4/1/06

"Dictation:
A poor diet is one of the biggest problems Chadians, especially children face. Most children eat only starches, like millet or rice, which are filling but do not provide nutrition. To be healthy and grow, children must eat vegetables, protein and grains together."

I'm working on a lesson plan for my English club- this week's subject is Health/Nutrition and Medicine. It's another blazing Chadian hot season day, and my tablecloth (a burgundy pagne with a pattern traditional grass brooms) is soaked with sweat in the spots where my elbows are resting as I write. There's a strong wind blowing, which would normally be nice, but when it's this hot, it simply blows around the heat and dust, and does nothing to lower the temperature.

Criccck-CRASH!...Bang!

I look up; I didn't see anything, but it sounds like a tree must've blown down nearby- I make a mental note to go check it out later, and get back to lesson planning.

BAM! Criccck-crash! Crash! THUMP! Something, multiple things, hit the ground farther away, and in quick succession. I decide to see what's going on, and walk across Marc's yard out to the road, where I heard the noise coming from, trying to keep the blowing dust out of my face. I glance to the left- two of the streetlights/electric poles have crashed to the ground. I can see the streetlight shattered on the pole in front of the Hibé's driveway; maybe 30 meters farther down the road, by my landlord's house, another pole is just off the ground, balanced precariously on the housing of the streetlight, and partially supported by the thick black electrical cable. In the other direction, maybe 200 meters down the road, four more poles have toppled next to the EFLT Lutheran church. I walk over to look at the pole by the Hibé's- the base has been completely hollowed out by termites. A splintered sliver of wood, maybe the width of two pencils is all that's left of the pole's inside, the rest being the sand/sawdust mixture aftermath of an African termite attack.

Termites here are relentless, and usually destroy anything in or near their path. When I went to N'Djamena and on vacation last June, I accidentally left my plywood table leaning ever so slightly against the wall. When I came back a few weeks later I found three of the four legs all-but-gone, my grass mat which had been next to the table in tatters, and half of Nigeria having disappeared from my paper map of Chad and its neighbors. The termites had chewed through the walls and floor to get to the table, leaving brown sand/sawdust 'cheetos' sticking out 10cm from the wall in places as a bridge.

People here know that termites will eat through whatever stands in their way, leading to the obvious question- why the hell would you plant wooden poles in the ground to support your power lines? The French colonial authorities figured this out decades ago, and the metal poles holding up the partially functional streetlights in Bongor are still standing. The answer is the constant tendency of most Chadians to do half-assed work and to cut corners whenever possible. Because life is so difficult here, people don't plan for anything but the present, and apparently, it didn't occur to anyone here that the wooden poles wouldn't last. The termite problem could've easily been solved by pre-treating the poles, raising the cement base of each just slightly above ground level, or simply mixing in a 40¢ packet of insecticide powder with the base of each pole. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to occur to anyone, and it looks like Gaya will be in the dark for a long time to come. Fortunately (in a way), the electricity hasn't been working, so the downed power lines' biggest threat is as a trip hazard, at least for now.

Later in the evening, shortly before sunset, I walk out to chat with Marc. I see the power lines swaying crazily up, down, and to the side. My first though is that another pole must've fallen, and I go out to the road to see where it is this time. What I see stops me cold- a group of kids are climbing on the fallen poles near the church, and whipping around the cables like ropes. My God, how many of these kids would be dead if the electricity were to suddenly come on? I wheel around and look at Marc, who's stacking bricks for a new house in a nearby pile.

"Do you see what they're doing?" I ask, pointing out the kids.

"Oui, ils s'amusent," he answers. Yeah, they're playing.

"But don't they know that it's dangerous?" I demand. "What happens if they were to turn the electricity on?"

"They don't care," Marc says. "They're going to play on them no matter what we say or do." Fortunately, it looks as though his daughters aren't anywhere near the downed lines.

"But someday, when the electricity comes on while they're playing it'll kill them!" I protest.

"They won't listen if we tell them no," he responds.

"But what if it kills someone?" I plead. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Well, if someone gets killed, we'll go the place mortiere and drink tea," he responds with a laugh. "If God wills it, then someone will die."

I'm speechless. If God wills it? Are you incapable of independent action, or does it all depend on God? Jesus, maybe you could give God a hand, and tell your kids not to play on the damned power lines. I realize that nothing I say or do is going to change Marc's 51 years of being Chadian, and the accompanying worldview, so I stalk off to my house in disbelief.

I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised though- fatalism is one of the pillars of society here- anything and everything that happens is the 'Will of God,' and people have no power to change it. Honestly, I think that’s part of the reason why things are as backward, and frankly, primitive as they are, to be non politically correct for a moment. Because most Chadians believe that their destiny is decided from the moment the midwife cuts their end of the umbilical cord, there's no incentive to do anything that would create a positive change. 'My father lives in a mud hut and is a tailor, so I'll live in a mud hut and be a tailor,' people think.

Coming from a society that preaches the exact opposite belief, that you can be anything you want to be, and do whatever you want to do if you make it happen, I can see why I find this attitude so hard to accept. You can certainly have a belief in God, but doesn't mean that you are completely subject to his/her/its will, and have no ability to change things in your world, like taking completely reasonable steps to prevent the electrocution of small children.

Still Chadians aren't one monolithic person, and some people seem to realize this. The next day as I'm biking back from the lycée I notice that the power lines that had fallen in front of the Hibé's house are out of easy children's reach, held off the ground with a long, forked tree branch. Looking farther down the road, I see the temporarily switched-off lines still lying on the ground, and kids playing with them. Feeling utterly powerless (pardon the pun), I walk my bike across the across the concession to my house. For the moment, the streetlights aren't working- the night they do come on, I hope they have plenty of tea, rice, men to sit, available women to cry and cook, and grass mats handy, because apparently, that's what God wants...

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