Biltine

Sunrise near Haj El Fassil

The Village People, Chad style

Bulk demolition at Gamara village, 17 August

A Tchadian village from a bird's eye view

Blog update on Saturday 18th August. I'm in N'Djamena at the moment on an admin weekend. We have spent the last three weeks doing EOD callout work in Biltine, a municipal seat in the eastern district of the same name which borders Darfur.

An OG7 found by locals

This kid showed us some bits of RPGs, an empty mortar bomb and a 12.7mm bullet

White marks show where kids have thrown stones at this 106mm HEAT shell..

.. resulting in accidents like this, where this child (with a fragmentation wound on his foot) was the only survivor. Four other children were killed. They were probably banging a rocket.

My spacebar and 'c' keys are sticky thanks to the dust in the field. I've been reading the Alistair Campbell diaries ('The Blair Years') which is a right riveting read. It's almost like it has just hit me that an era is over, Blair is gone, the leader of Cool Britannia and projected as the young lovestruck PM in 'Love Actually'.

Listening to the new Manics album, sounds okay but not as good as Know Your Enemy. Talking of which the enemy and Interpol have some good tunes. Got the latest Avril Lavigne album but so far I'd rather listen to goats bleating and Chadians snoring than hearing teen-rock. And I've heard a lot of the Chadians at night. Despite the 0430 wake ups, they just make a racket every night, they don't sleep because of their sugar laden tea that they may as well have on intravenous drip.

This week spent mostly driving around, finding less dangerous items and getting bogged in a lot. I lost it a few times with the drivers who were stupidly 'driving quickly to get through the wet bits', which at one point saw two of our three vehicles get stuck in the sand twice each within 300m. They just end up getting stuck further in to a large wet area.

My driver mechanic Abba takes a mouthfull of the good stuff whilst sorting out a diesel filter change

I'm now thinking about moving on to other places and later returning to Biltine. This job is different from mineclearance because we rely on locals to find UXO. It is not feasible to clear an entire area ourselves and keep people away from it until we've finished. So popping back again to check is probably the way forward. If we're not finding anything here, we could be reducing the threat in other places before returning to check.

In Gamara, a village 15km south of Biltine, nothing had been found for a week. Then yesterday we did a bulk dem there of some 122mms found in Abeche (below) and some locals alerted us to a 107mm rocket location, and we also found a 90mm HEAT. So, when do we call it quits here?

Had a bit of a recce to a village 9km south of Abeche, the country's second city. Some city- no tarmac roads. Had to grip our pilot for not maintaining comms so we could not work. George had to turn around from his mission to Am Zoer.

At the village, where there were dozens of boys at a muslim college, we found a blind 122mm rockets and a 106mm HEAT round right by the main road and between mudhuts. Mad that this place hasn't been cleared already. Lots of scratches on the HEAT round where kids had been throwing stones at the thing.

I think George and our Belgian pilot friend are having some difficulties understanding each other. This probably wasn't helped by the fact that on Thursday night, they both traipsed into the darkness for half an hour and failed to find the great big white Cessna. In fact, George says they didn't even find the runway, which is right behind our house. Things are so much more difficult when (1) you cannot speak the local lingo fluently (2) not everyone speaks the local lingo (3) the translators make mistakes (4) there are no street lights..

The nomads here are very friendly. Many times this week we have been driving along and waved down. After a barrage of al hamdu li laahs, they always present us with some sweet camel milk in a bowl. I've had no upsets yet due to camel milk but profess to have tactfully limited my intake.

Story of the week

Camel milk.. qui sera sera

Tried to download Lost series 3 episode 1 off the net but connection broke. Unfortunately my DVD planning was poor- I brought along very few films and the ones I brought include Out of Africa, The English Patient and Lawrence of Arabia. Hardly escapism when you're actually in the desert. I'm missing Helaena, our home and our pets, even more for the fact that she has all the decent DVDs. Today Helaena sent me pictures of the flat in Delhi, which looks awesome compared to my pad at the moment. Our loo is in dire need of disinfectant. When you go for a pee a flotilla of flies rise up from the long drop hole. I want to throw a stick of C4 down there to vaporise the little critters.

Roger ate some camel last night. He said it was like beef 'but had an aftertaste of piss'. Not sure where he was going with that, it tasted perfectly okay as a red meat to me. I stuck with 'capitane' fish. Had two beers and a caparinha and was KO'd before long. Roger is excellent company, a former Swiss army officer now working as a UN logistician. As a Warrant Officer at the age of 24, he had to work with British WOs of the same rank in Kosovo.. all of whom were dubious about him because in the British Army WO is a rank that is usually achieved after 12 - 15 years of service!

A 'ship of the sea' having an easy ride

This week we're heading off to the oolloo a bit, no mobile reception and 100s of kms of rutted wet roads. I'm off to a place called Iriba and then Bahai, which is not on any maps I have seen (bar UNHCR maps) and is on the border with Sudan i.e. North Darfur. More in two weeks.

Easy to lose, apparently