12/20/2004

Gounou-Gaya has really been buzzing these past couple of days, due to a very special visitor. Yes, I did arrive a week ago today, but I'm not the cause of the celebration, at least for the moment. The leader of Chad for the past 15 years, President Colonel Idriss Deby, is in town to kick off the official start of his re-election campaign, with elections scheduled for January 2006.

Deby's party, the MPS (Movement for Popular Salvation, I believe) has an absolute majority in every aspect of the Chadian government, and seems unlikely to lose it anytime soon. Of course there's no real way to tell; the threat of a coup d'etat is ever-present, which is easy to see when you see the way that the president travels. His motorcade just passed the road alongside my house, and counted no fewer than 45 vehicles passing, including 11 brand-new black and white Hummer H2's, one of which was presumably carrying 'Monsieur le President.' There were various other Land Cruisers and SUV's, all with blacked-out windows, and what seems to be the official military transport in Sub-Saharan Africa, Toyota pickups with a very large machine-gun mounted in the back, carrying loads of very scary looking men in camouflage fatigues.

When he's not traveling, the President is kept a virtual prisoner inside his palace in N'Djamena, again due to the constant coup threat. The palace looks fierce, surrounded by high walls topped with razor-wire, and manned by military police at each entrance who, as the cliché goes, will shoot first and ask questions later. During training we were instructed to pass the palace as little as possible, and under no circumstances stop in front. There have been several Chadians killed in recent years for doing just that, and the US Ambassador's wife was supposedly fired on once, although she wasn't hurt.

Gounou-Gaya seems to be a Deby/MPS stronghold, although it's at the complete opposite end of the country from his power base, in the northeast near the city of Abéché. Deby's tribe, the Zaghawa, are closely related to the Fur people of Western Sudan, the namesake of the Darfur region, which everyone knows about already. So, why the loyalty? To put it simply, it comes down to one word, money, better known as l'argent around here. The President of the National Assembly, Nassour Guelendougousia, who in what is sure to be a giant shock is a leading member of MPS, is from Gounou-Gaya, and money gets distributed accordingly. Within the past six months the government has built a brand-new power plant, water tower, cell-phone antenna, along with the Ugandan company Celtel, and a high school, which I'll be teaching in. When I asked my host father, coincidentally named Marc (same as my real father, but with a different spelling) if he'll vote for Deby in the next election he said, "Of course- look at all the new things he's brought us." I've heard that idea before, and I believe the official term for that would be 'checkbook democracy.'

Not that it's likely to make a bit a of difference one way or the other how Marc or anyone else votes for that matter. The Chadian constitution supposedly limits the President to two five-year terms- Deby's working on year 15 now, and seems to be aiming to stick around until at least 2011. What's 20 years between friends anyway? Supposedly another candidate actually received more votes in the 2001 election here (sound familiar to anyone in the States?) but lost. By African standards though, Deby hasn't really been in charge that long... Paul Biya of Cameroon is going on his 20th anniversary, and Omar Bongo of neighboring Gabon has been in charge for at least that long. Down in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe is presiding over his disintegrating country for what will soon be 25 years. Unfortunately, these guys are bush-leaguers compared to the grand champion, Chad's not-so-friendly neighbor to the north, Libya, where Colonel Muammar Qaddafi is working on 40+ years of uninterrupted rule. Even Yasser Arafat couldn't quite beat that at the helm of the PLO and PA, and Fidel Castro might be the only other leader who's been able to stay in charge that long.

Quite frankly I'm not sure why someone would want to be the President of Chad in the first place. I think it'd be more than a little depressing, to be blunt, to know that even by African standards your country is in bad shape. But then I guess as the President you'd be in such a tightly-controlled, luxurious bubble that you might not even notice. The Hummers (not Clinton-style, by the way), palace, private jet, and more must make for a pretty rarefied existence, even in one of the poorest places on Earth. The ex-pat community supposedly lives in 'Golden Ghettos,' as I've written about before, but I suspect the prime occupant of that particular neighborhood might actually be 'Monsieur le President du Republique.'

Back to Peace Corps Writings