Najlae Benmbarek, Djibouti

We woke up pretty early yesterday for our first visit to a local girl’s orphanage. Before heading there, we met at the chapel of the base. The chaplain, a tall, blonde, always smiling officer, was surrounded by a group of volunteers, among which were musicians of the Air Force Academy Band. We interviewed the chaplain in the bus and Aaron asked him if, in the frequent interactions they have with the locals, there’s an attempt to “export part of the American culture”, to which the chaplain replies “absolutely not. We know this is Africa and we would never try to have any influence on them”.

Once at the orphanage, a few girls watch us from distance before they come and join everybody else, in the “performance room”. They come, groups by groups, and sit on the benches, watching the musicians warm up. The volunteers try to break the ice in a 100-degree room. The girls are very shy; most of them are teenagers and are covered head to toe in their beautiful African dresses. They smile to me, a little bit amused by this sweaty girl with a camera. We get instructions to not shoot them if they feel uncomfortable, so for the first half-hour, we only shoot the performance. The volunteers –most of them women- sit next to the girls, take pictures.

Little by little, the girls open up to their “short-term adoptive big sisters”. They start singing along, clapping hands, laughing. The band plays “I love rock’n’roll” and other famous songs. Then it’s really weird to me when they all sing “Amazing grace”. I am almost certain that one hundred percent of the kids are Muslim. Then the girls let us take pictures of their faces, they even started dancing, drumming. The chaplain was spinning around with a cute little boy on his shoulders. Meanwhile, I start talking to a 16-year-old called Fawzia. Her dad is Moroccan and works in Egypt. He visits her in the summer only. Her mom died a few years ago. The other girls suddenly come around me when they hear me speaking Arabic and French, which they all speak in addition to Somali (and sometimes Afar).

Later, they insist to take me to the building where they live. Upstairs, there’s a TV. A girl shows Aaron how she can dance like Beyonce. Another girl, Soumaya, turns on TV and here they are, singing “I miss you” from hip-hop singer Chris Brown. Then they show me their lockers. One of them has “Jennifer Lopez” written on it. Another has “Allah Akbar”. I am shocked when I see the last one, with “Oussama” on it. “I love Oussama Bin Laden”, the girl told me. I am like: “why?” She says: “because I am Muslim and so is he”. I think the color of my face changed at that moment from red to green. I say: “do you know this man has killed a lot of people in the name of Muslims?” “No, he didn’t”, she says. “Would you kill someone and call yourself a Muslim?” “No, I could never do that”, she said. And then suddenly: “Najlae, I can erase his name from my locker!”

I am even more upset by how quickly they can make up their minds. They’re here, in this old crambling building, watching TV for hours, catching a few words from here, a few words from there, from different TV channels, in different languages; probably too much ideology for their young minds.

They asked me to come back next Friday.

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