THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

I was nervous about touring N’Djamena – a seething, dusty slum of 700,000 people, mostly dirt roads, one-storey tin shacks, and low cement buildings riddled with bullets from years of civil war.  With its poverty, high population growth, and history of violence, much of N’Djamena was said to be unsafe in the daytime and all of it dangerous at night, even for locals.  The matronly hotel clerk who had sold me a map (a useless investment, I soon learned: streets had no signs) warned me, “Wherever you go here, walk like a man, or thugs will strip you naked and steal your shoes!”

Tayler/Wind