Its Been a While / JPME / Khat

Ok, its been 9 days since I last posted, ruining a good streak of a post every couple of days. A variety of boring reasons why: lazy, more busy at work with new position, and playing XBox. Yeah, the XBox 360 I ordered arrived last week - the temptation of playing Gears of War 2 all evening is hard to resist. At least I've been able to make myself get to the gym everyday. I have been less successful in studying for the JPME course I signed up for. JPME is joint professional military education, its an academic certification for field grade officers - about leadership, strategic planning, joint military operations, etc. It's required for command at the O5 level and makes one more competitive overall. I'm taking the Air Force distance learning version of JPME. There are 7 courses, 18 months max to complete. This deployment is probably the best opportunity to do it, I hope to get at least 5 courses done. I don't want to study that stuff at home. Part of the reason I haven't gotten much done on that yet is that I don't have the books, still waiting on delivery, 3 weeks so far. I don't like reading a textbook on the computer screen.

On Saturday I went out into town during the day. I got a good tour of the city from an officemate. A big part of the culture here is men chewing khat in the afternoon. The leaves of this plant are chewed for a narcotic effect, nearly all Djiboutian men do it. The whole city is much less active each afternoon after the daily Khat plane arrives. Selling khat employs a lot of women, they have little wooden stands setup on the street, with a burlap sack full of the stuff. In fact the closest intersection to the camp is called Khat Corner. There is a wide range of living conditions in Djibouit city from crowded shacks & shantytowns up to apartment buildings and homes that wouldn't look out of place in a western country. Djibouti even has a five star hotel, the Kempinski. I saw the downtown square area, there is a variety of shops, restaurants, and nightsclubs - what one would expect in a downtown area, just with its own African twist. Of course, its the foreigners that support those businesses.