Moundou, Sarh & the South

The south lay beyond the reach of the Saharan trade routes and was for centuries the raiding ground of the Muslim sultanates to the north — Baguirmi, Ouaddaï and, in the 1890s, Rabih az-Zubayr — whose slave raids depopulated whole districts and left a deep distrust of the north. The Sara and their neighbours lived in scattered villages rather than states, organised by lineage and by initiation societies.

French rule after 1900 transformed the region. Fort-Archambault, founded on the Chari in 1899 and renamed Sarh in 1972, became a garrison town, and from the late 1920s the colonial administration imposed compulsory cotton growing on southern farmers, with harsh penalties for those who resisted. Missions and schools followed, so that at independence in 1960 the educated elite, the army's officers and the first president, François Tombalbaye, were southerners. His campaign of cultural "authenticity" in the 1970s included forcing civil servants through the Sara yondo initiation, before he was killed in a coup in 1975.

After northern forces took N'Djamena in 1979 and 1980, the south became the base of resistance, and fighting between government troops and southern rebels in the early 1980s, including massacres of civilians in 1984, left lasting scars. Oil changed the economy from 2003, when the Doba fields began exporting through the pipeline to Kribi in Cameroon.

The Sara, a group of related peoples including the Ngambaye around Moundou, the Sar around Sarh and the Mbaye, Madjingaye and Gulay, form Chad's largest ethnic bloc, and Ngambaye and Sar are widely spoken alongside French. Chadian Arabic is heard in markets but matters less here than anywhere else in the country. Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, is the majority faith, often combined with ancestral practices, and there are Muslim communities in the towns.

The yondo, the Sara initiation in which young men spend a period in the bush learning the secret knowledge of their elders, remains a cornerstone of identity in many villages, and it is not discussed openly with outsiders. Dance, drums and balafons accompany funerals, weddings and harvests, and church choirs are a central part of town life. Chiefs of cantons still arbitrate land disputes.

Southerners often describe themselves in contrast to the north, and the old tensions over power, land and religion colour politics. Visitors are welcomed warmly, and sharing millet beer is a common gesture of friendship.

Moundou and Sarh are the two main cities, each with over 100,000 people, and Doba, Koumra, Kelo and Laï are the other important towns. Moundou is the industrial centre of the south, with the Gala brewery, cotton ginning and a cotton-oil mill, while Sarh depends on trade, government and the nearby sugar estate at Banda.

Most people farm: sorghum, millet, cassava, groundnuts and sesame for the family, cotton for cash. The cotton sector has been through repeated crises, and oil money from the Doba basin has brought jobs and roads without ending poverty in the surrounding villages, where land lost to oil installations is a source of grievance.

The south also shelters large numbers of refugees who fled violence in the Central African Republic, in camps around Goré, as well as Chadians who returned from that country. Competition between settled farmers and herders moving south with their cattle during the dry season is the most pressing local issue.

Southern cooking uses the region's greater rainfall. Boule is made from millet, sorghum or cassava, and sauces draw on okra, sesame, groundnuts, cassava and sorrel leaves, dried or fresh fish from the Logone and the Chari, and bush meat or chicken on special occasions. Shea butter, pressed from the nuts of wild trees, is a common cooking fat.

Mangoes, guavas and citrus grow around the towns, and Sarh is known for its fish from the Chari, sold smoked or grilled along the river. Groundnut paste thickens many stews, and roasted groundnuts and sesame bars are everyday snacks.

The south is Chad's beer country. Bili-bili, a cloudy home-brewed millet beer, is sold by women brewers from their compounds and drunk from calabashes, and Gala, the lager brewed in Moundou, is found in bars across the country.

Moundou, on the Mbéré near its meeting with the Logone Occidental, is the gateway to the south: a sprawling low-rise town with a busy central market, a cathedral, riverbanks used by fishermen and washers, and the brewery that produces Gala. Downstream the Logone valleys of Logone-Occidental, Logone-Oriental and Tandjilé open into wide floodplains of cotton, sorghum and groundnut fields, with villages of round thatched huts and the river town of Laï in Tandjilé.

East of the Logone lie Doba, the centre of the oil basin, and Koumra in Mandoul, a market town among millet fields and shea trees. Sarh, the region's other city, sits on the Chari with shaded colonial-era avenues, a riverside market and views over the water.

Manda National Park, on the Chari near Sarh, protects a stretch of Sudanian savannah, woodland and riverine forest where antelope, buffalo, primates and river birds survive despite years of poaching; access is by track and requires local arrangements. Beyond it, the Chari and its tributaries run through gallery forest towards the Central African Republic border, a remote area best left alone at present.