Nothing can prepare anyone in moving to Africa. I immediately googled - living in Djibouti. Well, thank God, we are not the only ones and I found an American woman who was blogging about her life with their kids in Djibouti. Djibouti is an ex-French colony so theirs are a lot of French expats working there, French restaurants, French grocery, French products. The cost of living in Djibouti is very high because products needed to be imported from Europe, other parts of Africa or the Middle East.
It's a joke in Djibouti that they loved their country so much that they named it twice - the capital of Djibouti is none other than Djibouti City. It is a very poor country, other third world nations are lucky that they have natural resources that they can produce their own food while Africa has barren lands. We felt bad for the people in Africa - they are not well educated, no potable water to drink in the rural areas of Djibouti and they are just living in poverty. Sometimes, we tend to forget that in some parts of the world, people are just less fortunate. It opened our eyes to realities of the situation in Africa.
It was a "short" journey because we stayed there for less than a year. We decided, of course dogs included, to move back to the US. One of our weekend adventures was we drove to Tadjoura, where you can find one of the saltiest body of water in the planet, Lake Assal. It is even saltier than the Dead Sea. We were able to see animals in the wild, and yes, Djibouti has its own version of the Grand Canyon.