Men played drums made from tinned shell casings, men and women swayed, girl- children danced, God became flesh and wine.On Monday he headed out to his flocks in the eastern desert. The only hotel offers, at pounds 18, dirty, airless rooms that would be over-priced at a fiver But Faya is remote, so everything is overpriced there. Everything except the smuggled corn oil, tinned fish and petrol on sale at the Libyan Market.Bessita is a big man, 6ft-something, fleshy and charismatic. On Sunday morning, he celebrated Mass in Faya’s shady, shoebox-shaped church, his vast form in crisp white linen looming over the leaner congregation. But there are artillery holes in its water-tower and there is no electricity. Chicken claws, goats’ hooves and sardine cans litter the sand of the streets You watch out for the scorpions, whose sting can kill a man. Those thousands of tawny dots were trees, and trees meant water.Faya has the makings of a popular tourist destination – a striking setting, some pleasant, rather Moorish buildings, a halo of palm fronds; it is close to desert, mountains and lakes.

I will never forget reaching the top of an escarpment and looking down on the desert town of Faya. We were crossing a plain where sheets of perilously soft sand alternated with tooth-loosening broken gravel The heat was intense. We came upon a broken-down truck whose inhabitants rushed forward with empty water-bottles, and le pere took their grateful driver aboard Then we ran out of water ourselves. We crossed great tracts of desert, with dunes where the wind covered our traces within minutes of passing. I met Father Bessita, whose parish must be one of the world’s remotest – the tiny Christian communities scattered among the Arab tribes of the Chadian desert. If I would pay for the diesel, he’d take me with him on one of his thrice-yearly jaunts.We drove into the semi-arid Sahel, and then across savannah, where we saw – and, rather to my discomfort, hunted – gazelle.

Its market sprawls around a large mosque, and there’s a wealthier, tree-lined avenue with banks, a patisserie, and epiceries selling wine and tinned fois gras If you want to hire a vehicle, you can – at a price But I got lucky. In the Eighties it suffered famine, became known as the world’s poorest country, and received a fleeting audience with Bob Geldof. Today Chad seems to be stable, but it urgently needs to develop its tiny economy. And it would love to see a few more tourists.The capital, N’Djamena, has the colonnaded, sleepy air of a Mediterranean backwater. But in the Chadian Sahara you’re lucky to find a row of marker posts leading you through the sands, or around a minefield.