Thoughts far, far away

It's halftime at the Super Bowl, but my thoughts are divided. While I am watching the game, I am also thinking about my daughter Hillary, who is in Chad. As you probably know, "rebels" have been attacking the capital, N'Djamena. (I put "rebels" in quotation marks, because some sources assert that they are agents of the Sudanese and that the rebellion is an extension of the conflict in Darfur. However, the government of president Idris Deby has faced internal resistance several times in recent years.)

So far, from what we can learn, the remote eastern town where Hillary is based, Bahai (spelled Bahay on Maporama), has not been threatened, although the BBC reported an attack on Adre, a town about 300 km of Bahai.

Yesterday, Hillary's mother forwarded an email message from her, prefaced by this from Hillary:

ADVANCE NOTICE:  When you read this message, please do NOT worry!  We
are absolutely fine out here in the middle of nowhere hinterlands of
Eastern Chad, with nary a problem in sight.  Contingency plans are
being made should anything change.  But, please, no panicking!

This is so typical of Hillary, who has worked in Thailand, Cambodia and Burma to make the world better. Slim as a pencil, she's tough as iron. She has been doing the sort of thing her father wanted to do in a younger day--but she has far more courage than I. She's also a much better writer.

I'm not going to quote her entire message here, because I don't have her permission, but I don't think she'd object if I shared what she said about what the cold is like in the desert:

It is shockingly cold here now and though temperatures don't drop as low as they would in the U.S. or Europemid-winter, the wind rips through you. Nothing is constructed forcold weather—I don't think Chadians even know what insulation is—so being inside is just as bad as being out, and sometimes worse. I know now what it means to be chilled down to your bones: a cold that works its way under your skin, into every part of you, and settles in for the duration.

Tonight we sit in front of the TV wearing every available layer of clothing: long underwear, flannel shirt, wool sweater, heavyweight fleece and cashmere socks. We're huddled under thick Chinese blankets, the weighty velveteen kind slung over beds all across Asia (and Chad, too, apparently), awaiting each newsflash for word of any changes in the situation.