Kharaz Security

Security is a big deal in Kharaz reportedly. I am constantly warned of danger and chastised for leaving the compound alone. The biggest worry is that I will be kidnapped by local Yemenis who will use me as a bargaining chip in their feud with the government. In other places in the past this has proved effective, but until recently it was not a threat that local Yemeni tribes were using against the NGOs in this area. For example, once a car with two foreigners in it was hijacked, but the foreigners were allowed to go free, walking the rest of the way to the camp. Since that time, it has been mandatory for all NGO cars going to and from Kharaz to be escorted by Yemeni soldiers/policemen in their armed cars. This is inconvenient for all people who like to follow a schedule and minimize pointless waiting time. Yemeni policemen are not overly concerned with promptness.

In my four short months in Yemen, we’ve already been evacuated from the camp two times due to threats from local villagers. The first time, an angry villager, expecting to be paid for work he never did, roused a bunch of his tribesmen and started stalking the camp with their rusty weaponry, looking for NGO cars to hijack and yelling that he would kick out all of the NGOs. We were gone for a month. Last week we were evacuated suddenly after a fax (no, not a carrier pigeon, but a fax) was sent to the UNHCR office in Aden warning of an impending attack on the NGO compound. This time we were gone for a day. That is life here in Kharaz…frustrating when there is work to be done in the camp and we can’t get to it, but exciting because you never know where you’re going to end up.

A couple of weeks ago, on the weekend, I dutifully checked with the guards about leaving the compound. I don’t often do this, but there had been some threats recently, and my coworker with a mommy complex made me swear to check before I left. Abu Jamal, a jovial Yemeni guard with a long pointy white beard, a large rounded gut, always clad in traditional Yemeni garb, greeted me at the gate and assured me that my five-minute walk to the Women’s Center in plain view of the compound would be perfectly safe. He laughed at the worries of Nusaiba and others, but offered to escort me if I wanted. I declined. Ten minutes later, I was in the Women’s Center, and I hear a knock on the door. It’s Abu Jamal and he is yelling at me to come on get out now! I grabbed all my stuff and went to find out what happened. He whisked me into the ambulance which he had somehow commandeered, squeezing us both into the passenger seat and we zoomed back to the compound. During our very short ride, he informed me that a truck full of Yemeni men with weapons had come by the compound just after I left, swearing to kidnap the first red person they saw. Never having heard of myself being referred to as a “red person,” I checked to make sure they were talking about me. “Oh yes,” I was informed by the driver of the car who was himself ironically covered with henna mud in the process of dying his hair, beard and face an orangey-red in the fashion of some Yemenis, “Foreigners like you are red.” I’m not sure if the armed men actually saw me and thus made their threat, but I was told by my boss that this is the first time Yemenis in this area had actually threatened kidnapping of a foreigner even though this was a common practice in other parts of the country. He was concerned and I was kept under lock and key for the rest of the weekend. I was mostly amused by how the story grew. That night I got a phone call from Aden asking me if I had been hurt by my would-kidnappers, and for the next week people kept coming to me to make sure I was all right. Somehow the story grew to me being almost kidnapped or beaten up or chased by evil Yemeni villagers. Fortunately, it all blew over quickly and I was only escorted to work in the camp one time—by a scrawny unarmed soldier boy who probably would have run away as fast as his little legs could carry him if anything had really happened. But with him, I was safer than on my own, I guess.

More recently another threat to my security was from a crazy Somali refugee who decided to follow me and my microfinance assistant, Abdifatah, around in our work. He kept trying to offer us cigarettes, and we refused. Abdi tried to get him to leave, but he refused. He kept trying to walk closer and closer to me, and finally Abdi gave me his phone to carry, pushed up his sleeves and said: “I’m going to fight him.” I laughed at him (he’s kind of a tough guy), and we kept walking and Crazy Guy didn’t try anything else until we got back to our office. Then, I am guessing, he said something that made Abdi mad, maybe something about Al Shabab as he claims to be on their side and Abdi hates Al Shabab enough that even a crazy guy might push him over the edge on that point. Abdi went into the office and got a fold-up metal chair and starts to threaten to hit the guy with it. I’m thinking this is going to turn into something TV worthy and considering changing into my bikini and high heels, but I got distracted because at that moment the oldest car in the world carrying the oldest living man in Yemen put-putted up to my office and died. I noticed that it was carrying some much-needed supplies for my gardening project so I started poking around in the back of the truck while Methuselah undid the padlock on the hood of the car to start his own poking around the engine, trying to make it stop smoking. I was making sure everything was there, keeping an eye on Abdi and Crazy who was picking up rocks to throw at Abdi (there is never a shortage of large rocks here in Kharaz). Another man ran to get the armed security men I told you about before. An armed soldier (they will come armed if they’re going to fight a refugee) showed up and told Crazy to leave. But Crazy, in the true sense of “crazy,” says the equivalent of “Bring on your gun! I’ve got a rock!” At that point my boss shows up trying to get me to go to a wedding which I know I can’t make it to since I now have to deal with Crazy, have a meeting with a potential loan client and his guarantor, and unload and register everything in the Oldest Truck in the World. While my boss, not a very big man at all, is talking to me, Crazy comes up to him and starts waving his finger in Mohamed Osman’s face and yelling stuff at him. Mohamed replied calmly, and Abdi got out the chair again. I was told later that Crazy was warning Mohamed not to talk to me. I’m not sure if he was trying to protect me or warning Mohamed away from the infidel foreigner with uncovered hair. Crazy then put his flipflops on his hands and started doing push-ups to show his toughness. At this point, the owner of the Oldest Truck who had been busily working away under the corroded rusty hood, oblivious to the mayhem around him, had managed to get the truck to gasp out a few more miles, and I got in the truck to go with him to unload everything. As I was very slowly driving (rolling) away I saw four armed soldiers come and forcefully escort Crazy, ranting and raving, away to our little Kharaz jail.

In reality, I think my biggest danger here is the wild dogs. I was out early one morning and a couple a dogs were sniffing around. They barked, but I ignored them until one came up and nipped at me. Fortunately for me not wanting to have to go get rabies shots, he only caught the hem of my long black dress. I grabbed a convenient rock (of which I told you previously there are plenty) and chucked it at him and he ran away. Ever since then, I always load up on rocks to throw at attacking dogs just in case. I’ve been attacked a couple of times since then, but the rocks work. I have never wanted to throw rocks at dogs before, but these dogs have mauled people before in the camp. The maintenance people tried to kill them, but compassionate refugees kept some in their houses and they were never able to eradicate them all. It did help me understand some of the fear that people have for dogs now. But I still don’t get why some of the girls I live with in the compound are deathly afraid of the tiny new born kittens living in our yard. “Are you afraid of the big cats?” I asked them. “No. Just the little ones. They are so creepy,” they informed me.

So you see between my weapon of choice (rocks) and Abdi’s weapon of choice (the chair) and security’s weapon of choice (the Kalashnikov), I don’t see how THIS red person is going to be kidnapped any time soon. But if I am, don’t worry, their demands will be promptly faxed to the UNHCR, and I’m sure I’ll be released soon.

Christmas

It's kind of sad, but here it is:

I was going to write about some of the funnier moments that happened this week, and there were several, but I just wanted to take a moment to do something out of character and be serious. First, I will explain that I love Christmas. I start listening to Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving every year. But this year, whether it was the fact that my Thanksgiving meal was eggs and hot peppers with Somali bread or the fact that I am in a dusty desert surrounded by refugees living in tiny huts or the fact that I couldn’t decide where I was going to spend Christmas--whatever the reason, I didn’t want to listen to Christmas music. I was not depressed or sad to be missing Christmas…I wasn’t thinking about Christmas at all. And I love Christmas…so it was strange for me. I tried to listen to Christmas music but turned it off after one song. But this last week, maybe because of the nearness of Christmas in Indonesia (ticket prices finally decided for me), I started listening again. And then I started singing along. And all week I have heard over and over again the words from the second verse of “Oh Holy Night” (a song that is resurrected and murdered by various divas and divos without fail every Christmas): Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother, and in His name all oppression shall cease!

This week I’m grieving the oppression I see around me. I am especially hurting over the fate of a little boy I recently came to love. Khaled’s story touched my heart right away when I first met him. He’s an Oromo, a minority Ethiopian ethnic group that has been persecuted in Ethiopia and sometimes is allowed refugee status in Yemen if their story is horrific enough. Khaled’s parents are divorced and both remarried. Neither new family wants him, and he has been passed along in the camp foster system from family to family, all Somali, who don’t want him either because he makes trouble and runs away. Finally, after trying every foster family in the camp and the orphanage in Aden, Khaled decided he wanted to work in the village. This week I found out that he has been working in the village, but that he is living with a man who is sexually abusing him. I wanted to run in and get him out. I pestered my boss and the social counselors who all told me that we can’t deal with this, a different NGO is in charge of protection. I know that NGO won’t do anything. And I don’t know what else I can do. Khaled’s story is common here.



Every day I am approached by refugees asking for assistance who don’t yet know that I’m only in charge of gardens and small business loans. These people are desperately seeking help for medical procedures that can’t be done in the camp. Some of them want food for their children since the rations they received were full of worms. Others just want a blanket because it’s gotten cold here at night and they are worried about the health of their families. These people left everything they knew hoping for a better life, and frankly, in many cases, it’s worse here in the middle of nowhere in an unknown land far from family and friends.

So where is my hope? What am I even doing here? I keep asking myself that because it’s about time to renew my contract, and I find myself wanting to run away again to start a new adventure somewhere else. I am afraid, knowing that I can’t change lives, and I can’t bring the light of Jesus to this place. I am the only believer here. What can I do? I know that I can’t do anything, but I know that Jesus can. And I know that it is true that in His name all oppression will cease. It may not be right now, but that time is coming because He came and fought for us and won. And this Christmas, in beautiful green and rainy Indonesia, I will celebrate the end of oppression and suffering that will come even here in the dusty and dry Yemeni desert where 13,000 Somali refugees are hoping for it. Please pray for me, my precious Somali refugee friends, and the volatile country of Yemen where we all live. Pray for the light of Jesus to come to this place to break the chains of slavery, violence, suffering, and abuse.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid! I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”

Baywatch Aden (title from Chad)

There was a point when I was running in slow motion across the beach, but luckily for me, I wasn’t worried about my swimsuit riding up my crack…mostly because I wasn’t wearing one. My ridiculously sexy and inappropriate swimwear consisted of Matt’s baseball shorts which I will probably never give back to him and Nusaiba’s t-shirt which she already gave to me knowing that I was never going to give it back. I was running in slow motion because I was tired and trying to get back fast enough to help but without using the rest of my energy left over from swimming into the rip, pulling the little girl out of the rocks, and swimming back out of the rip. So here’s the story (for those who asked and those who don’t care but for some reason are reading my blog):

I went to the beach with Jonathan (boss’s boss) and Miriam (boss’s boss’s boss) because Miriam wanted to swim while she was in Aden and Jonathan wanted to try out windsurfing with Nigel and me. After the ordeal of putting the windsurf together (the main reason why I like regular surfing better), we made our way out into the water, surrounded by crowds of little boys as usual. We really should stop going to this beach on the weekend. Too many people see me in my Baywatch clothes. A couple groups of black-clad women sit on the beach watching everybody else have fun while small groups of men in robes chew qat and probably don’t notice much else. My plan is always to get in the water as fast as I can and stay there. Of course, that’s almost always my plan whenever I go to the beach, but here the reason is to obscure my scantily clad body whereas everywhere else, it’s just because I love the water.

So the sea was kind of rough, and the waves made it hard to get the sail up. I played around for a while and then let Jonathan have a “go.” (British people suck you into their lingo.) While Jonathan was figuring things out, I was body-surfing the baby waves in towards the shore, but carefully, because there were a bunch of rocks between us and the beach, and I didn’t want to crash. I noticed a couple of little girls playing on the rocks. I thought they were playing, but it turns out that the younger girl (maybe about 7 although it’s hard to tell because Yemen has a malnutrition rate worse than many African nations) was screaming at her older sister on the shore that she was stuck on the rocks. I swam over, but it was hard to get there fast because the girl was stuck in a rip.

As soon as I got to the girl, she grabbed on to me, and we both went under. I finally propped us up on the rocks, but the waves were breaking over us, and I couldn’t swim with her clinging to me like a baby koala bear. I told her to move to my back and then I rolled us out of the rocks. Just then, her dad got to us. I passed her off, but then I noticed that he wasn’t swimming well. I tried to tell him to swim parallel to the beach to get out of the rip, but he didn’t get it. So I swam out of the rip (it took some serious effort and prayer), trying to think about what to do. I looked down the beach and saw a couple of girls playing with a large yellow floatie in the shape of a duck. I ran to them and asked if I could borrow their duck, but they were not OK with that idea. When I asked about their mom, they pointed me towards a group of veiled women, lounging around on a nearby truck, in a style very different from what might be seen on a Ford advertising poster. Also, the truck was a Hyundai or something weird starting with an H… So I explained the situation, and to their credit, no one took the opportunity to lecture me on my outfit. Instead, the mother came with me to convince the girl to give me the floatie. After I swore on a stack of Qurans to bring it back, she relinquished the duck into my care. And that’s when the slow motion run came in.

From out in the water, Jonathan and Miriam were smiling and waving at me running down the beach with the duck, thinking I was just hanging out with some cute kids. I swam back out to the father and daughter who were clinging to the rocks and trying without much success to stay above water. The dad helped me throw the little girl over the back of the floatie, and then he grabbed the other side. I started the long slow swim out of the rip (again). Jonathan showed up then and I handed him the little girl to bring into shore. He was out of the rip and able to walk in to shore. He didn’t realize what had happened, he just thought the girl was tired of playing. He left her on the shore and went back to windsurfing. I stayed out and pulled the dad in. Even as a Yemeni man who refuses to touch a woman not related to him, when I yelled at him to grab my hand, he did. I dragged him and Duckie into the shore. When he got to a place where he could stand up, I swam in to his daughter, who was in hysterics on the beach.

I tried to calm the girl down, taking a water bottle from a nearby qat-chewing man who had watched the whole incident. She drank a little water and calmed down enough to tell me that something had hurt her leg. I thought at first she had just scraped the rocks like me. My hands and legs were all ripped up, and I was bleeding all over the place, probably attracting sharks. But the little girl wasn’t scraped up. She had somehow come in contact with a sea anemone, which left about 50 black bumps in her little leg, some of them with spines still sticking out of them. I wrapped her in a towel and stuck her in the car with her sister and ran back to the father to make sure he was ok. He had almost made his way back to the car, but he was obviously exhausted and in shock. I told him he needed to take his daughter to the hospital right away because of the sea anemone, but I don’t think it registered in his mind. He immediately started trying to pull out the spines until I stopped him and reminded him to go to the hospital. He turned back to me and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, not in a creepy you’re-a-Baywatch-Yemen-star way, just really grateful. It was weird. Then he promised he was going to the hospital right now. I watched them drive off, and then I ran back to give a very anxious little girl her duck floatie. And all was right with the world.

Sadly, I’m afraid that an experience like that will keep both of those little girls out of the sea for life. They are among the few rare girls of any age that I have ever seen swimming. If they had known basic swimming skills and which places to avoid playing, they would have been fine. I really wish that more people here could safely enjoy the beautiful water they are blessed to live beside. I would love to teach swimming and basic safety knowledge to girls here. I want them to be a part of the fun…even if they have to pay money to swim at the private women’s beach. At least then fewer accidents like the one today would happen. Plus, I think it’s a tragedy to live next to the beach and not enjoy it. I already told Cait she is a failure as an Australian because of her hatred of beaches and any type of enjoyable physical activity. She should be from somewhere like Wyoming…there’s nothing out there, right?

Yemeni Men

It is time. I must analyze the average Yemeni male for the benefit of my readers. In spite of the general segregation between the sexes here in Yemen and the fact that I either live with two girls or ten, I have spent a lot of time with men the few weeks while I was stuck in Aden. My favorite of these men is not actually Yemeni. He may not even be human. Possibly he is a story-book character come to life. Later I will have to dedicate an entire entry to Captain Roy and his awesomeness. He is worthy of it. It is so difficult for me to tear myself away from showering Capt. Roy with accolades, but I will return to the subject at hand, Yemeni men.

Fortunately for me and other women here, Yemeni men are much less likely to approach a woman on the street. They will rarely make rude comments and after 2 months here, no one has tried to touch me at all. I really appreciate this on public transport when I would never be expected to sit next to a man. I usually stand haughtily outside the door and wait for the men inside to rearrange themselves so that I can sit far away from them. When riding in ADRA cars with coworkers, I sit alone in the wide front seat made for two passengers while 5 men cram into the back seat. But I do not feel sorry for them. The benefits of being a man here far outweigh the minor inconveniences of being squished in the car. They don’t wear long black dresses that cause lots of tripping, and they swim in the beautiful sea with impunity. I only get to do that after a long run/hike with Capt. Roy and Matt through the remote rocky mountains on the edge of the city where no one might accidentally see me in my long shorts (borrowed from Matt, thanks man!). And I’ve come back to Capt. Roy already…how does that happen?

Last week I had several men-only experiences. First I went to a restaurant. Yemeni women rarely go to restaurants, or if they do, they eat in the “family section.” Most of them wear the niqab (face veil) and they would never be caught taking that off to eat in front of strange men. But being the scandalous loose woman that I am, I went with my coworkers (all men) to a restaurant for lunch. It was crowded with Yemeni men who could not stop staring at me. We went upstairs and kicked off our shoes to join the rest of the patrons on the floor while busy waiters ran back and forth bringing rice and meat to everyone (there was a very limited menu…I think that was our only option). I mentioned to my friends that I, at least, was not worried about someone accidentally on purpose running off with my shoes. In spite of the joy that I got from that experience, then I declined the next invitation to eat with the boys. It felt creepy accidentally looking up into the shocked eyes of fellow floor-diners.

Here men and women who are not related rarely interact. Still, foreign women are sometimes considered the exception to this rule. I can sometimes use this to my advantage. In my neighborhood grocery store, there is always a shortage of my favorite whole-wheat pita bread. The man in charge of the bakery has become my friend as I often ask him for the bread. We have multiple exchanges in which he tells me to come back after sunset when the bread will be there. I do, but inevitably it is not. Then he tells me to come back in an hour. Still nothing. Finally, he is feeling very embarrassed so he ends up going to the bakery himself to retrieve the desired bread. I am almost positive that he never does this for any other girl. Once when I hadn’t visited the store in a while, I walked in and he came right over to me, asking if I had been ok because he hadn’t seen me in a week. He had been worried that something might have happened to me. He is not the only guy in the store who “looks out” for me. One time this random guy came up to me, telling me that he was my neighbor and asking why I don’t keep better control of my noisy kids who keep banging on his door and running away. I am pretty sure he is one of the Egyptian guys who live across the hall from me, and we DO have noisy kids in our building, but I really like them so I don’t care. I told him that they are not my kids, but they live above us. “What about your kids?” he asked me. “I don’t have kids,” I told him. “Oh,” sudden interest, “You don’t have kids? You aren’t married?” “Nope. See you later.” I decided this would be the moment to find somewhere else to be. But a minute later one of the security guards came up to me and asked if the other guy was bothering me. “No,” I said, “I think he’s my neighbor.” “Well, men are not supposed to talk to girls they are not related to. That does not happen here in this store. It’s forbidden.” I guess he forgot that he is also not related to me, but even though he was little too excited about playing my knight in shining armor, I’m glad to know that at least people are watching what guys in the store are stalking me.

Happy Holidays (warning: long with extraneous details)

Much like in the US, the holiday season in Yemen involves lots of food and time hanging around the house. Unlike in the US, the electricity often cuts out, which is unfortunate for foreign guests who are supposed to be sitting in front of the TV being entertained while their hosts are cooking (and not wanting said foreign guests underfoot in the kitchen). Because much of the three day holiday that marks the celebration of the end of a month of fasting involves so much cooking, I spent a lot of time obliging my hosts by sitting in front of the TV. Sometimes I would venture into the kitchen, hoping to be useful stirring or chopping something, but usually I got sent out again. Other times the younger siblings who weren’t cooking or hanging out in the streets eating candy would sit in the room with me. Then we would watch Arabic soap operas or music videos on one of the many music channels (while eating candy). During one of these times we actually managed to watch the same video four times in a row on four different channels. I kept thinking it was over and then they’d find it again. Sadly, it is probably my least favorite Nancy Ajram song too…although that might be because I heard it so many times. It was one of her deeper and more emotional videos where she cried a few times and pooched out her plastic lips as much as possible.

The soap operas were more entertaining. My favorite one was about a woman who had married 5 husbands at the same time, thinking that at least 3 of them were dead and that the other divorce had been finalized. She perfected the art of dramatically fainting when coming into contact with what she thought was the ghost of one of her dead husbands. There were also some bad drug dealers involved which seems to be a common plot in Egypt these days judging by the movie I saw on my flight over here which also involved drug dealers and twins separated at birth—one twin was a cop and the other was working for a drug dealer. My favorite part of that movie was the subtitles. The drug dealer convinces the bad twin to run over (translated “dash”) his cop brother and take over his life. Forever after the bad twin feels deep remorse for dashing his brother with the car. Dashing things with cars is definitely a common Middle Eastern problem, so I always look carefully when I’m standing in the middle of the road to make sure that the cars are swerving around me.

Aside from the long hours sitting around and hoping that I could convince my friend to let me come back to Aden early so I could enjoy the wonderful loneliness of an empty apartment, I did have some memorable fun times. I definitely enjoyed eating all the great food prepared for me in the kitchen. Nusaiba promises to teach me to make fuul when we get back to Kharaz because it is mumtaztik, especially with lots of besbas (one of the best words for hot peppers that I have heard in any language). I also loved exploring the old city of Sana’a with its unique gingerbread houses and perfect not-too-cold-not-too-hot weather. Drinking mint lemonade on the roof of a hotel overlooking the city at sunset and getting some exciting news from my sister in a text message was pretty sweet too. I also had some good times just hanging out with my lovely Sudanese family, hearing stories about Sudan, learning how to wrap myself in a thobe, and planning our trip there in November if our UNHCR Sudanese friend has enough wasta to get me a visa.

On the second day of my Eid vacation, we met up with a couple of Nusaiba’s friends. A slightly crazy non-terrorist from Palestine married to a good friend of hers from school. Every time I met one of Nusaiba’s Yemeni friends she would always point out that they were friends even though they’re not both from Sudan. Apparently that was important information for me to hold on to. These friends are going through a rough time in their marriage and in an attempt to not think about it, they road-tripped to Sana’a from Taiz for the weekend in their friend’s car. That was convenient for us because they chauffeured us around to various places we wanted to go. I especially enjoyed Ibrahim’s refreshingly clear Palestinian accent unobstructed by a cheek full of qat leaves. The first night Ibrahim insisted on taking me to Fun City (basically Six Flags over Sana’a with more people and less rides plus somehow separate lines for women and men on certain rides). Only, neither he nor Nusaiba will ride the rides, so I got pushed into riding with Sabah (Ibrahim’s Yemeni wife who is friends with Nusaiba even though she is Sudanese-just pointing that out again for all of you). I don’t mind riding rides, but I hate waiting hours in line which is just as much a part of the Fun City experience as it is in any overly-crowded amusement park in the US. In Yemen, these waits are made even more annoying by virtue of the fact that they are a complete waste of everyone’s time. Not only are the people waiting in line to ride on the rides, but the people on the rides are waiting on the rides for the operators to personally lock each seatbelt and then slowly saunter back over to the operation booth to turn on the ride. After 30-45 minutes of waiting in line while two groups before us each enjoyed a 1 minute ride, we finally made it. We began our 15 minute wait sitting in the horribly uncomfortable seats waiting for the ride to start. Sabah was very nervous about this ride. Maybe it was the fact that a large sign sternly warned all “pregnants” from taking part in this electrical adventure, but she was not pregnant. She said she was more concerned about the part of the ride where we would be sitting upside down 50 feet in the air (or some sort of large distance). I was just glad we had finally made it to the ride, and actually the 15 minute wait came in handy as Ibrahim surreptitiously snapped several thousand pictures of us. He was trying to do it secretly because it’s actually frowned upon/forbidden because of the modest women riding the rides (the ones waiting in the women’s only line) who might be accidently caught in your photo which would then probably make it into some evil American pornography website (maybe Facebook). Haram. But the flash gave him away and an annoyed guard told him several times to stop. Fortunately for my Facebook photo album, Ibrahim is Palestinian and he told me that he would never let a Yemeni tell him what to do.

So we are sitting in the seats and we finally get locked in. And then, amazingly, we began to move. It looks like 45 minutes of waiting is finally going to produce the much-anticipated excitement of flipping upside-down high in the air. As a precaution, knowing that in Yemen Fun has no safety standards, I said a little prayer to Jesus that went something like this: “God, please don’t let me die in Fun City.” And just then, He answered my prayer. The electricity snapped off (remember how I said it had been doing that a lot?). The ride creaked to a stop and our seatbelts popped open. As everyone started to yell and complain and insist on staying in their seats until the electricity came back on and people could ride again, I jumped out and ran to the fence where Nusaiba and Ibrahim were telling me to stay in my seat so no one else could take it. I looked at Ibrahim and said, “What if the electricity had stopped when we were upside down?” He said: “Disaster.” I said, “I’m done here.” Sabah and I went to ride the rides that spin around in circles on the ground. They never did get the upside-down ride back on, so I will never know if anyone died there, but so far that is the nearest to death that I’ve come since being here in Yemen.

Our other trips around Sana’a to KFC at midnight and the old Imam’s house on a rock were also fun and eventful but better seen in the pictures I put up on Facebook. Plus they were slightly marred by Ibrahim and Sabah’s constant bickering and the awkwardness that was that.

So all in all it was a good trip. The magazine in the seat on my flight back listed 5 must-do things in Sana’a, and I was proud to see that I had done them all, including trying aseeda (a disgusting blob of what seemed to be to be uncooked bread dough which is pinched off, squished into a ball, dipped in some weird yoghurt curds and eaten…give me good old plain Sudanese beans any day). Coming home and finding that someone had been allowed to stay in my house (without my knowledge) while I was gone and had eaten all my food and left trash everywhere was slightly annoying, but we worked all that out today. And I am enjoying my solitude in the apartment while Cait and Nusaiba are gone which is actually my idea of a perfect holiday.

Feuds

I love the girls I live with. I will say that right off because it’s true, and they are great and not just at cooking. They have taken me under their motherly wings and cooked for me and showed me how to clean properly in their special Yemeni way. Then, of course, they do not allow me to do any of the cleaning until I snatch the mop away from them and do it myself. They have been really kind to me. But I have discovered that 10 girls living together in very close quarters in Yemen are like 10 girls living together in very close quarters anywhere else. They fight about stupid petty things and then gossip about each other and build alliances with certain people and cut certain other people out. The difference is that Yemeni girls go one step further and refuse to eat with or in the presence of those people that they have declared to be the Enemy. It’s something about eating being a sign of friendship, and heaven forbid they give even the appearance of friendship with the Enemy. But since it’s Ramadan here and everyone is eating at the same time, that is very awkward. My first night here I unwittingly promised to eat with two different groups, thinking that we would all eat together. That was not the case. I soon found out that I had been co-opted into one group so that it became almost impossible for me to eat with the other group. Fortunately, I am the foreigner so apparently everyone on both sides of the feud can still like me and hang out with me. I am holding on to that as I delicately (and so far unsuccessfully) try to play peacemaker.

Meanwhile, I have developed my own personal feud -- with the swarms of flies that infest this whole area. Apparently, God has not seen fit to call off the plague of flies in Yemen yet. And I have discovered that I am not skilled with the fly swatter at all. It seems that it takes a very patient person to really master the art of fly swatting. I am not patient, and I usually end up screaming curses at the flying pestilence and swatting around wildly while they continue to buzz over my head, taunting me. So then I just give up and call Layaal who calmly destroys them all in under five minutes. She is one of those exceptionally gifted people. Also a great cook. And very skilled in the art of feuding. An amazing woman.

Note from the Ghost-Blog-Uploader: Amanda embedded photos in the Word document she sent me, and I tried to upload them on here, but I couldn't get the document to open on my mac, so I had to use Josh's PC, which I don't really know how to use, and it is a long and not very fun story. So no pictures. I'm sorry. Until Amanda sees fit to attach them to her email like a normal person would instead of putting them in a Word document. msf

Commitment Issues

Before coming to Yemen, I knew I would probably wear the headscarf and so I had worked that out in my mind already.Still I have found myself less and less committed to it. I can’t stop wearing it now because that would be shocking and scandalous, but I have found ways to wear it without wearing it. I loosely wrap it around my head and my hair still blows out around my face so it’s not really hidden at all. Sometimes, I even pull it off to fix the pins trying to hold my hair back (usually without much success). I have done that in front of my boss several times. I apologized, but he says he doesn’t mind. Still his favorite joke is that if I were to wear the niqab (everything covered but the eyes) or the burka then I could be his boss. I’m not sure how that would be possible since places where women wear burkas and niqabs rarely allow them to be bosses of anyone, but it did work in my favor when I agreed to wear the full hijab (just the face showing) so that he’d let me out at night to attend an event for newly arrived refugees. Now that I have found this chink in his protective (of me) armor, I plan to use it to my advantage. Soon I’ll be leaving the compound all by myself in full burka, but no one will know it’s me!Meanwhile, when I’m just wandering around under official escort doing my job, I have decided to go for the pirate bandana look, where I tie up all my hair in the scarf into a big knot. That way it’s off my neck and it’s slightly cooler.

This Ramadan is not finding me committed to fasting either. I have perfected the art of carrying around a water bottle in my bag and sneaking drinks when nobody is looking.I also sneak food whenever I’m in my room alone (not very often), and I am grateful every day to Brittany’s grandparents who packed her 200 granola bars which she did not eat while we were in France. Those granola bars have been a great source of nourishment for me since otherwise I’d have to wait until after Maghrib to get any food. And next weekend when I go to Aden for a few days in semi-civilization, I plan to eat whenever I want to. Of course the food won’t be as good because I won’t have my lovely roommates cooking wonderful stuff for me. They are trying to teach me how to make the food because I told them I wanted to learn, but no one really lets me actually do any of the cooking, and I doubt I’ll start when left on my own.But hypothetically I do know how to make lots of tasty Yemeni dishes now.



Here is where I tried a million times to insert a picture of the Fatoor Meal: soup, 3atr, samboosa, dates, and juice all on the floor of my room. But it did not happen. Hope you liked the blog without pictures. Next time if the internet is faster I'll get them on!