I finally got around to seeing the second largest city in Chad this week – Moundou! Two other SALTers, Maddie and Ruth, are living and working there, and this week I went with Angela and her friend Liz to pay these guys a little visit.
We traveled by bus (a big one, like a greyhound), which had a TV that played some of the strangest videos, shows, and music videos that I have ever seen. For example, we watched a photo/video slideshow from someone’s wedding, we saw shows that seemed to consist of no plot other than people yelling at each other (which most of the bus found hilarious for whatever reason), and even a music video that included all of the following elements: a woman in a bathtub in a field and her friends dancing around in towels, people dancing on their motos, hip-hop dancing, and couples in formal attire doing a tango or some similar dance, all set to the music of a song in Arabic that I could not understand. I wish I could have known the words to the song to see if the choreography actually made any sense.
Anyway, after about 7 hours on the bus we arrived in Moundou, where our trusty driver Timoté brought us to the guest house where we would spend the night. This place was beautiful, complete with gardens and a walking trail, all nice and green from their recent rains. That evening we went to dinner at Coton Tchad, a restaurant associated with one of Moundou’s greatest economic contributors. There I ordered a horse burger. As in a burger made of horse meat. Like real horse. !!!. And I actually quite liked it. It was ground meat, so basically just a regular burger, but it tasted less greasy to me. Not bad for a girl who wouldn’t eat spaghetti as a kid, huh?
The next day we visited some of the MCC partners in Moundou. We started at BAOBAB, an organization that works with development in 5 local villages, focusing on things like agricultural sustainability training and practical applications. We got to see the BAOBAB office which included three great mango trees, examples of compost piles, and even a cotton tree that I got to take a bit of cotton from! From there we explored the market and I was able to buy a ton of mangoes that cost half of what they would in N’Djamena. We went to a small salon where Liz got her nails done for a whopping $2 (that was for hands and feet!).
We ate a delicious lunch at the home of Maddie’s host family, then visited Ruth’s host family as well. Both homes had precious little puppy dogs that I of course loved, and Ruth’s family even had two big tortoises! From there we visited the orphanage/boarding school where Maddie teaches, which was pretty quiet since the students just finished their exams and had mostly returned to their homes for the summer holiday. We also saw CENTRAM, the English school where Ruth teaches, and got to talk with some of her students (all adults). I loved getting to see how and where the other SALTers spend their time. We ate dinner at the “big” hotel in Moundou, which was yummy. I spent the night with Maddie and Ruth at Maddie’s workplace where we stayed at the guesthouse. We had a movie night with the 20 students who were left on campus, though I only stayed awake through the opening credits.
I woke up bright and early the next morning (4:30am, people) so we could catch the first bus back to N’Djamena. The rains I had been praying for the whole trip decided to come at this time as well, and because life pretty much stops for rain here, we were virtually the only ones at the bus station at the scheduled departure time. So that 5:30 bus we woke up so early to catch didn’t leave until 7. Ugh. But, we made it back to N’Djamena by lunch time around 1:30 just the same, where I was greeted by my host family. They were so excited about all the mangoes I brought back, and of course were eager to tell me how fat I’d grown (amazing, considering I was only gone for like two days).
In summary, I really liked the slower pace and less crowded style of Moundou, and of course the 20 degree temperature drop was also appreciated. But guess what – I brought the rain back to N’Djamena with me! Tonight we got our first rain since last October or November and it absolutely poured! The night was so nice and cool (you know, relatively), and all of my host siblings and I crowded on to our little porch just to watch and hear and enjoy the rain (okay, and maybe dance and shout for joy a little too).