1/30/05

Chadian life, and perhaps culture as a whole, seems to be constantly coming up with new paradoxes and moments of weirdness that I can't possibly explain or understand. The attention to detail, on one hand, along with an almost total lack of structure on the other, is truly bizarre. In my (granted, limited) experience, for example, when you ask a Chadian what time it is you'll never hear "around two o'clock," or "about 1:30." Instead, you'll be told that it's 1:53, 37 minutes past four, or 2:17 and 30 seconds. I've heard that this is supposedly the reason many people here wear digital watches, to be exact. Contrast this with the everyday scene at the 'taxi' station, where any driver will tell you "we're leaving right now,"" and three hours later, you're still waiting.

Yes, life is full of paradoxes, but somehow they seem amplified in Chad. Take household cleanliness as another example- the average Chadian, such as Marc, my host father, or Ertchey, my neighbor, live in houses constructed of mud brick, sometimes baked and hardened (although usually not, since it's much more expensive) with either a grass or tin roof. By comparison, my house is made of fired bricks with cement floors and a tin roof. Chickens, ducks, dogs and the occasional goat or pig wander into the open door of Marc's house throughout the day, barking, clucking, and relieving themselves at will. Nobody seems to notice or care. My 'patio,' on the other hand, made of woven grass mats called Seiko, wire, and wooden poles is an animal-free zone, and I work hard to keep it that way, chasing them out whenever they approach, because the last thing I want to deal with is cleaning up manure. Given that, plus the fact that farm animals seem to have free rein in Marc or Ertchey's house, why is it that when I have leaves, plastic bags or straw in my yard that have been carried in on the wind, Ertchey will look at me and gravely intone, "You really should sweep this up." I have to resist the urge to say something like, "you have dogs crapping on your bedroom floor, but if there are leaves in my yard, and my dirt isn't swept properly you get bent out of shape?"

I notice these same sorts of contrasts on the job too, particularly at our staff meetings at school. If the scheduled start time is 10:30, there's no way we’ll get underway before 11, yet once we do, everything changes. From the moment the Proviseur calls the meeting to order we could be giving a tutorial on Parliamentary Procedure. Everyone listens intently while the Censeur (Assistant Principal) slowly reads the minutes of our last meeting. Even if it is the same 25 teachers who were there last time, and some of whom have been there for years, we'll all introduce ourselves again, making sure to include our name, department, and qualifications- only then can we get started. The Proviseur will (again) slowly read the agenda, and we'll begin. Although many of these teachers and administrators have been friends for years, it's always "Monsieur le Proviseur," "Monsieur le Censeur," "Monsieur le chef de département," and more. Despite the carefully stated agenda and rigid attention to protocol, the meetings are incredibly inefficient, with one hour of items easily stretching into three and a half hours.

So, where does this fixation on protocol and exactness come from, and if it's meant to streamline, clarify, and show respect, why does it seem to be so good at slowing things down, obfuscating them, and wasting people's time? My guess is that it's a remnant of the French colonial past, and although Chadians have tried to hold to it, perhaps the stereotypical easygoing rhythm of African life has permeated it.

Another aspect of this that I've observed is the incredible intelligence of many people here in some respects, compounded with the utter ignorance of the outside world. Marc, who is the staff medic at CotonTchad, the largest employer in Gounou-Gaya, can tell me about the function of dozens of different antibiotics, and prepare a blood sample by the light of a cheap Chinese flashlight. Yet the other night, after talking about the recent tsunami disaster in Asia, asked me if the ocean was the same depth throughout the world, and if it'd be possible to send a spaceship to land on the Sun. As a medic, I assume he'd know just how many potential infections there are on fresh manure, yet he allows his children to run barefoot throughout it, and his youngest daughter, who just turned one, to simply plop down in it in the shade. This disconnect between something obviously unhealthy, compounded with his knowledge of sanitation truly baffles me.

Janvier, a professor of history and geography, and Livana's older brother has left Gounou-Gaya a total of three times in 23 year; the other night he pointed at a map of Africa in his teacher's manual, and asked me if the black lines dividing up the continent were highways. I tried hard to contain my astonishment as I explained to the geography teacher that the lines on the political map dividing the continent are known as borders.

There's no doubt that we have our share of bizarre paradoxes and contradictions in the US, as well as more ignorance that any developed country has the right to have. Just like my living in Chad, to use a cliché, life on the outside looking in, is a chance for me to discover the constant little absurdities here, I have no doubt it'd be the same, or more so for a Chadian in the States. If Marc, Ertchey, or Livana were to be suddenly abducted, blindfolded, and left in downtown San Francisco, or airdropped into Times Square, they'd probably be even more shocked at what they see than what I see here. Almost certainly more, I imagine, because I at least had an idea of what I was getting into when I joined Peace Corps. I don't think I'll ever truly understand much of the culture here, but I have almost 23 more months to try...

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