I won't name the newspaper or the individual, but when I was filing for the paper in Chad it sent a message saying it was sending someone to replace me - I'd had enough of the place by then and things were pressing at home - and that he was 'a good guy and knew Chad'.
Turned out he was a galloping PITA, deeply ignorant about Chad, with far-from-fluent French. He was a friend of a previous correspondent who had disgraced himself by pretending to have been to places he hadn't, and after I left did the same thing himself more or less. My hotel bill was building up and I needed more money. The geezer didn't bring any money, and had a friend in one of the aid agencies so could stay there for nothing. I had to borrow the money to pay the hotel bill. The newspaper, bad cess to it, said since the hotel bill had been paid what was the problem? It was quite prepared to rip someone off if it could get away with it.
Cost me a lot of money at the time, and took forever to screw the bread out of the paper.
I was awake half of last night remembering this Scheiss and getting in a towering rage all these years after the event. I still remember the prat's smug idiocy and ghastly attempts to pronounce French Rs. I'm a sensitive cat and like my father much given to pointless retrospective anger.
Foreign hacking can be interesting but can take years off your life.
|
|
I tried to add: Chadians I had become friendly with were puzzled by my disgust with my 'friend'. He richly deserved a few years in a no-joke Chadian military jail actually.
|
At the time I quite wanted him to end up dead in the reeking purlieus of the Chari river, along with the many others who had incurred the displeasure of Hissene Habre and even Goukouni Weddeye.
But with hindsight I suppose such a final lesson would have been a bit on the severe side. He was an utter prat but not seriously bad.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Thu 25 Aug 16 at 16:24
|
|
Apart from enjoying the colour of the anecdote, I'm SO recording "reeking purlieus" in my commonplace book of plagiarism for my future use. Thank you.
|
The Chad Valley was a delightful place. Full of toys.
|
Ghastly attempts to pronounce French 'R's...
Surely it's not that difficult to pronounce ' Cul ' ....
|
|
The pong of rotting human bodies is pretty grave.
|
|
Did you ever find out what happened to him ultimately, AC?
|
No. I didn't care and I didn't want to know.
Whatever happened, he's probably still annoying someone.
:o}
|
|
I should have added that the geezer's prose style and writing ability wouldn't have got him an O level distinction.
|
Annoying experience in Chad - Armel Coussine
