Djibouti vacation and the marvels of snorkeling

Rose-ringed parakeet in Djibouti City

This entry is not entirely chronological as we were on vacation in Djibouti prior to the last entry. Somewhere back there, we had a week of restful vacation, which has completely worn off after a week of frantically catching up on work! But it wouldn’t do to miss the opportunity to share something about our week in Djibouti. Paul wrote about all the challenges in getting there and the lodging snafu at the end. I’ll focus on the positives!

Djibouti is a very small and relatively new country tucked into the corner of the Horn of Africa. I had been in the Afar region the week before and I was immediately struck that it was basically the same landscape: dry, rugged, desert. The kids asked, “why is there construction rubble everywhere?” But it wasn’t from construction – the land is just covered with rocks, piled and heaped and scattered. Even many of the same people groups are Djiboutian – Afar with their camels and goats, living in daboyta houses; Somalis; a lot of diaspora Ethiopians; a few Arabs here and there, due to the proximity with Yemen just across the Gulf of Aden. 

Djibouti mountain landscape

The main difference is that Djibouti is Afar by the sea…It is the major port for the Horn of Africa. It is also a strategic location on the continent, near the middle east. There are at least five major military bases there, set up since the first Gulf War to monitor piracy and terrorist threats. It was once a French colony (or possibly just a private slave-trading fiefdom for a particular French merchant?) and only gained independence in 1977. We learned that at that time there were only 9 Djiboutian high school graduates in the whole country—no investment in human resources there. Anyway, Paul and I were very happy to have an occasion to use our French again.

Desert by the sea

We drove for three hours over strikingly scenic winding mountain roads on our way between the airport and our beach hotel. We also noted the many, many rusted carcasses of container trucks that had fallen off the twisting roads – this was once again the main trade route between the port of Djibouti and Addis Ababa. It was a very tricky place to drive, honestly, and we were glad for an experienced chauffeur. Our guide claimed that it’s mostly Ethiopian drivers who have the accidents – they like to consume alcohol, which puts them to sleep. The Somali and Djiboutian drivers just chew chat and don’t eat anything and stay awake all night (probably until they take a wild risk and fall off the road, too).

Les Sables Blancs

We reached le Village Vacances des Les Sables Blancs (white sands vacation village) just at dusk, taking a rather hair-raising rocky, rough road down a steep cliff to the sandy shore below. You can see that little line of road in our photos. Oren had no interest in ever being in a vehicle again on that bit of road and went by foot to meet us at the top of the cliff when we left.

The rooms there were simple, but we had a family suite with two big, tiled rooms, enough bed space, fans, and a tiny bathroom (honestly, they could have made the bathroom a little bigger, and the bedroom would not have suffered!). We took an evening walk along the water and began to see many blue spotted stingrays in the water close to shore, maybe even a coral snake, to keep us on our toes. We had dinner and then went straight to bed after a very draining week and lots of travel.

In the morning, Paul, David, and I went for our first snorkel. We had heard that it was a great place to snorkel, but honestly, from above the surface, it’s very hard to tell. The tide was high, but we hadn’t swum out more than 15 meters when we found ourselves above a field of coral rubble. By 20 meters out, we hit a full coral shelf and by 25 meters, there was the drop-off. Right there, at high tide, so far below us that we couldn’t see the bottom. The coral was absolutely brimming with so many sizes and shapes and colors of tropical fish. We were stunned, almost speechless. It was too easy. Paul and I kept swimming along the edge of the coral drop-off, always more to see, until suddenly we realized we’d been out too long with David and he was getting tired.

We went back to shore, had breakfast, and then took Oren out with us. That time, Oren spotted a green sea turtle. It looked at all of us and then swam away out over the drop-off, flapping its flippers like a bird. From there, we snorkeled every single day, at least four times. We snorkeled at high tide and low tide – none of this business of a long, exposed coral shelf that you have to walk over for a kilometer at low tide, dodging sea urchins, to get to the water (that’s how it is on the Indian Ocean).  There was virtually no current at any point in this sheltered bay, and so it felt very safe to swim out, even in deep water.

We had brought a secondhand book, identifying coral reef fish, and we pulled that out after each swim, gradually learning to identify the Red Sea fish around us. We had never really had the opportunity to use it and study coral reef life before. I have watched and studied birds for thirty years now, and so I have automatically learned to identify the body shape of a thrush versus a finch. But I realized that it is a whole new world to learn to identify fish, name their types of fins, know what to look for. And here’s the catch – with birds, you have the bird in the tree, your binoculars, and the book open in your hand. With fish – no book in your hand! I had to try to remember what I was seeing with each fish, to distinguish it from other similar species, and then look it up when I was back on land.

Ancient coral shelf

Besides being a snorkeling paradise, Les Sables Blancs had one other amazingly great feature for total relaxation: absolutely no Wi-Fi whatsoever. 😉 And so, when we weren’t in the water we had to find other things to do. No checking work email! No Minecraft. We all read or listened to books, played games, took decently long naps, and walked up and down the shore when the sun was low. That was especially cool along the right side of the hotel where an ancient coral shelf was mixed with lava, and we could see all kinds of fossil remnants. All our meals were decided and prepared for us, so there were no decisions to make. It got a bit tricky when we needed to contact our taxi to make sure he was picking us up at the end of the stay, but the manager lent me a hotspot for five minutes and we were able to do that essential communication. We were aware that a war was beginning in Ukraine and that we had no way of getting news in the midst of that, but we had to just let it go for the moment and trust that it was all in God’s hands.

After just 48 hours, I said to Paul – “I don’t think I have been this relaxed and rested for a couple of years.” Besides the lack of Wi-Fi, I think that was mostly due to some very special properties of snorkeling. It’s hard not to try to get a bit poetic about it. We have no underwater photos, but here are some of the joys of snorkeling to consider.

There is truly nothing like being in the water, for a start, but tropical seawater at just the right temperature is very special. Humans are buoyant in saltwater and so one can just float with no effort. You couldn’t sink if you wanted to. In fact you have to kick hard and dive straight down if you want to see things deeper under water. Water washes away your cares and soothes your aches. There is a quality of returning to the womb, they say when you are floating in the sea.

And then there is the question of breath. If you have good snorkeling equipment, no leaks in your snorkel or mask, you are able to just relax in your breath. Steady breaths, in and out, timed in rhythm to slow strokes through the water. Deep, steady breathing is a good practice, in and of itself.

And then your sense of sound: once your ears are under the surface, your auditory world shifts completely. First, you are conscious just of the sound of your own breathing, in, out, in, out, slow and rhythmic. Then you become aware of the distant sound of shifting gravel on the seafloor, rhythmic with the waves. If you are attentive, you might begin to hear the delicate, irregular sounds of a parrotfish munching on coral. The only external sounds that disturb you might be the rustle of wind across your exposed snorkel or maybe the unwelcome whine of a motorboat approaching. But mostly, you are in a world of very limited sound.

Dive-boat "Lucy" docked in our Bay for 3 days!

And so, what you are mostly left with are your eyes and a very intense sense of being fully present. Snorkeling demands your full attention and full awareness. It is not an activity that allows your mind to wander. You need to be in the moment, alert, receiving all that is before you. This is partly a safety issue – after all, you are in the ocean, and deadly or dangerous creatures could possibly appear just around any corner or crevice. You need to be alert to any current, to the capacity of your own body to control your safety. That’s maybe the dark side of the sense of being present. But also, you WANT to be completely absorbed in what you are seeing, in what is right in front of you, because it is so wonderful. There are treasures hiding in the folds of every coral outcrop. Behaviors to watch. Colors to marvel at. You see a giant clam, its lips as long across as your forefinger to your elbow, and you want to dive down to tickle it and watch it retract into its undulating shell. 

above Sables Blancs

A huge grouper, 150 cm long, glides along under you and you follow to get a better look. A varied school of fish is gathered around a piece of coral rubble and you hover over them, fascinated at how they all gather to chomp on this one bit in this one place. In a deeper, secluded corner, a lionfish floats almost motionless on the seafloor, its feathery fins extended. On one end of the coral garden, the drop-off becomes incredibly deep and you have momentary vertigo and then realize that nothing can disturb your hovering flight over top. And what is that? slim, silver, almost 2 meters long? A barracuda – we saw several over 4 days.

Photo from the internet at this site: but
this is basically exactly what we saw

There are particular treasured moments – when you disturb a hawksbill sea turtle in a shallow area and have a good long look before it takes off. Or the early morning snorkel when you are on your way back to shore and then suddenly stop dead – there, just 5 meters below, is a giant creature, an eel? Opening and closing its mouth, its body extending just a little from a deeper cave in the coral, as thick around at the neck as a human waist. Can it be an eel? Or just a big fish, with tail hiding? You carefully swim around to get a better look from the other side. Chilled, a bit horrified, and utterly transfixed, yes, that’s no grouper, it’s an eel at least 3, maybe 4 meters long in total – you can’t quite see the end of its body. How can something that big be living so near shore? You get back to land, look it up and find, yes, there is such a thing as a Giant Moray Eel. Paul saw it too, separately, so I know that I was not hallucinating.

David fishing

As an aside, David loves fishing even more than snorkeling and tried out his fishing rod in all kinds of places along the shore. He got the hook caught in the coral a few times and needed a snorkeler to rescue it. Then he had the idea of taking 4 m of fishing line, tying it to the wooden handle of his net, sticking a hook on the end, putting a piece of dead fish on there, and then swimming off to the drop off to see what would happen. I went with him, and the first thing was saw was how many different reef fish were carnivores, all trying to get a piece of that bait. But then try getting a fish off a hook while treading water! David had extra bait in a ziplock in his pocket and we swam around and lowered the hook a few times. Until it occurred to me that we were carrying on our persons very fragrant dead fish meat. Really not very far from where I had spotted that Giant Moray earlier in the day. Sharks? Maybe. I called a halt to this fishing expedition and we dumped out all the dead fish meat and rinsed the bag before putting it back in David’s pocket.

salt-encrusted skull

All in all, snorkeling is an incredibly restorative activity. It is very good to spend a long time not thinking – just being and watching. We were very grateful for those days.

We departed Le Sables Blancs on Wednesday morning and started our drive back to Djibouti City. We had hired a taxi to give us a tour of some interesting sites, so along the way, we stopped at an area that had experienced recent volcanic activity. The ground all around us looked like cracked and broken asphalt, but it was really a lava flow. In one place, steam still poured up from a long crack. Empty Lava tubes had created interesting caves in other places. We stopped at a hot spring in one place, with boiling water pouring out. And nearby, a spring was filled with tiny strange fish that enjoyed nibbling on bare feet.

The major goal of our sight-seeing was Lac Assal, the lowest point on the continent of Africa. It is a saline lake that is receding each year and leaving a layer of dazzling white salt on the surface.

in a lava tube cave

It was really fascinating to touch the salty water and feel its’ oily texture. Young guys dipped various things into the saltwater, and within 45 minutes they were coated with salt. Oren bought a goat skull that was salt-encrusted. He thought it was severely cool. We had a picnic lunch beside the sea and then kept driving on to the capital.

In the last blog, Paul recounted our one major problem on the trip – a bad miscommunication about our Airbnb. It all ended well however. We were able to find two rooms available at a lovely little French bed and breakfast. The four rooms are actually part of a couple’s home, with nicely decorated rooms and even mini-fridges. Madame Michelle was incredibly gracious and friendly, preparing such a nice breakfast for us each morning: homemade French yogurt, croissants and baguettes, European cheese, eggs, jams, and fresh coffee. Upstairs, she has a peaceful terrace, with a bit of a view of the sea. We would highly recommend it as an affordable place to stay in town.

Dinner in Djibouti city

Thursday morning we went and got our COVID tests done (always an ordeal in a new setting, but we had time) and then walked to the big French grocery store about 5 km away. There were a few things we wanted to pick up there, and it was a good place to have lunch. We had a quiet afternoon to rest while the sun was high, before taking a walk to the really expensive hotel downtown. It was quite an amazing place to walk around, and we paid far too much money for a couple of soft drinks. We went on to a cheaper place by the water for dinner – we actually ended up having dinner there three nights in a row!

Ocean kayaking

On Friday morning, we had time for one final outing: kayaking to Turtle Island. Rushing Waters Adventures took us out on good ocean kayaks early as the tide was still high. After a little while, we did begin to see a couple of sea turtle heads popping up above the waves and then diving down again. It was honestly better to see turtles when snorkeling, but this was still very fun. The kayaking itself was kind of exciting, rolling over fairly big waves. We hopped out on one of the islands to swim in the crazy surf for a little while. As we were heading back, I said to David, it would make me happy if a sea turtle came up right next to me. And then half an hour later, that actually happened. He looked incredibly startled and didn’t look at me long, but it was a lovely experience.

We cleaned up and rested afterward and then walked to a nearby Yemeni restaurant, Restaurant Beit Al Mandi.  It was packed with local families and groups of friends, having a special meal after Friday prayers. We looked at the menu and had no idea what to order, but we had heard about the amazing Yemeni oven-roasted fresh fish. On the advice of the waiter, Paul ordered 2 large fish to share. Two massive plates of fish appeared, along with an enormous round galette, or Yemeni flat-bread – kind of like naan but thinner and crispier. We ate as much as we could but couldn’t finish all that fish! I don’t think Paul and I ate again for another 24 hours. Next time, 1 fish and a salad alongside it!

on La Terrasse

We finished our day enjoying the quiet at the guesthouse, playing games on the terrasse in the afternoon. In fact, the city of Djibouti seemed remarkably quiet and calm overall – such a contrast to the constant hum in Addis. Our flight back to Addis in the morning was in two legs, but it was pretty uneventful. And then we returned to our home, the guests waiting there, and all the work to finish up before the end of the fiscal year, March 31.

Just to keep a record of these contacts, and for any of you who want ideas about how to be a tourist in Djibouti:

·       Les Sables Blancs: https://www.sablesblancs.com/ Your best bet to contact them is WhatsApp : +253 77 15 66 66

·       Rushing Waters Adventures:  https://www.rushingwateradventures.com/

 tours@rushingwateradventures.com Run by Americans, so English works.

·       La Terrasse Villa Guesthouse Djibouti : https://www.laterrassedjibouti.com/en/guesthouse-la-terrasse. Michelle Boulay also has a simple house on an island where she hosts people on weekends. We want to try that next time.

·       Arta is supposed to be an even better place to snorkel and it’s the gateway to seeing Whale Sharks. But the season for that is November – mid-February. We were too late.  We would want to try to stay a night or two near there at Sunny Hill Center. But still didn’t get a contact.

And here are the bonus photos:

breakfast on the porch

coral fossil

giant clam fossil

David was barefoot, needed flipflops, and found some in the tide trash

moutains of Djibouti

in the lava tube

Oren in the tube

David at a touristic Daboyta

La Terrasse

Kayak stop at turtle island

Goliath heron

Djibouti City

At the Kempinski for a walk

toe-nibbling fishlets

Lac Assal

Above Bai des requins (shark bay)

on volcanic rock

Hyrax at sables blancs

 

"I will never go back to that place!" --A field visit to Dabat IDP camp

" I will never go back to that place!" A sentiment echoed by nearly everyone I spoke to. The context is a recent field visit to Dabat IDP (internally displaced persons) camp. Temeskin, the 12 year old boy in the picture was someone I interviewed. He told me about his harrowing escape from Tigray with his mother and 4 siblings. His father is a soldier with the TPLF, and since his mother is Amhara, they, like all the Amhara in and around their homes were threatened with violence, many of their friends and neighbors were raped and murdered. When I asked him if he hoped to return someday, his otherwise sunny disposition turned dark and he said, "I will never go back to that place, --full of dead bodies!"

I have just returned yesterday from a 4 day trip in northern Amhara region and Gondar to visit projects we have in those areas. The trip comes after a recent return from our Djibouti vacation last week. Rebecca will be providing some highlights about that in a future post, but the current week is so full it needs to be documented while it is still fresh. 

Our arrival back to Addis on Saturday was a reunion with some visitors who were passing through, including Rose, the former MCC Rep. Rose was on her way out, and Neil, a colleague and friend from Arusha, was here to do some trainings for partners here on conservation agriculture. He and I had both planned to travel north later that week. Since his trainings were happening in advance of my planned visits, he left on Monday by plane to Bahir Dar to join our technical team who were traveling by car to their final destination--Debre Marcos see work with one of our partners. 

I stayed in Addis with Rebecca on Monday through Wednesday which felt like a mad dash to get through stacks of time-sensitive emails for disbursement of grants and submissions of new concept papers, as well as our annual audit which was ongoing at that time. I felt like we were racing the clock as I was planning to leave myself into the field to visit two projects where our colleagues were heading after the training with Neil. 

I left on Thursday afternoon and took a flight to Bahir Dar, about an hour away. One good thing I can say about Ethiopia, is that Ethiopian Airlines offers excellent local travel services. They have many daily flights to most major cities which reduces travel time from 12 hours driving to about 50 minutes flying. I met Mesfin our food security coordinator and Wondeweson our logistics officer at the airport in Bahir Dar and stayed the night at a hotel there.  They had just arrived from Debre Marcos, about 4 hours to the south. I did appreciate the sacrifice they were making bringing the LandCruiser up to meet Neil in Debre Marcos then continuing on to see me. Their entire trip for them would take 8 days. 

Bahir Dar is a nice town, set up to be touristy (although since the conflict and COVID there is no tourism that I could see.) It is on lake Tana, a large lake in the north of the country. We had a pleasant evening at the hotel we were staying in, then left the next morning. 

We had a full day planned with visits to 4 well sites and waterpoints put in by our partner AEID who had been working extensively in the region to provide access to fresh water to many communities in several woredas near Bahir Dar. 

These visits are always interesting. At a completed water point, we can see large groups fetching water, and hear reports from the water committee about how much it has changed the life of the community. Women are often saved many hours of walking and several reported that the change had allowed their daughters to attend school as they are no longer needed to help fetch water. 

If the well is not done, there is a huge drilling rig at the site and watching them bore a one to two hundred meter hole is impressive. At all sites, community members are very keen to 'show respect' a ritual of gratitude which involves gorging us as much as possible on food provided by the community. I have mixed feelings about this in terms of 'checking privilege'. It feels uncomfortable for me a rich person to have food lavished on me by those who are much poorer. But like the woman who breaks the expensive bottle of nard on Jesus' feet, I think it is important to understand the symbolic act as ritual and its function in their culture--not to judge it with a western utilitarian/pragmatic mindset. 

Each of the four of us visiting were given huge plates with several enjera the size of pizza shells. This was covered with potato sauce (dinnich wet) and dried fava beans. Then I was given 4 hard boiled eggs, a huge helping of local creamed cheese mixed with berberri (ground chili). They wanted to pile on more but I politely declined. Then they brought me a pint of raw milk filled to overflowing in one glass, and another full glass of sweet yoghurt that they added beriberi to as well. Other drinks included T'alla, a local mead beverage, and areke, a locally made brandy. This was all followed by coffee. 

Doing one of these meals is challenging, but it takes extremely persuasive diplomacy to keep us from having to eat this at every community waterpoint we visit--without giving offense. The last group we saw really wanted us to stay for lunch. (like the last meal an hour before was a light snack!)

We left the well sites in the early afternoon and headed north to the town of Gondar in region by the same name. The land around there is mountainous and fertile (although it is the dry season). Lots of recently harvested wheat and teff fields blanket the land. 

Gondar is a historic town with buildings that date to the 15th century when Fideles one of the most important Kings of Gondar lived. The historic landmark in the middle of town has 7 castles on it--each of his descendants who became King built another. Although the Italians bombed the site in WWII much of it is preserved. We came into town in the early evening and had a chance for a quick tour before dark. 

We stayed in a hotel (amusingly called the Florida Hotel). It even had a very nice pool (though I had neither time nor swimsuit.) We stayed the night then started again midmorning to head north to two towns where there are several refugee and IDP camps, one is Dabat the other is Debark. These towns are close to the border with Tigray and many Amhara people who were living in Tigray during the war were forced to flee south and ended up in these camps as internally displaced persons. 

My reason for visiting is that our partner, MSCFSO is running an emergency project funded by MCC to provide food supplementation (Famix) to pregnant and lactating women (PLWs) and children under 5, to prevent malnutrition in the camp. 

We arrived mid-morning. This is not the first refugee camp I have visited and as I anticipated, there were many neat rows of large 'tent-like' shelters set up by UNHCR or IOM with logos emblazoned on the tarps that make up the shelters. There are well-organized areas for school, latrines, an area for playing football and volleyball. There were also, set up that day, many gunny sacks of famix and flour ready for distribution to the IDPs who get a fixed ration from UNHCR. 

When we pull our LandCruiser in the gate, we are met by many happy or at least amused children who follow us around while we inspect the food distribution site, the health post, latrines, and other areas of the camp. We take time for extensive discussion with the local govt officials, project managers, then the IDP coordinating committee (made up of IDPs who govern themselves.) We interviewed several beneficiaries. 

The stories we hear are heartbreaking, nearly everyone in the camp is Amhara, who was living in Tigray when the conflict broke out. Mikadra is a town name (in Tigray) that came up over and over again, most fled from there. There is evidence of extreme trauma, especially among the women we interviewed. Rape was a weapon of war and many women were sexually assaulted prior to their fleeing Tigray. It seems that the children here were spared the worst of the trauma, or appear to be resilient at least, and seemed to be in good spirits, generally during our visit. 

Among the most troubling reports is the lack of food at the camp. Although they are issued a monthly ration of wheat and beans, there is little else, and on some weeks, the shipment is late in arriving and they have gaps between the end of one ration and the beginning of the next. 

There is frustration for the women, many of them educated and capable, but stuck in the camp as they have nowhere else to go. They want to have the govt. resettle them, and none of them I spoke to  had an interest in returning to Tigray. 

It is humbling to feel helpless in the face of so much need. We offer them our encouragement, and a promise to do all we can. It is hard to know that MCC's rations will last only 3 months unless we can extend the project. But funding for this kind of intervention is expensive, and there are limits to how much and how long we can keep supporting them. 

The people we visited were gracious thanked us sincerely for our efforts, and we promised to do all we could before leaving. We continued on to Debark, about 25 kms further north where there are several camps that are even larger and contain IDPs as well as refugees from Eritrea. 

During our tour, one little boy happily showed me the toy pistol he had fashioned and told me that his father was an Eritrean soldier. We were able to see inside some of the tents. This is very sobering. Up to 48 people (10 households) can occupy one tent. Small foam mats line the walls but will be used at night. Huge piles of cooking utensils fill the middle of the tent. The conditions they must endure here are heartbreaking, but I know they came from worse, and there are systems in the camps to provide at least minimum sustenance in hopes that their situation here is not permanent. 

We did have a brief debrief with someone at the camp, then got back in the car and headed South again to Gondar. I had a flight back to Addis from Gondar at 5pm and we were on target to arrive at the airport about 4:20 which was great. 

Unfortunately, on the way, it became quite dusty and windy. By the time we got to the sky was dark and ominous. Sure enough, despite the dry season weather, a huge storm opened up right on the town. The plane was delayed by an hour, then canceled altogether an hour later. I had to stay another night in Gondar. The main problem with this was that I was going to teach Sunday School in the morning, so I had to call Rebecca to jump in at the last minute. (The sad irony of it all was that I looked on the radar map and there was only one small cloud cell in the whole country and it was right over Gondar!)

I returned to the airport the next morning and the flight was rescheduled for 10 am. I returned without incident. It was good to see Rebecca and the kids again. She had had an insanely social weekend with guests coming and going, and several rendez-vous with friends in different parts of town on top of Sunday School. 

We had our small group Sunday afternoon and it was good to be back in that rhythm again. Oren has been studying intensely for his mock A level exams which began this week. He has quite a few hours of exams in Maths, Chem, and History. It is good to be together as it is harder when Rebeca and I have to divide and conquer to do our job. In the coming weeks we should be able to travel together to several places. 

Rebecca will add a blog later this week with details of our Djibouti vacation.