Sleep

I have just woken up after a lovely long night's sleep in my 'own' bed. I was undoubtedly tired after an overnight flight the night before but there are other reasons I sleep better in the UK than I do when I'm in Africa.

1. It's cool. In N'Djamena at the moment the night time temperature doesn't get below about 25C and at the hotter times of year it probably doesn't get much below 30C.

2. It's quiet. To try and keep cool in Chad I sleep with a fan on. It's always a bit of a dilemma - am I kept awake by the heat or by the noise of the fan? Even with the fan on you can still hear all the other sounds of the African night - the frogs, crickets and dogs keep up a constant chorus throughout the night and then there is the early morning cacophony of the call to prayer, the cockerels and the goats.

3. It's dark. For security reasons our compound in N'Djamena has outside lights and although that makes us all feel a bit safer it does mean it is never really dark. The availability of thick material to make curtains is also pretty limited so it's hard to block out the light.

4. It's comfortable. When you do short-term assignments you tend to get the 'spare' bed and inevitably they have seen better days...

I am going to make the most of the next 17 nights in the UK!

Small things make a big difference

I arrived back in the UK today after nearly four months in Chad. There are always adjustments to be made when transitioning from one country to another but within a couple of hours of landing at Newcastle Airport I realised I may have become more Chadian than I imagined.

• I had to remind myself it probably wasn't acceptable to shake the immigration official by the hand and say 'Bonjour, ca va?'
• I picked up a friend's car and drove home. I remembered to drive on the left but had to focus in order to not drive straight onto a roundabout, expecting that the vehicles on the roundabout would give way to me
• I stopped at a shop to pick up some milk and a newspaper and as I got out of the car I instinctively looked around for the group of young girls wanting me to buy their bottles of peanuts
• My shopping came to £2.09 and as I handed over a £10 note I expected that the person serving me would a) give me an exasperated look, b) offer me some small sweets to make my bill up to a round figure, c) ask if I had the 9p and when I said 'no' he would d) hand me £8 change and make a big show of circling the 9p on the receipt to make sure I knew how generous he had been in reducing my bill because he didn't have any change
• When the man serving me gave me a handful of coins and apologised for not having any notes I found myself thanking him profusely and feeling a great sense of achievement that I'd managed to get small change
• I got home and decided to make a cup of tea. I looked around the kitchen for the water filter so I could fill the kettle
• When I washed up my cup I was surprised that there was hot water coming out of the tap

Living in another country is a myriad of small experiences, which added together make somewhere seem like a different world.

Humidity

The seasons in Chad go something like this:

• Windy / Dusty (January – March)
• Hot (April – June)
• Rainy (July – September)
• Humid (October)
• Cool * (November – December)

The months are only a rough indication and from year-to-year the actual start and end times of each season can vary by several weeks.

At the moment we are coming towards the end of the rainy season (it hasn’t rained now for over a week in N’Djamena, although one of our pilots had to fly around a big storm in the east of the country earlier this week) and the humidity levels are rising.

I think this is probably my least favourite season. The hot season is pretty intense with temperatures rising into the mid to high 40s C but it is a dry heat and air-conditioning, fans and cold showers make it possible to cool down a bit.

I find the high humidity levels (above 80% on some days according to the BBC weather website) drain my energy levels and make my head feel all fuzzy. Somehow the available ‘cooling devices’ don’t seem to have the same affect they have during the hot season.

There are other ways you can tell it’s humid:

• The laundry takes all day to dry, rather than the usual couple of hours
• Even though your clothes are washed, dried and ironed they still feel just that little bit damp when you take them out of the wardrobe
• Towels always feel slightly damp, never quite drying out between the morning and evening shower
• All the wooden doors are warped, which means that opening or closing a cupboard door involves a lot of effort and slamming
• The salt and pepper are damp so your meals are either under or over seasoned. Either you think you’ve seasoned the food but actually nothing came out when you shook the container or you shake extra hard and it all comes out in a mad rush making the food inedible

I’m glad that it’s the shortest season – for me it can’t end soon enough.

* This is a relative term – it’s ‘cool’ compared to most of the rest of the year but it’s actually quite ‘hot’ by UK standards.

Bemused by bureaucracy

I find that one of the biggest challenges of living in another country comes when I need to understand how any of its bureaucratic systems work. What are the regulations for immigration, visas, tax, social security, banking, driving, vehicle ownership, etc.?

I have always been fortunate to work alongside local people who patiently guide me through the various requirements and do a lot of the 'leg-work' to make sure both the organisation and the individuals are in compliance. Sometimes though you find that even they don't understand what is going on, which can be both reassuring and a bit alarming at the same time.

Last year I blogged about the process we had to go through to get all the vehicles checked and issued with a sticker which showed that all the paperwork was in order. I was aware that this sticker was dated 2012 so expected that at some point it would expire and we would need to go through the whole process again for 2013. I asked our Chadian staff on several occasions whether this was necessary and they kept telling me that the 2012 sticker was still valid.

We then heard, via the international grapevine that exists, that the police were embarking on a rigorous process of stopping vehicles and checking paperwork. Initially this was not a concern as we knew that our paperwork was in order but it then transpired that the annual checks needed to be re-done.

And so began another week where two staff spent the most part of every day trying to get the seven signatures that are required for each vehicle, which show that everything is in order. The first time they went they returned to the office very quickly as the police compound where this work is done was so full of vehicles that had been impounded for not having the right paperwork that it was impossible to get anywhere near the place. Then one day they came back after a few hours saying that they had waited for a while only to eventually be told that all the people who processed the paperwork were in a meeting for the day.

From what I hear the process sounds as chaotic and confused as it was last year but by Friday lunchtime we had received a 2013 'Fiche de Sortie' for each vehicle. For now that is one less piece of Chadian bureaucracy I need to try and understand, unless the requirements change again. Something I wouldn't like to rule out.

Life is Tough

This week there was fairly widespread media coverage of a report by the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) about a sharp increase in the number of malaria cases being treated by them in eastern Chad.

There is always a fairly high incidence of malaria at this time of year as the rainy season comes to an end and the mosquito population is at its height. This year though it does seem to have been particularly bad, with one of our Chadian staff describing the situation to me as an 'epidemic'. I was slightly cynical about that assessment at the time of the conversation because malaria (or 'palu' as it is known here) seems to be the default diagnosis whenever anyone is sick.

When I hear of someone who is sick I struggle to know how best to help them, as the 'system' they rely on for their health and well-being is so broken. Access to good and affordable healthcare is very limited and most people do not have the knowledge or understanding needed to question the diagnosis they are given. My own medical knowledge is not extensive but when I see that a 7 year-old boy has been prescribed eight different medicines at a cost to his family of £35 GBP (or $55 USD), which is about a third of his father's monthly salary, then I can't help thinking that something is very wrong.

And then you hear a story that just makes you realise how tough life really can be for some people. Like this week when one of our staff told us about her 'cousin' (exact relationship unclear as this is a bit of a catch-all title for a member of the extended family). He was a motor-bike taxi driver in the city and last week he disappeared. No-one knew where he was and he could not be contacted on his mobile phone. On Thursday of this week his family were told that his body had been found in Cameroon. He leaves behind a young wife and a small baby.

Sometimes there are just no words...