I never got all that far south of Marrakech.
In grad school, while I was on leave without pay from the Agency to finish my MA (ended up not going back), I basically recruited a fellow grad student for them. But when he told me what they offered him (contract rather than staff, and as a NOC in Ndjamena), I told him that I'd turn it down. He ended up going there. Came down with malaria. Wife had a worse problem: amoebic dysentery and she had no resistance to it. They had to return to the States. The doctors told her she could never go anywhere like that again.
I never could figure out why Qadhafi wanted to annex part of Chad. What the hell was he thinking? Wait . . . Qadhafi and thinking don't necessarily fit in the same sentence.
The Europeans who created a bunch of countries that are half Muslim/half Christian/animist didn't do the locals any favors. Frankly, I'm not surprised that Sudan split. Kinda surprised more countries haven't gone the same way. Unlike Europe, the Africans never had a chance to solve those ethnic issues before they became independent countries. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are good examples of what happens when ethnic issues aren't considered and foreign diplomats are in charge of drawing border lines on a map. Every now and then there's even talk that Belgium might split Walloon/Flemish.
