Halpin at large: Dec. 14, 2007

December 14, 2007

About this blog: Michelle Halpin, Solano Magazine's production manager at large, is a public affairs broadcast journalist, currently deployed to Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, which is headquartered at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti. A member of the 69th Public Affairs Detachment, a California National Guard unit in Fairfield, Calif., she is currently attached to and deployed with the 131st Mobile Public Affairs Detachment out of Mobile, Alabama; she left in March 2007 and is scheduled to be back in the U.S. in early summer 2008. Halpin says, "So far on this deployment, I've bounced from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Tampa, Florida, to Atlanta, Georgia, back to Tampa, Florida, to Qatar, to Djibouti, and to..."

---

December 14, 2007

CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti -- The 50+ mosquito bites I received all around my ankles during my last blogging adventure have almost all healed. They would have healed earlier, but the amount of itch created by them was too tempting for my discipline-o-meter, so a couple times I scratched the bejeezus out of them for some immediate relief.

The shoot with Al-Jazeera English went off without a hitch the next day, and all was well with the world as we returned to lovely Camp Lemonier without incident a day later than planned and with only minor intestinal discomfort from eating at the lodge, our 'home' of two days.

I had learned a lot from the Al-Jazeera crew and hadn't expected such a cultural exchange to take place between us. All three were from Nairobi, Kenya, so naturally, they boasted a lot about how much they love it there. I realized in listening to all their stories about Kenya and their different adventures as journalists in Africa, that before coming here, I had subconsciously envisioned that most of Africa was some kind of giant safari-esque environment, barren of greenery, except in Rwanda where the gorillas are and in West Africa, with few modern cities and that it was mostly flat as a pancake in terms of geography. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong!

The journalists felt that Ethiopia was a close second to Kenya, which really surprised me. They described Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city, as a beautifully green, lush city high in the mountains of Ethiopia and one of the best cities to visit in Africa. Number two actually, next to Nairobi, in their opinion.

One of the funniest and oddest conversations we had was about the differences in cell phone service in the U.S. and in Africa. It started with a comment from their lead journalist about how much he loved his Somali cell phone service. As the conversation naturally led to the minutia of comparing rates, services and available minutes, we Americans were speechless when the lead journalist said that there was so much cell phone competition in Somalia that he actually received rebates from his cell phone provider, that they periodically called him to check on his satisfaction with their service, and that he received thousands and thousands of minutes a month for somewhere in the neighborhood of under the equivalent of $50. He laughed at us when we tried to clarify if those were anytime minutes or just during certain hours of the day (a non-existent concept to him). He also said the reliability of his service was exceptional. Stunned. That's what we were. How is it possible that this guy in Africa has signed up for cell phone service in Somalia of all places and he has better service than I do in the U.S.? Competition.

Cell phone service here in Djibouti is another story. There is one cell phone company. Needless to say, the service is terrible and unreliable, so bring your Iridium phone if you ever visit!

Read her previous entry...

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to Solano Magazine »