One
of those ripples passes over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,
rolls across the aquamarine waters of the Red Sea and
washes up on the harsh shores of the tiny Republic of
Djibouti.
It's
not improvised explosive devices, or even kidnapped journalists
that are littering the beaches of this strange little
country. Djibouti's bountiful harvest is young, barrel
chested American sailors, on ...R n R... from combat missions
in the Persian Gulf.
Djibouti
is a true city state perched in the middle of a desolate
and brutally hot volcanic plane. There is no real agriculture
in Djibouti, or noticeable botany of any kind. Instead
most of Djibouti's 23,000 Square Kilometres (about one
quarter the size of Tasmania) is dramatic black rock planes,
freckled with brooding black boulders and pugnaciously
bright spiky green date palms. Jagged black rock mountains
randomly escape from under the planes. Baked clean of
life, their creator seems to have abandoned the convention
that mountains congregate in ranges, and instead has scattered
these at whim. Djibouti's one ancient railway line winds
its way between them like a drunken boa constrictor sliding
its way home after closing time. Only the wise old camels
gracefully navigating around their base seem to understand
the mountains' chaotic choreography.
Rather than grow things, which is virtually impossible
in such absurd geography, Djibouti imports things, a lot
of things. The massive commercial port accepting all these
imports, and sending them on to Ethiopia, and further
south to Kenya, Uganda and beyond, is the sole reason
for Djibouti's continued existence. The well guarded French
Naval base defensively squatting beside the port is the
sole reason for Djibouti's continued independence.
Up
until the late 1970's Djibouti was a French colony and
the place is still crawling with macho French Foreign
Legionaries stomping around in tight muscle shirts and
sandals with knee length white socks. Good French restaurants
litter the European quarter of Djibouti City like refugees
from the skyrocketing price of Parisian real estate, and
tired French colonial buildings stare emptily out across
the Red Sea. Having failed to secure a prestigious position
in the post colonial regime, the gorgeously run down relics
seem to have turned their back on the locals, preferring
abandoned freedom to subservience under an apparently
unworthy tenant.
However
despite the quality of the French food and architecture,
it is not French culture that the young American sailors
are sent here to discover. No sir, these sailors are sent
here to blow off some steam, or let off hot air, or any
of the other euphemisms that we use to describe the process
of searching for forgetfulness.
These
tough looking sailors wander around the red light district
of Djibouti City wide eyed and defensive, looking exactly
like bewildered Australian country boys on their first
big night out in Kings Cross. Their muscly arms are illustrated
with colourful and aggressive tattoos that somehow look
cartoonish on such clean and well mannered young men.
The only obvious sign that they are soldiers, not an American
high school field trip that accidentally caught the wrong
plane out of JFK airport, is that their hair is cut so
badly I am left wondering if the obscene aftermath littering
their scalp is some mysterious experiment in psychological
warfare.
Following
them through the heavy padded doors of Club Golden, or
Le Barfly, or any of the countless dilapidated and dingy
"night clubs" that form a debaucherous scrum in a dark
corner of Djibouti City, I couldn't help but think for
a second that I had actually slipped through a hole in
the time space continuum and landed back in a seedy Saigon
gogo bar, circa 1969. These night clubs look like a set
straight out of a remake of Stanley Kubrick's classic
Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket, only this time produced
by the creators of Beverly Hills 90210.
The
young pretty prostitutes dressed in fancy, but fake, western
clothes are there. The loud and outrageously dressed Madame
greeting you as you shyly walk through the door, all fake
French accent and over applied eye shadow is there, and
of course the tough looking American sailors are there
to.
But
rather than Private Joker's jungle fatigues, these sailors
are dressed to the nines in the latest gangster rap outfits,
with two white wrist bands around one arm and long shorts
so baggy they give the impression of being two ankle length
denim kilts sewn together. The sailors look like they
have just stumbled out of the MTV music awards, not retreated
from the most technologically advanced war in human history.
Only their embarrassed looks as they glance at every person
coming through the door, as if they expect their irate
mothers to storm in at any moment to grab them by the
ear and drag them out of such a disreputable "entertainment
venue", warns me that these quiet Americans definitely
ain't rap superstars.
Inside,
rather than milling around the fringes of the dance floor,
like good girls would, the Ethiopian bar girls, living
in Djibouti to earn hard currency the hard way, stand
behind the raised bar eyeing off their customers like
submerged alligators eye off a wildebeest drinking from
a nearby river bank. Walking up to the bar with fifteen
of these wise to the world beauties staring down at me,
I feel like a decidedly untalented actor auditioning for
the lead role in a well funded Ethiopian film based loosely
on Casanova's autobiography, History of My Life. The outrageous
price of my first Heineken does nothing to ease my discomfort.
By
the time I have ordered my first drink, some unspoken
delegation has taken place and a girl casually plonks
herself down beside me. She asks me if I want to buy her
a drink. No more, and no less. But some how the look in
her eyes, and the seriousness of her tone, leave me in
little doubt that if I say yes, I will get much more than
a vodka lime and soda.
Rather
than face my demons at the bar, it seems safer to retreat
to one of the couches guarding the locked fire exit
in the back of the room. The couches look like they
have seen more action than a projectionist in a Hong
Kong movie cinema, but are a better option then the
well worn booths that line the wall closest to the dance
floor. The tightly packed row of booths, light by a
single naked globe hanging at head height above each
long narrow table, look like something pilfered from
the special high security cell block at Abu Ghraib prison.
Afraid
that Private First Class Lynddie England may be hanging
out by the booths waiting to ask me for a light, or
even worse a dance, I gingerly plonked myself down on
one of the couches. Sipping on my cold can of beer,
I took some time to ponder some of life's imponderables.
Didn't these sailors know that the HIV infection rate
among Ethiopian prostitutes is estimated at 30 percent?
My guide book warned me, so why didn't theirs? Maybe
they did know and didn't care, or maybe they didn't
know and really would care if they did. Looking around
that bar, packed with young men who do brave and unspeakable
things for honourable reasons, bargaining with young
women, who do brave and unspeakable things for honourable
reasons, it was hard to decide which would be more tragic.
Having
such dark thoughts as your drinking partner always lends
itself to depressingly long, alcohol soaked nights.
In Djibouti's bars that outcome is all the more likely.
You see there is something about the bars in Djibouti
City that makes it that much easier to forget about
the promises and commitments you made in the outside
world, to forget about the risks and the assaults on
yours, and other's dignity.
It's
easy to forget about all stuff inside these places because
that's what these places are all about, forgetting.
If for a second you can prove to yourself that you haven't
been were you have been, haven't seen what you have
seen, haven't done what you have done, and aren't going
back to where you are going back to then this bar, this
drink, this woman have served their time humoured purpose.
That's what these bars were all about in Saigon in the
1960's and that's what they are all about in Djibouti
in 2005. The bars haven't changed, and the horrible
reason for their existence hasn't changed either.
Sitting
in that bar, watching these sailors who have seen so
much, but act like they know so little, I found myself
wondering if it's possible they have changed since those
dangerous days in Saigon. Even as they stumble outside,
drunk, satisfied, forgotten, they seem to have a core
of seriousness, a steely purpose in their stumbling
gait that reeks of a man, or a boy, on a mission. Did
conscripted soldiers plucked from the poverty of the
Bronx or Detroit Michigan have that core in Vietnam?
They didn't seem to in Dear Hunter.
As
the night drags on, Heineken after Heineken, the dance
floor slowly fills with more drunk and stumbling soldiers
who have obviously agreed to buy their new found girlfriend
a drink. The rap music blaring across the dance floor
is so loud and so angry it is obviously a key ingredient
in the amnesia conspiracy that lie at the heart of all
these places. But despite all the volume, and all the
violent "pop a cap in your ass" lyrics the sailors slow
dance with their partners, gently shuffling their feet
from side to side, head sadly resting on a sadly offered
shoulder.
As
I sat their watching those guys dance, clinging to their
girls as if they were afraid letting them go would mean
they would be pulled away to some cold and lonely place,
never to feel the warm embrace of a woman again, one
line from that great Eagles song released a few years
after the end of the Vietnam War, Hotel California,
kept on looping through my head;
...How they dance in the courtyard
Sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember
Some dance to forget....
Lachlan Harris has worked as a lawyer, journalist
and political adviser. This article first appeared on
The
Backbench. All Rights Reserved The
Backbench 2005.
