Alright…..here we go!

When we arrived we started moving our suitcases in.   We had a friend drop by for an hour and so we sat and caught up on the mat.   We started to get thirsty.  You know the 100 plus temperatures have a way of making you thirsty.  So step one in house set up was for Jacob to go to the market and buy some blue barrels that we could store water in.  Nothing is ever that simple here, but by that afternoon we had two large barrels and some smaller ones on the veranda.  Step two was to find a boy that pushed containers of water around so that we could pay him to pour some water into our barrels.  Step three was to start putting the water into our filter.  Although I’m pretty sure we didn’t have our filter out that day.  So in the midst of those steps we had Nehemiah run to the doucan to buy some bottles of water which we quickly drained.   

On the food front, I was thankful that our old friend and house helper, Fatuma, could come over that first day.  I had her wash some clothes and then I sent her to the market to buy some food.  She came back from the market ready to prepare some “spaghetti sauce.”  Keep in mind that there is no stove here and we have to wait until we can get one brought from N’Djamena… I won’t go into the details of why that is.  So I asked Fatuma to set up a Chadian kitchen with coals and a little wire contraption to cook on over the coals.

All of our household items from our previous time here were in storage. She went to boil the noodles and asked “Where is your pot?” Ummm… we do have a pot but that is in storage right now.  I guess I will ask the neighbor lady for a pot.   Then she was getting ready to make the sauce when she asked me, “Where is the knife?”  Umm….we do have a knife but not with us right now… (thankfully Kendra had a Swiss Army Knife).  Then she asked, “Where are your plates and silverware?” Yeah, I have no idea where those are right now.  So, we took the top of a blue barrel which is round and similar to the trays the Chadians eat on, and we put a big plop of noodles with sauce on top of it.  Then I told the kids to dig in with their hands:)  I know we were totally breaking the etiquette rules and if our children ever eat at your house and start to eat like animals you’ll know why.  I can’t remember what we had for dinner that night.  

You might think that the fact that we only had three mattresses that night that we borrowed from a friend would have put everyone over the edge, but thankfully Jacob had a way of making it sound exciting to sleep on the roof on the mat with three mattresses and the eight of us.  

Yes we did go to the bathroom on Day One but I can’t remember a whole lot about how that went.  I think that Jacob got a little frustrated with Athanasius for not hitting the hole.  You would understand if you saw the situation ;-)  Let’s just say the flies were having a hay day.  And once Hadassah saw the “crickets” aka cochroaches she would not go to the bathroom in there.  Now we know that it is actually pretty tough to hit the hole.  The real downer on the outside toliet is that you have to walk in front of the Chadian people living next door to get into it AND the main entrance to the house from the outside street is very near to our warabate, which does not have a roof or door.

I think that this was the day that I found Evangeline in her swimming suit so that she could cool down.  Unfortunately I freaked out about this.  What!? Your swimming suit?! What are you doing?!!!  

We learned about this water you can buy here called “Koshi.”  It comes in a small bag and is very cheap.  They helped us replenish our sweat glands:

Day Three – Kendra Saves the Day buy Prozac online

Day Three was a Sunday which means that Fatuma does not come.  It’s the day we give her off.  Unfortunately I was not yet ready to go without Fatuma.  By 10:30 that day I was sending Nehemiah to the doucan to get “biscuits” which means stale orange wafer things.  Yes we ate them and at about 2:30 I was starting to get really hungry so I sent Nehemiah to the doucan to get some hard boiled eggs.  Often times they are available at the shop down the street.  When he came back to announce that there were no hard boiled eggs I didn’t know what I was going to do.  I had to eat something and I had no other options.   This is when God knew I needed Kendra.  Kendra said, “Mrs. Broten, I think maybe I can start a fire and make something.”  And she did.  She laughs now and says it took her a whole box of matches, but praise the LORD, Kendra started a fire for the coals and boiled noodles for all of us.  She even made some kind of sauce out of tomato paste and it tasted really good.