Vacation, Part 1

What does one bring on a one-week tour of Chad? Well, if you’re a Chadian native you bring a knife and a small mat, in addition to whatever clothes you happen to be wearing when you leave. I decided to travel in style and brought a pair of pants, two shirts, toiletries, laptop, phone, camera, water bottle, passport, handkerchief, and the cherry on top…one pair of underwear. Stuff it all in a backpack and we’re good. Adventure is out there!

The first leg of the journey went as planned. We walked in front of the hospital, hired 3 motos to take us to Kélo, agreed on a price, and hopped on. 45 minutes to the bus stop in Kélo, no problem. The bus ride to N’djamena went smoothly as well, except for a few more stops than normal. So in total it took us about 11 hours to get from Béré to NDJ (it normally takes like 7). We didn’t really know what we were gonna do when we got there. Hopefully there would be a night bus that would at least take us in the right direction. There wasn’t. It was about 1am, so we slept on the ground at the bus stop. One lady took pity on me and gave her fabric skirt to use as protection from the mosquitos (she was wearing another one, don’t worry).

We woke up around 5am and started asking everyone where to find a bus towards Am Timan. After a few miles of walking and a few passport checks, we found this little hidden area of NDJ where lots of bus services were gathered. One guy was very excited to take us to Am Timan. Sweet! After waiting for a bit, we asked when he was leaving. “Maybe 11-12 or something.” That wasn’t gonna work, so we ran over to this other area where a big fancy bus was getting ready to leave for Abéché. That’s at least the right direction, we decided. We’ll just get off in Mongo and find another bus. As we were stepping on the bus, we got pulled aside and taken to this dark little room because they wanted to check our nationality, passports, visas, etc. I was a little worried because the bus was just about to leave. After waiting impatiently for a few minutes we glanced over and saw that all the guy was doing was writing down our names. But it was taking FOREVER. So Zach grabbed the pen, wrote our names, and we left. The bus was very nice, by Chadian standards. It was big and had air conditioning. WAY too much air conditioning. I was shivering!

As we left the outer limits of NDJ I started to get a perspective on what life is like for people in central/eastern Chad. Up until this point I had the mindset that Béré was pretty remote and isolated. But it became very apparent to me that Béré has a wealth of beauty and natural resources.

We arrived in Mongo about 5 hours later, at noon. The next task was to find a bus to Am Timan. After asking around we learned that the only thing we could do was ride in the bed of an old clunky pickup. We waited for 4 hours. Things don’t go anywhere in Chad until they’re full. Like FULL. The bed of the pickup was filled up past the roof level with stuff, and then like 20 more people got on top. We had paid a little extra for one seat inside the cab, so we agreed that I would take that one since I was the smallest. I sat on the center console, sandwiched between the driver and another person who was supposedly “very important”. The shifter was basically in my butt and I had to put my feet on the dash and lift myself up whenever the driver wanted to shift. Super uncomfortable! The “very important” person only spoke Arabic, but the driver spoke French. So between the three of us we were able to make small talk. We passed several groups of camels, which I had never seen in real life before. Super cool!

It was about 6am when we finally arrived - 14 hours since we had begun the 250 km (150 mi) drive from Mongo. The next task was to figure out how to get from Am Timan to Zakouma. We asked around, but it seemed like everyone was working against us. The moto taxis were asking absurd prices to do the 50 mile trip, and the cars even more. We got super frustrated and created quite a stir. Eventually we just started walking toward a different part of town. We found some new moto taxis that didn’t seem to know about our little uproar and bargained our way down to something reasonable. Finally! We left around 7:30am and go to Tingo camp (the little resort where we had a reservation) at like 9:30am. We saw lots of camels and giraffes during the moto ride. The drivers got upset because they said that it was farther than they thought. We gave them a little extra.

So, it took us 36 hours to get from Béré to Zakouma. I think we spent about 16 of those hours waiting around. The police stopped us at least 15 times. But the sights in the park made it all worth it…