November 2009 — It is Sunday here in Africa. The sun is pretty strong for it being a “Dark Continent” and all. Regardless, the weather is predictably hot but not near as bad as what I call “The Devil’s Breath” or what others might call Kuwait. Wait… let me back up…

…I flew up to Cleveland, Ohio to meet with the small group of guys that were picked for this unique mission. I wonder what I can say about the mission, as most of what I specifically do is classified. Please don’t mistake that for actually being cool. I just simply can’t talk about it. If I did tell you, you most likely wouldn’t think it was all that cool. Real secrets aren’t like in the movies. They are, in actuality, pretty boring. But my job here has a bit more to it than my normal job. It can get…touchy. There I go again… getting ahead of myself. Where was I? Oh Cleveland, that’s right… wait… not far enough back.

I suppose I should start with the administrative part… this being the first dispatch from Africa and all. This all started when I began to send out weekly e-mail updates from Baghdad, Iraq last year. To confess, it was more cathartic for me than informative to anyone else. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who received the e-mails that didn’t want it but couldn’t muster the energy to bother telling me to stop sending it to them. And so there I stayed, ignored, like the Target and Netflix emails. And so history is doomed to repeat itself with the Africa e-mails, which are now also being posted on When Falls the Coliseum, edited to be appropriate for an audience other than my friends and family.

Now where was I in the recap of events? Cleveland. Right. So I fly up there to meet the guys. It seems like it will be a great bunch of guys. There are only 3 of us that are staying for the whole year but we are all here to stand up something significant here in Africa. Then, after 3 days of paperwork and “team building” (that’s military speak for drinking), we fly to Fort Benning, Georgia. Benning was nice and easy. They were early days (like ready and moving at 0415) but we got the training we needed and equipment we didn’t (like fantastic cold weather gear that I would cherish were I going anywhere besides 11 degrees north of the Equator).

So then we drive up to Norfolk, Virginia to fly out on a Navy rotator flight. A rotator flight is a contracted military flight that runs on a predictable schedule. Military members, family members and retirees can all take these flights if there is room (standby). I think it costs about $15 to fly to Rota, Spain or Siganella, Italy. Not a bad ticket price, eh? After a 24-hour delay because of a flat tire, we began our 23 hours of flight time! While I can’t complain about the flight, it was long. They showed movies the whole way and I got a solid 2 or 3 hours of sleep. Refreshing!

We arrive at O dark thirty (military speak for an ungodly hour in the morning) in Djibouti. The name of the Camp here is Camp Lemonier. The link is the wiki page about the Camp for those bored enough to check it out. In short, it is a former French Legionnaire camp that is now the Headquarters of Combined Joint Task Force — Horn of Africa or CJTF-HOA for short or simply HOA. We received temporary rooms (currently I’m rooming with a young Marine Sergeant) and started our in-briefing.

Those of you that were in Iraq with me will recognize everything so far. Here comes the differences.

A) No one is shooting at us. There are no rocket attacks at night. There are no not-too-distant sounds of gunfire. There are no unexplained explosions. So there’s that.

B) Saturdays are a half day for mostly everyone. While no base is ever completely off (Guard Duties, Operations Center manning requirements, etc), most everyone else is off for half the day. While that might seem like a nice enough break from the daily grind (which is roughly 8-5 ish — yes, that’s right, not the 15-20 hour days in Baghdad), Sundays are completely off (again with noted security exceptions of course). At first, that might seem like a ridiculous scenario. Why so much off time? Well, I would refer back to A… there’s no one shooting at us. Bullets flying tend to ramp up your sense of urgency. And so the timeline here is a bit more relaxed.

That’s not to say that things are lax and easy here. I mean, hell, we can only have 3 beers a night here… and we have to PAY for them! I know! That’s what I said. Absolutely ridiculous! What do they think this is? Some war-torn foreign country? When I was in Iraq, we had bottles of Jack sent to us all the time… um… nevermind… no we didn’t… that never happened… I mean I HEARD about it happening to other people but no one I knew… kinda like that girlfriend in Canada story you know… completely uncorroborated. Anyways, yes…. we can have beer here. Three per day. Seems reasonable to me. It provides for a nice cool down period at the end of a stressful day and yet doesn’t allow people to get out of hand. Pretty fair compromise actually. And at $3.50 for a big 20 oz bottle or so, I don’t hear anyone complaining… at all.

Since we arrived early in the morning on Saturday, we started to get settled and decided to get lost on the camp… you know, kinda feel our way around. 30 minutes later when we had walked the camp twice we had to try and occupy ourselves for the rest of the morning. Finally, after lunch, we got into our workspaces and spoke to those that we will be working with. The section is called the CJ-9. Hmmm. Ok. The military generally assigns numbers to sections within a staff. Where a civilian company would have a Human Resources Section the military has a S-1, G-1, J-1 or CJ-1 section. The different letters denote the echelon of the command. For example, an S-1 is only at a battalion or brigade (the lowest levels) while a G-1 would be at a division, a J-1 is a Joint Command and a CJ-1 is a Combined Joint Command. Ok, having said all that, I will work in the CJ-9 for now.

This 9 shop is titled Strategic Communications. I am part of a Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Support Element (PSE) that is standing up for the first time here in Africa. What does that mean I will do? I can’t talk about specifics but my Intelligence background is why I was picked for this job as well as having been a PSYOP Team leader when I was on Active Duty 10 years ago. So, in general, I will be finding things out and analyzing that and other information to figure out the best way we can support the mission. The mission is to help Africans help other Africans (help them build up their own infrastructures and capabilities) and to hunt pirates and terrorists. That’s it in a nutshell. However, this place has unique challenges.

When I was in Baghdad, we had to focus on the different areas of a 7 million population whole. There were neighborhoods and boroughs and so on. Each were different from each other but all were the same city. Think Brooklyn different from Manhattan but both are still NYC. Well, from the HOA website — “The Combined Joint Operating Area (CJOA) consists of Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and Seychelles. CJTF HOA is not currently conducting activities within Eritrea, Somalia or Sudan. Outside the CJOA, CJTF HOA is operating in a Uganda, Tanzania, Mauritius, and Comoros.” HOA has 14 different countries. 14 different cultures. 14 different governments. 14 different ambassadors. I have A LOT of homework.

It will be a busy week, I’m sure. 

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