Dan,

I presume that he was up in the Tibesti mountains then. Which is in the northeast.

As for being fired upon, that's just the way it is in Chad, and has been for just about forever even at the best of times! Security problems or not! The day we crossed over into Darfur in Sudan from Adré in Chad, we were the only ones to make it to the Sudanese side without being held up at gunpoint. There were 4 other vehicles (locals) crossing that day, and all of them were robbed. Luckily, no one was shot. The thing is that there is a kind of "no mans land" between the countries where neither governments bother to uphold the law. So it seems the bandits generally have free reign. And while crossing the country from west to east, we were constantly stopped at checkpoints where they (it varied between police, military and obscure para-military groups) enjoyed sticking the barrels of their AKs into our faces. This is rarely done in other African countries. It was of course just to intimidate us to get bribes, and the chances of them actually firing was close to zero. So they never got any bribes, but always sent us on our way when they eventually tired of us talking barely understandable French with them. The trick was that we had just as much time to waste as them. Or even more.

The Chadiennes are in fact known to generally be more agressive then people from their nabouring countries. Or so we were told by locals in differant countries in that region. And our own experiances in Chad confirmed that this is true. It's too bad, cause I know there are lots of interesting places there to see.

Ps. Wasn't it Lefoul who got hit in the arm by a spear thrown by a Chadienne sheepherder a few years ago? Or was that another French PH???