Taxpayer Funded Tourism

I finally managed to get off this military base and see Djibouti a bit. Interesting sights... I thought Iraq was bad, but now I realize it was mostly just blown up. There are vast swathes of Djibouti City that're just corrugated metal shanties. People sitting in the middle of goddamn nowhere along the highway, perhaps taking a break under the only tree in sight as they walk kilometers for water. World War Two-era Italian bunker complexes in the hills out towards Ethiopia. Huge plains, here at the mouth of the Great Rift Valley, covered in barren volcanic rock. And then long stretches of sandy nothingness, our trucks staggered into the wind to keep from blinding each other in clouds of dust. Djiboutian military convoy, Panhard AMLs and HMMWVs, trucking along. A pickup with the ubiquitous flame decals flipped upside down in a ditch. A dumped shipping container filled with broken glass.