{"id":278635,"date":"2019-06-11T11:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.google.com\/articles\/CBMiQGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmV0aGlvcGlhb2JzZXJ2ZXIuY29tLzIwMTkvMDYvMTEvcmV0dXJuLXRvLWRpcmUtZGF3YS_SAQA?oc=5"},"modified":"2026-09-28T11:31:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:31:23","slug":"a-french-dentist-returned-to-dire-dawa-sixty-years-after-a-childhood-on-the-djibouti-railway-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/278635","title":{"rendered":"A French dentist returned to Dire Dawa sixty years after a childhood on the Djibouti railway line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On 11 June 2019 Ethiopia Observer published Arefaynie Fantahun\u2019s interview with Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Garnier, a 72-year-old retired French dentist who returned to Dire Dawa with his wife and adult children about sixty years after growing up there while his father worked on the Djibouti\u2013Addis Ababa railway.<\/p>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"780\" width=\"780\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-353196\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Tourism-Ethiopia-702103-1714-54-07.jpg?fit=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"A French dentist returned to Dire Dawa sixty years after a childhood on the Djibouti railway line\" \/>\n<p>Garnier described arriving by cargo ship via Djibouti as a toddler, remembering the eastern city as home, and feeling both nostalgia and disorientation at how the place had changed, with video of his return recorded in French for the Observer feature.<\/p>\n<p>Kept as culture and city-history archive, the Observer interview dates a personal return story that preserves mid-twentieth-century railway-era Dire Dawa memory.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ethiopiaobserver.com\/2019\/06\/11\/return-to-dire-dawa\/\">Ethiopia Observer<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Return to Dire Dawa&nbsp;&nbsp;ethiopiaobserver.comA French elderly returned to Dire Dawa, a town that was home to him 60 years ago when he lived with his parents there. The narrator&#8217;s childhood home in Dire &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":353196,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Tourism-Ethiopia-702103-1714-54-07.jpg?fit=788%2C538&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1au7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278635"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":755133,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278635\/revisions\/755133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}