Visited the palace of the Sultan the other day with some visitors, and I brought Isaac along. The Maba Sultanate dates back nearly 400 years, when it split off from the Sultanate of Darfur which encompassed western Sudan and eastern Chad. When the French finally conquered the region in the early 20th Century, the sultanate was all but destroyed. A puppet sultan was put in place to do the bidding of the French. But after Chad’s independence in 1960, the sultanate was restored. Today it exists, not officially as part of the Chadian government, but alongside the government. The sultan is allowed to run his own Islamic court to decide local matters, and is still very influential in the region. He has the traditional palace, where he no longer lives, but instead lives just across the street. His black Hummer is parked outside. And his pet ostrich is still kept inside the palace walls, fenced in (barely) and strutting around like he owns the place.
Isaac and Lillian pose in front of the ostrich.