Boom

This post was going to have a picture.

Friday night during my midnight foray to the gym, we experienced An Event. The gym is a great place at midnight, since there are usually only two or three other people there, plus one or two staff members (locals. Actually, they're Djiboutians. No need to continue this ridiculous farce of hiding the identity of my location; I've already said I'm in Africa several times and, if you look at a map, the U.S. doesn't have any military bases of any size outside Djibouti. Besides, it's a fun word to say.) Despite the limited number of people, the televisions are all turned all the way up.

So I'm in there, not really making a concerted effort at working out, just doing things to ease my insomnia-induced frustration, and I hear something over the Giant Voice. Giant Voice is an amusing name for the basewide speaker system. It's really only Giant if the person using it bothers to speak clearly and at a reasonable volume, neither of which the fellow at the microphone was doing.

The other guy who was working out and I stuck our heads out the doors. "All personnel move to the bunkers immediately," is what we heard. So I grabbed a bottle of water and made my way to the nearest bunker post haste. This bunker happened to be right next to a cluster of female tents, and, it being midnight, all the women were just waking up and heading for the bunker. I lost track of the other guy, and I was the only male in the bunker with about twenty women. This was mildly awkward. We sat in there for a few minutes, until the Giant Voice came back and made more specific instructions--namely, that we were in a bunker that was right near whatever it was that was bad and had to leave immediately! And get north of Michaud Blvd!
Michaud Blvd. was the road immediately west of the bunker we were in. I walked out of the bunker, took five steps, and, theoretically, I was safe.

I went back to the gym. I was the only one in there. The Djiboutian staffer had walkd up the hill and had no intention of coming back. No one else came in. I turned all the tvs to a baseball game. I tried all the exercises I'd seen in the magazines that I'd never tried because they looked silly. Turns out, they were pretty silly. I used the elliptical trainer for about thirty seconds and decided I didn't like it. Then I heard an explosion.

It wasn't much of one, just a little boom, not apparently very far away. I stuck my head out the door. People were wandering around on the main street, by the gym, so clearly the area hadn't been evacuated. I decided to go out and see what was up, so I walked over to my clu. The clus had been evacuated. Dozens of people were standing around looking at their clus with the expression you see on people's faces watching their homes go up in flames on the evening news. I went back to the gym.

After another half hour, the Giant Voice announced all clear, so I left and went back to my clu. And that's when I saw It.

The Robot.

The Robot that Blows Things Up.

It was right there, with Its handlers and mobile oppression unit. It was absolutely the coolest thing I've seen since the cheetahs. I ran upstairs and grabbed my camera, and ran back downstairs before they could load The Robot into Its van. One of the handlers saw me approaching.

"You can't take a picture of The Robot," he said. He had an M-16; he was about 19 and looked a little jumpy. I decided not to inquire further.

Saturday night, while I was asleep, the entire scene played out again. They evacuated the clus. I didn't notice. I may not have slept much, but I slept hard. I missed my chance to catch The Robot in action. Sunday night, I saw a man leaving his clu, waiting for a van to pick him up and take him to the airport. He had luggage. He left the luggage alone and went to a restroom.

Unaccompanied baggage is, of course, a Suspicious Package, and thus must be blown up by The Robot. I considered calling the explosive ordinance disposal unit, just so I could see them come back out for the third consecutive night and maybe surreptitiously snap a photo of The Robot blowing up luggage. But then I thought, I'd be pretty annoyed if they blew up my luggage. So I went and stood by it until the man came back.

Still. I know The Robot is here. I will get a picture eventually. The Robot demands it.