The social scene in Abeche is limited, and that's tough for someone as garrulous as Patrick. Wit is his strong suit; humor his Vaseline on the raw sting of Abeche. But his funny is hamstrung in by the complexities of French and his jokes fall flat at dinner parties. The conversations are superficial, anyhow, he says, mostly focusing on refugees and life's frustrations. American playwright Lillian Hellman once wrote that "Lonely people talking to each other can make each other lonelier." That's true in Abeche. Conversations start with how long have you been here and are quickly followed by when do you leave. Patrick has done one year. He will stay on for another. His time in Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast and Madagascar prepared him for the strain. "Life is easier for me than for most people here because I did Peace Corps," Patrick says. "That helps me deal with the isolation." Find him a dive bar, put a Gala, a Chadian beer, in his hand and surround him with local men who like a good chin wag and Patrick is content. But they don't always take too kindly to the expatriates. "The locals seem to hate us or see us as circus freaks," he says.
Patrick Obrist's time in Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast and Madagascar prepared him for the strain of working in Chad for Catholic Relief Services
Aid Work in Africa: Behind the Scenes
By Lane Hartill
Patrick Obrist has been sweating all night, curing in his own body heat.
"I feel like I have a hangover," he says, as he steps out of his concrete room that turned into a Dutch oven last night. The generator wasn't working, which meant no air conditioning. The night slipped by and Patrick rolled under the fuzzy blanket of Chadian humidity. "You sweat so much you become dehydrated," he says. It's been averaging close to 110 degrees in Abeche, Chad, and Patrick's been averaging close to three showers a day.
Abeche is a town as dry and brown as burnt pie crust, its mud houses constantly blasted by a hair-dryer-hot wind. During winter, it cools down to the mid 80s. But it's the peak of the hot season now. And 122 degrees -- the temperature of glue guns and a good cup of hot chocolate -- is common. Patrick, a 30 year-old Nebraskan and CRS' lone American based here, grew up on sweet corn and Omaha Steaks and Husker Football. Lincoln, he says, never got this hot. No place he's ever been got this hot.
"Go to your oven and turn it on to, say, 350 degrees," he says. "When the oven reaches that temperature, go open it while your face is really close. The blast furnace that you feel is pretty close to what 122 degrees feels like. Only it does not dissipate."
CRS' international workers are usually based in capitals. A strong cappuccino, Wolf Blitzer, and an imported bottle of Chanel No. 5 are never far away. Even the cities that ring with danger -- Islamabad, Kabul, Beirut -- have pockets of luxury. When your sanity is threatened by stress, you can lie down for a deep tissue back massage, the kids can sip Shirley Temples, and there's always someone with that familiar, granular American accent. Not here. Not in this dust-blasted wasteland on the far edge of nowhere.
What's it like to work here? How do you adjust to a life of curfews, bandits, and gluey porridge in the morning? Abeche is arguably CRS' most difficult posting. Patrick's life, and that of other Americans here, reveals the personal sacrifices aid workers make in order to help Darfur refugees. The isolation, the cultural differences and the grinding monotony, all take a toll on humanitarian workers. Yet without them, the Darfur refugee camps would cease to function.
When Sudanese refugees from Darfur started streaming across the border in 2003, Abeche went from town where a husky donkey was the closest thing to an SUV to a city awash in them, all gleaming and imported from America. The population shot up from 40,000 in 1988 to more than 80,000 today. Now it's packed with some 150 expatriates and international staff working for humanitarian organizations. CRS' partner, Secours Catholique et Developpement, manage three of the 12 Darfur refugee camps.
For some expatriates, this Saharan landscape is a refuge, an escape from home countries that have spun out of control. Americans here don't want to dance with the stars or idolize Americans with Paula, Randy and Simon. Survivor is not a reality show in Abeche; it's an appellation for of an entire population.
This is: firewood delivered to the refugee camps so women won't get raped collecting it; four girls in class seven in one camp. Only four, yes, but that's a start. That's better than being forced to marry as a sixth grader. Outreach workers who lecture men about why they shouldn't hang their wives upside down from trees and call their brothers to help beat them.
But this is far from Patrick's daily schedule. He isn't on the frontlines feeding starving babies or bent double digging wells. He's in an office, fighting Western donor fatigue.
"Darfur is something I read about on the BBC," he says. "People always think that I am some crazy savior and self-sacrificing martyr for working out here," he says. "But I am really just a paper-pusher. We are the ones who support the whole effort and assistance. We are less visible but still needed."
When the splashy headlines about George Clooney's trip to the refugee camps dry up and the klieg light swing away from Mia Farrow surrounded by Darfuris, the invisible battalion of aid workers push on. Patrick will still be there, wedged into an office with three other men for 10 hours a day, sharpening budgets, chasing after receipts, and sweating over spreadsheets.
"You just have to realize your niche and do it the best you can," Patrick says. "It makes a difference on the ground." Someone, he says, has to make sure the funds are still rolling in. Last year, to run the three camps, it cost just under $5 million.
* * *
Patrick's life is surprisingly mundane, he says, for being in the geopolitical crosshairs of Africa. Sure, there are a handful of conflict junkies, but most of the humanitarians in Abeche spend their days behind laptops like the rest of the world. Everyone has their own reasons for being here.
Take Lauren Stroschin, an American pilot based in Abeche who flies aid workers to the refugee camps, wanted to get away from the United States. She wanted to help the refugees, who she sees as heroes, not victims to be pitied. Their resilience and determination inspires her, something she rarely felt living in the United States.
"I just want to be a better citizen of the world," she says. "I wanted to get the real news for myself instead of the filtered version we get in the US. I wanted to be the person that travels and disproves all the negative stereotype about Americans; to show that some of us do care, travel, and know there are events happening outside our boarders."
Patrick admires Lauren; she's a veteran of Abeche, having stayed three years. Most don't last that long, he says. The length of the average contract is about a year. He talks about Abeche, like hardened criminals talk about solitary at San Quentin. "I could do this stint standing on my head," he says. But then adds, "If it wasn't for Tara."
Tara lives in Virginia, and Patrick's in love with her.
"Life here would be easier if I didn't have a girlfriend I think about constantly." Not long ago, she tried to rendezvous with Patrick in Paris. But Patrick was asked to stay in Abeche; a US Congressman was coming through, one of the steady stream personalities and politicians who blow through in eastern Chad. He stayed. Tara wandered around Paris alone then returned to Virginia, never having seen Patrick.
Long distance chats, courtesy of Skype, keep the flame alive.
2009-07-12-PatrickObrist.jpg
Patrick Obrist is based in Abeche, Chad, for Catholic Relief Services.
The social scene in Abeche is limited, and that's tough for someone as garrulous as Patrick. Wit is his strong suit; humor his Vaseline on the raw sting of Abeche. But his funny is hamstrung in by the complexities of French and his jokes fall flat at dinner parties. The conversations are superficial, anyhow, he says, mostly focusing on refugees and life's frustrations.
American playwright Lillian Hellman once wrote that "Lonely people talking to each other can make each other lonelier." That's true in Abeche. Conversations start with how long have you been here and are quickly followed by when do you leave. Patrick has done one year. He will stay on for another.
His time in Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast and Madagascar prepared him for the strain.
"Life is easier for me than for most people here because I did Peace Corps," Patrick says. "That helps me deal with the isolation." Find him a dive bar, put a Gala, a Chadian beer, in his hand and surround him with local men who like a good chin wag and Patrick is content. But they don't always take too kindly to the expatriates. "The locals seem to hate us or see us as circus freaks," he says.
* * *
After being cooped up in an office all day, Patrick, a former soccer player, needs to exercise. But his options are limited. There's no place to run and when you try, your lungs are sandblasted and turn to jerky. There's hardly a blade of grass in the city. The only green space is a balding strip of ground in the middle of town with a punctured hose lying on it. But the grass is closer to dryer lint than fescue, and clouds of dust from passing vehicles carpet it with sand. The trees surrounding it are foliated with black plastic bags.
For a little exercise, Patrick MacGuyvered a solution: he filled some giant powdered milk cans--as big as industrial buckets of laundry detergent--with concrete and connected them with an iron pipe: dumbbells. He also convinced some American pilots to pick him up an exercise bike in Uganda. "Now I can sweat for a reason," he says.
Abeche isn't all bad, says Lauren: "I love that I don't have stand in the grocery store line and stare at the Enquirer and read those terrible, pointless headlines. It's liberating: No cell phone contracts, cable TV, taxes, rent, car insurance. All that is gone."
But not the Chinese food. You can buy an uninspired plate of sweet and sour pork and a $6 Chadian beer at the Shanghai, a restaurant that opened last year. For entertainment, sit back and watch Chinese television and the French military flirt and air kiss the tired-looking waitress. For a night cap, hustle back to your guest house before curfew and admire the cosmos. No electricity in Abeche means no light pollution, and the stars shine like diamonds on black velvet.
Patrick prefers the Afrique Etoile, an open-air joint where the main dish is chicken, dusted with the spice and the air-borne grit of Abeche. It's U-Pick here, and you point the piece you want. A dish of spicy dipping sauce, the color of old makeup, is free of charge. The saving grace: a stein of the foamiest, most invigorating smoothie a dollar can buy. Made from powdered milk, ice, sugar and bruised bananas and beat up mangos, the juice makes an Orange Julius--that stuff they sell in American malls--taste like cold pulp.
Don't let the restaurants and starry nights lull you into complacency. Things can turn on a dime here. It's a security level 4, the highest in CRS. Patrick's evening out recently was rudely interrupted when an enraged military man went ballistic in a popular restaurant and pulled out a Ramboesque knife and plunged it into a table.
That's the problem, says Patrick: The people who are meant to protect are often the problem. In February, in a town not far from Abeche, the United Nations said a Chadian military soldier entered a bar, tied up the owner's sons and told one of them to call their 17 year-old sister. When she arrived, she was raped by several military men.
It's not just the local military. A French Foreign Legion soldier based at the French military base in Abeche recently killed four men this April. The spokesman for the French military said he "went a little mad".
And then last month, for example, it was pancake Sunday at Lauren's house. One of her colleagues was pulling into the compound. The gate was opened and just as the vehicle was about to enter, a man with a pistol tried to force his way in. He was after the 4x4. Thankfully, Lloyd, a skinny male with a hoarse voice, was in the courtyard. He terrified the bandit and he took off. That night, Lloyd the guard dog was treated like a king.
"I think it all boils down to if someone sees something you have, and they want it, they will take if from you, by force if necessary. The bandit wanted our truck and he was willing to kill for it," says Lauren. "Then Lloyd changed his mind."
Patrick lives with Matchurin, a CRS staffer from Burkina Faso. They recently got a dog, Bobi, to add another layer of security. But Patrick has started stashing his valuables in the walls of his room. He wonders if it's just a matter of time before their compound gets broken into.
But something much more pedestrian terrifies Patrick: The 10-minute drive to work. Every morning he gets in the RAV 4 and steels himself against the kids who dart out into traffic, grinning as cars honk and dodge. It's a favorite game here: who can touch the passing NGO vehicle. "It's the most stressful part of my day," Patrick says, as a boy runs across the central artery, nearly getting hit. There are no streetlights or stop signs here. It wouldn't matter if there were, drivers prefer to gun it and swerve, rather than stop and signal.
Patrick fumes, almost seethes, when he talks about how many times he's seen drivers almost hit children. He says Chadians have been known to rear end vehicles then demand huge payments. If there's a problem, people don't get out and take pictures of the damage and exchanges numbers over the hood. The problem is often settled with a knife.
"The way Westerners were raised and educated and the way African's have been raised and educated have created two different sets of logic and reason," says Lauren, diplomatically. "To look at a problem and have two different solutions to that problem, and you just know that the African solution will not work, or will not work long term, it just wears on me. I really miss Western logic."
* * *
The heat is starting to thin at Patrick's compound. He's in the hammock, beneath the sun- crisped banana trees. He likes it here. He says the rustling of the leaves help calm him down.
The former English major is making a dent in all the English literature he never got to in college. He made quick work of The Great Gatsby, The English Patient and just polished off Aiden Hartley's The Zanzibar Chest. Right now, he'd give anything for a deep dish pizza. And after a year looking at various shades of brown, his eyes could use a field of green grass and his throat a microbrew, preferably back home with Brad, Curtis and Dustin, his buddies from Nebraska.
"In the US everything is easy," he says. "I can hop in my car and go see a movie or buy food without haggling. I can renew my license or go to small government office and not have to pay a bribe."
But for now, this is his life. And he can stomach it. He believes in the work he's doing, albeit behind the scenes. The heat, the monotony, the culture, none of that bothers him. What does is trying to describe his life to people who have no point of reference about Africa. Soldiers returning from Iraq, he says, go through the same thing. You don't know what it's like, he says, and you'll never understand Abeche unless you've lived it.
"The isolation aspect arises when I try and relate my experiences to people stateside," he says. "They ask how Africa was, and I am like, well do you have a few hours? Their eyes glaze over quickly. So I boil it down: It's Africa, the roads suck and it's hot. I know this is lame and stereotypical, but it is too fatiguing to try and describe and nuance the experience here."
Lane Hartill is the West Africa regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services. He is based in Dakar, Senegal.
