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!