OBOCK CENTER

Around a nucleus of houses grouped near the pier, the fishermen's quarter, are spread out a few spaced buildings. In front of the mosque, heading towards the sea, one crosses a small plateau built of houses rigorously aligned, and still similar although very decayed: they are those of the French soldiers of the colonial period, all close to the governor's residence and today inhabited by policemen.

Obock has preserved some vestiges of its brief past as a capital, of those years when Pierre Soleillet was "installing" France in the region. They are not very spectacular, but full of history. The port will not impress you by its size nor by its activity (except at the arrival of the ferry and... of the qat), but your imagination will undoubtedly allow you to reconstitute the more intense traffic which reigned there formerly. The residence of the territory's first governor, Count Léonce Lagarde, is still standing and now houses the local commissioner of the Republic. It is situated on the seafront, a little way from the centre, surrounded by a small garden. There is not much left of the merchants' houses, except for the present prison, formerly a warehouse of the French Society of Obock.
Henry de Monfreid had a house here, or rather one of his houses in the Horn of Africa, the one that was for a time his "main base" (in the 1930s). Moreover, Monfreid and the other European adventurers who made Obock their base would never have been able to sail the Red Sea without the help of the local fishermen, especially the nakhouda (dhow skippers and captains) who have a special status and retain a certain prestige. In love with Obock, he lived there with his second wife Armgart and his daughter Gisèle, and built two boats. You will have no trouble finding it, or the locals will point out "the little white house sitting on the shore", which the adventurer used to look at for a long time.

To the west of the town lies a large marine cemetery where about a hundred French sailors were buried, struck down by a contagious disease: the monolithic cement tombs, covered with whitewash, are all anonymous, except for that of Elie Thomas Dufant, assistant commissioner of the Navy, who came to die in Obock in 1891. The whiteness of the tombs in this mineral environment, the overwhelming limpidity of the sky, the surf of the sea like a world clock, make the visit of the Obock cemetery a parenthesis, an outstanding moment.