China’s investments in Africa were regarded, by Tamara’s bosses in Washington and Tab’s in Paris, with the same mixture of awestruck admiration and deep mistrust. Beijing spent billions, and got things done, but what were they really after?
Out of the corner of her eye Tamara saw a flash in the distance, a gleam as of sunlight on water. ‘Are we approaching the lake?’ she asked Tab. ‘Or was that a mirage?’
‘We must be close,’ he said.
‘Look out for a turning on the left,’ she said to Ali, and then she repeated it in Arabic. Both Tamara and Tab were fluent in Arabic and French, the two main languages of Chad.
‘Le voilà,’ Ali replied in French. Here it is.
The car slowed as it approached a junction marked only by a pile of stones.
They turned off the road onto a track across gravelly sand. In places it was hard to distinguish the track from the desert around it, but Ali seemed confident. In the distance Tamara glimpsed patches of green, smudged by heat haze, presumably trees and bushes growing by the water.
Beside the road Tamara saw the skeleton of a long-dead Peugeot pickup truck, a rusting body with no wheels or windows; and soon there were other signs of human habitation: a camel tied to a bush, a mongrel dog with a rat in its mouth, and a scatter of beer cans, bald tyres and ripped polythene.
They passed a vegetable patch, plants in neat straight lines being irrigated by a man with a watering can, then they came to a village, fifty or sixty houses spread randomly, with no pattern of streets. Most of the dwellings were traditional one-room huts, with circular mud-brick walls and tall pointed roofs of palm leaves. Ali drove at walking pace, threading the car between the houses, avoiding barefoot children and horned goats and outdoor cooking fires.
He stopped the car and said: ‘Nous sommes arrivés.’ We have arrived.
Tamara said: ‘Pete, would you please put the carbine on the floor? We want to look like students of ecology.’
‘Sure thing, Ms Levit.’ He put the gun by his feet, with its stock hidden under his seat.
Tab said: ‘This used to be a prosperous fishing village, but look how far away the water is now – a mile, at least.’
The settlement was heartbreakingly poor, the poorest place Tamara had ever seen. It bordered a long, flat beach that had presumably been underwater once. Windmills that had pumped water to the fields now stood far from the lake, derelict, their sails turning pointlessly. A herd of skinny sheep grazed a patch of scrub, watched by a little girl with a stick in her hand. Tamara could see the lake glittering in the distance. Raffia palms and moshi bushes grew on the near shore. Low islets dotted the lake. Tamara knew that the larger islands served as hideouts for the terrorist gangs who plagued the inhabitants, stealing what little they had and beating any who tried to stop them. People who were already impoverished were made absolutely destitute.
Tab said: ‘What are those people doing in the lake, do you know?’
There were half a dozen women standing in the shallows, scooping the surface with bowls, and Tamara knew the answer to Tab’s question. ‘They’re skimming edible algae from the surface. We call it spirulina but their word is dihé. They filter it then dry it in the sun.’
‘Have you tried it?’
She nodded. ‘It tastes awful but apparently it’s nutritious. You can buy it in health-food shops.’
‘I’ve never heard of it. It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that appeals to the French palate.’
‘You know it.’ Tamara opened the door and stepped out. Away from the car’s air-conditioning, the atmosphere struck her like a burn. She pulled her scarf forward on her head to shade her face. Then she took a photo of the beach with her phone.
Tab got out of the car, putting a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, and stood beside her. The hat did not suit him – in fact, it looked a bit comical – but he did not seem to care. He was well dressed but not vain. She liked that.
They both studied the village. Among the houses were cultivated plots striped with irrigation channels. The water had to be brought a long way, Tamara realized, and she felt depressingly sure that it was the women who carried it. A man in a jalabiya seemed to be selling cigarettes, chatting amiably with the men, flirting a little with the women. Tamara recognized the white packet with the gold-coloured sphinx head: it identified an Egyptian brand called Cleopatra, the most popular in Africa. The cigarettes were probably smuggled or stolen. Several motorcycles and motor scooters were parked outside the houses, and one very old Volkswagen Beetle. In this country the motorcycle was the most popular form of personal transport. Tamara took more pictures.