I live in Chad.  Chad is in the center of North Africa.  Our home is in Abeche which is a day’s travel east from the capital.  When I open the gate of my house I observe all kinds of different people, animals and bizarre things.  Down the street, the shopkeeper, Hussein, sits on a bench talking to men in the neighborhood.  He greets me in Arabic as I pass by to play soccer with my Chadian friends.  Most of the streets are dirt.  There are four paved roads in town.  Frequently, donkeys, goats, sheep, camels and cows roam the streets.  They eat grass, tree branches, old shoes and other garbage. Bizarre looking vehicles called rickshaws, travel down the streets.  Rickshaws look a little like a golf cart and normally hold two to three people.  They are used for short trips from one side of town to the other because they have small wheels and don’t travel very quickly.

One Sunday afternoon in July, I climbed into a rickshaw with my Papa, Mama, Kendra, three sisters and brother.  In addition to my family, Papa’s guitar was wedged onto the floor.  People stared at us because it isn’t often that they spot eight white people squeezed into a rickshaw.  As we rode, we passed an enormous truck called a lorry which had about twenty men sitting on top!  Then all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, a donkey came into sight.  It walked steadily across the road.  The rickshaw driver didn’t swerve as I would have expected.  Instead, he continued heading straight towards the donkey.  He didn’t even beep which might have helped the donkey know we were coming.  And then it happened.

Our rickshaw collided with the donkey.  It knocked Kendra’s knee and gave us a quite a fright.  The injured donkey fell to the ground but slowly got up and hobbled away.  People who were driving by turned their heads to investigate.  We looked at each other laughing in disbelief.  Did we really just hit a donkey with our rickshaw?  Living in Chad you never know what kind of bizarre things will happen!

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