Les Moustiquaires....

The handyman was up this afternoon to finish the mosquito screening project that he has been working on for three months. He had to come back this time because the board that he used to secure the rolled screening to the cement doorframe was actually blocking the door from closing.  It was a minor delay; this outer kitchen doorway actually plunges down four floors toward nothing and, understandably, gets little traffic. It makes an exceedingly more rational window-way.  Since the installation, I had been attributing the presence of mosquitos to some flaw in the workmanship behind the door left ajar.  However, tonight the work is done, and I still believe that the aggression and cubic volume of mosquitos has increased.  So, my theory has changed.  I now see them lining up like blood soldiers with their needlenoses cocked like bayonettes as they single-file through a miniscule crevice in l'impénétrable forteresse.  Only, I can't decide whether they are wearing képis or berets.

Miaow round the house...

Djiboutians don't use the ubiquitous black plastic bags that you find in West Africa.  There are certainly enough issues with Crystal water bottles (a Coco-Cola refinement project) and tin cans.  But, the plastic bags here are pastel-colored, and thin enough that they break down quickly.  Around my house, the process begins almost immediately.  I collect a couple days worth of kitchen trash in a grocery bag suspended from the kitchen door handle.  I take my beach bags into the market when I shop so that the streetkids won't lob wet objects at me for being ungenerous.  However, I let the vendors pack each of the vegetable items in a seperate plastic bag as well.  Walan proved that keeping a traditional trash can would be impossible when she claimed the blue one for her merry-go-round.  It is wise not to store decaying food waste in tropical climates, anyway.  So, when I am ready, I unhook my trash bag, tie the handles together and swing it from my hooked finger as I whistle my way down the steps.  Tomboy, the greenish-colored cat that is wooing my Walan, chats me up as he follows down the stairwell.  I trip a little as he weaves between my legs, but I make it, safely, to the bottom.  I turn the corner, round the tree and approach the commercial trash can in the corner of the courtyard.  From two feet away, I toss the bag off my finger, into the open can.  MIAOW!  I jump.  A larger-than-life street cat comes pouncing out of the can.  Random trashbaggings are an occupational hazard for the feline dumpster-divers in our neighborhood.  Sometimes, if I am lucky, I get two.

Haute Cuisine

I have discovered Golden Grahams.  Unlike your standard convenience store, the Total across the street from my house is stocked with interesting items at a lower price than the grocery store.  In addition to shampoo and canned fruit, wafer cookies (it's a French thing) and household cleaners, they sell Lion (tastes like a Lion candy bar), Cocoa Puffs, and Golden Grahams cereal boxes just inside the glass door.  At only $4 a box, I find that I am becoming one of those people who grabs a bowl of cereal for lunch... for dinner.  Healthy, I don't know.  But, yes, convenient.

An American with connections through the Embassy is now selling loaves of homemade bread a couple times a week.  They run only $3 each and are delicious!  For breakfast, I cut a slice of cofee/cinnamon or barley bread, with butter and the final scraping of Mom's blackberry jam.  Wow -- incredible.  It has me dreaming about those $68 toasters.

I've learned that fish is subsidized here.  You can buy fresh fish, right out of the ocean, for rockbottom prices.  But, why?  Because they don't.  This is a Muslim nation, where goat and lamb are favored.  So while grass is almost nonexistant, and the livestock is hauled across international lines, the coastal kids grow up never having once seen a stinky whole fish.

A couple nights ago, I was complimenting my American colleague on his clever little salads.  Multi-bean salads, crab salads, tuna salads.  His response: "Yea, I'm getting to be pretty good at opening these cans."

The Next Summer Blockbuster

1:50 pm.  I am standing on the corner, waiting for a green and white to drive by.  I have to be at the Embassy in a couple minutes.  I see a cab turn the corner, and put my hand out to wave at the sidewalk so the driver will slow down.  Suddenly, flashing blue lights and sirens... a shining black hummer speeds past Djibouti Telecom, past the Post Office, and slams to a stop in the middle of the intersection.  I pause under a tree to take a read on the situation.  Oncoming minibuses jackknife out of the way and begin to line up down the boulevard.  On my side of the street, there is another line of side-stacked minibuses and white Toyota 4x4s waiting.  There is an announcement, a tinny voice from the vehicle, whose driver is dressed in street clothes.  Then, three more shiny black hums, also with sirens blaring, come flying around behind, tossing dust in all directions.  I think it must be a chase.  I look for the culprit among the mailboxes, or through the Ministry of Ed fence.  They make the turn, streak back up the boulevard the other way, and are gone.  I notice that they are youthful Somalis, that they look confident in the manner of anyone who might drive head-on into Djiboutian midday traffic. 

The street grows comparably quiet as business resumes.  I hail a minibus - they are easy to be had.  I chat with the fellow whose manning the coins.  I make driving gestures, a siren sound, flash big eyes.  He contemplates my meaning for a minute before everyone chuckles.  Ah, Presidente.  Oh, okay.  So, I go about my way as I think back through the scene: out of the lastest action flick, maybe, or Djibouti, if you read it.  Jooji, I say, to have the vehicle stop.  I am still the only passenger.  Jooji?! They repeat, because they can't imagine that I am speaking Somali.  Russe? They ask me, if I am Russian.  Ummm..., okay.  No, americaine, I assure them.  No, no you're not, they tell me as I jump out at my stop.

Nawal Awad, breakout Djiboutian artist

Did you hear it here first?  Nawal Awad studied Beaux Arts in Belgium.  She is now a pedagogical adviser at the CFPEN, and teaches arts and crafts in schools.  She launched an art exhibit tonight at the Kempinski Palace, much to the pleasure of her assembled colleagues and friends.  Ranging from oils on canvas to ink on cloth and acrylic over burlap, her work is infused with the chaos and emotion of the life and love of a Muslim woman.  Contrasting reds and blues, geometric movements and one-word titles typify her work.  It was my closest glimpse yet into the minds of my Djibouti counterparts, and rare evidence of practiced artistic expression for this region.  Unfortunately, she may have out-priced her audience.  Even though the showing will be held throughout the month of December in the halls of a hotel that rents rooms at $500/night, there still weren't a lot of folks at the showing who could scrounge up $1500 for one of her paintings.

Winter in Djibouti

The handyman is finally getting mosquito screening into place.  It has been complicated for his team to trace the irregular walls of French colonial construction.  Our Somali guard communicates to us in hand gestures and chirps about the nasties that bite away at him all night.  I hear him; at least he has a net.  I haven't been able to figure out an arrangement yet for hanging a mosquito net in my room, with its cement walls.  But, it didn't matter much in the past because my mandatory air-conditioning deterred the skeeters.  Ah, but now it is "cold" in Djibouti.  I watch the thermometer on my porch, which drops to 70 in the mornings.  I wish I had a barometer as well, since the humid has dropped away, and my skin feels itchy with dryness.  It is abysmal to wake up and stand under cold falling water, so I have reverted back to my bucket bath.  Ah, winter.  You have come.

The French grocery stores have forfeited cereal and long-conserve milk bottles to three rows of holiday candies.  For $300, you can get a large box of assorted chocolates, or have a six-pack of Kinder eggs for only $30.  But, the shiny red and silver tinfoil is still a delight to the eyes, in the unattainable dreamlike way of The Christmas Story.

Across the street, the guys who watch tv on the sidewalk beside the kiosk, their cheek fat with qat, now have a fire going.  All day long, they sit by the pile of burning wood, occasionally lifting their bare feet toward it.  If only it were really that cold.  But, our Congolese friend, who is celebrating her first full year in Djibouti, is feeling it too.  She's got her jean jacket buttoned tightly around her whenever we go out in the evenings.  And, at certain hours, the wind lifts hard enough to blow things down the street.  Not snowflakes, certainly, but I can imagine.

Lingua Franca

Across the street from our place, stands a little green kiosk where the folks sell tuna for my bisadi Walan, cold bottles of Coca, chalky chocolate biscuits and canned milk.  I meet the Cuban gynecologist there occasionally, who communicates to the vendors unabashedly in Spanish.  That is the funny thing about living in places where Roman derivations are not the mother tongue.  You can say anything you like, and most people are not shooting for your words anyway.  They just take for granted not understanding.  It is the context, and the gestures, that matter.  So, where I found the Cubans approach a little off-putting at first, I now find that I speak to almost everyone in English, to the detriment of my French; and, I get along just fine that way. 

However, now that I am getting a sense of the rhythms of Somali, I try that a little too.  My colleague and I have both experienced a taxi driver or a street vendor, leaning wwwaaayyy out to shout Habeen wanaagsan (Good evening) as we go by.  We think the rumor mill of guardians and chauffeurs around the city has folks watching out for us now.  First, it was the minibuses that knew to stop for us -- most foreigners don't take them.  Now, it's the folks around town, who are starting to recognize us, and engage.  As I walked into the market a couple days ago, a man called to me: "Bonjour, la djiboutienne!"