3/9/06

Get out the bubblegum cigars...

I say goodnight to Marc yesterday evening, and get stared on my typical hot-season sleeping outside routine: clear off the table and move it off the cement slab, grab my folding bed and mattress, untie the mosquito net and tuck it in, brush my teeth, make a quick latrine run, and climb into bed with a few minutes to spare before BBC's Newshour. Fortunately, it's not too hot, and I fall asleep easily enough.

I keep waking up with my heart racing, seemingly every hour or so. I chalk it up to the Mephaquine, which I take every Wednesday morning to keep the Malaria parasites coursing through my system at a reasonable level, and which is known to cause vivid, weird dreams as a side effect. At one point, I realize I'm having a dream about Marc's new baby, who he's said he'll name Nathaniel if it's a boy. I wake up around 2:30 to loud talking; in my half-awake state, I can't quite tell what's going on, but I hear Ertchey, but also Tanga, Ka-Idi and Hophyra, as well as several adult voices. That's strange- I can't imagine what they'd be doing up this late. I ignore it, and try my best to fall back asleep.

I open my eyes just before my alarm goes off at 5:55, and switching it off, climb out of bed. I step out of my hangar to say good morning to Marc, and that's when it hits me, like a fist in the gut.

There are grass mats spread out in the early morning light under the guava tree that Marc's daughters are constantly climbing on. The mats are filled with men, not saying a word- I see Samson sitting on one edge, Dounplata at the other, Pastor Hibé, and more. I realize what's going on- around here it's known as the place mortiere, the public grieving over a death. People come from across the village to offer condolences- while the men sit stoically, the women wail and cry, in addition to preparing food for the visitors. I can't say I understand the reason why it's done like this, but tradition is tradition.

"Bonjour Nah-tahn-yel," Marc says with a tired weak smile, sitting on a mat.
"Bonjour," I answer. Ça va?"

"Ça va," he says, "mais vraiment ç'est difficile, hier pendant la nuit Valaddi a accouchée, mais c'etait un né mort." Last night Valaddi had the baby, but it was stillborn.

...Put the cigars away.

I feel like I've been punched. "Oh God, I'm so sorry," I say, taking his hand to shake it. I can actually feel myself going numb.

"Was it a boy or girl?" I ask quietly.

"Un garçon," he answers. A boy.

This was the son whose namesake I would've been.

"Valaddi is at the hospital now," he continues.

"And she's all right?" I interrupt.

"Yes." Thank God for small things.

"Do they know what happened?" I say, fighting the lump in my throat- it wouldn't be appropriate for a man to cry in this culture, foreigner or not.

"No," he says weakly, "but they think he'd been dead for two or three days."

I sit for a few minutes with Marc and the other men, not saying anything, just alone with my thoughts. The dry statistic of "one in five children in Chad die before the age of five" means only so much, until it happens to one of your closest friends. This would've been Marc and Valaddi's fifth child, after Tanga, Ka-Idi, Hophyra, and Dakassia (excluding Ertchey, who has a different mother)- statistically, I guess his number was up. The past few months we'd spent many evenings chatting, with Marc telling me how much he was hoping for a son, and even the Musey names he had picked out: Elkana if it was a boy, and Ndak-Boïkadi for a girl, roughly translated as "no problem." I know that, rightly or wrongly, Marc sees Ertchey as a loser and delinquent, and I think he felt like this time, were it to be a boy, he'd get it right. Between the army and being a prisoner-of-war, he was absent for most of Ertchey's childhood, and wasn't there to provide even the minimal guidance most Chadian men give their sons, even if it's usually at the end of a stick. To be so close, to have seen his new son's face, but never see his eyes open or hear him cry seems like an unspeakable act of cosmic cruelty.

Tragic as it may be, I still have to go to school, and I excuse myself from the group as quietly and politely as I can. As I make my way back to my house and hangar I can feel the lump forming in my throat again, and this time, I don't fight it.

The news, plus four hours of teaching leaves me both emotionally and physically drained, and it's a relief to come home at 12:30. When I do, the crowd has mushroomed, and the mats at the foot of the guava tree are completely full. Across the concession, Marc's brother's wives and other women living nearby have taken over Valaddi's kitchen, and are squatting on bricks and wooden stools, making rice and tea for the men, another tradition. Not wanting to call attention to myself, I quietly walk around the perimeter of the concession to my house, instead of through the middle as I always do.

Later in the afternoon, I send Liva to the market, with instructions to buy two kilos of sugar, as a gift for Marc. It's tradition here to give something when there's a death, either money or food, to help defer the cost of feeding the guests coming to pay their respects. Normally it's something small, maybe 100 or 200 francs, but Marc is a close friend, and I have no qualms about spending ten times that to help him with the cost of what will be hundreds of glasses of tea.

Awhile later, I'm surprised to hear loud voices and laughter coming from the guava tree. I thought this was supposed to be a quiet occasion, at least among the men, but I suppose you can only sit on a mat for so long with your friends and neighbors before someone starts talking. I hear Marc's distinctively high-pitched laugh, and I smile- I'm glad to know he's feeling a bit better. I do find it hard to understand that he's in a joking mood so soon though, less than 24 hours after his baby son's birth and death, but I guess it's just one of the myriad of cultural differences.

A little more time, and a little reflection help me realize the difference. While life is no less sacred here than in the West, it's so much more difficult that death is a far more frequent visitor, and as a result, people are more accustomed to losing loved ones. Honestly, most people aren't expected to grow old, and it's generally accepted that in a Chadian family one, two, or more kids won't survive. I remember a conversation I had recently with Sarah, a new volunteer (who's since ET'd), who told me that when she explained to Abba Ali, one of the Peace Corps drivers, that most American families have maybe two or three kids, his first response was, "Well, what happens when one of them dies?" She came up with some sort of placating answer at the time, but as she told me later, "What was I supposed to tell him? Kids don't die back home like they do here." It's true- in the developed world it's one in 1000 or less, not one in five.

Not having grown up in a place where infant mortality is such a regular part of life, I can see why it's hit me so hard, and why Marc, while undoubtedly upset, has been calm about a tragedy like this in a way I can't begin to fathom. When Enoch, one of the other English teachers at the lycée lost his baby daughter last year, I remember a similar reaction. The death of a child would crush most families in the First World, but here it's just part of the numbers game- have five, lose one, have 10, lose two. In so many ways people in the West have so much more than your average Chadian- when it comes resiliency and endurance though, we couldn't hold a candle...

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