Traveling south from N'Djamena over the dark smooth road on my way to Darda, I had trouble recognizing the countryside.
The village located about 60 km south of the capital, 5 km from the paved road, was the former site of a Peace Corps training center before the program pulled out in 2006. Now, it is a private retreat used by government ministries, NGOs and schools.
In 2006, I had spent 10 weeks there learning the skills I would need to teach English in secondary school in Chad. During the latter half of my training, my fellow volunteers and I had spent weeks commuting from Darda into N'Djamena where we practiced our new skills at different high schools in the capital. I can remember a slow commute, making painstaking progress, by way of detours through villages and jolting movements in the sturdy Land Rovers needed to navigate the dirt roads. Now five years later, the dusty paths have been replaced by new roads connecting the capital to the rest of the countryside, changing the scenery to the point that I’m having trouble associating this luxurious, smooth travel with Chad.
The recent construction of roads in Chad has been a process with ambivalent outcomes, but certainly a mark of progress for this struggling sub-sahelien country...Read more
