some frame grabs

If cruelty is beauty then the landscape around here is like consummation.

From djib country

This guy came up to us on the highway and got psyched for a piece of candy:

From djib country

And God made the ground like asphalt:

From djib country

OK. Looks like a marmot, but has hooves. This little guy, a hyrax, shares an ancestor with the elephant and the manatee:

From djib country

I went to visit Ann in Ali Sabbieh, where she was interviewing refugees, getting their stories. This is the outskirts of the big settlement an hour away from the refugee camp. It looks post apocalyptic, but its not. There is no coming back from the apocalypse

From djib country

Ali Sabbieh, equally close to Somaliland and Ethiopia. Me and Ann walked around after she finished work at Ali Abdeh

Walking back to our hotel from the office. Note the pride:

From djib country

This goat was just born, had to step in the afterbirth to get this shot:

From djib country

Djoy

The spirit of Christmas has descended. Djibouti was colon-ized by the French and when they left, its hard to say what was left behind to enrich the country. As is the case, I'm sure with any colon-ial endeavor. French plumbing, e.g. may or may not be like the plumbing here, which separates us from sewage by a layer of asphalt. Most of the time.


Nevertheless, I surmised that the French restaurants around here in Downtown Djibouti-ville would be run by stalwart Gaullish entrepeneurs and retain actual French chefs. So I talked Ann into roving down into the nearest one, even though she was not excited by the prospect. For vegetarians, I guess there is not much typically on offer. For meateaters, there is some serious weirdness. In front of the place, we saw this guy:



We go in, not much happening. They send us upstairs with the others. We try to find a table where the three unnecessary airconditioners are not triangulating on our heads, but the only table meeting that criteria is 5 feet from the toilet, which has no door.

We opt for a table by the stairs. I am unsuccessful in filtering out Ann's complaints about the AC blowing on her face and one waitress turns one of the AC machines off, and then another one turns on a secret fourth one that drives cool air into Ann's ear. We note small children in the room shivering and covering themselves with napkins, for warmth, from other tables, and finally get the secret fourth turned down.

I have been focussing on the menu. I know there must be some nice meaty things in here, its all in French, though. The steaks are obvious, but frankly, every piece of beefsteak I have tried in this country tastes vaguely of shit. To the point where it doesn't repel me so much anymore, I am beginning to find different qualities in shit taste. Not into this at the moment, Ann points out on the menu the pork loin. I think yes. Granted, haven't seen any pigs for three months. Have seen cows, but mostly goats. Not one single chicken. The waitress comes up and asks if we want a menu in English. Ann is totally confident in her command of the language, as am I. I have decided on the pork loin, so we are like: "Non".

They bring some fresh bread, no butter, and some other tablespoons of something and then comes the meal. The pork Loin looks small to me. Like a sausage. I know it is not a pork loin or a sausage that civilized people would eat upon the first cut, as the aroma comes out and saturates my senses.




After the first bite of this "pork loin" I reminisced:
I remember every time someone would leave Kibondo when we were in Tanzania, they would have a big goat bbq. You would get beer for a while as they roasted it, and when it would smell perfect and you got hungry for it, the line for food would start. I would be totally salivating from the smell, and get in line immediately. But after the first time, when I got a bowl of the stuff they offered before the bbq was ready, a stewy soup. I learned that they char the good parts beyond recognition and offer a bunch of pieces of intestine and stew that smells like crap and tastes pretty gaggy, like it takes some serious will power not to gag for me. And intestines are really chewy. I started to lay out the pieces in front of me that wouldn't chew down and wonder what their functions were, because they were clear examples of anatomically functional adaptations. But Ann was sitting next to me and she said "If you don't get that away from me I will throw up"

So I pretty quick wolfed down the sausage and washed it with rose(yeah, we totally drink pink wine here) and french fries, fully suspecting I was eating intestine. The parts of the pig that don't get into the hot dog. The unclean parts. I googled "Disgusting French Foods" when I got home and found out that my dinner actually made the list of "Stinkiest Foods"

Take a pig colon and slice up the other intestines around it and stick them in the colon. I was eating a pigs entire asshole. I hope its not true that you are what you eat. But fron the way the french around here act towards us, it may be the case.

Planete Hollywood

There is a Planet Holly wood here in Djiboutiville. Not according to the thrice bankrupt company founded by Robert Earl, former president and CEO of the Hard Rock Cafe, with the cash from Hollywood stars Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

From djib country

The logo is consistent, and there are pictures of stars in this "Planete Hollywood" but the service is typical of downtown Djibouti.

I ordered a Double Cheese Burger and got it. You would recognize its ilk if you have ever microwaved a single cheeseburger at an AM\PM Mini Mart. I peeled the top bun back and showed the semi hot Djiboutian waitress the single layer of of debatable meat patty. I said "I ordered a double burger. Double. This is SINGLE." She said "Djibouti Double." She didn't even smile. But she's right. Here in Djibouti they gladly charge you double, triple for nothing extra. You get more for less and nothing for more sometimes, I guess.

This country should be prosperous right now. It has a huge port and it is the only port that Ethiopia can use. Ethiopia used to think it had its own port in Eritrea, but the war put a lid on that jar. So many trucks move through here.

Many trucks, many military personnel. But the government here gouges as much as it can, and rather than taking advantage of a momentary window to create a vital economy, the gov't here chooses to squeeze everyone until they have to leave.

That is what is meant by a Djibouti Double. Nothing more for twice the price.

There is, in the same building as the one we live in, a "Djibouti Olympic Committee." It is right next to the disco "Club Hermes" which Ann and I have started to call "Club Herpes" because there are a lot of Ethiopian Hos up in that joint.

Update: I finally gave in and went back to Planete Hollywood to get a burger, this time I ordered two single burgers, thinking to double up the meat patties and toss the bun. On the menu, the single burger is 900DJF ($4.80) and the "double" is 1300DJF ($7.80). So I get the two burgers and they are exactly the same as the "double" I got twice before, as I pretty much expected. Then I pull the one meat patty from one, trying hard not to look at the yellow lettuce, and stick it in the other bun. I look up and the waitress looks astonished. "Why didn't you order the double?" I had to laugh as I tried and failed to explain to her...

whalesharkskunk

Whale sharks are the biggest fish in the world, 40 to 50 something feet. They have brownish beige coloring on top with white checkerboard or constellation patterns of white. In Kenya they call them "papa shillingi" because the white parts look like coins(shillings), and in Japan they call it "geger lintang," which means "stars on the back".

You can go snorkeling and harass these majestic animals here in Djibouti if you've got the cash. If you are more ecologically inclined, like Ann and I, you can shell out $180 to ride on a boat for 6 hours and NOT EVEN SEE their starry asses.

The boat:



wooden, my backpack smelled of diesel, washed the beach towels we brought three times and they still smell that way, quaintly primitive for 18 minutes and ridiculously inadequate for the 5:42 after that.

After a three hour motor, watching the crew cut up fresh fish into kebab sized chunks, assuming that was going to be our lunch, we arrived at a typically trash strewn beach which was apparently the milieu of our esteemed and large quarry. One group of 6 got off the big wooden boat about an hour before we arrived, and took a launch. As the wooden boat anchored (there was no name upon its bow or stern) a launch pulled up to take the rest of us to see the whalesharks. Our cadre consisted of me and ann and one amercan rancher from cali named phil and 13 french soldiers, 2 of whom were women. We roved around in the launch randomly for an hour and saw no sign of the checkerback. Made it back to the boat and I was alright, anticipating the awesome kebab lunch, but amazingly, even as they were finishing cooking those kebabs on the boat, we were offered cold cheesy croissants and salami sandwiches. I assumed they were appetizers for the kebabs and rice which was sizzling inches from my fist, but then they scooped all that tastiness into big platters, loaded it into boats and headed towards the beach. I looked at Ann, what the fuck? is that for dinner? Long story short, NO. Nothing.

Then the six who took the other launch reappeared, all flush with their viewing and swimming with the whale sharks, and proceeded to head to the beach to eat all that I watched sizzle and mature on the coals. How I tried not to hate them. How I failed. One 65 year old guy that will probably outlive me had a baseball hat that said "Crystal Mountain"

For us though, No whalesharks, no kebabs, weird food tease and I can no longer in good conscience recommend this sucky Djibouti travel bureau called "Lagon Bleu" which is blue lagoon spelled wrong which was a decent movie starring brooke shields before this horrible incident and now is only a bague whaleshark shaped inkblot on the dark part of my soul.

We did see a cuttlefish, the water was really clear.

On our way back, we got offloaded from the wooden nameless boat onto a fiberglass 19 foot long 6 foot beam piece of crap with an out board. The sun was going down and we were in an open ocean (indian ocean) shipping lane with no running lights and no life preservers. I had my arm around Ann as I realized that our lives were forfeit because I had not taken the proper precautions and the sky darkened and we rode ten foot swells toward the barely and less discernible lights of Djiboutiville on the wrong side of the channel bouys.

No big deal.

End of the Square

I was working here today, on this west end of Menelik Square in Djibouti city, when a great shout rose above the daily noise of horns honking and people yelling at each other and competing mosque megaphones blasting out calls to prayer and monotonic sermonizing.

I took a look from the balcony and saw the police bus and a bunch of police. Broke out the video camera. Round up:



I think it may have been students protesting the kleptocracy around here but Ann thought it might be refugees.

It struck me that I had noticed this big police bus and couldn't figure out why they always parked it right in the square every day. There is a second police truck, a cab with a flat bed and a cage around it, with corrugated metal on top. Sometimes they park that here. Even though the city has a downtown spread that might accomodate 500,000 people, there is no industry here for the common person. The gov't sucks up all the cash from the port and it seems like the actual population is around 40,000, despite the municipal footprint. So I couldn't figure out why they would need TWO big trucks to haul away offenders every night. I found out today.

Djibouti borders Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somaliland. Ethiopia is the one you want to be aligned with around here, its big and moving in the right direction, and it has its own commodities market. Eritrea, to the north of Djibouti, has a port, one of the main reasons that Ethiopia didn't want to lose it, a reason that spent lives in a bitter war called civil by the Ethiopians and defensive by the Eritreans, supposedly ending in 2000. Djibouti is Ethiopia's port, and that's why Djibouti gets great deals on power,transport,Qat and military support from Ethiopia. Also, there is a big detention center in Djibouti for any native Eritreans, especially males of military age. Eritrean conscription is mandatory and lifelong.

But Djibouti doesn't get enough cash to maintain that detention center so the Djibouti police periodically head downtown and fill up a couple of police cattle trucks with refugees from Somalia who are downtown at the wrong time and use them to muck out the Eritrean detainees stalls and generally act as slave labor at the detainee center in the neutral zone between Djibouti and wherever, until their paperwork is discovered within the UN's statute of limitations, about 2 weeks...

Which totally explains why the police are always hanging out downtown but doesn't explain why the refugees keep getting caught, since getting caught is kind of the anathema of being a refugee. Once you get caught, you aren't a refugee anymore, but do you want to be?

I went to the store today to get some food and all the guys in the city always yell stuff, hard not to laugh, like:

wassup brutha?
rambo tu!
YES!
NICE! yes?

Today I cracked up because somebody yelled:

Sup Nigga!

The Gate of Sorrows

Bab-el-Mandeb - the "Gate of Grief"

That is what the piece of water that goes from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea is called. It's hard to navigate. According to legend, there was an earthquake when Arabia and Africa separated and this water was named because of the many unnamed who perished during that mythical upheaval. 75 miles west of here, Lake Assal (-509 ft )is the third lowest point on earth, a salty lake separated from the Red Sea, perhaps during that same upheaval. The lowest point in Africa. I was in the Dead sea once (1338 ft below Sea level) , and some guy asked me if I knew why it was so low, and I started to babble about the African and Arabian continental plates but he stopped me and said "No. It is because an angel turned the land upside down, for man was wicked." I didn't have the heart to tell him that turning the land upside down didn't fix that. But I did ask him to take his hand off of my balls.


Here in the city, it sounds like a train is going by about 10 hours out of the day. There's no train, taxis honk all the time, people yell and now, late in the year, the wind is starting to blow. I am grateful for that wind. I can hear the disco pumping out the jams, but so far Ann won't go.

The sun goes down and the crows gather:



I didn't thnk it rained much here, but the wind was howling yesterday and something was pelting the windows. I looked outside and it was really coming down.



3rd world cities. You think you got problems. Can't get enough money out of the ATM to pay rent. All these women with babies holding their hands out. And kids calling you chief, looking for some francs. And everyone else wants to help you. I go get water at a stand 20 feet from the entrance to my building everyday and always some guy wants to show me how to get there. "My friend! What do you need?"

Or walking to the Casino ( that's the name of the grocery store a block away) I hear guys going "YES!" I stopped turning around after a while. They say "YES!" as if they have the answer to the question you haven't asked. The answer is usually "Nice massage, coca, drinking, yes?" Or sometimes they have a briefcase with sunglasses (I point to the ones I'm wearing ) watches (same) giant lighters (I've learned to feign disinterest) , black switchblades (still feigning), and Tiger Balm. I get confused at the Tiger Balm, its not like the other things, but I realize I need to be strong or there will be some consequences, like I might owe the guy a drink or something.

After a few weeks I hear "YES!" and I think "no..." But I don't think its bad, it is an affirmation after all. To pay rent and the deposit I had to go to a cash machine and take out the max 4 days in a row. I couldn't take out the max in one go, because the ATM had its own limit, I had to put my card in 3 times to get out the max the bank decreed. The security guard for the ATM seemed to think I didn't know how to work it, because I kept putting in my card and pulling it out. He made some gibberishy moves with his hands and possibly quoted part of the Q'uran and then said "francs" one time. I got my cash and thanked him and walked away. Ever since then, when I get cash there, he watches me and say "YES!" when I get the francs. The look on his face, his demeanor, its like an observer fascinated by a chimp who puts the square block in the square hole.

And that's kind of when it dawned on me that from the locals' perspective, we do need help. They have this concept of Europe, or America, and see all these fat happy people coming from those places. The have cable TV and high speed internet here, but a lot of people are totally poor. Malnutrition is around 30%. But why would we leave these Entourage-like milieu's and venture to this stinky sweaty town? They might think we aren't making good choices in our lives. They might think we need their assistance.

It's like when cats bring you dead birds or mice. It is clear to the cats that we are too clumsy and noisy to hunt up some decent prey.

Better

So we get up and we know there is an Island 45 minutes away in the Golfe de Tadjoura. Djibouti is shaped like a Rhino's head with its mouth open and the inside of the mouth is the Gulf. In the middle are a lot of islands, really small and undercut, like Moucha. Doesn't seem like much grows on it, it looks like it is made out of dead coral reefs that ended up above water somehow. Deeply undercut all around

From 2011922-20111003

Really good snorkeling. Apparently good diving but we haven't tried that yet. Plus the beers on tap are cheaper than in the city, 25cl of draft Stella for 600 Djibouti Francs ($3), versus 1000 downtown. WTF?

From djibouti mousha island

Next time maybe we can dive with whale sharks, biggest fish in the world.

From djibouti mousha island

I kept feeling like I was in a different country on this 3km circumference island. We were there for 4 hours but it felt like a longer, slower time. You could still see Djibouti city, the cranes that offloaded cargo from here if you tried.

I tried not to.

Our Place in Menelik Square

Menelik was the bastard son of The Queeen of Sheba (Makeda) and Solomon according to the Kebra Nagast, a part of biblical text shaved off by all but the coptics and the rastafari. He brought with him the Arc of the Covenant when he left Israel. We got an apartment in Menelik Square, I don't know if the lost Arc is here, but there are a lot of poor women in bright colors begging for money with their babies. One view from our balcony:



We are on the third floor and right at the end of Menelik Square. It is an active part of town. A lot of the time, after it starts to get dark, we hang out on the porch and watch people roam around. We watch the guy paint the circle white and watch the cabs picking people up and dropping them off. But its pretty boring. The interesting part of the city we can only hear as we drift off to sleep.


The beat sounds at first like a bad bearing in the overhead fan. Or maybe some gas in Ann's belly, next to me. Possibly some late night construction?...

No, it is the disco, Club Hermes, which Ann and I have dubbed "Club Herpes". In the basement of our building, it may yet make our brains gelatinous but we resist and reach toward sleep. Our dreams are bent, but as yet our intent is not. Though how would we know?

Look man, I love this place. It is so weird. People call me "Rambo" at first I thought they were talking about "Rimbaud" the poet, the guy who wrote "A season in Hell" before he actually moved to this region after being shot by Paul Verlaine and becoming an arms dealer and never writing anything else in his life unless you count signing for the weapons that the ethiopians used to repel the italians as writing. Because in French Rimbaud and in American Rambo sound exactly the same. But the Rambo they are talking about is probably Rambo 5 who is like 50 so its not so cool. Clearly I need a haircut.

There are these two screened vents close to the floor in the kitchen. The pigeons like to hang there, we walk in and hear the coo and its kind of nice. It is somewhat disconcerting to be cooking breakfast with a pigeon's butthole mere inches away but in the grand scheme of things...

From Our Place in Menelik Square

Entering Djibouti

It is hot here, but cool for Djibouti. How hot? Hotter than the outside of Uranus, but in the winter, about the same as the inside of your anus (thx Scottie).

We went for a walk to check out the local scenery. Walked along the beach, the local people sleep there in the summer because their homes are too hot to sleep in, I'm told. Quickly veered away from the beach because it smelled like human turds and we have yet to repeat that particular walk. Here is some local scenery:




We arrived about midnight on september 20 something, and had a little trouble getting a visa. Just another lesson in not believing that getting a visa before arriving isn't worth the effort, despite what anyone tells you. Although it wasn't bad, and it is funny that the officials that questioned us looked so grim and dire before they let us in, and so jolly once we convinced them. People don't always look the way they feel, but they often look the way you think they feel. Or the way you feel. Didn't get close enough to them to figure out if they felt the way they looked.

And then some 90 year old Djiboutian grabbed our 30kg luggage despite our protests (because we had $20 US money for the cab ride, zero Djibouti francs and only some kenyan shilling amounting to about $5) and dragged it to a cab. The cab driver dutifully told us the ride was $20 (3600 Djibouti Francs) and since our luggage didn't fit in the cab, the trunk was open and I kept an eye on it. The toothless valet was befuddled at our Kenyan Shilling tip, but we left him in a cloud of fine Djibouti sand as he uttered his righteous curses.

Arriving at the Alia Hotel, our reservation was lost, although Ann managed to pull it up and show it to the concierge on her laptop, and we slept in a single that night. Everyone including Ann speaks french here, except me. Later that day we got moved to a double room, here is the view from that window:

So it was hot this first week, and we finally got into a permanent place, out of the hotel room. Me and Ann went on a couple of walks trying to find the charming shoreline we envisioned. It smelled at the waters edge. Even at the hotel Sheraton and places cordoned off. In fact, it seemed that there was a whole road made of human turds blackened and hardened by the sun on the northernmost edge of this place. We called it the rue de poo. There were herons there.