Can Murphy's Law apply to an entire country? If so, the Republic of Chad could make a good case for it...

Pretty much anything that can go wrong here has, whether you're discussing climate, access to water and resources, political stability, wars, famine, even the occasional locust plague.

Even by African standards, Chad is a poor country- decades as France's most overlooked and neglected colony sowed the seeds which has given Chad the dubious distinction in the past as anywhere from the 3rd-10th poorest nation on earth.

Despite all of it though, the Chadian people have endured, and although they may not be wealthy or thriving by Western standards, many people seem to manage to get what they need.

Just under 10 million people live in the country, with approximately one million of them living in the capital, N'Djamena. There are a few other major cities in Chad, Moundou and Sarh, but N'Djamena is the center for business, diplomacy and more. The population is clustered mostly in the southern third of the country, as the northern desert as populated almost entirely with a few Arab nomads.

There are three major religious groups in Chad, with just over 50 percent of the population identifying as Muslim, according to the US State Department. Approximately 35 percent of the population are Catholic, which perhaps isn't surprising considering the French past. According the same report, seven percent of Chadians are Animist, with the remainder claiming other indigenous beliefs.

French and Arabic are the official languages of the country, but in addition to these two, there are more than 120 other languages and dialects. Life expectancy and infant mortality statistics are, like much of Africa, fairly dismal among Chadians. 48 years is the average life expectancy, with 95 of every 1,000 babies dying in their first few years.

The government of Chad is relatively stable, with a multiparty democratic system in place since elections in 1996. Although Chad is very limited in most natural resources, oil was discovered in the country in the early 1990's, and a pipeline has been constructed with the potential to bring up to 1 billion barrels of oil to the Atlantic via Cameroon. Aside from oil, the primary industries are more traditional things such as meat-packing, beer brewing, construction material and more. Although oil has stimulated the economy, the nation is struggling with a huge foreign debt bill, hardly uncommon in Africa.

Physically, Chad is a gigantic place, approximately three times the size of California, twice the size of Texas. As I said above, the north is almost entirely desert, averaging less than eight inches of rain per year. The center of the country is a savanna-type area, which averages more rainfall, while the south is much rainier, with almost 50 inches per year.

Chad is mostly flat, although the Tibesti mountain range in the far north has at least one peak of more than 10,000 feet, Emi Koussi. The terrain flattens out as it approaches Lake Chad, the second largest lake in West Africa. The lake has shrunk significantly in the last 40 years due to the combination of increased water use and little rain. There are two rivers which flow northward into Chad, the Chari and the Logone.

The Saharan portion of the country wasn't always completely barren, however. According to fossil and cave painting evidence, the area was filled with wildlife such as elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, and many more. Today, only camels survive.

Politically, the country gets along reasonably well with its neighbors, although relations have continued to be tense with Libya. There are still very strong ties to France, and to other European nations as well, with embassies of other governments and representatives. In 1988 Chad officially recognized the state of Palestine and received an ambassador, while it has refused to recognize the existence of the state of Israel.

Overall, Chad is a place which could perhaps generally be called developing, although surviving is probably a more accurate description. Although things seem fairly grim for now, with the revenues from oil just beginning to flow into the country in mid 2004, there is some hope for change on the horizon.

For more information, and more detail on Chad, please refer to the links section. When writing this, most of the facts I used came from the State Department's Chad Background Notes, published through the Bureau of African Affairs.

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