Toilet Nut Knob

Rough day at work for Ann today.


So we scored some pizza and beer at the local Pizzaiolo. Decent. On the way out, saw this fellow with his sharp traditional Afar clothes, and his stick. A lot of these older dudes carry sticks of different lengths, haven't figured out what they mean. I saw a guy with a 6 inch stick and when they get longer they look like canes, maybe its some carryover from herding goats in the rolling scrub hills of Somalia. Maybe its some status thing, I don't know. Sometimes when they go into buildings they give the stick to a security guard to hold until they come out.


Anyway I noticed the guy's stick because it had a white knob on the top. At first glance I thought it was porcelain or camel bone. I gave him a nod as we walked by, thinking he must have some special status, and then got a closer look at his knob. It was one of those giant plastic nuts that cover the bolts of a toilet.


Earlier, watching the sunrise, I saw the guy making the noise that passes for the rooster's crow. Looking down from the balcony, the first thing I noticed was his giant ears. He was bugging the guy cleaning the street, yelling something at him, the guy swiped at him with a broom and he veered away. Then he started yelling at a passerby and that guy made a feint with open palm and the rooster cringed making aye aye aye aye noises.


Midday, I can see all the SUVs parked in front of the Planete Hollywood below me, and there are six kids in between two of them, 8-10 years old, maybe. 2 of them have shirts on that have colors, the other four are wearing clothes that have aged to grey. One kid, one whose shirt still has colors, has a pair of orange flip flops on, the others are barefoot.


I see an elderly gentleman done up in semi traditional garb with a stick checking his look in one of the SUV mirrors. The barefoot kid with colors in his shirt goes over and starts punching the old man in the shoulder until he leaves. It strikes me that these kids have assigned themselves protectors of the SUVs and hope to collect a tip when the owners get back.


The kid that punched the old guy wrestles the right flip flop off of the other kid and puts it on.

Life in the Turd World

Ann takes to the blog....
One thing I’ve noticed here in Djibouti is a strange proliferation of animal body parts on the street. When we were living in Jordan I was walking home from work one day (and it had been an especially hard day) when I looked down and saw a dead kitten. This made me feel REALLY sad and I vowed to keep my eyes above waist level from then on whilst walking in (some) foreign countries.

From Our Place in Menelik Square

Unfortunately I keep forgetting about that. A few weeks ago we went to the swanky Kempinski Hotel for a little escape-from-Djibouti action. A day spent lounging at the pool, waiters with little bow ties bringing us drinks etc. Then we had to go home and since we don’t have a car and it isn’t 120 degrees out (yet) we decided to walk a bit. Almost as soon as you leave the hotel grounds you know that you are back in Djibouti. The bougainvillea and manicured lawns give way to thorny sticks clinging to life in dry, cracked mud puddles. The smell of cocoa butter is replaced by the smell of shit (because people are well, shitting, in the sea). But what really brought it home that we were no longer in Kempinskiland was that I looked down and saw something about two feet long with hair and what was unmistakeably, a hoof. “Is that a goat leg?” I asked Reed. “yup” he said and we kept walking. 

From djib country

About a week later I was walking home from work (not looking down) when I came upon the IOM dog. I used to work for IOM and they are just down the street from our office. The dog is always out in front of their office and he only has three legs and is super scroungy in a very endearing way. The two times a year it rains he rolls around in puddles and then goes around caked in mud for the next month with his little pink tongue lolling about. He manages just fine with his three legs and it would appear that this happened quite some time ago. On this particular day when I strolled past him I had some stale cookies to give him but he was engrossed in something else and was chewing away quite happily and ignored my offering. Curious (no! bad idea!) as to what could be more enticing than stale French cookies I looked closer and discovered he was gnawing on an animal leg, no a DOG leg. Now the strange part is that it was not HIS missing leg as his leg has obviously been missing for a long time but it was some OTHER dog’s missing leg. It even had all it’s little nails still. Sadly I did not have my camera or even Reed with me to witness/process this.

If one does have an affinity for the four-legged friend it’s a tough town. I hit what can only be described as a new low-low when I chased down a pack of teen-age boys and threw a rock at them. They were throwing rocks (they started it!) at a dog and then a little cat and I lost my shit. Yes there are plenty of people that don’t have enough to eat here and I should save my energy for them and some countries just don’t have the same feelings for animals and blahblahblah. Fuck that. I work in a refugee camp and I know how bad off people are and it occupies 99% of my waking hours so excuse me if I want to focus a tiny amount of energy on animals. Wow, see what happens? Anyhoo I was a crazed banshee shouting at them, throwing my rock, stalking them for a few blocks shouting them down in English (I’m pretty sure they got the gist of it, most people seem to understand f-bombs). Reed said “I was right there with ya until you threw that rock…”. I’d like to say I’m not proud of what I did but obviously I am because I am writing about it.

From DjiboutiLicious - Shots from and around our apartment

Another fascinating (might be a strong word here) thing about Djibouti is that people talk REALLY loud. I would go so far as to call it SHOUTING. The lingua franca (besides Frenchy) is Somali and you really cant tell if the person shouting is happy/furious/excited/crazy/all of above. Sometimes they do it right in your face and we call it being “thundergunned” after an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia. It’s a good verb. “You know that short, lighter salesman with the Kanye glasses? He fucking THUNDERGUNNED me today when I was getting off the bus”.

Next to thundergunning horn honking is another national pastime. There is really little to no need seeing as there is one measly traffic circle downtown and not many cars but for some reason they can’t seem to negotiate it and end up jammed in these goofy configurations honking like maniacs, even though they could easily pass the blocking car. I suspect they long for a proper traffic jam so they could really let loose on their klaxon action so they just pretend to be mad and honk away all the while shuddering in ecstasy. 

And then there are the beggars and qat-chewing drug addicts on the sidewalks (and I use the term ‘sidewalk’ loosely here). At first I resisted giving money to beggars but I felt like such an asshole that I started carrying a pocketful of change and when I remember I buy biscuits to give the rugrats instead of money (they scowl, one even gave me the finger). As for the qat I suspect the government doesn’t mind having almost the entire male population addicted to drugs as that effectively prevents them from rising up and demanding oh I don’t know, jobs? Education? Health care? Clean drinking water? Streets that don’t stink like piss? And yes people here pay taxes. You think WE get a raw deal ha!

We fall asleep to the pounding bass of Club Hermes (Herpes)  and waken to the blare of the mosque (4 a.m.). Somewhere in between is another layer of hell which is the karaoke bar that caters to the Japanese soldiers. It's pretty bad but makes for interesting dreams.

One has to be able to HANDLE Djibouti and some days I can’t. But most days it is funny as hell and nothing ever goes like you think it will (should). 
Happy 2012. Peace, love, and fresh air to all!

Xmas in Addis

Ever since I read the Sign and the Seal, about the whereabouts of the real Lost Arc of the Covenant, I have wanted to go to Ethiopia. From here, it is a $350 round trip, and as long as there are no Eritrean stamps on your passport, they love Americans. So we head to Djibouti International (the only airport, there are no other airports in the country). We met an American we'd met before there, pretty cool guy, IT consultant for the US base here, while we were waiting for our flight. He gave us a short list of places to check out. As per our poor travel custom, I don't think we checked any of them out. We did see two US drones take off from the same airstrip. Our pal commented that it was funny that on base, there is serious security around the drone hangar and really no acknowledgement that they exist, but here from the bar at the airport we can watch them take off about 200 meters away. I got a little nostalgic for my home town McLean, knowing that the kids flying those drones were probably in Langley. Reminds me of Ender's Game.

We'd decided to check into the Sheraton, the 5 star hotel in Addis Ababa, so I figured we'd probably won't going to see much of the city. The rule of thumb I've learned from travelling is the nicer the hotel, the less you see. Actually I probably read that somewhere, but let me confirm it. Knowing this, I took some shots from the shuttle on the way to the hotel.

From 20111231-203010

Iron Like a Lion In Zion.

From 20111231-203010

No way this scaffolding would be OSHA approved.

From 20111231-203010

I didn't take pictures of the guard at the gate, they had these giant black mock pith helmets, almost like the hats the Keystone Kops wore. And when I got out of the cab, the guy that grabbed our meagre luggage had a top hat like tom petty wore in that one video. Taller than Abe's stovepipe, and flaired out at the top. It made me feel a little sad to see people wearing these costumes for a job, but then I remembered what I wore in High School in the marching band. Also that they had good jobs. No unemployment rates in Addis, that ain't published and it isn't on anyone's tongue that we found.

Still, first thing we noticed, Ethiopia is CLEAN. And the people are nice. And they don't try to rip you off. I guess I'm talking mostly about Addis Ababa, but also in Lalibella and the airport. And unlike Djibouti City, you can't smell either piss or shit or death at any given moment. You can smell frankencense and that spice, cardamom, and occasionally hash. Didn't see anyone throw garbage on the street, saw a lot of trash cans and people used them...

The difference between the third world and the turd world. They grow Qat in Ethiopia, it grows there like a weed, cultivated and a major export to the arab world. The stuff is a mild amphetamine that breaks down with time, especially in heat, and the amphetamine compound degrades. Over time. Like the mind of the users. The rapid degradation is one of the reasons that Ethiopian Airlines was founded, and before that, the Djibouti-Addis train, now defunct. Because Djibouti is a major port, serving the red sea, Yemen, the saudis, etc...

So you would think that in Ethiopia, where you can get the good stuff, you would see a lot of qat chewers, but in Djibouti they are everywhere, green teeth, slurpin a bottle of watered down coke in a Dasani 1.5 liter, grinning their green grins, exposing their wild stained and rotting teeth.

And I didn't see any of that in Ethiopia, maybe the good stuff hits you before the rot occurs. Maybe it hits you so hard you are finished forever. I don't know.

Next we went to Lallibella to see the churches hewn out of the rock. Here's a trailer of the trip:

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.