Home Sweet Home or M*A*S*H 2007

January 21, 2007

Okay, I promised a tour in the previous post, so here goes.

The Republic of Djibouti is on the East coast of Africa shored by the Red Sea. This is my first time in Africa and although I had thought of previous visits to more exotic places like Kenya or Kilimanjaro, this will have to do for my “first” here.

Djibouti used to be a French colony, and as a result, Camp Lemonier was once a French base, but the French decided to build a nicer one up the road and leave this to us. There is also a French Foreign Legion base nearby as well.

It is purported that Djibouti is the hottest inhabited place on Earth. Temperatures have been known to reach 140 degrees F in the summer. I noticed today’s temperature at the thermometer just outside the med facility:



Remember, this is January 21.

The camp houses 2,000 personnel of all branches of the military but is officially a Navy base now. It used to be for the Marines, but with a war going on they were needed elsewhere.

We were given a t-shirt that I think summarizes the attitude here about Camp Lemonier:



I love, “Its not hell, but you can see it from here”.

Djibouti is a country of the very poor and the very rich. The upper class is oil $ rich, while the majority of the populace is destitute. There is not such thing, apparently, as a native Djiboutian. The "citizens" are either Ethiopian or Somalian. The average annual income is $450 per year. (I don’t know how many of them are songwriters) It is said that many of the males are addicted to a woody bush leaf harvested in Ethiopia called khat. Ethiopia is bordered on the west while Somalia is just to the south. Apparently there are many beautiful Ethiopian women that "work the bars" in the city. 96% of them are HIV positive.

Let’s take a walk around Camp Lemonier. First here is our home for 4 days and three nights:



Inside we enjoy"air conditioned" (during the 140 degree summers, the tents get down to about 100) comfort:



Outside there is a scenic view as we head toward the latrine and shower area:



Water is a premium subsidy here. Conservation is especially stressed in the shower area:



At the same time the threat of dehydration is high, so there are frequent iced down water caches around camp.



Then there's the state-of-the art movie theater and game room:



And don't forget the shopping mall for your gift shopping needs:



and then there's the recreation area, med facility, mulit-denominational chapel, and chow hall:











The food is quite good and plentiful on base and actually, life doesn’t seem all that bad here, but then again we are here for only a short time. Some soldiers have very long duty here, up to 2 years. That would probably make anyone pretty stir crazy. There is supposed to be a nice 2 1/2 mile hike to the Red Sea, but you have to watch out for the hyenas which can be dangerous. Since we’re locked down, we won’t have that opportunity



Moving on now to the show tonite. I’m beginning to feel like a broken record. The band was its awesome self as usual and the soldiers were their usual incredibly appreciative self. But don’t take that as me becoming hum drum about this. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything I’m more moved by this than ever. Its just that I have run out of any portion of the English language to exress it, so all I can do is show some more pictures.

Earlier in the day, the entire band wrote a "suggestive" song called "In Djibouti" (a six way publishing nightmare) that was a huge hit with the troops.

At the end of the show, the 2nd encore was “Sweet Home Alabama” and the soldiers swarmed the stage to sing with the band. The Beatles doing “Hey Jude” couldn’t have done better than this:






There were a couple of Marines from a unit who informed me that they had to leave a bunch of guys on a duty and that it was killing them that they couldn’t be there. They had the same duty tomorrow night for our second show. AND they were all shipping "downrange" to Iraq in June. Well, we couldn’t disappoint them and so after all the autograph signing, handshakes and thank yous, we went over to their duty area to play them some songs. We had to. We couldn’t have gone to sleep with a clear conscience if we didn’t.

Here’s a shot of me playing for them:



Thom and Bob:



And one more:



The Marine to my left in the picture above was an enthusiastic 22 year old from Alabama. I asked him was his duty was and he said he was a "combat engineer", which means (his words) "I build shit and blow shit up". He said it very proudly.

I looked into these kids eyes knowing where they were going and prayed, "Please, God, let them all come home"