Army life

Livestock and laundry

My uncle François was a French military officer, in artillery if I remember correctly.  He died when I was 10 and my only army-related memory of him (if you can call it that since I wasn't actually there at the time) is the photo of his graduation from the military academy at St Cyr.  I know my great-grandfather served in the first World War, and several uncles during the Vietnam period (although not on the ground there).  I don't believe I have ever talked to any of them about that experience.  Basically all that I know of the military is from movies and a couple of books.  There are many details of army life that I really didn't expect.  Over the past two weeks I spent a lot of time in our more remote camps near the border with Liberia, and I was reminded of some of these things.



The Liberian civil war(s) lasted the better part of twenty years, and ended right about the time the recent unpleasantness started in Cote d'Ivoire, which was a stroke of luck for quite a few young Liberian fighters with not much on their résumé and a lot of time on their hands.  They were more than happy to come over here and take up arms again for the highest bidder, to the understandable resentment of the locals.   Meanwhile, all the Liberian refugees who took shelter here from the fighting there now overlapped with the Ivoirian refugees taking shelter there from the fighting here. And when all of that fighting had more or less simmered down, Ebola broke out over there, but not over here, so no one wanted to go back there any more and everyone here definitely wanted all of those over there to stay put for a while. So the border area is a bit of a mess and it's likely to take a while to sort it out.

As a result we have a number of camps in that area, and I visited two of them for the first time two weeks ago: Grabo and Para.  They are right up in the hinterland along the border, where rule of law is not necessarily the rule.  Those are the only two camps that the Security Unit insists you have a military escort to get to (or the only camps in Sector West at least, I really don't pay any attention to what happens in Sector East, although I believe the Ghanians and Burkinabés are pretty low key).


Bridge on the road to Grabo

It was my first military escort, so I was kind of excited, even though it was pretty routine for them.  It just involved a military pickup with a bench in the back holding three armed but not terribly attentive-looking young soldiers.  A bridge had washed out on the usual road so we took a very complicated route through the oil palm plantations and even stopped to ask the locals for directions at one point.  The locals didn't know where we were going so couldn't help much but they were perfectly friendly.

With all the trouble it takes to get to these camps I shouldn't be surprised at how happy the soldiers were to see us.  They have no internet connection out there and only patchy cellphone coverage, and I honestly don't know if I could stand that for a stretch of several months like they do. They're so visibly delighted to have visitors, you kind of feel like the guy from the Gold Rush days who used to go to Alaska with the 2 week old Seattle newspaper and charge people to listen to him read it aloud. (Please note: I do not charge them for fixing their plumbing.)

Everyone stops to greet us and ask about the work, or salutes if they don't speak the language.  They come over and watch what we're doing, and bring us a drink or a chair.  On some level they're all tourists here like me, and it always makes me smile to see them posing for pictures in front of the camp buildings or tanks or whatever.  I know they'll send them home to their families, just like I do.  The thing that still surprises me most, though, is the farm animals. Every camp has chickens running around and sometimes guinea fowl (this was the first link that came up for them, a bit random, I know), and at one Bangladeshi camp they even have rabbits. I don't remember any from "The Longest Day", but a lot of the young men who went to fight in WWII were from farming backgrounds, just like these guys, so I wonder if there weren't chickens running around the Allies' camps too.



Military salad

The other thing that surprises me is the laundry.  Soldiers here are always washing clothes.  Only the Moroccans seem to have bothered bringing washing machines - the Nigeriens and Bangladeshis do their washing by hand - but everyone hangs their clothes out to dry on any line or surface available, even on the rolls of concertina wire (razor wire) that mark the camp boundaries.  I don't know who washes the officers' clothes: a mystery of military life yet to be solved.



Grabo was the only one of the two camps where we stayed the night, and I got my own special women-only room in a private spot next to the infirmary and a special women-only prefab toilet block some distance away that clearly hadn't been used in months. It was clean, but a lot of spiders and crickets and things looked well installed and quite surprised to see me.  Finding my way from bedroom to bathroom (and back) in the dark without stepping in anything unpleasant was a new and exciting challenge, and one that I won't mind not ever having to do again. Still, the water pressure in the shower was fantastic, and my room was nice and clean and comfortable, and notwithstanding the bugle calls at some ridiculous hour of the morning and the song of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer (being predominantly Muslim countries, their battalions have imams, not chaplains, another departure from my "Band of Brothers"-centric idea of army life), I actually slept quite well.

Note: the goat pictured at the top was in the camp at Para, and that's a bit of an exception. They don't have a good perimeter fence, so all the villagers' farm animals come to snack on the army leftovers, of which there are plenty. They are frankly a bit of a nuisance and the Nigerien commander is not at all happy about them being there. The villagers are pleased though, because they're sure their livestock are safe.

"Forces Armees Nigeriennes" sheets - I want some!

Easter

Palm Sunday procession in Daloa, last week

It's funny to me that here in the country that exports more cacao than any other, there are no chocolate Easter eggs to be seen.  They have them in Abidjan, but in Daloa there was no sign of them anywhere.  I thought I would try to celebrate Easter with the locals, by going to the Easter vigil mass on Saturday night.  Little did I know it's the longest mass of the year.  Here they don't believe in skimping out on that stuff - it lasted four hours.  I probably wouldn't have gone had I known, and I definitely would not have expected to stay awake for the whole thing.  But I was expecting the kind of solemn, soporific grandeur I grew up seeing at church.

This was a whole different experience.  They had a synthesizer, and maracas, and they weren't afraid to use them.  There was singing and low-key hand-clapping throughout, but it didn't really take off until after communion, when they struck up a song that ignited the crowd and suddenly everyone was on their feet, hands in the air, clapping and waving handkerchiefs.  One of the priests led the altar boys down from the front and they danced their way down the main aisle then up one of the side ones and made a couple of laps around the pews, with more and more parishioners joining the dance as they passed, like a giant conga line.  It was sensational.

Private infirmary in Daloa, with
the Grand Mosque in the background

I don't have much of a wardrobe here, and I had tried to look appropriate in my one nice office outfit by wearing earrings and leaving my large, shapeless bag at home.  In my mind that was dressed up.  Unfortunately, it meant I didn't have my camera, so I don't have any evidence.  I wouldn't even have been the only one - I saw at least three locals filming on their cell phones.

Augustine, who went with me, says that this is fairly normal for the big feast days.  All I can say is, if you get the chance, go!  Take a nap and make sure you go to the bathroom beforehand, but go - it's totally worth it.  And don't forget your camera!