DENOUDSTEN DIARIES

January 24^th

^{(Editor's note: Apparently it has taken three days for this post to come so we know what a challenge Henk and Margreet have with the internet.)}

We are entering the 21^st century: we got a crash course in texting and using a Dongle(?) for internet use. Access is slow (very slow) but available... it was because of this that we received Tim’s email announcing his engagement to his  lovely lady Melanie Peters.

Tuesday morning we were packed and ready to go at 5.30am to make the one hour UN flight from N’Djamena  to Mongo. We were very thankful for that as two years ago  the 500km took  a good eight hours of concentrated driving.

We were over the runway and about to land, when the pilot had to pull up sharply as there were people on the dirt runway; the second time around we were able to land and our friends were waiting for us.

A quick sorting out of their mail and handing over two million Francs($400) for the safe flight we got the keys for the Landrover and off we were to drive the 70km to Tchelme. There is a new road being built, which is a good thing, but nobody is allowed to use it yet. The old road, which was reasonable two years ago had deteriorated quite a bit.

We arrived safely and Cindy greeted us warmly (not too difficult as it was 35C). We discussed projects and later in the day went shopping for plywood (not to be found), hinges (yes, the right size) bag of cement (50kg heavy), screening for the windows and paint and paint thinner (somebody found it for us the next day and brought it out on his motorbike).

Interesting to watch the going-ons after we had fueled up 80 liters of diesel, one 20 liter jerry can at a time (which needed to be filled from 25 liter buckets). The Arabic counting system is quite different and it took some time to figure out the total: out came the cellphones to use as calculators!

That evening we slept for almost eleven hours: after sunset the wind started to pick up and the temperature dropped to the low twenties.

This morning we have been painting and replaced one screen. Of course the material is not the same width as the original and it took a bit of doing to attach it properly. One other window had a bit of dry rot which needed attention.