Today is Independence Day in Chad and the main focus of the celebrations is at the Place de la Nation in the centre of N'Djamena, just in front of the Presidential Palace.
Bryan has been in Chad for the last 5 weeks as our relief pilot (you can read about his time here at his blog: http://bigglesgsy.blogspot.co.uk/) and was leaving today. Knowing that the main routes to the airport would be in chaos I recruited the services of Dieudonne, one of our hangar workers, to help drive Bryan to the airport and I was glad I did.
All was fine until we got to the junction where you can go straight on past the Presidential Palace - there was a single female police woman guarding the route and indicating that we should turn right. We joked that she didn't seem much of a deterrent if you were determined to go straight on but then we remembered that she probably had sufficient back up in the soldiers who guard the palace. Even on a 'normal' day there are at least 30 armed soldiers stationed at regular intervals along the kilometre stretch of road in front of the palace.
Having turned right we drove a bit further on and then spotted the police water cannons and military tanks parked up ahead waiting for the start of the parade. Dieudonne took a swift right-hand turn down a side-street, which was a muddy, single-track road with houses close on either side. We took a series of turns, following close behind a yellow Peugeot taxi who I thought was going to get stuck in the mud at any moment, until we emerged back on the main road close to the airport.
As we said 'Bon Voyage' to Bryan four helicopter gunships and a couple of fighter jets took off from the airport and flew overhead. Dieudonne then took a different route back, which at least involved staying on the more main roads although everyone else in N'Djamena seemed to have had the same idea. We made slow progress, with cars, buses and motorcycles jostling to get just a few feet ahead, and I saw parts of the city I hadn't seen before.
Apparently the celebrations will go on all day and finish with fireworks tonight.
Happy Independence Day!
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