" . . . a no-man's land of eternal want . . . "

CCX

 

After “a marvelous breakfast whose chief d’oeuvre was a mushroom omelet supplemented with cups of fine French chocolate,” Earhart and Noonan took to the air before dawn to make their next hop to Fort-Lamy, in the Tchad District of French Equatorial Africa, 1000 miles eastward. 

The Electra at Fort-Lamy on June 12, 1937. The lack of a curious crowd is testament to the remoteness of the place. Today, one in 14 Chadians lives in the city

Today, Fort-Lamy is the city of N’Djamena, and is the capital of the Republic of Chad.*

N’Djamena (Fort-Lamy) today. Despite the modern architecture that dominates the downtown area, most of the city would be recognizable to Earhart and Noonan as the same dusty outpost they knew, were they able to see it again

When Earhart and Noonan reached the city, it was a sprawling but thinly-populated place, whose inhabitants let livestock roam in the dusty streets. The town was younger than either Earhart or Noonan, having been founded in 1900 by the French as a river port at the confluence of the Chari and Nogone Rivers. Most of its trade was with the French Cameroon District across the rivers. It did serve, however, as a market town for the native peoples --- over 200 separate groups --- that made up (and make up) the population of Tchad.

In perhaps too many respects, Chad fulfills all the stereotypes that Westerners hold about many African nations --- aridity, poverty, overpopulation, violence, political corruption,  and a lack of direction. Many economists consider landlocked Chad to be a “Fourth World” nation, a place unable to overcome its many difficulties

Despite its unprepossessing appearance, the French declared Fort-Lamy the capital of Tchad, in part because there were no other towns of any size in the 500,000 square miles of the district, and in part because Fort-Lamy had river access. For the most part, the French colonial administration neglected all of Tchad except for the region immediately around Fort-Lamy, which was given over to cotton production.

Most Chadians, like this girl, live a nomadic and subsistence existence.  The clan and tribe is the basic social unit. The country is also divided by religion --- 55% Muslim, 40% Christian, and 5% Animist --- and the lack of a sense of any national cohesion in Chad has resulted in a history of brutal, sometimes grotesque, violence

Both Amelia and Fred were stunned at the emptiness of the land passing beneath them. The “Landmarks” notations on Noonan’s charts were reduced to such unhelpful phrases as, “Many remains of animals.”  

Of the region, Earhart wrote,

We crossed stretches of country barren beyond words, a no-man’s land of eternal want, where the natives cling tenaciously to an existence almost incomprehensible to Westerners . . . 

*Of all French colonies in Africa between the late 19^th and mid-20^th centuries, Tchad may have been the worst-governed. The French presence was virtually nonexistent in 85% of the country for most of that time. Even in and near the colonial capital the French provided little infrastructure except for their own use, no educational system worth speaking of, and no large-scale irrigation or reclamation projects. The northern Saharan peoples were ignored, the Sahelian people were set against each other by inconsistent colonial administration, and the Sudanian people of the south, particularly the Sara, were openly favored by the French. During both World Wars, Chadian troops served the French. During World War II, though Chad was under formal Vichy control the Free French maintained a powerful presence, so much so that the Luftwaffe bombed Fort-Lamy. When Chad was granted independence in August of 1960, it was without adequate preparation and so it was not long before the country devolved into civil war. The various insurgencies and coups d’etat have continued to this day, leaving Chad among the poorest of all nations. Cell phone usage hovers around 22%, the lowest of any country. The recent discovery of oil reserves in the north may help stabilize Chad, but with the switch to renewable energies on the rise it may not. However, Chad does have a surfeit of one positive resource --- sunshine --- and it may be able to sell power --- however, again in direct competition with its more developed neighbors.