10/04/2004

This feels bizarre...

I'm sitting in a mud hut in the village of Darda, Chad, on a straw mat with the only source of illumination being a kerosene lamp, and I'm typing on my iBook. When the First & Third Worlds collide, I suppose it manifests itself in ways like this.

The door of my cement-lined room is closed to keep out the bugs, and with the lamp going it is absolutely roasting- sweat pours down my face as I type, and I have to be careful how I angle my head, so as not to drip on the keyboard. We've been sent out to host families for 10 days as part of our training; I'm staying at the house of Mourangue Jean, a local villager. He lives with his wife and one month old son in a concession about 10 minutes from the center of the village of Darda. His parents live there as well, along with three younger brothers, Bertz, Michael, and Maxime.

The compound has five small buildings, four rectangular and one round, all made of mud-brick. The round house has a roof made of thatch, while the rest of the houses all are topped with sheets of tin. In the center, there is a small patch of sorghum growing, along with a communal mat for people to sit and talk, where the old man of the family sits, smokes, and makes seiko most of the day. As I walk in each evening he raises a frail hand and says ça va, (how are you) to which the standard response is pretty simple- ça va. I suppose some things are universal. There are seemingly dozens of children living in the compound– one-month-old Rodrique, a few kids who look to be about six, and one little boy who I'm guessing is maybe two years old. Every time he sees me, he screams in abject terror and starts to cry until I turn the other way. I hadn't thought about how scary a white person must look to a child who's never seen anyone but black Africans.

I'm still spending most of each day at the center doing language classes, teacher training and attending cross-cultural sessions, and usually head back for dinner with Mourangue about 5:30 each evening. I eat with Mourangue and his brothers- the women never speak to us unless we speak first, and try to be as discreet as possible. It's culturally forbidden, it seems, for men and women to eat together. I was shocked when the first night I arrived how Mourangue's wife went into my room and silently swept the floor, tossed the dirt into her shoe, and quickly scurried away. Later, when she served us dinner, I thanked her- she smiled shyly, and walked quickly away. Mourangue seemed surprised that I had, and asked why I'd say thank you- I told him that it was simply the normal thing Americans do in a situation like that, which seemed to puzzle him.

The food is very traditionally Chadian. Each night I've been staying with Mourangue we've had boule, crushed millet, corn, or sorghum which is placed inside a large gourd with water, stirred continuously and cooked over a fire, until it forms a ball; boule in French. To eat it, the family (which for the moment includes me) sits around and reaches in to take a piece of the boule with their right hand; it's horribly inappropriate to use your left, a tradition in the Arab world that endures today. After breaking off a piece of the boule, it is dipped into a sauce of some sort, usually made of fish, okra, goat, tomato, or some combination of the four.

Like I said before, the meal is rigidly divided by gender- I always eat with my host brothers and Mourangue, never with any of the women. After the boule one of the young girls will come and take the dirty dishes, disappearing without a word. A few minutes later, they bring the tea, for a ceremony that seems almost ritualistic. Mourangue will take the gold-colored plastic teapot, turn over the two glasses and pour the sweet red liquid slowly and deliberately, always pouring mine (the guest's) first. The tea is strong and fragrant, but the sheer amount of sugar per glass would be enough to put any Southern Belle's iced tea to shame. We drink slowly, as I try to communicate in my broken French, and Mourangue listens politely.

After the tea is gone, the women quickly rush in to clear the glasses and teapot, as the men lounge on the straw mats. Michael is eager to practice his English, and we begin many conversations with, "Meester Nah-tahn-yel, how are you?" Each night I've been staying with Mourangue, Michael has diligently brought his English notebook, and slowly and deliberately read to me, line by line, with me correcting him after each sentence. He wants so badly to speak English, it seems, but the opportunity just isn't there.

That seems to be the case with so many things here though- people want to succeed, to see their country develop, but the chance simply isn't available. The way Chadians look at the world is so radically different from the way that a Westerner does, for the most part, and it comes across in the most unusual ways. Last night, for example, I was talking with Michael, and somehow we began discussing money and economics in the States versus Chad (quite an achievement, I think, considering my level of French). I was saying that although I may have a lot of money by Chadian standards, in the United States I was certainly not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. I tell Michael and Bertz that although I'm not wealthy in the States, someone like Dr. Paul, our Medical Officer would be.

"Cinquante dollars pour mois?" ($50 per month), asks Bertz.

That such a small amount of money constitutes wealth in his mind is staggering to me, coming from a place where if I didn't earn $50 in less than three or four hours I'd feel taken advantage of. If $50/month is wealthy to him, how could I possibly explain to him about doctors who make $500,000 per year, or athletes who earn millions to play a game?

What a strange world we live in, a place with such vast disparities between rich and poor, such a huge divide economically, technologically, and physically, not to mention culturally. This is why we're here though, I guess- whether we like it or not, we're ambassadors of the First World, and I see it as part of our mission to bring back our experiences to share with people back in the America- perhaps then, things will begin to change..

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