Moundou

A few weeks ago a group of us (Zach, Kim, Allah, and myself) decided that we needed to make a trip to Moundou. It's a big deal to travel to Moundou because it's a long way from Béré and it's also a pretty big city, the second largest in Chad after N'djamena. It has a big market with tons of stuff that you can't find in Béré and is also the home of our sister Adventist hospital. Instead of taking the main road west to Kelo and then south to Moundou, we decided to bust straight through the bush and take the straight-line path instead. We left around 5:30 AM to try and beat the heat. Oh man…it was SO awesome! Such an adventure! The sights along the way made me feel like I had stepped into a page of National Geographic.



I haven't mentioned this yet, but the best way to get around in Chad (besides just walking) is to take a motorcycle. This is a pretty sweet deal because driving a moto is way more fun than driving a car. After arriving in Moundou three hours later we headed to the hospital to drop off a few items and take advantage of the faster internet. I was actually able to call my parents for the first time since arriving in Chad! After burning up a bunch of our internet data credit, we hopped back on the motos and drove to the market. The market has waaaayy more stuff than in Béré, so we bought some special Christmas things like chocolate, cheese, bread, and yogurt. I also bought a super cool Arabic robe. <
After a roadside lunch of egg sandwiches and banana smoothies, we began our trip home via the paved road through Kelo. We chose the different route because we wanted to make a stop at the post office in Kélo. This is where all of the hospital's mail arrives since there is no post office in Béré.



To my surprise I found a Christmas package addressed to me from Walla Walla! I decided to save it so that I could have something to open on Christmas morning. Thank you so much to the SM department for putting the package together, and to my friends who wrote me nice notes and contributed other sweet goodies. What a treat! There were many other packages to pick up as well, so we took as many as we could carry and returned to Béré. We arrived filthy dirty and tired, but who cares. The trip was SO FUN! Allah and I are looking for any possible excuse to jump on the motos and do it all over again. Surely somebody is gonna want chocolate again soon, right? ;)