The latest addition to my website is Mouna-Hodan Ahmed‘s Les Enfants du khat [The Children of Khat]. Asli is a twenty-twenty old Djiboutian woman. Her father, like alll too many men in Djibouti, is a serious user of khat a drug. He does not work and expects his wife to work – she sells khat- as well as manage the large household and produce sons. He is lazy and violent like his friends. Asli, as the oldest daughter, has to run the household – nine people, with three children elsewhere. While other young people are focussed on clothes and partying, she has joined a religious study group and is learning the Koran, finding camaraderie with the other women and gradually learning that, for her, doing good works and following the precepts of Islam is the best way. She does, however, fight against female genital mutilation. Men, – all the ones in this book – are lazy, violent and utterly selfish and khat, mainly used by men, she feels, is the ruin of her country. Ahmed makes her point well. it is clear that women in Djibouti have a hard life.