Mideast tour: I'm totally in Africa
Get your Beavis and Butthead voice ready...
I'm in Djibouti!
It is full of rubble and trash and abandoned tires and goats eating the rubble and trash and abandoned tires, and aggressive street vendors and children begging for food, and then the street vendors literally hit the children in the head for distracting the tourists from buying.
After days in the Middle East where I felt all but invisible around Kuwaiti men (and highly disdained by a few Qatari border guards), today I have had at least twenty Djiboutian men (pronounce: Zha-BOO-zhin) put their arms around me and call me "sister," while offering me a "special price."
All the touching is startling after being in countries in which husbands and wives can't even touch each other in public. I jumped when I felt someone behind me grab my hair; it was just a cute little girl, in a headscarf. And then, of course, some man whacked her in the head.
A bunch of Djiboutian men were actually requested that we pull out our cameras and take photos with them; they would then provide big qat-stained smiles and thumbs-up -- while the women would jump out of the way, knowing that my camera can store up to 800 souls when captured at 640 x 480 pixels.
In front of the "Jenyfer."
Despite terrible poverty, an awful lot of Djiboutian women look just like Naomi Campbell.
After being in town, we went swimming at the Hotel Kempinski, a $214/night property that looks like this:
To me, "swankiness" + "Africana" says "I think I saw this on an MTV special about Russell Simmons' house." It was fabulous. They make bread in the form of snakes!
A hotel employee in charge of arranging rose petals gave me this:
I have a ton of videos for you, but the internet here is painfully slow. Off to do a show!
I'm in Djibouti!
It is full of rubble and trash and abandoned tires and goats eating the rubble and trash and abandoned tires, and aggressive street vendors and children begging for food, and then the street vendors literally hit the children in the head for distracting the tourists from buying.
After days in the Middle East where I felt all but invisible around Kuwaiti men (and highly disdained by a few Qatari border guards), today I have had at least twenty Djiboutian men (pronounce: Zha-BOO-zhin) put their arms around me and call me "sister," while offering me a "special price."
All the touching is startling after being in countries in which husbands and wives can't even touch each other in public. I jumped when I felt someone behind me grab my hair; it was just a cute little girl, in a headscarf. And then, of course, some man whacked her in the head.
A bunch of Djiboutian men were actually requested that we pull out our cameras and take photos with them; they would then provide big qat-stained smiles and thumbs-up -- while the women would jump out of the way, knowing that my camera can store up to 800 souls when captured at 640 x 480 pixels.
In front of the "Jenyfer."Despite terrible poverty, an awful lot of Djiboutian women look just like Naomi Campbell.
After being in town, we went swimming at the Hotel Kempinski, a $214/night property that looks like this:
To me, "swankiness" + "Africana" says "I think I saw this on an MTV special about Russell Simmons' house." It was fabulous. They make bread in the form of snakes!
A hotel employee in charge of arranging rose petals gave me this:
I have a ton of videos for you, but the internet here is painfully slow. Off to do a show!
posted by JenIsFamous at 9/01/2007 12:52:00 PM
1 Comments:
Jen - I've been greatly enjoying your travelogue through the Long War's current hotspots, and I look forward to seeing even more when you finally land near a broadband connection. Kudos to you for your morale-building efforts!
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