Every new year I set my expectations high and think that
this will be the year I master blogging! It seems such a simple concept, just
share what we are doing in easy little snippets so people can share our
journey. Only most of my life is the daily mundane everyone does everywhere in
the world which doesn’t make for very interesting reading!! So my aim now is to
try and give some more regular updates of our highlights, low lights and the
completely unexpected things that cross our paths here in Chad. Let’s see how long
it lasts!
So, we have now just bid a very sad farewell to January - it
is our cool month and it is lovely (bar the sand storms and incredible amount
of dust)! The nights can drop to the teens and the days at times struggle to
reach 30C. It makes daily life so much easier and it is so comforting to have
to snuggle under a light duvet at night and wear a jumper in the mornings. But,
as February arrived the dial was spun. We hit our low of 20C and our high of 40C this week and we probably won’t
drop back to below 20C until early December!
As you may be aware from our last newsletter, at the
beginning of January we moved house. It is great that our team is finally
expanding but not so great that we only have limited housing available on the
MAF compound. So, for now we decided to move off the compound and found an
apartment block with modern apartments that were ready to move straight into.
House hunting here is hard work as the price is either astronomical, or you
need to do so much work to make the house liveable. So we decided to opt for
this apartment which needed very little work, is furnished, and is comparable
to the standard of housing at MAF. We are still working on making it homely and
unpacking but so far we are all coping well with the move. The girls obviously
miss the freedom of the MAF compound and being able to run outside and play
with friends any time of the day, but they are doing well with spending more
together and we pop over to the compound very regularly.
 |
Becca in her new
school t-shirt |
Another highlight in January was that Becca started school.
We had tried to get her into the French international school for this academic
year, but it is oversubscribed and English speaking missionaries don’t seem to
come very high up on the criteria! So we had thought Becca would stay at home
with me. At the end of last year we then
heard of a Tchadian Canadian school that was just in its second academic year.
So we took a look at the beginning of January and decided to give it a go. The
school is Chadian run and is aiming to teach all children English as well as
French from age 3 and so we thought this could be a good mix for Becca. She
goes 4 morning a week has loved going, adapting to it very well.
So 3 weeks ago when Becca started school I was suddenly faced with
4 free mornings a week child free. What was I going to do with all this time?
Well fear not, I have not been putting my feet up…at the exact same time the
city descended into an outpouring of frustration and anger at the rising prices
of commodities and yet cuts in salaries. So for the last 3 weeks we have been negotiating
school closures and assessing each new day to see whether the roads are safe to
venture onto. Unfortunately, as the protests hit the streets they were met by a
very strong resistance and so riot police en mass were a regular site. Now
strikes are in place with many schools, hospitals, offices etc shut. Both girls
are finally back to school today after Becca being home all week and Rachel
only having Wednesday at school. Please
pray with us if you can for the people of this country and for safety as we
move around.
Finally the unexpected…well we do live in Chad so I guess
this isn’t completely unexpected but its not a daily norm. We rode camels!!! We
have had a visiting engineer from Madagascar who has been supporting our team
over the last 18 months while we haven’t had a permanent engineer in post. He has
come for month long stretches at a time to help us with such an important part
of our work – keeping the planes flying! But this was potentially his last
visit for a while as we have a permanent engineer family arriving next month
(hooray!). Michel had requested to ride a camel, so as a thank you we had a
team outing…it was so much fun if not just a little uncomfortable! Enjoy the
photos…
