Up at 0730 for shower in this skanky old French shower from another age. Toilet comes close to overflowing, but I do my best plumber shtick and get it working.
Breakfast with Wright in mess. Not bad.
0900 command brief with 2-star admiral Jim Hart. I record and take notes. About 10 other officers plus Cobble in room. Deputy commander, 1-star Tim Moon is there. We’re spending the rest of the week together, so I chat him up some. Quiet but intense. Natural leader. Reservist, with a smooth, mentoring touch.
Good discussion that goes about 2 hours.
Walking out of building I am strafed by local crows. Emergency wash with water bottles (cooler nearby) gets most of the shit out.
Then in car for trip to US embassy for lunch with ambassador Symington of the famous Symingtons. Nice embassy. Djibouti is one nasty place by and large, so happy to be traveling with personnel, as it were. Embassy is in bad neighborhood, but has front on Red Sea, so very pretty. Great lunch with Symington and local USAID boss. Hart and Moon and Hart’s POLAD (political advisor from State) there. After lunch I facilitate discussion with bunch of Djiboutian embassy workers in back yard, with ambassador and other staff hovering. It’s a regular listening gig for him, and for the first time, he has an outsider lead it. Nice give and take from some smart locals. Everything, by ambassador’s command, is completely off the record. Symington is a quote machine, so that’s too bad, but not much to do.
I must say, Djibouti is stunningly hot and humid, and I was there during the cool part of the year. It is truly hardship duty.
Back at Camp Lemonier I get another tour of facility with base commander (who remembers me from some brief back in States) and his deputy. We climb a watch tower along back wire, and I snap some photos of CLU City from above. Some sights not to be photographed and I can take a hint, because there is a rather reclusive Spec Ops element on base that works for CentCom. Naturally, there are many elliptical conversations throughout all this touring and briefing about the recent special stuff down in Somalia, but the line, both on and off the record makes sense to me: plenty of other locations from which to launch and a big desire by CentCom and CJTF-HOA never to mix the SWAT stuff with the community policing. Boring, sensible, and true. If the big media gets that wrong, then they’re just putting two and two together to get five and that’s not my battle to wage. Lazy reporting is lazy reporting, no matter what prestigious paper does it.
Then special brief with taping from J-9 shop on current ops. Much discussion on rise of Africom. Very useful.
Then Wright, three of his subordinates, Cobble and I sign out vehicle and head to town, despite the presence of six French vessels in the port (meaning a load of thirsty and horny sailors prowling the capital streets). We drive around in the dark, looking for this much prized Ethiopian restaurant that no one’s been to but everyone’s heard about. Traffic is pretty aggressive: you want, you simply plow ahead. Finally, we stop in known restaurant in town center and ask owner. He gives us his son to ride with us and direct. The son does a nice job, gets us there (way confusing), so we drive him back, drop him off and then retrace back.
We park outside Coptic Orthodox church having evening mass outdoors in back. Preacher is going at it hard. We enter a courtyard full of guys lounging about. Think about any recent Hollywood movie about a debris-strewn, filthy Third World city and you get the picture. Small lighted sign tells us to head up to rooftop restaurant that’s just tables in the dark (virtually no lighting) and small, barely lit bar kiosk playing American music. Mosque just on other side starts blaring call to prayer, so we have a clash of civilizations going on: Christian, Muslim, and Eminem.
We sit in the dark, casually chatting. Waiter comes to us and we order. He wants money first before getting beers. I pay Eugene in USD and he covers me, plus he gives me load of Djiboutian coins, which I love. We have a great meal of Ethiopian beef with this hot pepper to sprinkle over it, plus what looks like a huge napkin under all the plates that’s really this spongy, pizza-wide pancake bread called injera. Eugene, whose wife is a Yemeni Jew, is our expert, so I trust his judgments and it’s a great meal. Eugene and I debate a lot of international relations history and BS with the others on our favorite drinks and the usual middle-age-to-younger-age guy stuff (the three subordinates to Wright are all twentysomethings, but guys with some serious military mileage). It’s a great night and I hit the hay around 1am.
