Greetings-
I am writing from a small post in the hard-to-find-on-a-map country of Djibouti, Africa. If you were to use Google Earth to try and locate this position, it's extremely easy- located on the water in the horn of Africa. In fact, at the moment, I am sitting less than a mile from the sea. Please bare in mind, there are walls, berms, towers, razor wire, and various other barriers between me and the beach... and by no means is this a resort area... comically far from it!!! (By the way, the above picture was staged...).
The installation is a navy/marine base and is quite small. The climate/geographic classification is deemed desert but by way of comparison, my armchair analysis places it something like Florida... of course, I've been here a mere 4 hours- less time than the 5.5 hours it took to ride here in the C-130.
The mission here is preemptive and this includes us. The idea is to help establish infrastructure (clean water, schools, etc) and prevent another undereducated nation from being an environment for fostering extremism and terrorism. Of course, there's probably more to the story, but this is the official line and I see no reason to be cynical (who, me??)...
In addition to concerts on the base, we have some trips out to the villages scheduled. The marines love this interaction, for it has reaped benefits with the locals, such as positive intel on Al-Qaeda and other bad guys. If you took a look at that Google Earth map, you'd see we are virtually right on top of Somalia- that's the direction we'll head over to when the time comes.
We are taking our malaria pills and carrying DEET... as a side bar, the most recent Nat'l Geographic is about malaria. Pick it up and read it... incredibly interesting.
What isn't interesting is this blog post so I will leave you until we actually do something here besides drop our gear and eat.
Take care!
J-
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