A picture is worth a thousand words, but can lie just as well. If you look at pictures from my trip to Djibouti, you will see deserts, oceans, salt lakes, some animals and a few run down houses. Some of the pictures are beautiful or interesting if I’m allowed to pass judgment, but they do not capture the majority of what I experienced in Djibouti. They are significant not for what they show, but what they do not show: The Muslims who call Djibouti home.

My trip really begins in Paris. Djibouti is a small country and Air France only flies there once a week, leaving me with 18 hours in which I could wander bleary eyed around Paris. I speak a little French, so I stumbled around the city experiencing food and culture. It was probably a good thing I left when I did though since that was the first day of the French Riots, although I didn’t see them while I was there. It seems like I always find the small countries since that’s where I seem to spend lots of time when I travel. Djibouti is bordered by Somalia on the south and south east, Ethiopia on the west, Eritrea to the North West and the sea. The mixture of Yemen, Ethiopia and Somalia has caused some to remark that it’s not quite Africa and not quite the Middle East. The reasons for coming to Djibouti vary; some come as refugees and others for economic reasons. In fact, so many of Djibouti’s 600,000 people come from somewhere else that much of its culture comes with them. For example, the Somali influence is so strong that although the official languages are Arabic and French but if you listen to what people are speaking on the streets, it’s mostly Somali. It’s also almost completely Muslim, and as a result they often don’t want you to take their picture, so I didn’t. I was struck by what a melting pot Djibouti is when I tried to buy souvenirs, there are only 4 or 5 legitimately native Djiboutian objects; Afar knifes, salt, baskets, sandals and these leather water bags.

When I was setting this trip up, I thought that I’d be doing a little bit of computer maintenance, a little bit of teaching and maybe some other little projects. Somewhere between taking off in Raleigh and landing in Djibouti that plan fell through. That’s the nice thing about plans; they allow you to do the really interesting things when they fall through. I ended up spending a good deal of time writing a Pharmacy Inventory program for Centre Yonis Toussaint, a free health care clinic that does a lot with AIDS. I ended up writing the whole thing in a little under a week so I felt very productive. For those of you who care, it was web based written in PHP with a MySQL backend and served by Apache. Oh and the other thing about that program; it was in French. The trip wasn’t all work though. Djibouti is also home to some very nice coral reefs, so I got in some good snorkeling. When I was young, I remember seeing a picture of a man floating in the Dead Sea reading a newspaper. I was so fascinated by the picture that I always wanted to go to the Dead Sea so I could float like that. Arriving in Djibouti, I discovered that it was home Lake Assal. Saying its salty is like calling the Atlantic a big puddle. Lake Assal is the lowest point in Africa at 155m below sea level and is the most saline body of water in the world. The beach is salt, the bottom is salt, there are crystals of salt growing out of the water and if you get in you’ll find a fine powder of salt left on your skin as you dry off. It’s a little painful as you dry off, but I needed to try floating. It worked as advertised. I ordinarily sink like a stone, but here I could raise feet and hands out of the water almost to the elbows before I started sinking.

Everybody keeps asking me why I went to Djibouti. I can explain how everything transpired for me to go, the conversations, the emails, I can give you the detail stuff, but the honest answer to why is still on the edge of my consciousness. It’s not a tourist destination, its way off the beaten path for westerners. If you go to your local Barnes & Nobles you’re not going to find the Lonely Planet guide. Maybe that’s the charm of it. In a world where you can read the guide book and feel like you know a place; it’s nice to experience something totally new that you don’t have any preconceived ideas about. I like ideas, I find it easy to get caught up in them and live in the Disneyland of my mind. Djibouti is no Magic Kingdom, it’s a real place, and everybody has their own problems. I saw things that would never happen in the States, the way people stare at death in the way they live. I bought unwrapped baguettes for about 10 cents, cracked open a coke that comes in a glass bottle used over an over again. I was accosted by beggars who really don’t have any other options. I’m glad I went, but I’m also glad I’m home.

That wasn’t quite 1000 words so if you want some pictures to go with them here’s a place to start,
www.char1es.net/gallery/djibouti