This morning like every morning I wake up early with a single, burning thought in my mind: I must find butane gas. It might seem a trivial thing, but here in N’Djamena it’s an almost-daily struggle, an endurance event, a burden that we all must bear. We have no choice.
The authorities here in Chad have forbidden the cutting of trees for firewood or the use of coal. They say it’s to do with the environment. Fundamentally, it’s a decision I understand: deforestation is a scourge, and the environment needs to be protected. At the same time, the prohibition puts many families in an extremely vulnerable position. Butane gas, which is supposed to be the alternative, has become a rare commodity—precious, even. Its scarcity makes life hard.
At the best of times a 6-kilo canister—a bouteil as we call it—costs 1,750 francs directly from the supplier, and 2,000 francs from the traders who sell it in various places around town. But when there’s a shortage, prices rise to 2,500 francs, 3,000 francs…. even four or five thousand. And if you can’t find it, you can’t buy it.
I still remember the first time I had to spend my day wandering the city in search of gas. I’d left home with my empty bouteil hoping to get it filled up at a place not far from where I live. There, they told me that their delivery for the day hadn’t turned up yet. I went to another quartier. Same answer. And so began a journey through the streets of N’Djamena, from store to store, my expectant heart full of hope, my arms more and more tired.
I’m not the only one. Every day I see men, women, young people, even the aged, pacing the streets with their empty canisters, in search of gas. Sometimes passers-by exchange the latest rumours: “They’ve just delivered to the store by Dembé market”, “Go to Chagoua! They had some this morning”… It’s a network of mutual assistance born of mutual need, a system of solidarity between disillusioned citizens.
But why is it happening? Why does it keep happening? Every day the question troubles me a little more. The country imports gas, for sure. But it produces it too, in N’Djamena, Abeché, Moundou, Sahr. What’s happened to the distribution networks? Is it a logistical problem? Corruption? Or is it just bad management?
There’s a shortage of petrol too in this country—an oil-producing nation. The opposition points to videos of lines of Toyota pick-ups with battered barrels driving towards the border with Sudan. They’ve called for public action against the ‘mafia system’ behind it. Is that it?
I don’t have the answers. But I feel the consequences. If I can’t find gas, I can’t cook. If I can’t cook, my children go to school with empty bellies. And sometimes, in desperation, I’m forced to scavenge for wood in the outskirts of the city, risking arrest or a fine simply in order to be able to prepare a warm meal.
It affects our health, our morale, our life. It forces us into impossible choices: to economise on food so as to try and save enough to buy gas on the black market, or to take other measures, against the law. It’s not a matter of what to cook, it’s a matter of survival.
I dream of the day I won’t have to walk through town like a pilgrim searching for gas. The day when the state will realise the seriousness of it all and put in place policies to make supply stable and fair. The day when decisions made in the name of ecology are accompanied with concrete solutions to the problems of subsistence, adapted to those who are just getting by, day by day.
Tomorrow, and until that day arrives, I will pick up my empty cannister, I will knock on doors, ask around, search, hope. Because here, in N’Djamena, that is our everyday. And until it changes, I will walk, canister in hand, my heart full of resignation.
N’Djamena is the capital of Chad, close to the border with Cameroon and Nigeria. In 1900 the city was given the name Fort Lamy, after a French colonial military officer. In 1973 Chadian President François Tombalbaye renamed it N’Djamena —after the Arabic “place of rest”—as part of his campaign of Tchaditude in which he also changed his own first name. It lies in a region long at the crossroads of trans-African trade.
