I am standing on the bridge over the Chari, the river which forms the border between Chad and Cameroon. I came here as a sort of a pilgrimage – one year ago today, this bridge was a jostling mass of people; 30,000 people crushed across to escape the fighting in N’Djamena.
Today, at dawn, it is quiet. The sky is lightening, and the first commuters are stepping round me; young men chatting in low sleepy voices, or working their mobile phones; women in long colourful robes carrying bundles of grass on their heads. On the river, a dug-out canoe is a sharp flat silhouette against the water, two men gently coaxing it with long poles between the sandbanks. On the bank, people huddle around soft orange fires and dogs scavenge; a woman is throwing handfuls of seed into carefully furrowed dust. Other women move silently amongst the low mud buildings beside the bridge, swaying beneath buckets of water drawn from the river. In the strengthening light, children have emerged to play in the stagnant waste water outside open front doors.
On the bridge, the traffic is building up. A prehistoric lorry makes an elemental roar as it passes, and the bridge shakes. The lorry is stacked inconceivably high with bleached wood scavenged from the countryside, for N’Djamena’s fires. A man passes on a hand-cranked bicycle, his legs withered and lifeless; polio is still a reality in Chad.
Wind ruffles the water, and I turn to go. A camel passes me, its massive hooves making small explosions in the dust. An old man robed with a turban draped round his head and face urges it forward with a thin cane. A few metres behind, an old woman, his wife, trails along in the camel’s wake.
1 comment
Comment by Andy Dodd posted on
Glad to hear things have improved from a year ago. It is good to see change at least when it is a movement forwards. You're getting very lyrical in your old age!