Morning

It's early morning and I can't sleep again. This time, though, it's because I'm excited. For the first time in several weeks I'll actually be doing something. My ankle wound that just won't heal has kept me from doing just the bare minimum. I go up to the hospital, quickly see the hospitalized patients, do all the scheduled surgeries and then retire home to elevate my swollen foot. My day revolves around how fast I can get home to make the swelling go down and do a dressing change and take antibiotics. I even got so scared for a few days that I had Sarah start an IV on me and give me IV antibiotics.

This morning, though, my ankle seems to have turned the corner and I'm up, happy to be doing something I want to do. I'm going flying with Gary to N'Djamena. I'd needed to go to N'Djamena for a while, but with my foot, the idea of a long, bumpy ride in the back of a Toyota mini-bus just wasn't that appealing. With Gary's return after a 6 month absence, getting to N'Djamena has turned into a two hour pleasant flight over the African plain.

It's still dark, but since I can't sleep anyway, I get up and fix "breakfast" which consists of frying up some day old rice and beans with little bit of curry. Not a typical American breakfast but sometimes you have to eat for strength and not for sport (as some of my friends used to tell me in the early days when I was first in Tchad).

With the roosters having started their crowing since about 3am, the dogs barking and the drums and dancing having just stopped, the morning is quiet and peaceful with just the lulling, rhythmic sound of crickets breaking the early dawn's silence. I step outside into the desert cold. I quickly go back in and put on a sweatshirt. I pull my small North Face backpack over the sweatshirt and slip on my Crocs.

The ankle is a little stiff, but it feels good to be out on the deep, sandy road towards Bere's laterite airstrip. It's a 2 km walk and I have the village mostly to myself.

An early morning fog rests over the tops of the thatched roof, brownish red clay huts combined with the pungent smoke of wood and dried grass fires. The only ones awake are a few women pounding millet in homemade wooden mortars with 6 feet long wooden pestles. The dooomp, dooomp of the pounding of grain into the base for the typical Chadian breakfast porridge echos across the stillness. A few children are also up trying to chase away the night's chill around hastly gathered grass and stick fires. Their dark faces hidden amidst the white smoke wafting from the incompletely dried weed fires break into toothy grins as they see the "Nasara" walking steadily and gingerly away from the hospital. It's not every day that something this new and exciting happens!

They are mostly dressed in ragged shorts, holey pants and torn t-shirts. It's no wonder they're cold as the dry season has descended upon us leaving us with the extremes of up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit difference between day and night temperatures. The luscious greenness of the rainy season has rapidly evaporated into the brown, dead grass powdery dusty dryness of the majority of the year here in the heart of Africa.

I approach some of them, who eye me warily with looks of mixed curiosity and fear. I extend my hand, palm up. Several of the bigger, braver ones approach to shake hands. I shake my head and show them how to "give me five."

"Tak kebeng (slap my hand)" I encourage them in Nangjere. When they finally get up the courage to try, everyone wants to get in on the action and they all start giggling and laughing. What a privilege to really smack hard the hand of a grown-up, much less a foreigner!

I finally get to the airstrip where the early morning sunrise colors the mostly white plane with a tinge of pink. Gary is testing the oil and fuel and filling up the wing tanks with his bright red cans of Cameroonian gasoline. A few kids have gathered around as usual, but not the usual crowd since it's still so early. After Gary eats a "late" breakfast, we slide into the tiny Cessna loaded up with empty fuel and propane containers and after a short taxi we are soaring up and over where the 10,000 inhabitants of a Chadian county seat disappear quickly into the groves of mango trees with just occasional glimpses of thatched or rarely, tin roofed, houses give us a clue that there's actually a village hidden in this vast plane. We bank over the hospital to get a good aerial view and it also suddenly seems so small and insignificant when seen from on high.



We're on our way to N'Djamena...