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Update from the man himself:
Ben In Chad, Issue #1
11 December 2003
Salaam alekoum! Peace to you!
This is my first attempt at a so-called newsletter. In the future, it will be more organized and include more forethought, but for now this will have to suffice. I don’t have everyone’s email with me offhand, so feel free to forward to whomever you like. Happy reading…
Crazy Market
Today is t-minus one full day until I’m off to site. Right now it is 4:46pm local time. I am writing from the Peace Corps office in N’djamena, using one of the two computers available for volunteer use. The bustle in the office is slowly dying down. Earlier, the office was full of volunteers coming in and out, carrying telltale plastic bags from market full of assorted things. Today is our last day available for shopping and everyone is trying to get last minute things for site: toilet paper for those who aren’t quite ready to use their left hand, kerosene stoves and lamps, envelopes for sending letters home. I spent the better part of today walking around the market, peeking into merchant stalls, hoping to find the things that I need for site. I bought a hammer, some paint, a paintbrush, a small metal chest to store things in and a chocolate croissant at the French patisserie downtown. The bottoms of my feet are black from dirt, dust, sweat and filth. The black has burrowed its way into crevices of dry calloused skin. Maybe the pumice stone I bought will take it out, but I have my doubts. It will take some serious scrubbing.
Time Warp
It’s odd to realize how fast the last 10.5 weeks have past. At first, it seemed like some sort of strange time warp where each day felt like 3 and a week barely crawled by. In contrast, this last week has felt like that same time warp in reverse – days vaporize in hours. I’m afraid that if I blink too long, I will find myself on next Friday.
Son of a President
We spent 3 weeks here in the capitol model teaching at various private schools, getting some live classroom experience before headed off to our own schools at site. I taught at a small private high school of about 200 students called Etoiles Brilliants, Brilliant Stars. It was founded by a Canadian couple who have been in Tchad since the 70’s. Each week, I taught for four hours and observed classes for four hours. I had a class of 39 eighth-graders, including one of the President’s sons. He sat in the front row of class to my far right next to the door. I often found him staring off into space, or doing his math homework, which I presumed was the class immediately following English. On the last day of class, he asked me if I knew who 50cent was.
And We’re Off
Saturday morning bright and early, I head off with all my bags packed into a Peace Corps Land Cruiser. Destination: Dourbali, 100km and two hours southeast of N’djamena. One Dan Kucich, the next nearest volunteer to my site, will be in the car with me. He will be posted 60km southeast from me in a village called Massenya. Dan and I have a special connection: He was the first volunteer on our team of 20 that I met in Philadelphia during pre-staging. At 10:40am that Monday morning, he walked into hotel room belonging to those with last names beginning with K. I was semi-asleep on the bed, having arrived the evening before. Dan and I also have the same MiniDisc player. His birthday is Christmas day and I’m hoping to visit him at site to celebrate. Maybe I’ll go by bike.
Huh?
Some odd and interesting tidbits about Tchad:
· Despite the hellacious traffic – cars trying to share the road with motorcycles, mopeds, bikes, horses, donkeys and handcarts – everyone here uses their turn signal. Go figure.
· Nobody has change. Nobody. Even if people do have it, they are often unwilling to part with it. Sometimes, a 100-franc coin is more valuable, if not more useful, than a 1,000 franc bill.
· Sugar. Chadians take a lot of sugar with their drinks. Many times I’ve watched in disbelief, almost horror, as someone adds 5-6 cubes of sugar to a tiny little teacup. They watch with equal disbelief when I take my coffee black. On site visit, my counterpart introduced me on several occasions as, "This is Ben. He doesn’t take any sugar with his coffee."
Final Frontier
The first week at site will be very interesting to say the least. Right now, I’m not sure how I’m going to feed myself as I won’t have all the necessary things to cook right off the bat. Hopefully, my host family will help me with that. Unpacking and settling my stuff in will the priority #1. My little mud brick house will be home for the next two years so might as well make it homey. Not sure what thoughts will be running rampant through my head as I watch the Peace Corps vehicle drive away. One thing is for sure: it will be some kind of adventure. And I don’t mean wiping with the left hand…
Cheers to all and merry Christmas,
ben. | | |
| okay... i get online, and BOTH LEGOsharkchomp and ChopShtick (Jesse Chui) are online!
anyway, i talked to Ben and he gave me this link:
http://www.abbeyrowe.com
she's on ben's team and they update regularly as well.
Ben's doing well.
rock on.
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| And another...
Hello everyone,
This is for you from Ben! Please forward as you please to your groups, thanks:
we're in n'djamena again this week - this time for some class observation. next week we start model school where we'll get some live in class experience. should be fun and exciting. i'll be teaching the equiv. of i think 5th and 6th graders or there abouts. their system of numbering the grades is different here.
last week i went to visit my site - Dourbali. anyway, it's about 100km south east of n'djamena. it takes about 2 hours to get there because there isn't a paved road... just a simple dirt road. it was a good week, but by the end it was nice to come back and see the rest of the trainees. one week of isolation does stuff to you. these coming weeks will be getting busier cause of all the lesson prep i'll be doing.
last night we had ICE CREAM! that was def. one of the highlights of the week. there's a french restaurant in town that has a lot of western foods: pastries, cheeses, ice cream, stuff like that. it's expensive - we paid close to $40 USD for probably not more than three quarts of ice cream. but sooo worth it. we all gathered around the tubs of ice cream with spoons and dug in.
please say hello to everyone else at home for me.
ben. | | |
| I realize i have been remiss in my duties of keeping this thing updated but here goes.
Dear Peace Corps Friends and Family,
On behalf of the twenty Peace Corps Volunteers in Chad, hello! My name is Matt Costa and I¡¦m a trainee here in Chad. Your loved one gave me your email address so that I could send a quick note about our well being on her/his behalf.
Our Country Director, Nelson Cronyn, shared an article from the Dayton Daily News with us this past Saturday. The story addresses health and security issues in the Peace Corps over the last ten years. It¡¦s our understanding that the article was picked up by papers and news outlets nationwide and we¡¦re sure that many of you have read or heard about it. For people who haven¡¦t read it, it goes into detail about some pretty horrific assaults on PCVs in recent years around the world. Some of the stories are pretty shocking, but we want you to know that we¡¦re all safe and well. In fact, we probably face a lower risk of crime and assault than our peers in the States. Our Country Director, Nelson, is open with us about all risks we face and how we can minimize risk. Nelson has even offered to answer any questions any of you may have so just email them to your PCV and he or she will pass them on.
We ask that you read these articles with a grain of salt. American media have a tendency to sensationalize, believe it or not. ļ We re being well taken care of here. Nelson and the Peace Corps staff have set up a strong network of communication and safety for us, within our community and even with the U.S. State Department and Embassy. We are a group of 20, which is small by Peace Corps standards, and therefore easy to keep track of. No worries!!
We are all having the experience of a lifetime here in Chad and we hope that many of you can see it for yourselves someday. Until then, please know that we are safe and flourishing.
Salaam alekum, Amshou afe
Your PCVs
P.S. Send letters and packages (padded envelopes are best and food is good too). The biggest danger we face here is lack of letters from home.P.P.S. Good things to send are kool-aid packets, candy, sauce mixes and seasonings, jerky, dried fruit¡K anything along those lines! AND we do NOT have to pay to get small packages! So keep ¡¥em comin¡¦! | | |
| Another email! He's in Chad! (From 09/28)
i'm emailing from PC headquarters here in N'djamena. Things are going great. We have been welcomed with much warmth and hospitality. Everywhere we go, we have been well taken care of. Today, we met the US ambassador to Chad - he gave us a tour of the city and afterwards we lunched at his house on the embassy compound. He spent part of his childhood in davis, so we were able to chat a little bit.
luckily, it hasn't been too too hot here. there are a lot of bugs, but no big deal. bugs i can deal with. Sunday we head 1.5 hours south to Darda, where the rest of our training takes place. It's more remote than N'djamena, but it's along the banks of a river where we can fish and see hippos. No swimming though... too many parasites. Have already befriended some of our African counterparts. One of our drivers, Nouri, asked me to teach him how to play guitar. He will be out in Darda with us, taking us places we need to go and hopefully helping us to practice our french. My french is still very bad, but things are coming back - i think w/ practice, it will get easier.
today we also visited the "grand marche" - the street markets. it's pretty extensive, with lots of vendor stalls. the chadians also make some very nice furniture, chairs, beds and the like. the style looks almost art deco. very well crafted.
we're about to head off to dinner soon at a local N'djamena restaurant. tomorrow, there will be a church service for us to check out at the language institute where we are staying for now. a few of us will go to see what it's like. it's very exciting.
much love,
ben.
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