10/10/2004

It's a lazy Sunday here in Chad, the one day per week we have time with nothing scheduled, and wow, it's really nice to relax.

It's only semi-relaxing though– it's hot, there are bugs everywhere, and although it's humid, there's little sign of any rain as a respite.

I'm still staying with Mourangue and family, and will be until Thursday, which has been a great experience, if challenging at times. The room I've been staying in will become Michael's after I leave, so lately there have been new improvements made each day I come back from the training center. Yesterday there was a new screen door made of dried reeds, and today I discovered an entire new section of freshly woven Seiko, a mat made out of dried grass that can also be used as a wall.

The house itself is tiny by American standards, made of mud-brick (called banco here) with a single window chopped into the wall. The inside is coated with cement, and a single large sheet of tin serves as the roof, which is held up by wooden beams that are almost completely eaten through in places by termites.

It's obvious that life in Chad is nothing like anything most Americans could ever imagine. So many problems exist in Chad and the rest of the developing world that we simply don't ever think about in our comfortable lives back home– so many children die before the age of two, cholera and malaria are endemic, and basic sanitation is almost non-existent. A house like the one I'm staying in, were it to have been built in the States would be condemned and demolished; here, it's luxurious.

I was holding Mourangue's one-month-old son Rodrique the other day, and I couldn't help but think, cliché though it might seem, just how different his life would be if he were American, if he were born in Detroit or Daytona Beach rather than Darda. Barring a miracle, Rodrique will grow up (assuming he survives childhood, which isn't at all guaranteed), attend grade school and possibly learn a few sentences of English, and marry his pre-arranged bride at around 17. After that, he may finish high school and take the BAC, the university entrance exam, which only a small percentage pass– if he passes, he has a possibility of a better future, but if not, his life will presumably be spent in the rice and sorghum fields.

I don't mean to imply that everyone in America takes advantage of all the opportunities they are given simply by being born in an industrialized nation, or that it's impossible for a Chadian to achieve great things, but the barriers people face here are monumental, beyond anything we can ever truly appreciate. There are success stories though- one of our TEFL trainers, Massissou, was born in a village in southern Chad, excelled in school, attended university, studied in France and eventually the US on a Fulbright scholarship– today he is one of the senior officials in the Ministry of Education.

I'm 24, and Mourangue is 25– I've had the chance to attend school without interruptions by multiple civil wars, have had regular access to health and dental care, reliable transportation, and more– he's had none of these things. After my 27 months of service is up, I'll return to the First World, an option that will almost certainly never be available to him. By American standards, my life has been average, perhaps even lower-middle class; here, I'm incredibly wealthy, making more in a month than the average Chadian will make in a year, and I don't even have a family to support.

Hobbes was famously quoted as saying life is "nasty, brutish, and short;" although he probably wasn't envisioning Chad when he came up with that, in many ways it's a pretty accurate description of life here. It's challenging and I certainly wouldn't want to live my entire life here, but even after just a few weeks in Chad I feel like I understand more about the way the 'other half' lives than most Americans ever will. I can take photos and write about it, but until you come here yourself, smell the rotting fish at the market, see the kids with bellies puffed out from malnutrition, and taste the food the women cook in the dark over rusty barrels, I'm not sure if it's possible to truly understand.

But maybe this simple, albeit rough, life isn't so bad– the kids here laugh and play just like any other kids, the adults clean, cook, work and chat, just like back home. Sure, there are massive economic and cultural differences, but that doesn't make one society better than the other on a moral level. I was talking with Mouranague last night, and somehow the conversation turned to comparing notes on our respective nations.

"Chad is a bad country," he told me. "We're very poor."

Almost without thinking about it, I replied in my broken French. "Perhaps it's poor economically, but people here are rich in other ways."

When I ride along the bumpy dirt track that constitutes the highway, or pass by the open sewers, I see this confirmed for me. I also see it each day when I walk to and from Mourangue's house, how both the little kids and adults race out to greet me with huge smiles. Yes, we may be rich in the States, but in many aspects compared to Chad, we have a long ways to go.

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