Kate L.

I’m leaving for Morocco in September and I will be there for over 2 years. This morning I received an order through my amazon store for something to be delivered to “Poligono Virgen de Africa … Ceuta, Ceuta, Spain.” I was very curious as to what part of Spain this could be, so I plugged that name into Google Earth and Bingo! it moved only inches from the location in Morocco that I’d been exploring. I want to go to Ceuta Ceuta and meet Borja Alemany Serrano, who bought my audio cassette of Dead Can Dance’s Serpent’s Egg.

Delicious seafood, wonderful ambiance, gracious service, reasonable prices. What more could you want?

I will be observing training exercises. This trip is in connection with my work. I’m a sub-contractor with a company that is contracted to provide training materials. It should be interesting and I’m looking forward to it.

I will go in February or May of 2008. Either for carnival in Ziguinchor or the jazz festival in Saint-Louis.

So, it’s decided that the location for the project will be Chad, not Djibouti. I am thus removing Djibouti from my list.

I have a potential client for photographs of a country that looks very much like Djibouti.

There is a travel advisory on for Djibouti, to have personal security. I cannot afford personal security. However the client will accept any reasonable counterpart for Djibouti.

I need to find out what country might look enough like Djibouti to get a contract with the client. Does anyone have enough experience with Djibouti, and other parts of Africa (also Francophone, perhaps?) to answer this question?

News of his demise may be premature. As all the world knows, Fidel Castro is in the hospital recovering from gastric surgery.

If you believe U.S. analysts, I’ve already missed my chance to visit Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Quoting from the foreign press (Taiwan and South Africa):

“My opinion is, he’s never going to be able to resume his act,” said Brian Latell, a former intelligence officer at the Central Intelligence Agency. “He’ll never be back in the saddle. His era is over.” Another prominent Cuba expert, Jaime Suchlicki expressed a similar view, saying that “succession has taken place.” “Fidel Castro is not returning, and if he is returning, it will be in a ceremonial cap,” said Suchlicki, director of the Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies in Miami.

There’s at least one conspiracy theory floating around on the radical left, that Fidel never underwent surgery at all; that the entire event was part of an elaborate effort to evade a secret CIA plot to assassinate the Cuban leader.

According to most of the more mainstream U.S. press, Castro’s not doing so bad. One story went so far as to say he’s already back to ruling the country by cell phone and will be back in front of the media soon. Meanwhile, a religious leaders are praying, and soliciting prayer, on his behalf. That can’t be bad, right? Christians are supposed to love their brethren, even if those brethren be heathens and communists. That, at least, is my understanding about Christianity.

So maybe he will recover, and, if he does, I will go to Castro’s Cuba as soon as I can make the arrangements.

I am going to be doing research and writing about Djibouti. I am hoping to plan a trip there before the end of the year.