Club de la Paix

Maddie (another SALTer) works at Village Altonodji school, teaching English to the students there. But Village Altonodj is called a village because it is just that. It is a school, bakery, orphanage, medical clinic, library and chapel. Within the walls of Village Altonodji live about 100 orphans and 12 widows who are affectionately known as ‘Mamas’. Maddie also lives in a guesthouse at Village Altonodji during the week and has the opportunity to play, sing, dance and be around these children in the evenings.

Peace club is something that MCC Chad was hoping to being at Village Altonodji. In many countries around the world peace clubs are run by MCC staff to teach children about conflict, conflict resolution, and how to be peacemakers and peace activists.

Maddie and I decided that we really wanted to try to start a peace club at her school. We decided that we would work with children in 6e and 5e (equivalent to grade 7-8). It was planned to have peace club in the chapel as there is electricity in the chapel in the evening.

Two weeks before the Christmas break we decided to give peace club a go, but were stopped short when the electricity stopped working at the beginning of our club. The second week we had a number of students but they arrived very late and were not very participatory. Then after the break we were ready to start off strong only to have three students show up more than an hour after we were supposed to start. Needless to say I was starting to get a little discouraged.

Last Wednesday when I arrived at Village Altonodji, I soon found out that there was again no electricity in the chapel. Maddie and I decided that we were going to try it in her living room. So when the time came, slowly but surely children began arriving. We started off our introductory activity with about 10 students and ended the night with 18 children signing our attendance.

We sang Peace like a river in English and in French, and challenged students to come back next week with a version of the song in their native language. The evening was focused around differences in perspective.  We began by showing a couple of images where you can see two images. We showed the image of the young woman/old woman and another.

Then I told a story about a woman (Fati) who looked out onto her neighbour’s house and noticed that her neighbour was hanging up dirty clothes after they had been washed.  Fati thought to herself that her neighbour was dirty. The next day when her friend came by, Fati showed her friend the dirty clothes and her friend exclaimed that it was not the clothes that were dirty but her window. The students loved the punchline of the story.

Our final activity involved putting students in a variety of places around the room and having them draw four central objects. But depending on where each person was in the room, they might not have been able to see all the objects i.e. different perspectives. Also students got different writing utensils, different sizes of paper and different opportunities to see the objects.  We wanted to demonstrate different starting points and perspectives and that it is important to communicate with each other as conflict can arise when we have different perspectives that are not heard or understood.

Overall, I felt that it went very well. I look forward to tonight when we will be discussing about cultural differences and stereotypes!

Tourist in Chad

Chad is not a country where I would recommend coming if you want to be a tourist. There is one safari park but it is a two-day drive away from the capital. Needless to say, Chad is not a tourist destination. But when I was in N’Djamena for a week over the holidays, I was able to ‘play’ the role of tourist by visiting the National Museum of Chad, the artisan market, and riding on a camel.

1) The National Museum of Chad was a lovely museum with sections on Islamic culture, ancient Chad cultures and traditions, and even some fossilized bones. I really enjoyed learning about the different types of money (metals formed into different shares) that were used in the past as a way of trading goods. Each area of Chad had a different language and a different group of people (eg. Sahra people, Ngambai people) which meant different money forms were used.

There was a section that showed some traditional musical instruments with different horns, and drums as well as a type of xylophone. Another section of the museum showed traditional tools and clothing that was worn by Chadians. I really appreciated getting the history through artefacts of different aspects of Chad.

When we went upstairs, we came to a room with fossilized bones dating between 1.5-7 million years. There were bones from the ancestors of lions, crocodile, elephants, and fish as well as many others. While we were looking around, we peaked behind a blocked off area to see many other old bones that had not yet been categorized sitting in cardboard boxes! Someday I’m sure they will also be out for display but we enjoyed looking at them in their boxes.

2) The artisan market is an area where there are about 30 vendors selling different products from paintings to cards to fabric to clay sculptures. The different items that they are selling come from Chad as well as countries nearby. It was good to see the different things, but I felt that during our time there all the vendors wanted us to come into their little kiosk and by the end, my ears were practically ringing from the nagging encouragement.

3) My final and most exciting tourist activity was riding a camel. We contacted someone from the Canadian consulate who had a connection with someone who set it up for us. We arrived at a nomad encampment where there were 5 camels waiting for us. After taking some pictures we got on the camels as they were sitting down. When they stood up, I realized that camels are a lot bigger animals than I had previously imaged. We walked around for close to half an hour with a few 10 year old boys as our guides. Then at the end of our trip, we thanked the chief of the encampment and went on our way. It was a neat experience but it is not very comfortable. I can’t imagine riding on a camel for hundreds of kilometres at a time!

Three baptisms and a funeral

Baptisms

My cousin Trésor got baptised on Saturday December 20^th and I was able to help out with the celebration. The night before Adeline and Solomé (the two 20ish year old girls who live with me) walked to the house of my uncle who is a doctor. We arrived around 7:30 p.m. to find about 14 women working in the kitchen. They were preparing for the feast of the next day. Most of the women were taking pieces of boule (flour and water that is stirred until it is solid) with some added sugar and they were breaking it apart into water. So I helped them with this task. Others were cutting meat, and preparing vegetables. Around 10:30 p.m., 10 women lay down on mats to sleep (a few went home).

Wake up call was at 4:20 a.m. and we had a time of devotion before starting work . There was lots to do before the baptism. The main job was straining the boule/water mixture in order to make ‘l’eau de papa’ which is a tradition drink prepared for baptisms and sometimes weddings. Women put the mixture into ‘socks’ and then pushed the mixture back and forth to strain the water. I tried this at the end, and after a couple rounds my arms got tired. My job was to take the boule and then pound it with the mortar and pestle. This also proved tiring at 4:30 a.m. in the morning.

But there were many other tasks to be done, people were preparing ‘jus d’osé’ which is a red sweet juice, others were making a ton of pasta and still others were cutting vegetable and preparing a stew to put on the pasta.

Once the majority of the work was done, I ate my breakfast and showered. The baptism was supposed to start at 8 a.m. By 8:15 a.m. we had not left and I had been waiting around for a while. There was a cousin outside on his motorcycle and so I decided I would go with him (instead of waiting for the car) because I wanted to get there faster. We left  and as we approached the river (which runs the length of one side of Moundou) he called someone to verify directions.

We arrived at a baptism and we slowly made our way down to the front of the mass of people. Interestingly anyone with a camera seems to have the ability to bypass crowds at events like this. I was able to see about 8 people go into the water to be baptised by elders. I was happy to see it, but I was also a little confused because I did not recognize anyone and the minister was speaking Ngambai.

It was about at this point, when my driver told me we were at the wrong baptism. So we made our way through the crowd and got back on the moto. We drove across town, following the river to a second even larger baptism festival. But we only stayed long enough for the driver to ask a couple questions to someone (and for me to take a picture) and we were on our way again in search of the baptism place for my cousin Trésor.

After some more phone calls, we did manage to figure out where to go. We made it to the baptism place, but long after the actual ceremony. It was around 9:30 am and people were taking a few pictures before heading to the church.

*** Just a reminder that here in Moundou, there are no street names, or numbers so landmarks are used to figure out where events are. This makes it more difficult to figure out where events/activities are.

At 10am I had a 2 hour practice to prepare for the Christmas Celebration at CENTRAM. During this time, all the 40 who were baptised from my church, went to church to partake in their first communion. (There were about 800 people baptised in Moundou on December 20^th)

After this everyone from my family went to my uncle's house. I arrived around 12:20pm and was able to help with the work behind the scenes. I helped prepare the platters and brought one out for the guests. Those who were baptised travelled in groups of about 6 and went to eachothers’ houses parading and celebrating throughout the day.

Funeral

On Monday, December 22, I went to the funeral of a man named Laotai Samuel who was born in 1948. He worked at the agricultural school ISETAER (which uses the same building at CENTRAM) and went to my church.

In general people morn the loss of someone for 3-4 days with relatives and friends spending the night at the morgue in support of the remaining immediate family. Then the body is moved to the church in a procession on the day of the funeral.

Once the body is at the church, there are prayers and a lot of singing. This began around 9 a.m., but I arrived at church around 11 a.m. I joined the choir C.R.C. to sing with them. We took turns with the other choir from our church  as well as other  choir groups present (Soeurs Unis en Christ, Soeur d’Eglise des Frères) singing. Sometimes choirs/women would encircle the coffin and slowly dancing around it.

Around 1 p.m. there was the visit of the body, which means that everyone lines up outside the church, and walks down the aisle to pay their respects to the body.  After this, different friends of the man came up to the front to share memories of their friend.

At this point it was after 2 p.m. and so I decided to leave to go home to get ready for my classes. After I left, the body was taken to the gravesite and then buried. The ceremony ended around 4:30 p.m. Many family members and friends will continue to be with the immediate family to support them for many weeks to come.

Preparing L'eau de Papa

Using a mortar and pestle to prepare the boule for l'eau de Papa

Baptism # 1 (above and below)

Baptism # 2

Trésor and I at baptism # 3

How can I keep from singing!

This past weekend I participated in the yearly Révélation de Christ (CRC) church choir concert. I joined the choir at the beginning of October, and was excited for the opportunity to sing in the anniversary concert.

The anniversary celebrations began the night before when the choir gathered along with the elders of the church for a lovely meal of chicken/fish, bread, and salad. The choir then worked on doing dishes, and decorating the church for the next day’s church service and concert. Purple and white were the colours and we had balloons, flowers, table clothes, ribbons and bows in these colours. While preparing there was also time to do a little dance, make a little noise and have fun! I enjoyed the dancing and getting to know the choir members.

Late in the evening, there was a sound check and a couple songs were practiced. Around 12:40am we were done for the evening and it was time to sleep. Most of the choir members (including Maddie and me) slept over at the church. It is called a ‘veillé’. We slept on a mat, curled up in our cloth wrap-skirts, which doubled as blankets and went to sleep.

At 5:45am we went awoken and got ready for the big day. We ate breakfast and tea and then went over the songs we were going to sing. At 8am we put on our purple choir gown and caps (it looks like graduation gowns). Then we proceeded to sing and dance throughout the 3+ hour service.

In between the church service and our concert there were a couple hours. I took a little nap while others were preparing food and redecorating (because we were going to have our concert outside).

The choir concert which was supposed to start at 2:30 started almost an hour late, but in Chad that is expected. We sang a total of 8 songs, with a break halfway for a message and prayer. Of the eight songs, seven were in French and one was in Ngambai. In general there is a soloist who sings verses and the choir sings the chorus which is repeated many times. 

I danced, I sang, and I had the opportunity to hang out with some great choristers. I had a great time and look forward to continuing to sing in the CRC choir!

***Can you guess the total time that I was at church? Post in the comments section.***

My five hour church service

I go to church #8 in Moundou. It is a E.E.T. church (Église Évangélique du Tchad) which is quite large. On an average Sunday there are around 1000 people in attendance.

Church starts at 8:15am but very few people arrive at that time. When the church begins, there is only about 60-100 people in attendance. Within the first hour the benches fill up and by 9:30 the church is full. I normally arrive about half an hour late with my family.

Church begins with a lot of singing and prayer. There are two choirs at church, one called the CRC ‘Révélation du Christ’ – a choir that sings songs mostly in French with piano, guitar, bass guitar and drums. The other one is called Hosanna- this choir sings songs mostly in Ngambai and uses shakers and whistles, they also are passionate dancers and do a move which I have termed ‘the chicken’ where dancers move their hands back and forth all the while moving their heads forward and backward (kind of like a chicken pecking). I have attempted this dance move, but as of yet I have been unsuccessful.

Prayer is a big part of the service and often people are called upon to pray without warning. It is mostly church elders (male), however every now and then they will call on a woman to pray. At one point during the adoration part of the service everyone has the opportunity to pray together out loud. This time is ended by everyone clapping their hands.

My favourite part of the service is the offering. Each individual person goes to the front (through an organized process using each row) to give their offering. During this time each of the choirs sings a song. People sing along and often the offering time ends in a dance party at the front of the room. It becomes a time of thanks for the offering that can be given.

At the end of the service, scripture is read and then a sermon is given. Sermons are generally 40 minutes in length and different ministers and elders give sermons. The sermon generally looks at the scripture verse in great detail.

On the first Sunday of the month, there is an additional service right after the ordinary service for communion. The communion service has songs, prayer, scripture and a sermon. It generally takes one hour.

So for those who get frustrated by the length of church services, the average service that I attend is three hours, but they can last as long as five. It is different from my church service in Canada, but I enjoy seeing how different people worship throughout the world.

Here is a picture of my church. There are decorations on the ceiling and down the centre aisle.