More Expensive to Live in Chad than the USA???
As we have been raising support and awareness for our life in Chad, sometimes my head starts spinning with numbers. People ask us what the population is (11,227,208). How hot does it get in Chad? (120'ish ) How many hours does it take to get there? (15 + hours direct). And on and on...
Often, we talk about the cost for our family to live in Chad, and I hear my husband say..."It's going to cost us more to live in Chad than it costs us to live here." That's when I feel that the numbers have put me over the top. "Surely that just can't be true," I'm thinking to myself. "There's no way that it would cost more to live in a cinder block house, with no electricity, no running water, no American conveniences, than it does to live in our "loaded" American home." When you measure up item to item, no, it doesn't cost more to live in Chad, but when you compare what we could live off of here, versus what we need for us to survive there, it does cost more. Think of it this way, now we don't spend $15-20,000 dollars to fly "home" every 3 years or so. We don't spend $100 a month on internet. Our health insurance is subsidized by our work. And on and on...
And on top of that, we just read a recent article saying that N'Djamena was on the top 10 list of most expensive cities in the world for ex-patriates to live in. It's amazing what poverty, government corruption, lots of oil, and the UN can do for the economy. Read more on the article here.
Although we won't be living in N'Djamena, and it's highly unlikely that we will be eating any fast food (unless you consider how fast the chicken runs before you kill it. :) We will have to pay quite a bit of "skin tax", and the fact is, it costs a lot to live in Chad. But does it really matter in the end...our Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and we have never lacked anything we've needed. I can't imagine that it will be any different when we move to Chad.
Often, we talk about the cost for our family to live in Chad, and I hear my husband say..."It's going to cost us more to live in Chad than it costs us to live here." That's when I feel that the numbers have put me over the top. "Surely that just can't be true," I'm thinking to myself. "There's no way that it would cost more to live in a cinder block house, with no electricity, no running water, no American conveniences, than it does to live in our "loaded" American home." When you measure up item to item, no, it doesn't cost more to live in Chad, but when you compare what we could live off of here, versus what we need for us to survive there, it does cost more. Think of it this way, now we don't spend $15-20,000 dollars to fly "home" every 3 years or so. We don't spend $100 a month on internet. Our health insurance is subsidized by our work. And on and on...
And on top of that, we just read a recent article saying that N'Djamena was on the top 10 list of most expensive cities in the world for ex-patriates to live in. It's amazing what poverty, government corruption, lots of oil, and the UN can do for the economy. Read more on the article here.
Although we won't be living in N'Djamena, and it's highly unlikely that we will be eating any fast food (unless you consider how fast the chicken runs before you kill it. :) We will have to pay quite a bit of "skin tax", and the fact is, it costs a lot to live in Chad. But does it really matter in the end...our Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and we have never lacked anything we've needed. I can't imagine that it will be any different when we move to Chad.
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