10/3/05

Remadji, one of my best (and most enthusiastic) students from last year comes to visit around 9:00. I don't like to make it a habit to invite students over– it'd be absolutely unthinkable for a student to come to my house were I a Chadian teacher, and I don't want to violate that precedent. For Remadji and a few select others though, I've made an exception– students who really show an interest in English, or simply want to be friendly are always welcome. Whenever Remadji comes, he always has a sentence or two in English he wants me to help him translate– today it's, "my brother and I both come first." I have no idea how he finds the phrases he brings to me; last time it was something like, "How does the AIDS virus enter the body?" Without trying to make too broad a generalization, Remadji is Ngambaye, a tribe centered near Moundou, and generally thought of as better educated and motivated to succeed that most of Chad's almost 120 ethnicities, including the Moussei. Seeing his lanky frame appear in my doorway with English questions means that he's been studying over the summer, proving the stereotype, I suppose. After sitting and chatting for a while (and translating the sentence), I ask him what class he'll be in this year.

"Premiere L," he tells me proudly. "Will you be teaching in Premiere this year?" he asks, looking hopeful– it's nice to feel wanted.

"I don't know," I tell him. "It depends on what the Censeur asks me to do."

"But will you tell him you want to teach Premiere L?" he asks.

"Sure, I can do that," I say, bringing a big smile to his face.

We talk for a bit longer, and I notice he's carrying a magazine with him, Africa International Review, featuring a front-page "Exclusive Interview With New President Joseph Kabila!" the latest in a string of dictators to lead the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The second main story is a guide to Moundou, coincidentally enough. If I remember correctly, Kabila has been in power for quite a while already. I look at the date– April 18, 2001. I don't know if Remadji is carrying it around strictly for entertainment, or if he actually feels he's keeping up to date with current events by reading a four-and-a-half year old magazine. I guess that maybe the news itself isn't that important– in a place where the only entertainment is the radio and conversation, it's something to do. Not too long ago, I remember seeing Liva with a magazine, African Youth. The headline was, "What is the Future of Africa?" It featured three boys staring out the window of a typical mud brick house– dated 1987. Those "African Youth," probably have kids of their own by now.

News really doesn't seem important here– actually, it's not that people don't care what's going on, but news is Gounou-Gaya is more along the lines of who's marrying who, who has a new baby or just died, and the latest price of a 50kg sack of millet. The outside world simply isn't a factor au village. I remember in late 2004, when the massive Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami hit, eventually killing more than 300,000 people– I asked my classes about it a few days later.

"How many of you have heard about the tsunami?" I asked.

Silence. 80 blank stares.

"How many of you have heard about the disaster in Asia?" I tried.

More blank stares– outside, the grass rustled as a flock of sheep grazed.

"How many of you own a radio?" I asked, starting to feel a bit desperate- if I remember correctly, my whole lesson for the day was based on what'd happened. Two or three hands warily rose. This was one of the largest disasters in human history, and only three students could be bothered to find out about it? But then, in a landlocked semi-desert like Chad, tsunamis aren't exactly a major threat– even if they had heard what happened, they probably couldn't begin to comprehend it.

But then, I suppose for a life in rural southwestern Chad, the outside world isn't all that important. If a person never leaves the village, why would they care what's happening in Iraq, Indonesia, Israel, or anywhere else? Life doesn't change here. Most people's perspective here is limited to Gounou-Gaya, and the surrounding villages– if 300,000 people die in a tsunami, or 5,000 in a hurricane, so what? If one person is killed in a thunderstorm the next village over though, it's news for weeks. Not to say we aren't guilty of the same thing as Americans– when was the last time you saw CNN or Fox News devote more than 30 seconds to a catastrophe in the developing world that didn't directly affect Americans? I guess the difference is that even if we in the industrialized world don't focus on what's happening beyond our borders, we at least know there's more out there. Liva, for example, has never been further from Gounou-Gaya than Kélo– his entire world is contained in an 80km radius around his house. For someone in my position, who's had the opportunity to see more in the past few years than I ever would've imagined, living 10,000 km from home, Liva's worldview is unimaginable. We were both born on the same planet, but the difference between my world and his is beyond measure.

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