Smitty's Clu Vu

Sorry it's been a few days since my last post. My muse started speaking to me Sunday afternoon and I've been working on a new project almost nonstop (well, I did have to go to work after all) since then. That much time sitting at a desk writing made my neck and back terrifically sore yesterday so I spent much of this morning lying in bed reading, but the muse won't shut up and I have more work to do. But I thought I'd take a break, check email, and show you what my clu looks like.

Unfortunately, though, the clu is only about 9' x 10' and hence the interior is almost impossible to photograph well. So instead you get pictures of the outside and the view. That will have to do.

First is this picture of the outside of my bank of clus. You can see more clus on the left side of the picture. The door to my clu is the first door on the right, and a tiny sliver of my window is at the right edge of the picture. We're looking south here, toward the chow hall, over the tents, and out in the distance of rural (read: uninhabited) Djibouti.

Next is this picture of the airport terminal at beautiful Ambouli International Airport, just to the north. The airport and the base share the runway.

This picture is looking somewhat east from the airport terminal. This is a small portion of the local port infrastructure; the majority of the Port of Djibouti (which has another name) is quite a ways north on the Gulf of Tadjoura, as opposed to the Gulf of Aden, which is the body of water you can see here. This is more or less the view out my window, although half the view is obscured by the opposite bank of clus.

And finally here's the view west up the road toward the office. I took this at sunset and brightness and dust in the sky bled the color out of the picture; in fact the sunsets here can be quite spectacular because of all the dust. The large tent on the right is our fire station. The small trailer in the foreground on the left is the MWR hut, from which I'm writing this to you right now. Isn't that nice?