I went to Sana’a this week. People always try to get me to go there to “ghayr al-jau” or “change the atmosphere.” The Country Director has offered to pay for my plane ticket and put me in any hotel I want for a night or two. The general consensus is that Sana’a is awesome and everyone should want to stay in a fancy hotel there. But I disagree. For one thing, coming to Aden is “ghayr-ing the jau” for me. More importantly, Sana’a does not have a beach, and most importantly, Captain Roy does not live there. Today I went for a 3 hour hike up and around the rocky mountains of Shamsan, never losing sight of the perfectly beautiful blue water down below. We ended the hike down on the beach, went for a quick in the not-too-cold-not-too-hot-just-perfect Gulf of Aden. Just as we were preparing to climb up out of the wadi to head back to the car, one of the Captain’s friends showed up in his little boat, and boated us around to the other side of the hill from which we could easily saunter up to the car. Then the Captain showed us around his office, which looks out over the port. We admired the lights of the boats anchored around and remembered the USS Cole which the Captain heard explode and went to help. Then I came home to make cookies for the guys in the office, managing to burn every single one of the 3 batches I made…how is that even possible? Shouldn’t the odds be in my favor for at least one batch? But anyway, we can all agree that it was an epic day, full of adventure and now a blog and anti-terrorism TV commercials…yes, it’s true. In American you have (had?) “this is your brain on drugs” commercials, in the Middle East we have commercials reminding kids that it’s not “cool” to be a terrorist, and being a terrorist might make some people cry.
Does this blog post have a point? Not yet…maybe I’ll get there…maybe it’s letting you get a glimpse of the things that go on in my mind…keep reading at your own risk.
I should take this time to explain the title. Upon arriving back in Aden on Thursday night, a most impressive feat, actually, since they bought my ticket for Friday night against my express wishes and I had to go to the airport with Khaled and hope there was an empty seat on the flight. There wasn’t, but fortunately, there is a lot of unrest in Sana’a (you may have heard something about it) and the main roads are all closed, making traffic ridiculous and some people where late so I managed to make it on the flight. I pulled the poor foreign girl and tried (unsuccessfully of course) to cry. It only worked because some people didn’t follow the “be at the airport at least one hour before domestic flights” rule. Al muhim: Success! No thanks to Miriam who thought I was joking when I informed her that I wanted to be back in Aden by Thursday night in case of unrest in Sana’a on Friday, leading to evacuation, which I only want to do from Aden in a boat with the Captain. So I am very thankful for Khaled, who knew ahead of time that he didn’t want to spend extra time with those dahabashi’s in Sana’a (dahabashi is roughly the equivalent of “damn Yankee”) and he also didn’t trust ADRA Yemen dahabashi’s to buy his ticket. He had his already and he never lost hope that I would make it on the plane, chuckling gleefully that I was keeping another carpet-bagger off the plane to the paradise of the south.
When we landed in Aden, I was so happy to be home in the warm wet air with the smell of the sea mixed with jasmine bushes somehow growing in the dirty parking lot of the airport. I mentioned to Khaled that I love the smell of the ocean. That is when I learned the lovely phrase that is the title of this blog: gesh2 Lba7r. The direct translation of this phrase is “burp of the sea.” Apparently, this is the Arabic way of saying “the smell of the sea.” People with the lovely and refined Levantine accent would pronounce this word “jesh2” but I’m not sure if those kind of refined peoples would use this lovely expression. Well, no one every accused me of being lovely and/or refined so “burp of the sea” it is. And I love the sea and all its regurgitated smells.
Here are the high points of my time in Sana’a:
- Two hot showers. Wow. I had forgotten why showering was fun. Showering here is a necessity, but there is no joy in it. Showering in the Sheraton was “from the nose.” A Yemeni expression meaning “awesome.” Apparently, Yemeni noses produce awesomeness.
- Meeting the people from ADRA Somalia and planning my trip there. End of the month inshalla! Somalia waxaan ku tagayaa!
- Not dying of boredom during the millions of powerpoint presentations I was forced to sit through. I had planned my funeral and it was going to be mumtaztik, but I know that my mom and one or two other people would have been really disappointed if I don’t make it to at least age 30. Besides, dying of powerpoint presentations is almost like dying in Fun City. There are more creative ways to go, especially here in Yemen.
- The highlight of the meetings for me was the security presentation by Chris Gibbs. At first, I was disappointed that it was not Simon Butt. Since the beginning of the Qat Revolution, I have been getting a plethora of security related emails. I never read them if I have to open an attachment, and I never read them unless I see that they were written by Simon Butt. Simon is the head of the UN Department of Safety and Security in Yemen. These security guys are usually really tough looking former military guys who are just trying to make the world a better place using their skills which may or may not have been developed on dangerous undercover evil government missions for which they are now trying to atone. Simon, I’m sure, was driven to this life by his unfortunate last name, which made him become extra bad-ass to protect himself from bullies who prey on people with unfortunate last names. Somehow, and this is unusual for security-type people, he also developed a sense of humor. In his emails he once mocked the international media for showing a “very horrifying potentially violent demonstration” which was actually so insignificant as to have been broken up by one policeman with a stick. Another time he caustically informed the UN that when they see that people are throwing rocks, even if they have not been informed of a riot happening in that particular area, not to drive through the line of fire. In such a situation, a broken windscreen is only natural. I sensed that he almost added “it’s your own fault, morons.”
Anyway, Simon couldn’t make it to our meeting. I guess he’s too busy being awesome. So he sent a slightly-less awesome stand-in by the name of Chris Gibbs. Chris was very rugged and tough looking. He took us through the Impact/Likelihood matrix which he uses to predict the future. I don’t really remember all he was saying because I was busy admiring his accent. It was mostly classic British, but not your stereotypical “prim-and-proper-sit-up-straighter” British accent. Somehow his aforementioned badassness showed up in his accent. I did find the way he pronounced the name of a local tribe distracting. The Houthis have this rebellious streak going on and they like to stir up trouble when possible, and so they came up in some of our discussions. The way Chris pronounced their name sounded sort of like “the Hooters.” It was just hard for me when he would mentioned that certain sheikhs had “gone over to the Hooters” or that “the President was driving many people to the Hooters.” At any rate, he didn’t use powerpoint. He wasn’t one of those security people that falls back on technology to save him. He doesn’t diffuse bombs with a robot, he rips it to pieces with his bare hands before it explodes. He had to leave our meeting really fast after his session. I’m pretty sure there was a bomb somewhere that needed him. That or he was afraid he would have to sit through the next powerpoint presentation….I escaped it by taking an extra long bathroom break, because not everyone can be called on to diffuse bombs with their bare hands.
So there you have it, people. It’s been a while since this blog has been updated, so I made this one especially long. You’re welcome.
