As we left Ennedi we felt a deep sense of disquietude. Getting there was so difficult, and we had fallen in love with the place. It’s best to leave wanting more, and we definitely wanted, and want, more Ennedi. I hope we will return one day.
Kelly’s thoughts…
I have been to a few of the truly remote and exceptional places on earth, the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, Gunang Mulu, Kazakhstan, the Altiplano of Bolivia, but nowhere really compares to the Ennedi Plateau. I left transformed, having been to a place so few have been, but which is among the most dramatically beautiful and historically interesting regions of the world. I remember hearing someone once say, I cannot remember who, “Everywhere in the world has been explored… but not by me!” I am so blessed to have explored so many fascinating places, and hope to keep it up. And I am SO lucky to now be exploring with my lovely and lovable partner, Riki.
Kalait
We left Ennedi in the morning after a quick walk around the main camp while Yves and Armondo packed things up. As we drove away, we were anticipating another long, long drive across the complicated country that is Chad. Our route retraced a portion of our route back to the frontier town of Kalait for fuel and supplies… and for a few souveniers. Yves helped us to buy some items that were not tourist items, but, rather, things that everyday Chadians use. There really is no tourist culture, so there was no markets similar to other places I’ve been with carvings or textiles or other artisanía. But that was fine, what we wanted were some “authentic” chadian goods. I got a dagger, the kind that men wear on their arms or their belts. I also got a turban, an item I think is actually brilliant, a head covering to wrap entirely around the head and face to keep out wind and dust. It took some effort to learn how to properly wrap it. I stopped short of getting a jalabiya, the long, body-length shirt worn by most men of the region. Riki got some incense and perfume and a beautiful, ornate, blue cloth that women wear wrapped around their whole bodies including their heads. In the markets we saw clothing and home items, food and ingredients including various beans and lentils, coffee, salt, chiles, figs, onions, garlic, ginger and peanuts.
People
Our route from Kalait south to Zakouma National Park was long with rough, bad roads, but through a region with more people and villages and towns than what we experienced through central Chad. For three days we drove, stopping to camp twice along the way. Like in many developing countries, a paved, raised road had been built in areas, but there was no money for maintenance, and massive, overloaded trucks beat the road into potholes. So most often we drove beside the road on makeshift bypasses and dirt tracks. It was slow going.
More people were along this route, and we saw various types of dwellings, especially the beautiful, round, thatch-roofed huts. Although there were camels, there seemed to be fewer along the route, but there were vast numbers of cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and even more donkeys than we had seen before. Donkeys were everywhere being ridden by especially children and women. Donkeys were pulling wagons and carrying gear and water and products of various kinds. The funniest ones we saw were completely obscured by giant loads of long grass making them look like giant, untrimmed Chia donkeys. According to Yves, the donkey is the ”Minister of Transportation” of Chad.
But we also saw huge, overloaded trucks and pickups piled high with products and people on top of everything, dangling off the sides. Were they strapped in or tied on?? Did anyone ever fall off with rough driving on the awful roads?
In this part of Chad we also saw large caravans of nomadic herders traveling with camels and their livestock, with some camels piled high with household goods. Whole families or groups of families were loaded and heading north for the dry season where they would stay for several months before returning.
Abeche and Peter’s house
We stopped for a while in a somewhat larger town, Abeche. Here we visited a house owned by a man named Peter and his wife. Peter had come on a humanitarian mission from Switzerland with his mother in the late 1980s and stayed. He married a Chadian woman, and they had a small compound and a hotel in Abeche. His wife was an amazing woman who had started an NGO to help with the refugees from Sudan. She also administered an artists guild and we shopped in her small store of crafts and carvings, the first tourist souveniers we had seen. At the compound was a small school, and there were adopted children which we learned had been abandoned as babies at the doors. Peter also drove a truck and ran their small hotel.
Tied in a tree was a female patas monkey named, Halifax. She was inquisitive and sweet. Apparently she had wandered into a refugee camp where they were going to eat her. Peter’s wife rescued her and brought her back to their house.
We really enjoyed talking with Peter in English about Chad. He gave us many insights. As Agama lizards ran around on the walls, he described another type of strange looking lizard that came around homes at night. We finally figured out he meant the house geckos that are nearly ubiquitous in tropical regions in homes. He told us that Chadians believe they are horrifyingly dangerous. Not only are they dangerous and venomous themselves, but if they ever spit into your sugar or salt and you use them in your food or chai, you will die! Since I was a biologist, he wanted to know whether that was true, since he was skeptical. Of course it’s not true, and I told him so. He then got into a big argument with his wife, the gist of which was that he had told her it wasn’t true and she didn’t believe him. He had been to Cameroon, and there they didn’t have the same phobia. She (and his daughter, too) would have none of it, claiming I was ignorant and not from Chad and so I didn’t know!
Mongo
Another town we stopped in was Mongo, a crossroads (we would be coming back there in a few days). Here we stopped at a gas station (which was not selling petrol, however) and I had a beer, and Riki had a Coke. The beer was “Gala” a Chadian brew, and it was just fine. Here we got to see a small cross-section of Chadian culture, including an adorable toddler dressed in amazing finery who came into the gas station with his dad to get a treat. Chadians are extremely shy about having their picture taken, and we were generally respectful of that, but it would have been nice to have gotten a pic of this little fellow that Riki simply fell in love with.
Wildlife
As we got closer to Zakouma park, the landscape changed to denser scrubland and farmland, including vast fields of sorghum. We began seeing many more birds, some of them amazing, like herons, storks of various kinds, bee eaters, rollers and hoopoes, and we saw a few monkeys here and there. We found a dead hedgehog (I still have not seen a live one in the wild) and some dead chameleons, but no live ones. Giant Sternocera buprestids were here and there and everywhere. We found more scorpions. I flipped over a rock at one point and found some giant emperor scorpions, which are harmless. I freaked out Yves by picking one up and messing with it. “Mr. Miller, no… Mr. Miller, no!” he said as he took pictures of me holding it.
We camped along the road near villages for two nights. There was a party until late into the night at one village. Near the other, Riki heard hyenas laughing in the night, but by the time I awakened the village dogs had taken over, yapping and barking at the hyenas. And at one point a family of warthogs crossed the road. We were clearly getting closer to more wildlife, and with excitement, we eventually arrived at Zakouma National Park.
Riki’s thoughts . . .
I am already asking Kelly when we can return to Chad. He says that he has many other sites that we need to see, many other countries. I know he is right, but someday I want to go back to Ennedi, even now that I know the grueling drive up and back and the varied hardships that we faced (we went 12 days without running water). It is worth it. I want to see Oyo maze again and explore more sites (there are archaeological burial sites and many more indications of human habitation that we didn’t see.)
We had been in country for long enough without seeing venomous animals that I had gotten lulled into thinking there were none in this part of the world. The second night after leaving the Ennedi, Kelly was out after dark with his headlamp, looking for arthropods. He called me over to show me a golden yellow scorpion on the ground, curled up in an indentation of dried mud. He showed me that it was a dangerous scorpion, because the claws were small and the tail was thick. Not wanting to give up my fantasy of the area being “perfectly safe,” I asked if this was the only one in the area. Casually and truthfully, he informed me that they were everywhere around here. That changed my approach to squatting near bushes, adding a quick scan for yellow scorpions. The next morning, he was exploring again and excitedly called me over to see his next find. I walked over to see him holding a shed snake skin over three feet long. I will record our conversation here.
“Is that a snake skin?’
“Yes!! Isn’t it cool?”
“Um, yes, cool. I didn’t think they had snakes up here.”
“Riki, this is Africa. There are snakes EVERYWHERE.”
“But not venomous ones, right?”
“They are almost all venomous.”
With this short conversation, my illusion was broken, and I realized that I would have to keep my wits about me and pay attention to my business when I was doing my business.
Our time with Peter and his wife rest in my memory
as some of the best human connection moments of the trip. This was a trip primarily exploratory, and a bit isolated, so that time was a change of pace for sure. Chad has been welcoming of Sudanese refugees, despite the limited resources in much of the country. We enjoyed learning about how Peter’s wife had organized an NGO to support the refugees. It was an example of what happens when one person sets about to make a difference in a difficult situation. While her refugee school and boutique are up and running, sadly her gynecological clinic is closed now, due to lack of funding. Our country has been focused on the Ukraine and now the Israel conflicts, and most people have not heard anything about the conflict in Sudan, though the number of people impacted is so much greater in Sudan. Here is a link to find out more about the conflict: Civil War in Sudan.
For much of the time on our trip south, I was feeling nauseated, so it was a difficult trip. But Kelly, Yves, and Armondo did all they could to help ease my discomfort. The miles had to be covered, and I was not in any kind of danger. Kelly has been teaching me that there is a difference between being in danger and being uncomfortable. We should avoid or prepare for dangerous situations. However, uncomfortable situations are often necessary. I am proud that I have grown in my ability to be uncomfortable, especially if it is a trade-off for the many wonderful things one can experience before, during, and after discomfort. The saying is often true – that which does not kill us makes us stronger. I feel much stronger for my time going to, in, and leaving the Ennedi.
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