Addis Ababa
Escaping my cramped, clammy hotel room in Djibouti just wasn’t possible one evening. I sorely wanted to – this Horn of Africa coastal port is an intriguing place to wander as a journalist – and no one was stopping me. No one, that is, except the cast of the 1980s Brideshead Revisited television series.
A few weeks earlier at my base in Ethiopia, a parcel from a friend arrived including a USB stick with an eclectic selection of films and television programmes. Previously I’d only known Granada Television’s Brideshead Revisited through stills and short clips. But having opened the first file on my laptop I became mesmerised, so much so that the USB stick accompanied me for an assignment in neighbouring Djibouti. So I watched the last tumultuous episode while encased in the city’s African quarter, a muezzin exclaiming from a nearby mosque.
