It’s 3:26 AM in N’Djamena right now. Today we went to the UNHCR building to submit our paperwork to get all of the stamps and signatures we need to legally travel to the eastern part of Chad. I don’t have anything really interesting to say right now. I’ve just been busy with working on testing all the tech stuff for the World Refugee Day video conferences and haven’t been able to switch my mind out of that mode.
We had dinner at a french restaurant called Côte Jardin with some UNHCR staff tonight. The conversation was a mixture of light-hearted banter about the origins of sayings like “eat crow”, and heavier talk about the Cambodian genocide, new land mines that today are being planted near refugee camps in Chad that children will inevitably be maimed or killed by, and the interesting fact that the UNCHR now supports more “IDP’s” than “refugees” (14 million vs 11 million globally). An IDP is an internally displaced person that is still in their home country, whereas a refugee is a displaced person that has crossed an international border and is seeking refuge in another country.
It’s now 4:59 AM and I’m still fighting with Windows PC’s. Have I told you how much I love working with Windows? Gabriel and KTJ should be here in a few hours and then we’ll have to leave for the airport and beg and plead with the staff there to let us bring all of our gear that will be way over their normal weight limit for luggage per passenger. Windows still configuring updates every time I have to reboot it, yay. Wish we were working in the camps and not sitting in a hotel room. But this is part of the trip, so I can’t complain (for the record – this is whining not complaining), it’s all totally worth it to help connect the refugees in Camp Djabal with people around the world.
Windows is back, so that means I gotta go.