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" This is an album of photographs I took while writing &amp;quot;The Americans Have Landed,&amp;quot; which appears in the July 2007 issue of Esquire. Over the ten days I was in East Africa, from March 1 to 10, I shot nearly four hundred photographs -- the best of which are presented here on Esquire.com, along with my commentary. To read the blog about my trip, see an even larger collection of photos, or watch an TV interview about this story, please visit ThomasPMBarnett.com. Enjoy. Life in Lemonier  This is the first of the shots I took on my first day at Lemonier. This is the new command &amp;quot;shield,&amp;quot; so to speak -- one of the Horn of Africa officers designed it. I have this same emblem engraved on a command coin, which I got for giving a little talk at the Kenyan National Defense College, later on this trip.  This is an example of the old French Foreign Legion marine base structures. There aren&amp;#039;t that many in use, but the few that are in use are used to house VIPs. Needless to say, these accommodations sucked. They were bug-ridden and had nasty old plumbing. In comparison, the more modern containerized living unites -- CLUs for short -- were pretty nice.  One interesting thing about these old Legion buildings: The French left behind some paintings, drawn right onto the surface of the walls, in what is now the officers&amp;#039; club room of the officers&amp;#039; quarters. I thought they were pretty cool.  This is a shot down a &amp;quot;street&amp;quot; at Lemonier, with tents on either side and containers stacked in the distance. Notice the big air-conditioning units? It&amp;#039;s hotter than hell there during the warm months and just plain hot the rest of the time.  This is the American side of the airstrip. On the tarmac you can see a couple of CH-53s, which are used primarily to evacuate troops downrange in the event of a medical emergency. During my time there, one was used to ferry three Guam National Guardsmen who were injured in a vehicle mishap in Ethiopia. One was injured. The other two died.  --&amp;amp;gt; The Journey to Kenya  An airborne view of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from the Kenyan Airlines jet I took to Kenya.  One of a few volcanoes I spotted from the jet, not too far south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. You can see a lot of extremely old volcanoes on the flight down south until you hit the Great Rift Valley.  This is a shot of the Great Rift Valley&amp;#039;s edge. Honestly, it&amp;#039;s hard for anything short of a satellite shot to give you a good sense of its immensity. Eventually, the Horn will break off from the continent and will be set adrift, but that&amp;#039;s a very long time into the future.  I gave a speech at the Kenyan National Defense College -- they gave me that aforementioned coin with the new command shield engraved on it in return. This is a shot of the student body -- generals from all over Africa but heavily slanted, naturally, to the Kenyan military. By the time the room filled up, there were about fifty in all. The senior Kenyan military chiefs I spoke with before the talk eventually took seats in the back row on the right, along with the commander and deputy of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, or CJTF-HOA for short. They thought it was pretty funny to see me taking shots of the audience.  This is my hotel room at Safari Park in Nairobi, Kenya. It was closed to U.S. personnel for a few weeks due to terror concerns and was just reopened for HOA use the week I arrived. It&amp;#039;s much nicer than Lemonier quarters and even had a can of Raid in the closet, which I much appreciated.  --&amp;amp;gt; The Flight to Manda Bay  The C-130 on the Nairobi airport tarmac as it&amp;#039;s getting loaded up for our flight down to the Kenyan naval base airstrip on the coast of Manda Bay. This wasn&amp;#039;t the only aircraft there, however. In the distance, I saw a United Nations plane and several cargo planes from nongovernmental organizations. The commercial jets were from Kenyan, South African, and lotsa Middle Eastern and Asian airlines. There were far fewer European and American airlines there.  This is the Djiboutian liaison officer. Like all the American military, he immediately fell asleep when the plane took off.  This is a quick animation of the pallets in the C-130, which were quickly pulled out just a few minutes after we landed at the remote airstrip in Manda Bay. The whole unloading process was fascinating -- it all happened so fast. The guys just slid the pallets out and they were gone in a few minutes. Then some guys with guns suddenly appeared, and I remembered that this is a military strip.  We all just grabbed our bags and climbed out of the back of the C-130, which was parked on the landing strip. As soon as I got out, I dropped my bags, asked if I could shoot, and then started snapping pictures. Almost immediately, a senior noncommissioned officer strolled up and started swearing. &amp;quot;Damn, if I knew you were going to be here, Dr. Barnett, I would have brought a copy of your book to have you sign! I saw you back in the States last year!&amp;quot; That was weird.  Manda Bay doesn&amp;#039;t exactly have a big airport. This was basically the entire infrastructure, besides the landing strip itself and the tents.  --&amp;amp;gt; Life in Manda Bay  The commissary, which was run by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. (Actually, the food was decent to pretty good.) These are KBR guys quickly unloading a freezer unit brought down by the C-130. Basically, everybody on base helped out, lest the ice cream melt on the spot.  The baboons come and go whenever they damn well please, walking right through the wire like it&amp;#039;s not there.  This is the lounge for general-purpose officers and enlisted personnel.  Again, the chow was decent.  The inside of one of the containerized bathroom units -- a huge step up from the skanky and ancient French plumbing I got to sample in Djibouti. These were superclean and entirely bug-free.  This is the rather Spartan but rather nice cubicle I stayed in while I was at Manda Bay. Unlike my bed in Lemonier, this one wasn&amp;#039;t full of bugs. Overall, these accommodations were the best I had during my entire time in Africa. Still, I was a bit nervous walking to the head in the pitch dark at three in the morning -- the local snake population boasts more poisonous members than probably anyplace else on earth.  --&amp;amp;gt; Rebuilding a Rural School  U.S. Marine engineers working alongside Kenyan engineers to erect a fence around the school to keep out the wild animals and to build a gate that would allow traffic to get in and out. The Kenyan engineers helped the Marines push the local contractors to come up with better cement mixes.  The original construction of the school&amp;#039;s roof included a drop-down ceiling that attracted tons of bats, who left tons of guano in the classroom. When they rebuilt the school, the Marines skipped the drop-down ceiling and rehabbed the masonry.  A science lesson on the school&amp;#039;s blackboard.  A shot from inside the classroom. The bars on the windows are used to keep out the bigger wildlife.  The students on a lunch break from their studies in temporary tents. I passed out licorice I was carrying.  This was the cutest kid there.  And this was my favorite shot of the entire trip: Lt. Spirese showing the read-out on her camera to the kids. More than anything else, the kids loved seeing the shots on the read-out from the camera. It made me wish I brought a Polaroid Instamatic.  David Marrete, principal of the school. He gave me a nice tour and was an excellent interview.  The local rock they used for foundation work had one major problem -- it may have looked fine from the outside, but on the inside it was porous as hell. A lot of the stuff used was coral.  The school&amp;#039;s old kitchen was literally made from sticks with a little bit of corrugated tin for a roof.  The temporary classroom in a tent set up by Marines. Outside the tent, the teachers cooked for themselves and the students using large black cauldrons over open flames.  --&amp;amp;gt; At Play in the Fields of Manda Bay   The drive back to Manda Bay took us along sandy roads by the coastline -- you can see how the rainy season would make them completely impassable. The path reminded me of those loose roads along sand dunes in Rhode Island and Cape Cod. I&amp;#039;m in the backseat here, snapping shots. Note the suggestive air fresher hanging from the rearview mirror.  This is what your average rural Kenyan villager&amp;#039;s home looks like. The construction is mud and dung wrapped around sticks and topped with a thatched roof.  These are the main buildings of the Kenyan National Youth Service agriculture camp.  And this is an AIDS prevention poster that was hanging on the wall there.  After talking to the main guy at his office, we visited the camp&amp;#039;s fields. The heat and sunlight here was stunning -- we were running around in this intense climate around high noon and moving rather slowly. It was hard to stay hydrated. As we headed into the banana fields, we saw and heard Chinook helicopters buzzing along the treelines in the distance. With that whup-whup-whup sound and the evocative view, I almost found myself waiting for the Doors&amp;#039; &amp;quot;This Is the End&amp;quot; to start on the soundtrack.  The heat was dangerous, but the chance of getting sunburned really, really badly was even worse. We were just a degree south of the equator at this point and the banana trees were starting to suffer a bit from drought. The soil reminded me a lot of Florida.  The guys I was with cut down a kasava plant to show us the roots. We ate some raw. The roots, which looked like sweet potato, tasted like something between a carrot and a potato. It wasn&amp;#039;t bad, really.  --&amp;amp;gt; Landing in Lamu  A bunch of us got on some small speed boats (they&amp;#039;re all run by local carriers, like the Kenyan man in the foreground) and traveled across the bay to the port city of Lamu. In the background, you can see a Kenyan naval ship at the base pier, which is also the entire naval infrastructure at this site.  This is a dhow, a type of boat the locals use, out on Manda Bay -- they&amp;#039;re basically a water taxi.  A shot of one of the speedboats getting ahead of the rest. What a teeth-rattling ride -- I was stuck in the middle between Korean and French officers, with Djiboutian liaison up front. He later regretted getting that seat, because his rear end got pretty sore after the hour-long ride. Pulling up to the port city of Lamu, a truly ancient-looking place, a former base for slave traders and one of the best preserved Swahili settlements in Africa.  A shot along the harborside. These are old cannons left over from when the Portuguese were there, if I&amp;#039;m not mistaken.  --&amp;amp;gt; Life in Lamu  The streets are too narrow for cars, so there are donkeys, donkeys everywhere. They&amp;#039;re revered the way cows are in India -- these donkeys are not to be disturbed.  These buildings were very old. You could tell this place has been around for a very long time.  Who needs a ramp? This is the local longshoremen&amp;#039;s low-tech approach to unloading a ship.  A basket for transporting chickens.  One of Lamu&amp;#039;s many back alleys, where the sewage is open and raw. The trough starts on the left and switches over to the right side, running under the front step in the foreground. I fell behind my group to take this picture, but a force pro guy was always keeping an eye on me just out of habit. There&amp;#039;s no danger to be had in Lamu. Our troops love having a day off there.  As be headed back to shore, leaving Lamu, we saw local craftsmen building a dhow. There&amp;#039;s almost no hardware involved. Here they are putting the bow in place.  At the end of a long day, I bought everyone a round of beers at this cybercafe. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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