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Mideast tour: a good view of Djibouti

September 6, 2007

The other lady comics on the trip, Laura and Christina, took malaria medication before coming. I didn’t. I mean, it was “optional.” Why bother? So what I’m saying is that I have malaria.

Djibouti is freaking filthy. The US is there on a humanitarian mission, which means trigger-happy Marines are sometimes bummed out to find that their new assignment involves painting schools.

We were warned to NEVER DRINK THE WATER and, in fact, DON’T EVEN BRUSH YOUR TEETH WITH IT — yet everywhere there were sinks labeled “NON-POTABLE WATER, FOR SANITARY PURPOSES ONLY.” So if I brush my teeth with it, I’ll die, but I should be using the stuff to wash my hands, rinse foreign objects from my eyes, and wash out wounds? Good idea! Very sanitary.

In the market in Djibouti, various locals objected to my videography, so I surreptitiously took several very short videos and strung them together here. There’s not as much comedian-bantering, but I do think this represents the Djibouti experience, except that none of the women would consent to be photographed. (Although this video does end with a man trying to sell me a headscarf by modeling it himself. He seemed secure in his masculinity).

Mideast tour: in the belly of a Navy ship in the Persian Gulf

September 6, 2007

After arriving in Bahrain, we were flown 200 miles offshore to the USS Enterprise, a city-sized aircraft carrier. We were treated like kings! (And I do mean “kings” — wait ’til you see the Suave).

Mideast tour: how to get in and out of Djibouti

September 3, 2007

Getting to Djibouti from Qatar required five and a half hours on a C-130 — a cargo plane in which you sit on a pull-out, lawn-chair-like seat, and pee in a bucket in the back of the plane, behind the cargo.

Our flight here began with about fifteen minutes of sitting on the plane, inserting our earplugs, melting in 120+ degree heat. Then the A/C came on and the temperature dropped to about 40. I borrowed a windbreaker and slept, on and off, and tried to limit my fluids. Seriously, watch this video:

Somewhere in the last half of the flight, I woke up and decided I’d have to just suck it up and pee in the bucket. I started to squeeze past the cargo to the bathroom area when a female airman (er, airwoman) — a tall, young black woman looking hot in her aviator glasses, and forevermore to be known as the Angel of Pants On — signaled for me to take out my airplugs, and then shouted that we were landing in ten minutes.

We’re about to board another C-130. It’s 4:30am here, and our flight’s been canceled once already, meaning we’re behind schedule. We may have to travel and do a show in the same day, which isn’t supposed to happen, but we’re pretty good at bucking up and doing the show. Someone will meet us in Bahrain and let us know if we’re off to a hotel, or a show on a base, or helicopter to a show on a ship.

I’m sleepy.

Mideast tour: the trials of an introvert

September 2, 2007

Conversation I just had with a member of the United States Army:

Army: You are very attractive, but you are so unapproachable.

Me: I’m just checking my email and then I’m going to go to bed.

Army: It’s like there’s a starving man and you take a warm Thanksgiving turkey and put it right out of his reach! At least move the turkey a little closer so he can touch it!

Me: Women are not warm Thanksgiving turkeys. We are people with goals and jobs and interior monologues independent of your interest in our fresh meaty smell.

Army: I think you need to work on the approachability.

Solider then goes back to flirting with Christina, who is showing him the pictures on her digital camera. When pictures of me come up, he says, incredulously, “Look at her, she laughs! She looks so happy!”

Mideast tour: fun with computers

September 2, 2007

I just had the unique experience of setting my iBook’s Apple time clock to “Nearest city: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.”

You may be interested to know that Jenisfamous.com is banned by the government of Qatar:

And also by the U.S. military.

Reason? “Pornography.”

Just wait til I get to upload my video about covering our filthy whore shoulders on base.

One more — when you go to Google in Qatar, you get this:

Notice that the text box works from right to left!

Mideast tour: from the stage

September 2, 2007

When I stepped off the plane in Kuwait, one of the first things I saw in the airport was a woman in the full ninja suit, just her little eyes poking out. I stared at her — I couldn’t help it. So she decided she was going to stare at me. I stared at her, she stared at me. I stared at her, she stared at me. Finally I stuck my tongue out — and she had no means of retaliation.

Mideast tour: I’m totally in Africa

September 1, 2007

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!

Mideast tour: off to Djibouti at 5am!

August 30, 2007

Gotta go!

We leave for Djibouti in a few hours. Might be a few days before I can post all the videos and photos I’ve shot.

Djibouti is the hottest place on Earth, and guys tonight have been telling me it’s a hellhole all around. Of course, armed men in a hellhole need jokes.

xo
Jen

Mideast tour: I have been sleeping in a tent in Qatar

August 30, 2007

Staying in a hotel in Kuwait spoiled us. We had showers connected to our very bedrooms! We had internet access and carpet and could go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without stumbling thirty yards or more across toasty-hot rocks and sand.

I haven’t posted in thirty-six hours or so, but for good reason.

Here was my yesterday:

Our security detail gave us a 3am call time for a 7am flight to Bahrain. We meet in the lobby, settle our hotel bill, and are ushered into a dark SUV. For the first time, I notice our friendly security guy Steve using a mirror on a stick to check under our car for bombs.

We drive to the “military side” of Kuwait International Airport. That meant driving through lots of concrete barriers to a big open tarmac with lots of security signs and one special sign warning not only against taking photographs, but also against “drawing or any graphical representation.” No sketching!

There’s a waiting room that, like the majority of buildings on base, is basically an air-conditioned, bathroomless trailer; a 130 degree walk is required to get to the latrines, which means you never see yourself in a mirror except when you’re sweaty and pissed off. We wait. We are treated very nicely by the staff. We learn that we are going to Qatar, not Bahrain. We also learn that our 7am plane arrived at 3:30am, dropped off four passengers, thus making room for us — and then promptly took off at 4am. No one knows why. We wait around for options. Lots of people call lots of people. Our security says, “Welcome to military organization.”

Turns out we’ve missed the only flight to Qatar that morning. We all got up around 2am, so we’re exhausted; security takes us back to Camp Arafjan in Kuwait, where we check into the barracks, sign out sets of linens, and sleep on bunk beds in a giant open bay where the military women have strung blankets from bunk to bunk to create a bit of privacy.

We are woken up a few hours later and told we have a flight. We head back to the same airport (NO DRAWING!), get our luggage scanned, and are driven across the tarmac to a tiny, tiny plane. It was about 127 degrees out; standing directly next to an airplane with the engine on, it must’ve been 150. My entire Jen is burning. I urgently need to get on the plane, or I will cry. I start hopping back and forth like I have to go to the bathroom, which is apparently what I do when I feel like I’m in a microwave, about to explode.

Our pilots introduce themselves. Our plane is a Lear jet! And we are the only passengers! How the hell much did the government spend to deliver some jokes to our troops in Qatar?

We fly across the Persian Gulf and land in Qatar. We’ve left behind our handlers in Kuwait, and we have no idea who will be meeting us or where we’ll be going from there. A driver arrives and we’re loaded onto an ancient buses — perhaps those actually used to take the Beatles on tour in the early sixties and kept unrepaired for authenticity’s sake. They are the same buses that cart in Indian laborers to the bases two dozen at a time, a result of the privatization of war and the fact that Kuwaitis (and Qataris), in the words of our security, “don’t work.” Nearly everyone in these countries who ever sells you something or cleans the bathrooms you use is Indian. The Kuwaitis and Qataris are, as a result of the grand accident of nature that gave them oil, repellently arrogant.

We’re taken to the Immigration station at Al Udeid Airbase, where we have to leave our luggage outside and sit for a long time in a large open bay with chairs arranged in neat rows. A plane of airmen has just come in, some of them a bit sexy in their flight suits, and they are in line ahead of us. I notice a few large posters and wall hangings — one of them even made of a bedsheet — with messages like “MADISON JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL SUPPORTS OUR TROOPS,” and scribbled signatures all around. I think how snide I’ve been in the past — I may have been party to such a project in elementary school, and what an obvious and sentimental thing to make, and who would want it? I’d never put such a thing in my house. But in a cold, open metal bay, dust in the air, the whole base a speck in the middle of a painfully uninhabitable desert, a bedsheet full of children’s signatures is the sweetest thing imaginable.

I fall asleep in a chair and am woken by an Air Force woman who informs me that I need to cover my arms: “It’s Qatari law.” I stumble outside to my suitcase for a jacket. When we finally sign our immigration paperwork, I see that among the items prohibited by Qatari law is “Pornography (including swimsuit, muscle, and fitness magazines).” I think of the chiseled abs of the model on the cover of the Muscle & Fitness Hers in my backpack. My luggage goes through Customs without incident. We’re on Al Udeid Airbase.

We’d originally been told we wouldn’t have to do shows on the same day as our travel, but sometime on that day before we boarded the Lear jet, someone asked “Hey, would you do a show tonight at 20:30?” Of course! we replied. Later I remarked that, if you’d told us we had to do a show on zero sleep after being jerked around on flights, we’d have complained; if you ask us, though, we immediately step up to the call of duty. We’re easily swayed!

The show was our first indoor show. We arrived just in time — the audience was already seated and applauded as we entered the auditorium and ran up the side stairs, carrying backpacks, to backstage. After the show, we just sat down on the edge of the stage to sign photos. It was informal and felt organic.

We were shown to our tent. After Kuwait, we were itching for a more “military” experience, but this was the worst night of sleep of my life.

More soon — I’ve just done my second show in Qatar at As Sayliyah Army base, I’ve been blogging from backstage, and it’s time for a meet & greet.

Mideast tour: feeling nostalgic for black dudes

August 30, 2007

We had a day off in between Kuwait and Qatar, and we were forbidden to leave the hotel “complex,” meaning the hotel and the attached shopping mall.

After seeing a multitude of men in dishdashas and women in burqas, I was on the down escalator and spotted, on the up escalator, a totally normal black guy wearing a baseball cap and Bluetooth earpiece!

I gave him this look like “Hi!!!! Don’t I know you from … America?“

Mideast tour: Four Comedians See Some Camels

August 28, 2007

A candid video featuring fellow comics Laura Rosenberg, Christina Lopez, and Chris Freeman.

Mideast tour: scenes from a mall

August 28, 2007

Attached to the Kuwait Swiss-Belhotel is a shopping mall. This morning, that shopping mall was mostly full of Indian and East Asian vendors. This evening, it is totally full of women in burqas.

I really wanted to take a picture of a woman in a burqa buying something from Burger King, but I’m not sure my camera’s 2 GB memory card has enough space for an entire human soul.

Literally half of the stores in the mall are shoe stores, and twenty-five percent of those shoes are metallic. Because if you wear a burqa all day, what’s the most important part of your outfit? That’s right. Gold hooker shoes!

Mideast tour: a related note from Molly Crabapple, who wandered around Morocco alone as a teenager

August 28, 2007

“In Arabic, the word for alone is the same as the word for lonely. Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan feminist writer, said that freedom seemed synonymous with the nuclear family, which removed women from the dictatorship of their mothers-in-law and allowed romance between spouses. I wonder what Western feminists would make of that.”

Mideast tour: A Brief List

August 27, 2007

Items I have been asked by members of the US military to autograph:

• several camo Army hats
• one t-shirt
• two guitars
• one fresh tattoo
• one Marine pectoral muscle

Mideast tour: Camp Buehring, Kuwait

August 26, 2007

We’ve been seeing a lot of this.

These are the result of a government contract. They are not as popular as McDonald’s. Soldiers who sleep in tents and have to relieve themselves in porta-potties nevertheless have access to Chicken McNuggets and Frappucinos. Those are some strange priorities.

Autograph and photo session after the show.

More of the same. Soldiers who are just passing through often don’t have a place to put their guns, and are thus required to carry them at all times. Including to comedy shows, and chow. The dining halls have signs about where to point your muzzle when you sit down to eat.

Signing hats! Wrote lots of “Stay safe!”

Someone had me sign an Iranian bill. The guy was sending autographed foreign money to his kids, kind of a 2-for-1 souvenir. Kid Rock had come through and signed an Iraqi bill for him.

We shot M-16s in a simulation exercise.

You really do have to reload these things all the freaking time. You might kind of think that the most powerful military in the world would magically have shoot-’em-up guns like in the movies, guns that never have to be reloaded unless it’s a crucial plot moment for the hero, but real guns don’t work that way. You have to carry lots of magazine clips and people shoot at you while you are reloading and the gun is really heavy after the first five minutes.

I really try not to be the kind of person who worries about how her ass looks when trying to shoot simulated terrorists.

Here’s an example of the targets at which we were shooting. This was one of the live-action simulations that also tested you on ethics, as opposed to the video-game style ones in which you are supposed to shoot anything that moves.

Anthony is a Naval dentist who was helping out with the tour. He took the shooting photos above.
As comics, it’s important to keep in mind the mood of our audience; sometimes it’s a holiday show, or it’s a Friday night and people are happy to be chilling after work, or it’s a blizzard outside and the few people there really, really wanted to be at the show. Or whatever.

Some of the camps in Kuwait are used primarily for training, and some as waystations and supply stations on the way to and from Iraq. Buehring has few permanent troops; for most soldiers, it’s a first stop in the Mideast before being shipped off to one’s real destination.

In brief: an audience leaving for Iraq in the morning laughs less.

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