Mama Mia! It has been so long since I did a blog. I’m going to do what every responsable adult does and blame it on someone else. Well actually I’m blaming it on you since no one called me out on it. So I wash my hands of it and am moving on. Forgive and (never) forget, right? Lol.

Well life has been good into the start of this rainy season. This blog will be accompanied by a vlog that will come out some time this weekend. Finally the transition from hot to hot and humid to just humid is over. Now we are enjoying cooler nights with rain a couple times a week. Mango season is over which means the flies are gone too. As puddles rise, so does the rate of malaria and other parasitic diseases that water seems to be a vector for. Tomorrow we will be wrapping up an albendazole campaign!

One thing that has for sure been a huge hinderance is our current network situation. Not sure what airtel Tchad is doing but it is really playing games with my heart. We get these fleeting moments of connectivity that render us overjoyed with the love from the outside world (or each other) and then we won’t be able to respond. Thank you all who have been so patient in my responses. At first I thought it was just because of being in Bere and I forgot the struggle of the bush life but no, even regular text and calls are coming in hours later.

This caused a bit of a misunderstanding this past Saturday. Our church planned for a baptism and usually we make several trips with multiple cars to take people to the river for the event. Well in the morning I went 18km south to pick up one church group in our Nissan truck as my car is a bit “soft” for the real bush life. I set a limit of 14 people but of course we had closer to 20 including children. We drove back to Bere where I dropped them off at church. Then I went back to my room to wait until church started. I went over at the normal time but apparently everyone had already gone to the river without informing any of the drivers. Oh well. So I went back to wait for the rest of the group to go back the 18 km later. Well Olen took the truck so I had to make due with my car. I told the head elder he couldn’t come with me cuz of space but we packed in the rest of the 18 or so people into my prado. Only one person vomited and my car did amazing through the mud holes. Good on you Toyota! But as we were going down that evening a text came through giving the new program of the day asking if I could drive at 10 am rather than the usual noon. Oh well! What can you do?

With this bad service, I am spending quite a bit more time at people’s houses as well as walking around a ton more since we can’t call or text. It’s hard when you have the attention span of a gold fish and to make the most of your time at people’s house cuz you can’t just keep on “train of thought” texting. Out of this though I’ve gotten some great potato soup and fancy adult tasting egg salad sandwiches from the Netteburg home.

Well please look for the vlog in the next couple of days. I’m going to hopefully get that out. If not, I guess it’s not a big deal.

Cheers!

Zachary Gately, MPH
Deputy Director
Adventist Health International-Tchad
zchgtly@gmail.com
zgately.com
+235 68920884
+235 91122492

L’Hopital Adventiste de Béré
ATTN: Zachary Gately
52 Boîte Postal
Kelo, Tchad
Africa