Road Works

Since I returned to Chad in May of this year there have been on-going road works taking place in the streets around our compound. We live about 500 metres from a main road, in an area that is a maze of intersecting narrow streets. As is typical of large parts of Africa these are dirt roads – during the dry season they are rutted and full of pot holes and during the rainy season they become a muddy quagmire. It’s the reason why you really do need a 4 x 4 vehicle for city living – they are a necessity, rather than a status symbol.

The road works began earlier this year and have been gradually spreading throughout the neighbourhood. The work involves digging out the existing road to a depth of several metres and then packing the hole with layer after layer of sand. At the same time the storm drains that run along the sides of each road are being replaced. Huge concrete slabs are lowered into deep trenches and then they are sealed with concrete blocks. Then when that is completed layers of gravel are compacted over the sand to make a solid surface to the road and a kerb is put along the edges to stop people driving over the newly-installed storm drains.*

At this point I was expecting the ‘new’ road to be finished with tarmac but so far that has not happened. Instead the road works have continued on more and more streets and the new roads are already starting to deteriorate as they are unable to handle the heavy construction vehicles that drive along them all day long moving equipment and materials around.

A few weeks ago they also started working on the main road and so the challenge of getting out and about each day increased significantly as what was the main route in and out was no longer an option. Two signs have become a familiar sight – ‘Route Barrée’ and ‘Deviation’. I’d like to think that someone somewhere has a master plan of which roads they are working on at any one time, which will mean that there is always a way through but there is an increasing sense that one day all available routes may be blocked!

The thing we don’t really understand is why so much time, effort and money is being poured into repairing these roads. There is quite a bit of infrastructure development going on in the city at the moment but I would have thought there were higher priorities than the side roads in our neighbourhood. The only reason we can come up with is that there is also a new hotel being built close by. It is huge and the sign outside says it is going to be the N’Djamena Hilton Hotel. Maybe people who can afford to stay in such a fancy hotel cannot be expected to drive over rough unmade roads to get there…

* These new storm drains are potentially life savers. The old drains had fallen into such a state of disrepair that they were uncovered and so had become the receptacle for all the neighbourhood garbage, as well as the public toilet. This meant that when it rained the drains quickly became blocked and the deep water became a death trap in two ways. It quickly became stagnant and attracted mosquitos, increasing the incidence of malaria – a major cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. And each rainy season you hear that small children have fallen into the water and drowned.