The past few days have been pretty routine which is to say, conducting office calls with the primary staff here and attending various meetings.
I was lucky enough to schedule a couple of events today that would take me to an outlying village and a very thorough tour of the port of Djibouti and the various sectors of the city. I am going to break today into two segments.
For the first part of the day, I was going out on one of the daily missions with a Civil Affairs Team. Civil Affairs teams are small groups of soldiers who work in their assigned areas to identify projects which should be undertaken to improve the quality of the lives of the people who live there. The projects recommended may be well drilling, providing a steady source of electricity, providing for medical/vet/dental/eye care through mobile teams, vaccinations of local populace, building schools, etc. These teams don't actually do the things listed above. They identify the requirement and assist in the execution of those programs. 96% of the Civil Affairs units are found in the reserves for whatever reason and the members of this team were from an Army Reserve unit from Miami, Fl.
So, we load up in 2 separate Toyota Land Cruisers (Land Rover is also a favorite). We don't use HMMWVs because we don't really need them and they are very expensive to maintain. Plus we would tie up maintenance personnel who could otherwise be somewhere else, like Afghanistan. We are armed as a precautionary measure but don't expect any problems. Never hurts to be prepared though. When you really need a gun, it's to late to think about how you really should have brought something but didn't. Jodi would not let me buy a fighting hatchet, so I don't really have anything for the close fight. I will have to find an improvised weapon like a board with a nail in it. Mess with me and I will give you such a case of tetanus.
Once you get outside the city, there is very little infrastructure, so the roads are dirt paths. It is slow going but we reached our destination in about 30 minutes. The village which was our destination is called Nagae. It is really more of permanent squatters camp. There is no electricity or plumbing but they do have a piped in water source (but no internet). It was the water source that fell into a state of disrepair and needed to be addressed. People build a lot of stuff in Africa but never really tell the end user how to maintain it. Additionally, the enduser who is deriving the benefit wants to be compensated to maintain the free stuff they just got. Unless Africans shift their paradigm, I am afraid not much is going to change on this continent which is 3.5 times the size of the continental US.
I would like to say I was surprised at what I saw, but I was not. It was more of the same of what I have seen already. Everyone has shacks made of whatever they could find blowing across the terrain or at the local dump.
There were goats wandering around everywhere (no pens). Goats are a real staple in Africa. They provide milk, meat, low maintenence, robust from a health standpoint, and produce more goats. Goats are found everywhere in Africa. There were even a couple of camels in the village. I found out later in the day that you will find only one type of cow in Africa. It is the one that has a camel-like hump behind its neck. Turns out that this is the only species of cow that has sweat glands which are very important in a land of 115 degree temperatures and little shade. And, where there are goats, there is plenty of goat crap. Nobody really seemed to mind even though most were barefoot.
When we pulled into the village, children started following the vehicles and seemed very interested in us. The few men in the village were sitting in the shade near the mosque and the women went about their business of doing daily chores. There was one man, later described as not right in the head, greeted us and spoke with us briefly through our interpreters. The women are forbidden from speaking with us and would be beaten if they did.
We examined the central water point (see pic) which is nothing more then 26 spigots with an octopus of hoses running off it to everyones "house". It was leaking badly which was wasting a very precious resource, causing low water pressure, and the collecting pools of water are a health concern for malaria.
After we finished up at the water supply point, we need to travel a couple of hundred yards away to take a look at the village school. The Dijiboutian government is making a real effort to ensure that each village has a school and a health clinic. They feel that if people are healthy and educated to some degree, the country will prosper. Makes sense to me.
The school has its own water supply line as well as electricity. The school headmaster lives in the village and is paid by the central government. We were actually there to look at a broken water spigot. It is part of the school toilet structure and kids have been climbing on the concrete latice and using the spigot as a means to boost themselves up. Once the spigot is fixed, a fence will be erected to prevent this from happening again. While we were there, I thought I would take a gander at the toilets. What I found is the type of toilet that is common in Africa and the Middle East. It is really just a hole flanked by two bricks (see pic). That's right ladies, hike up your skirt, put one foot on each brick and....
To finish up, grab a bottle of water (you remembered your bottle of water, right), pour a bit down your backside and scrub a bit with your LEFT hand (never use your right). When you have that "oh so clean" feeling, stand up and stroll out. You may have heard that is impolite (downright nasty) in Muslim dominated regions to eat using your left hand (it is common to eat with only your hands in Africa and the Middle East) and the process I listed above is the very reason why. It also rude to hand something to someone using your left hand. Arguably, this is a better way to finish up then the Western way of using toilet tissue, but I will stick to what I know.
After the visit to the village, it was off to the government research center where we met with the Minister of Hydogeology. The team wanted to introduce themselves (have only been in country a couple of weeks), let them know some aspects of their mission, that they were seeking his support, and to procure a consolidated map of the city water works. He was a polite, well spoken gentleman who was very helpful and looked forward to working with them moving forward.
Tomorrow I will cover the second half of the day which included lunch with the Embassy's Station Chief and a tour of the city with the NCIS Agent assigned to the Embassy.
I was lucky enough to schedule a couple of events today that would take me to an outlying village and a very thorough tour of the port of Djibouti and the various sectors of the city. I am going to break today into two segments.
For the first part of the day, I was going out on one of the daily missions with a Civil Affairs Team. Civil Affairs teams are small groups of soldiers who work in their assigned areas to identify projects which should be undertaken to improve the quality of the lives of the people who live there. The projects recommended may be well drilling, providing a steady source of electricity, providing for medical/vet/dental/eye care through mobile teams, vaccinations of local populace, building schools, etc. These teams don't actually do the things listed above. They identify the requirement and assist in the execution of those programs. 96% of the Civil Affairs units are found in the reserves for whatever reason and the members of this team were from an Army Reserve unit from Miami, Fl.
So, we load up in 2 separate Toyota Land Cruisers (Land Rover is also a favorite). We don't use HMMWVs because we don't really need them and they are very expensive to maintain. Plus we would tie up maintenance personnel who could otherwise be somewhere else, like Afghanistan. We are armed as a precautionary measure but don't expect any problems. Never hurts to be prepared though. When you really need a gun, it's to late to think about how you really should have brought something but didn't. Jodi would not let me buy a fighting hatchet, so I don't really have anything for the close fight. I will have to find an improvised weapon like a board with a nail in it. Mess with me and I will give you such a case of tetanus.
Once you get outside the city, there is very little infrastructure, so the roads are dirt paths. It is slow going but we reached our destination in about 30 minutes. The village which was our destination is called Nagae. It is really more of permanent squatters camp. There is no electricity or plumbing but they do have a piped in water source (but no internet). It was the water source that fell into a state of disrepair and needed to be addressed. People build a lot of stuff in Africa but never really tell the end user how to maintain it. Additionally, the enduser who is deriving the benefit wants to be compensated to maintain the free stuff they just got. Unless Africans shift their paradigm, I am afraid not much is going to change on this continent which is 3.5 times the size of the continental US.
I would like to say I was surprised at what I saw, but I was not. It was more of the same of what I have seen already. Everyone has shacks made of whatever they could find blowing across the terrain or at the local dump.
There were goats wandering around everywhere (no pens). Goats are a real staple in Africa. They provide milk, meat, low maintenence, robust from a health standpoint, and produce more goats. Goats are found everywhere in Africa. There were even a couple of camels in the village. I found out later in the day that you will find only one type of cow in Africa. It is the one that has a camel-like hump behind its neck. Turns out that this is the only species of cow that has sweat glands which are very important in a land of 115 degree temperatures and little shade. And, where there are goats, there is plenty of goat crap. Nobody really seemed to mind even though most were barefoot.
When we pulled into the village, children started following the vehicles and seemed very interested in us. The few men in the village were sitting in the shade near the mosque and the women went about their business of doing daily chores. There was one man, later described as not right in the head, greeted us and spoke with us briefly through our interpreters. The women are forbidden from speaking with us and would be beaten if they did.
We examined the central water point (see pic) which is nothing more then 26 spigots with an octopus of hoses running off it to everyones "house". It was leaking badly which was wasting a very precious resource, causing low water pressure, and the collecting pools of water are a health concern for malaria.
After we finished up at the water supply point, we need to travel a couple of hundred yards away to take a look at the village school. The Dijiboutian government is making a real effort to ensure that each village has a school and a health clinic. They feel that if people are healthy and educated to some degree, the country will prosper. Makes sense to me.
The school has its own water supply line as well as electricity. The school headmaster lives in the village and is paid by the central government. We were actually there to look at a broken water spigot. It is part of the school toilet structure and kids have been climbing on the concrete latice and using the spigot as a means to boost themselves up. Once the spigot is fixed, a fence will be erected to prevent this from happening again. While we were there, I thought I would take a gander at the toilets. What I found is the type of toilet that is common in Africa and the Middle East. It is really just a hole flanked by two bricks (see pic). That's right ladies, hike up your skirt, put one foot on each brick and....
To finish up, grab a bottle of water (you remembered your bottle of water, right), pour a bit down your backside and scrub a bit with your LEFT hand (never use your right). When you have that "oh so clean" feeling, stand up and stroll out. You may have heard that is impolite (downright nasty) in Muslim dominated regions to eat using your left hand (it is common to eat with only your hands in Africa and the Middle East) and the process I listed above is the very reason why. It also rude to hand something to someone using your left hand. Arguably, this is a better way to finish up then the Western way of using toilet tissue, but I will stick to what I know.
After the visit to the village, it was off to the government research center where we met with the Minister of Hydogeology. The team wanted to introduce themselves (have only been in country a couple of weeks), let them know some aspects of their mission, that they were seeking his support, and to procure a consolidated map of the city water works. He was a polite, well spoken gentleman who was very helpful and looked forward to working with them moving forward.
Tomorrow I will cover the second half of the day which included lunch with the Embassy's Station Chief and a tour of the city with the NCIS Agent assigned to the Embassy.
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