First Week

A week and a half in Djibouti and I’m just starting to get into the swing of things. With a mix of hormones, jet-lag, change in culture/way of operation, the intense heat, and the stress that I brought with me, this has been a rather difficult week. The first few days, Emily and I were given a lot of time to rest and adjust to the changes. I am very thankful for that as I have learned that jet-lag is a real thing! When I went to Jordan two years ago, we got off the plane, jumped into two vans, and were off to the desert to begin working that same day. The amount of time we had to adjust and get over jet-lag was… a whole 2 hour long van ride? After a handful of days in the desert renovating a house, I was wiped out. I never really recovered until I broke my foot in the middle of the trip which turned out to be the best thing that could have happened! I enjoyed being in Jordan so much more when I was able to slow down and take it easy. But anyway, this slowed pace has been very helpful because even though it’s been less stressful than Jordan was at first, there have still been difficulties in adjusting.

I don’t know when there will be a day that I will be able to talk about being in Djibouti and not mention how hot it is. *Actually, to end my discussion of it as well as my attempts to convey to you the truth of the matter, I'm attaching a blog entry that Rachel posted about the heat. (and keep in mind that her family has lived here for seven years)

When we tell people that Djibouti is hot here are some responses:

1. But it's a dry heat. (not for April, May, June, September or October. And the dry heat, when it comes, brings blasts of sand and wind that feel like a hair dryer in your face, complete with cracked and bleeding skin and temperatures over 120 with no place to hide)
2. I've been to Texas or India (or...fill in the blank), I know about heat.
3. But there's air conditioning. (sometimes and some places but not really. With the a/c on full blast for four hours, our living room cools to 90)
4. You're used to it. (is it possible to get used to heat indexes topping 150?)

We had a guest visit from another 'hot' country. She was sure she could handle the heat. We took her to the beach and she spent the entire day inside the air conditioned car. We had another guest who had visited Malaysia and 'knew all about heat'. I took her to visit a friend and after about twenty minutes we had to leave because my guest was minutes from passing out. Yesterday the spare tire on the back of our car exploded. EXPLODED. Tom asked the guys at the garage if they thought someone punctured it and they just laughed. "This is from the sun," they said. "The heat makes tires explode in the summer."

Just how hot is it? People pass out and tires explode and children develop rashes and lollipops melt to the cupboard and candles wilt without even being lit and goats cower in the shade under my car and I feel guilty prodding them out so I can drive.

Just how hot is it? Tire exploding hot.

There you go. :P Just like it’s hard to think of anything other than the cold on Dr. Cook’s poverty immersion and refugee weekend, it’s hard to think about anything but the heat here. And while I’m on the topic of Dr. Cook’s simulations, I should say that I have thought about them on multiple occasions while here. For those of you who don’t know, Dr. Cook is a professor at Cedarville that educates the campus on how to work with the urban population in America. He teaches a class in which he sends his students out on a poverty simulation to give them first-hand experience with what it’s like to belong to the urban poor population. We were thrown into the city to experience what he was teaching us in the classroom. He does a similar thing with another class, calling it refugee weekend. In that simulation, we are run out of our homes and live as refugees. I’m reminded of my experiences in those simulations frequently as extreme poverty is found at every angle. And I don’t know how to deal with it.

Daily I’m asked for money by people I pass in the street. I’m told to ignore the outstretched arms, even those of children, because if we respond, it’s likely that they will follow us, and if other people see, they will ask and expect our generosity to extend to them as well. And there’s no knowing where the money would go anyway, so it’s better to give food or water instead if we have it. Most of the time I don’t have those things, though. And I’m really frustrated that I don’t know the language enough to apologize or even ask what the person needs. Instead, I move past them, pretending not to notice their constant, “Madam, madam.” I’m sure I look so heartless, like I don’t care about their state of being, but inside I’m dying. I hate walking through the market and making little to no eye contact with people so that by chance they think that I just didn't hear them. I especially hate doing it when it is a child. I just want to scoop the kid up in my arms and hug them forever.

Most apartments here (or at least the apartments that belong to white people) have a guard who sits outside the building keeping watch to make sure no one breaks in. They open and closes gates when cars beep at them and they knock on windows when someone is waiting for us in a car outside the gate. Their life is spent living outside someone elses house. They are basically homeless men who get paid to protect the home of another family. The guards sit outside the apartment in a chair or makeshift hut all day and night, moving only within the parameters that make up the apartment building. How does he even use his money? He never leaves! But what other option do these men have? Around 60% of the population is unemployed, so any and every job opportunity is taken... even if it means giving up your life in order to stay alive.

I also don’t know how to deal with being a white female in Africa. My treatment in most cases is a result of the color of my skin. Sometimes I am treated like royalty, other times I am ripped off, and most of the time, I am asked for money. But I understand that it is so hard for people to see past my white skin, my foreign, privileged background. And I have trouble, too. I have been accustomed to a different lifestyle and although I can learn this one, I will forever compare it to a different one in the US because I know of something different than this. And I know that if I got on a plane and headed back to most any region of the US, I would have a place to stay and food to eat and all in better condition than it is here. I cannot escape that knowledge. And these people cannot escape it either. None of us are ignorant to the inequality and unfairness of it all. Neither the Djiboutian nor I are pleased by the reality and neither of us knows how to change it. We just operate in spite of it.

All the more I long for the day when none go hungry and justice is restored- even to the least of these. And all the more I long for the day when we are free from the bondage of our skin tone, all colors equal and united. Lord, haste the day.