In the late afternoon light, the salt flats glisten like snow against the blue-green waters of the lake. Beyond the brown hills that encircle us, the desert stretches all the way to the sea. Stepping out of the 4×4 into the surreal landscape, I am buffeted by a stiff breeze that drones and murmurs in my ears. There is a slightly caustic tang in the air.
A rickety sign marks the start of the path down to the shore. 'Adepela la caravane nomade du desert accueil tous les touristes et touristiques,' it reads. Lining the path on both sides are stands laden with an array of minerals: balls of salt crystals; spiky lumps of gypsum; geodes the size of eggs; and flints of mica and obsidian and quartz. As I walk past, a group of gangly youths appears – seemingly from nowhere – and invite me to treat.
'Mille francs, monsieur! Mille francs!' they clamour, thrusting rocks and crystals at me. The price rapidly drops to five hundred francs when I demur. Five hundred Djibouti francs! All of US$3 – not even that. For a moment – a long moment – the amateur geologist in me is tempted. I finger a large amethyst and a bristly green gypsum. 'Ce sont très jolis, oui très jolis,' I murmur. But if every rapacious souvenir-hunter were to leave here with a fancy rock…
'Non merci,' I say eventually. The rocks belong here, by the strange waters that gave them birth.
The boys are disappointed, but leave me be. One presses a small obsidian shard and a little crystal of salt into my hands as he walks away. 'C'est un cadeau, no money,' he says simply. And I stand there holding the little black rock and the little white rock, puzzling at a gesture of goodwill that I do not quite understand, while the wind roars in my ears.
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