have to wait for another entry. I’m tired now, and we start work shortly after the speakers of the local mosque crackle to life and the singing greets the dawn.

November Charlie Nine-Six signing out.