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A Change in Itinerary
Category: Day 0: Preparations
i-ACT team members, Gabriel, Katie-Jay, and James travel from the States to Paris and finally arrive in N’Djamena Chad. It will take a few days to get their permits and make it to the eastern capitol, Abeche and then finally to a refugee camp. Watch videos from their preliminary travel and read early reflections of i-ACT 9.
4:00am – I woke up way too early and could not go back to sleep. The alarm was set for 5:15 am, so that we could be check-out, out by the door, and ready for pick up by UNHCR driver by 6:00am. But, I woke up at 4:00am! 6:00am – We have checked-out of the […]
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Through Interaction
“It’s only through interaction that we learn.” Oscar is an animated and charismatic individual, but that is not what struck me most about him, Delphine, and other HCR (in Chad the ‘UN’ is dropped and they are known as ‘Hache-C-R’) workers in N’Djamena. It was their desire to connect people, and to be connected to […]
Today was a bit of deja vu as we retuned to the UNHCR compound to get our filming permits. We made the best of our wait by interviewing three people working in different but interconnected offices. First we spoke with Delphine Marie who essentially works as the spokesperson for the UNHCR mission in Chad. She […]
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Teamwork and Technology
It was nice to see Yuen-Lin (YL) and Eric (E) live on our computers last night. We tested the three way communication using the equipment we’ll be using out in the refugee camps. It was quick and pretty simple. Out here, there’s no high speed internet. There’s no medium speed internet. There’s slow and slower. […]
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NDJ
N’Djamena (NDJ), Chad is an interesting city, which has changed quite drastically over the last year. Many more streets are paved, and we could see many more lights when we arrived last night. New statues and plazas adorn the capital. Today, fighting jetlag, we headed out early to visit the offices of UNHCR and the […]
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James’ thoughts on arrival
Most of our first full day in the capital was spent at the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) doing the Byzantine paperwork necessary to travel through eastern Chad. After our driver picked us up at the hotel I got my first chance to see rush hour life in N’djamena. The streets were busier […]
This is my ninth time flying to Paris. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, shopping and fine dining. Nope. Paris is just a necessary stop on our way to the capital of Chad, N’Djamena, and–eventually–the refugee camps in the East, along the Chad-Sudan border. In Paris, I only get to see the airport, which is pretty […]
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7:00am, Leaving for Chad
Drop off the dog. Pick up the last of our food. Get a coffee. I am running the last of our errands for the trip, my sixth and Gabriel’s ninth. An American music teacher is speaking on NPR about his students at the Kabul Music Academy in Afghanistan. The reporter asks what kinds of students […]
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