It would be fair to say that before coming to Chad, in the months leading up to this mission, I was expecting something alien. Conditions and life-ways so extreme and dimensionally different from
I want a Porsche. There’s no way around it. Ever since I was a kid cars have fascinated me, the power, aesthetics, speed, engineering. My jaw kind of drops when I see one, and has for many years
Patient names and minor details have been changed for confidentaility. “Youssef” has consented to have his story told in this forum. I told him that it was as if his picture and story wer
The night of Thursday 5 June 2008, seven Sudanese refugee women and girls were tied-up, beaten with whips and sticks, and publicly humiliated by a group of refugee men.
The compound is where expats (staff from countries other than Chad) eat, sleep, and generally hang out after work. It’s a space about the size of a couple of basketball courts in a high-school gym
Much of the work that we do out here is focused on the final act: the prenatal exam, the psychotherapy session, the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of disease, supplements and monitoring for th
The ground moves here. It may look like a patch of dirt, rubble or cracked concrete, but it you crouch down and just wait a few seconds, it starts moving. Tiny ants doing reconnaissance, larger o
The day that I left Chad a text message arrived an hour before hopping on a plane for my holidays (I write this from idyllic-but-obviously-not-too-distant Stone town, Zanzibar).
Not sure what it was that helped me turn the corner, but after a couple of feverish nights and a loose string of, well, phlegmatic days, some energy returned!
It has been brought to my attention, most unceremoniously, that I have kept the blog more descriptive than personal, more playful than ranting, more academic than grit.
Chad remains politically active. We don’t get mentioned much on the BBC anymore, but news is that the government has declared a “state of emergency” for two weeks.
