mardi 7 juillet 2009

A little slice of Francophonia in Africa

Dire Dawa (Ethiopia) --> Djibouti --> Tadjoura --> Djibouti --> Dire Dawa (Ethiopia)

Imagine a sandpit, yet one which costs a lot of money. Cruel? Probably. However it's fair to say that this is an effective summary of Djibouti. OK, it was cruel. There is definitely more to Djibouti than sand: Djibouti is also noted for its salt.

OK, I'm overdoing it. The most noticeable thing about Djibouti, should you arrive there in mid-summer, is that it is not only hot (and we're talking close to Sudan hot here) but humid. Thankfully there are plenty of people willing to help by selling reasonably priced bottled water and cheap ice creams.

Djibouti city is visually European in the city centre with the suburbs quickly turning to the typical shantytown / tin shed style of architecture which we see so often in Africa. The centre with it's distinctive style also 'has character': there's a distinct lack of care taken for these buildings and although the crumbling brick and peeling paint add a little something.

Culturally, the most notable aspect of Djiboutian daily life is the arrival of qat from Ethiopia. Ethiopia has clearly hit on a great thing and is renowned as having the best qat in east Africa: daily qat deliveries arrive in Djibouti at about midday and this, combined with the heat, means that the average Djiboutian is spending the hottest part of the day slowing getting a qat buzz. Cafes and the streets are quiet with the few people that can be seen lying on the pavement with a layer of cardboard as a matress.

Food and transport is generally cheap here although the accommodation is notably more expensive that other nearby countries: where we can pay US$12 for a twin room in Addis Ababa, US$15 for the same in Hargeisa or US$3 per bed in Sudan, the cheapest room in Djibouti City – after negotiation to halve the price – was US$35 for a twin room. Apparently Djibouti's higher cost of living (for accommodation at least) is due to the price of electricity (coupled with a compelling need to run air conditioning non-stop for long parts of the day) and Djibouti's need to import just about everything except salt.

As it happens, Djibouti's president, who indulges in a little Middle-East-style personality cult development judging by the posters of him in parts of the city, is lauded (but perhaps only by himself) as having done a lot to develop Djibouti's port. Well done to him. Other billboards suggest that the work has just begun and that by the time that Djibouti goes jusqu'au bout de la reve – “until the end of the dream” - the port area will be a space-age mix of leafy boulevards and high-tech buildings.

We spent a few days looking around Djibouti – there's not so much to see there as there are no distinct tourist attractions within the city – and looked for the opportunity to see the crown jewels of Djibouti: the desert lakes of Lac Assal (relatively easy to get to: 50 minutes by car) and Lac Abbe (not so easy to get to: down on the border with Ethiopia). Unfortunately the only way to get to these destinations is to catch a taxi or a tour in a 4x4 neither of which was cheap: for a trip to Lac Assal a 4x4 costs US$300 for a daytrip (although one operator dropped his costs to US$200) and taxi drivers typically wanted US$100 for the ride there, wait a few minutes and return.

So we skipped this and the possibility of snorkeling with whale sharks and decided to see what Djibouti's second city, Tadjoura, had to offer. The short answer is not much. Getting there was easy enough: there was a bus that left from central Djibouti at about midday and it takes about three hours to get to Tadjoura. It doesn't cost much. Off we go!

As it happens there is one hotel in all of Tadjoura – Le Golfe - conveniently located on a beach, and it's not bad (although you'd expect not bad for US$58 per night for a twin room). We stayed there for a few nights, despite having seen Tadjoura in a few hours and generally relaxed and had a quiet time. As I've already suggested Tadjoura doesn't have much: it's a small, crumbling town but with nothing happening: no (commercial) port, no apparent trade, nada. It's most compelling features are the buildings which, crumbling as they are, “have character”.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Djibouti. We packed up, headed back to Djibouti (the city) and exited back to Dire Dawa by bus at the next opportunity (and getting ripped off by the bus operator as we did so: we had to pay extra for bags. Sound familiar?)

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