Kim's Ramadan Daydream

"What are you going to do when you get off the plane?" is a common question that expats get when people find out that they are going home after being away for a while. Well, I'm not planning a trip home but Becky and I did decide what we are going to do. This little plan was hatched while trying to walk down Hadda street one night after being whistled at, ripped off and generally gawked at.

First, I am going to find the area in my neighborhood where there is the highest population of Middle Easterners (preferably Yemenis) and I am going to first drive around said neighborhood and every time I see someone who looks like they might be of Middle Eastern decent I am going to lean on the horn, screech to a stop and scream "Marhaban!" ("Welcome!") at them regardless of how long they look like they have lived there. When this gets old, I am going to get out of the car and wander around the town saying "Kaf Haluk?" ("How are you?") and "Habibik!" ("I love you!") to every immigrant and expat I see. If this fails to get their attention then I will just whistle or make strange noises. If I should see something even slightly out of the ordinary (like-- God forbid-- a woman wearing a headscarf) I will come to a dead halt right in front of them, let my mouth drop open and stare at them with wide eyes while saying "Ya' Allah!!" ("My God!"). When I am inevitably arrested for harassment I will tell the cops that I am simply a friendly and curious person and that people shouldn't have been offended at my attempts to reach out to them.

Eventually I might meet someone who gives me the time of day. When they respond to my cries with a "hello" or a "what do you think that you are doing" I will exclaim in loud and condescending tones "My God, your English is wonderful, where on earth did you learn to speak English like that?!?" I will then ask them for their name, their age, where they live, where they work, their marital status and find out what they think of America. When this interrogation is done I will take their arm and give them a tour while saying lots of very condescending and obvious things. "Here's a McDonalds! Have you seen a McDonalds yet? It's a restaurant. You can eat food here. Have you ever tried a hamburger before?"

Okay, I am not going to do these things of course, but imagining myself doing them is keeping me sane as I walk through the streets of Sanaa.

FIP, Becky

(FIP: Fly in Peace)

Well, my housemate Becky leaving just me and Sonia (which I am very happy about, Sonia). She left last night and we had a tearly evening farewell at the guesthouse gate. About two hours later we got a call from same saying that her flight was cancelled and that she was coming back, which was made even more inconvient by the fact that I was about half finished moving into her room. Anyway, they managed to get her on another flight today and it looks like everything is a go.

My two week break has been a bit of a bust. I had plans to go to Taiz, Kokoban, Marib, Ibb, Shahara and a frew other places but one by one each plan was shot down. The family that was supposed to take me to Taiz had a "family emergency" and the person I was supposed to go to Shahara with ran out fo cash... blah, blah, blah. I am going to try to escape next week but that is a bad time because it's going to be Eid.

Gives me time to catch up in my grading. One of my students, in a paragraph where he was to describe himself, wrote: "I am handsome man. I am black hair and I in gray shirt, brown shoes and black panties."

He meant pants. I hope he meant pants.

Adventures in Teaching

Yesterday I walked into my Level 1 class and asked them, "Okay, what did you learn in your science class yesterday?" (They have chemistry classes as well as English.)

A hand shot up like a rocket and the guy was going "ooo!! ooooo!!!!" I called on him, surprised by his excitement. "Yes?" I said. For good measure I repeated the question. "What did you learn yesterday in Chemistry?"

"3!" he said triumphantly.

Iftar

Is Ramadan over yet? No, the moon is full which means that we have two more weeks. This is my last week of classes, however, and things should get a lot more relaxed when I no longer have to get up at 7:45AM after getting to bed at one in the morning.

Ramadan is the time of Iftar (I am probably not spelling that right), also known as breakfast although it is eaten around 6PM after the sun goes down. It's a tradition to invite people to dinner, and Sonia (my Muslim housemate) has been going out about every night and when I am lucky she brings me with her.

The traditional Iftar meal starts with a quick appetizer of dates and samosas. Generally stuffed with either cheese or meat, these things are to die for. After that, the people all go off and pray after having their hunger for the most part fought off. When they get back, the women will spread a large plastic sheet on the ground and spread food on it. The names of the foods escape me right now, but for those who are interested please check back. I will get someone to photograph the spread of the next meal and write down the names for me. But generally there is this dish consisting of that spongy Ethiopian bread in a yogurt sauce of some sort, and it rocks. A meat dish and a big platter of rice cooked with potatoes and meat. Everyone is given a spoon and told to dig in. There is usally flat bread that gets passed around when the salta (another dish which is actually kind of gross and in my opinion looks a bit like puke) comes out.

After dinner it's desert time, generally a jello thing (called jelly here, like in Samoa, which was a shock when I bought some "mix-it-yourself" jelly that I made and tried to eat off bread) and some cake type thing. And coffee. Needless to say, I have put on quite a bit of weight!! (The nightly Pilates sort of died out.)

After that there is conversation. We've figured out a way around this by having a friend give up an emergency call at around 7:45 telling us that there is a roach in the bathroom, the toilet is overflowing, genies are talking over the world—whatever is needed to get us the hell out of there before we have to meet someone's grandmother, mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, 2nd cousin and so on. Becky and I were wondering if they do this to each other. The same thing happened to me in Palestine… I mean, could you imagine going to your friends house, having a nice meal, then having them say "Well, let's get in the car, we're going to Grandma's house so that you can meet her?" Keep in mind that this is made worse by the fact that we don't speak the same language.

Iftar is cooked by the women of the house, and they generally eat separately from the men. In many of the dinners that I would be at I wouldn't even see a woman, except for an occasional smiling grandmother who greeted us at the door. When we were introduced to the women, they would come pouring out of the door like a clown car. Becky and I did recently go to an Iftar where we were the guests of the women, and it was a very different experience. It was a special occasion and there were easily 60 women there, and I only saw the men at the beginning of the evening. For me, it was sad to see all the identical black-robed women walk into the room and show such personality after they threw off their scarves.

Anyway, tonight some of our housemates made dinner and we had our own Iftar. Tim and Derrick (a new housemate) were cooking and we girls sent them into the kitchen while we lounged around and watched TV in our Bizarro version of Yemen. It was nice until I was told that I would be the one to wash the dishes.

Do We Feel Safe Yet?

The other day I was heading to work in the Gas Company with my driver, Abdul. In addition to the two of us, the car held a payload about ten boxes of textbooks that were needed for the next class. We got to the gates of the Gas Company (uh, remember as you read this tale that there have been about three attacks on Gas-related industries here in Yemen in the past few weeks) and Abdul honks for the guard to let us in.

The guard came out and had a word with Abdul. I didn't recognize the guard, but that's not saying much as there are a ton of them and they all look alike in their matching guard uniforms. Abdul and the guard had a short argument and the guard eventually waved us in.

I will admit that it was in Arabic and that I didn't know a word that he was saying. Abdul is a sweet man, and he's worked at MALI for years, but he doesn't really know very much about the in and outs of what I am doing. He knew that we were delivering textbooks for MALI and the name of the director of said institute. But in reality, Abdul doesn't really know anything that you couldn't find off the Internet in about five minutes (from my blog alone, in fact.)

So once inside the gates, we quickly unload ten unmarked and very heavy boxes to various floors in the building. The guard even helped us. On the way out, he finally got around to asking me my name. Turns out that he was new and didn't know who I was. I gave my name to him and he went to the office to write it down. He didn’t ask to see any ID, including my "official" gas company ID card. (I put "official" in quotes because after waiting a month for the card I got sick of signing in every morning and swiped a card from a former employee and simply scotch taped—not glued—my name and picture over the old name and photo.) By the time he got to his office, Abdul and I were happily out of the compound and bouncing away down the road as he took me to a different entrance.

It wasn't until afterwards that I realized that ANYTHING could have been in those boxes.

US Foreign Relations Fucks Up Again...

Today was my last weekday off, so I took the opportunity to head to my embassy. I went for a few reasons… the first was simply to see it and see if it looked anything like the one in "Rules of Engagement" and the other reason is that I had two passports—my Peace Corps passport and my regular passport. I had to use the Peace Corps passport to get into Yemen because the other one has an Israeli stamp on it, and it was only good for three months after my service finished, and I didn't want to be with a visa in an expired passport.

So I walked to Hadda Street and hailed a cab. He said he wanted 600 hundred rials, I stood firm at 400. After I started to walk away he relented and I got in feeling smug. But the bastard got his own back. We got to the embassy; he pointed it out and kicked me out of his cab. I nervously walked up to the heavily fortified entrance holding up my passport. The guards told me that I had to go around. "Around" consisted of about a ten minute walk on a busy highway with no sidewalk and nearly every taxi or bus that saw me screeching to a halt and honking in hopes of getting a western fare. You see, this is why I hate taxi drivers.

I finally got to the place and they waved me in. I had to walk halfway back to where I had started and entered a line with a bunch of bored looking Yemenis. After waiting for about ten minutes, I realized that it wasn't a line, rather just a place to wait for something that wasn't going to happen. I asked the guard if I could just go in and he waved me to the door.

In the door, I handed in all my junk to a Yemenese woman wearing a matching headscarf and bullet-proof vest and was ushered through a metal detector to conciliate services. The embassy really looked like what you would expect. Big, modern, lots of guards and a big wall all around it. I went to the conciliate office and waited for about a half hour (for some crazy reason I had neglected to bring a book) and then someone came to help me. I had to shout my problems through a glass wall about a half foot thick. "I have two passports," I told them. "This one is my Peace Corps Passport, it has my visa", I opened and held it up, showing the visa, "but it is only good for another month. And this is my other passport, but it has this," and I showed him the Israeli stamp. He nodded and I slipped both passports under the window. He told me that he would have to speak with his boss about it.

More waiting. The power flashed off and the generator kicked in. Finally, I was called back. He told me that since my Peace Corps contract was cancelled, he had gone ahead and cancelled the Peace Corps passport. He gave me back my Peace Corps passport and I looked at it in horror. He had punched a few holes in the cover and put a big "cancelled" stamp in it. "What about my visa?" I asked.

"You will have to transfer it to your second passport", he said, giving said passport back.
"Are they going to put a visa in it, with this?" I asked, holding up the stamp.

"No," he admitted. "I guess you'll need a new passport." He got me an application and demanded $67 bucks. Fortunately I had planned for this and handed over the money. He then asked for two identical passport pictures. I had not planned for this, and felt like a real idiot since I had two spares in my desk at home.

"But what about my visa?" I asked.

"You'll have to put it in the new passport. You'll get it in a week."

"But since my current passport is cancelled, isn't my visa cancelled as well?"

The man blinked a few times, obviously not having thought that far. "Well, yes, theoretically," he stammered. "But if anyone gives you any problems, just call us and we'll sort it out." I thought about when I got arrested in Israel and the only support that the embassy gave me was a stack of outdated Cosmopolitans and a call to my mom. Needless to say, I didn't feel much better.

Anyway, I asked where there was a picture place and they told me that there was one to the left. "But you'll need to take a taxi, it's too far, you'll never make it."

"How far?"

"About half a kilometer." I wondered what would happen if I was arrested more then half a kilometer away from the embassy. I set out on foot and ten minutes later I found the place. I asked (in Arabic) for some passport pictures. I said that I needed them NOW, in ten minutes, and was the place digital? They nodded. First they tried to sell me ten. I talked them down to four. They told me it was 250 rials, and I paid the bill and they gave me a receipt.

"Where do we take the pictures?" I asked. The man shrugged and pointed at the lights. "No power", he said. I remembered that it had gone out an hour ago.

I bought some melting ice cream and sat outside to sulk and wait for the lights to come back and wonder if it would bankrupt the bloody embassy to provide themselves with a simple digital camera and printer along with their fancy useless generator.

When the lights came back on (I was lucky, it only took about fifteen minutes) they ushered me into a room and sat me down to photograph me. The guy snapped my picture and I looked at the camera suspiciously. "Digital?" I asked. He nodded as he pulled the lever to advance the film. I went back out and asked when my pictures would be ready. I was told to come back in about three hours.

"No, I need them now," I said. I was offered two hours and the very Yemeni "it's okay."
Another 250 rials on the table and they were able to wrestle up an actual digital camera and their photographer begrudgingly took my photo again. It looked terrible—I swear that he messed it up on purpose. At that point I didn't care. I ran them back to the embassy and hopefully I will never have to step on that particular patch of American soil again.

So here I am, in the Middle East illegally. Again. This morning I was legal and a trip to the US embassy changed all that. Thanks, guys.

They Hate Us, You Know

I was walking down the street a few days ago with a friend when some young boys hung their heads out the car window and whistled at us. I ignored this but my friend sighed and told me "They hate us, you know." She went on to say that Yemen was the most intolerant place she's ever lived. I didn't agree with her at first, but now I'm not so sure.

It was a pretty shocking thing for her to say, especially since I was more or less under the impression that I was a welcome visitor to this country. But talking to her made me realize a few things... namely that the horn honking and the "hey baby"'s mean something a little different here.

After living in Samoa for so long I more or less got used to the unwanted attention and stares. However, something that hadn't occurred to me was that in Yemen, unlike Samoa, it isn't really cool to sleep with as many westerners as humanly possible, and it certainly isn't cool to brag about it. Rather, it is Shame, and most things sexual-- from sleeping with someone to hooting at someone on the street-- isn't really something that any man-- even a teenaged one-- would be proud of. In Samoa you called out to palagis to impress your friends. Here, no one is going to be impressed. No, the whistling and the cat calling has a different meaning here.

After I saw it that way, things started to look different. The stares are starting to look a little more hostile and a little less curious. The anti-American sentiments that I hear seems a little more pointed and I find myself feeling like an idiot-- did I really think that I could just stroll into this country and everyone would like me? Did I really think that just because I have certain views and actions people would treat me differently? You can't get into Yemen if you have a Israeli stamp in your passport-- even if you were working in Palestine-- and neither the government nor the people have a problem with this. It's politics, just like anywhere else. We are judged by our appearance here just like anywhere else. Am I such an "Ugly American" that I didn't forsee that?

Anyway, don't get me wrong. I have a lot of friends here although it's hard to be friends with the woman (who can't leave the house and who you can't hang out with) and it's harder to be friends with the men who people will assume you are sleeping with, thereby bringing shame to their family.

One of my students, Aziz, took some of my friends to Old Yemen to see Ramadan at night. I didn't go because I was tired and I assumed (correctly, as it turns out) that night at Babel Yemen would be like any other night. Anyway, Aziz and my friends (all western girls) went into a shared taxi and their way to the gate. A woman sat next to Aziz and according to him (admittedly Aziz can exaggerate sometimes) the women started questioning him about the girls. He asked him if he was sleeping with them. When he said that no, they are my teachers, she said that he should stay away from us, that we do bad things and that we come from evil places. Not entirely inaccurate, I will concede. Still, how much is said behind my back when there isn't someone who can translate the conversation for me later?

PS: Who the hell is Anne Nicole Smith and why won't the news shut up about her?

Under the Veil

The other day we were playing "class expert" and an interesting problem came up. For all you aspiring English teachers out there, this is a great activity which has never let me down. It gets the students to speak and requires zero prep work. You have all the students write down a problem or a question, preferably one that uses the current grammar points. You then pick a student to sit at the front of the class and the rest of the kids fire questions at them. Meanwhile, you are standing at the board writing down the grammar mistakes and getting volunteers to fix them. It's a great activity and I have never seen anyone NOT get into it.

Anyway, we were doing this in one of my more advanced classes and one of the girls brought up her problem. Fatima (not her real name) told us that she didn't want to wear her veil anymore but that her family was making her. Fatima wasn't talking about the headscarf (which no woman would ever consider going without) but rather the veil that covered the bottom half of her face. Many women here go without that veil, and I asked her why she wasn't one of these. She told me that her husband's family (her husband works abroad and is trying to get her a visa) is the one that doesn't want her to go without. Although she lives with her mother's family and her sisters don't wear the veil she is still expected to wear it.

I have been here for four months only, but I really starting to suspect that I would never understand this whole shame thing that they have got going on. All of the people in my class knew Fatima really well and I suggested that she not wear the veil in class, even going to far to suggest that she use me as an example. She told me that with the veil she had problems breathing, but that didn't matter. Were she to take the veil off it would bring Shame to her family. Honor, shame, honor, shame, I just don't get it.

She told me that this was a real problem. I noticed that some of the phones that the students bring to MALI were taken at the door, and when I asked for the reason I was told that they were camera phones. The students aren't allowed to bring cameras because they might try to take a picture of the few girls that are brave enough to remove their veil while they are attending classes. Fatima had tried to remove her veil once (please remember that we are not talking about the headscarf here) and she told me that there were a lot of people that tried to take her picture. Plus, it got back to her husbands family and she was shamed. The entire time that she is telling me this I am staring at her wondering what the big deal is. So someone has a picture of her? Who cares? This is a part of society that I am just not able to understand.

We had another discussion in another class then started as a discussion on different types of exercise (I DO yoga, I GO jogging...) and turned into a debate concerning how much freedom a woman should have to walk on the street. I won't go into the debate, but the final decision of the class was that a woman should be able to walk down the street with a brother or a husband without people assuming that she was having an affair. As for whether a woman should be able to walk down the street whenever she damn well chooses wearing whatever she wants, forget it. Another class had a discussion about a woman's right to work. The final consensus in that class was that a woman should be able to work as much as she wants provided that her work doesn't interfere with her household duties. I suggested that if work did interfere with her household duties then maybe her husband should step up. Why would a man want to wash dishes? I was asked.

Ramadan is the worse for women. The women I know all work. This means that they have to get up to teach for their 4-6 hours, and then go home and spend about 3-4 hours making a Ramadan dinner for their families. They have to do this every day WHILE they are fasting. One of the teachers that I work with was describing her schedule to me-- teach at 10, go home at 2, cook until 6, then do Ramadan family stuff and clean the house until around 3, (she can't sleep because her family doesn't sleep) then make Ramadan breakfast and catch two hours of sleep before working again. When do you sleep, I asked her. During the two hours, she pointed out, as if she was talking to a dull child. When I pointed out that two hours of sleep wasn't enough she shrugged and said that she can sleep during her day off. The men, on the other hand, work only about half as much. Myself, I work for 6 hours a day and I barely have a minute to myself, and I don't have to cook for anyone. It's pretty appalling, if you ask me.

Shout Out

First a shout-out to Sonia's bf who is one of my biggest international fans at this point. Sonia's my housemate and apparently he is reading the blog to find out interesting gossip about her, of which I have none. She has kicked our asses (another word that can be found in the Penguin Readers that I unwittingly assigned my class) into doing Pilates everyday do to the fact that we are all gaining weight from Ramadan. How can one gain weight from fasting, you ask? Well, fasting all day and then eating a three course meal topped off with about three different types of deserts is a bit like eating a Big Mac and Chocolate shake and then walking up the stairs on your way back home hoping that you will balance it out. Here's a picture of us (top row from the left, unknown, Becky, Miriam, unknown, me, Sonia, unknown, unknown, Adbulla, Sukaim, unknown) at one of the dinners that we went to. Sonia is the only one in the house that is fasting, so I am trying not to eat around her but I probably shouldn't bother. She starts cooking at around 3PM and the smells that come from the kitchen drive me crazy even though I have eaten that day.

Ramadan is tough on teaching as well. I am back at the Gas Company for a 10AM class (not fun considering that I still have my 10-12 class at night and I have to wake up at 8AM) and my poor students have mostly been up until 5AM. During Ramadan, you stay up all night to have the sunup meal and then sleep all day, unless you're them. They get four hours of sleep and then wake up at 9AM to go to class. (They get an extra hour of sleep because they are guys and they don't have to bathe.) Needless to say class participation has been down. I find it helps to randomly start jumping up and down and screaming "Wake up, Wake UP, WAKE UP!!!!!" I get a five minute reprieve from 16 sets of glazed eyes and open drooling mouths.

Miriam left, and if she is reading this then she should know that her email address that she gave me is bouncing, so please send me an email!!! It's very sad without her. Becky and I were watching "Crocodile Dundee" and we didn't have anyone to make fun of during the viewing. So a shout-out to Miriam: "Crikey, G'day mate! Is it true that people grab each other's genitals in the bush?" It's really sad about her, she was the brightest spot in Yemen. Right now she is working in Korea (or as I like to think of it she is scouting out Korea as a possible destination for me after Yemen.)

There was an earthquake and Tsunami in Samoa but apparently everything is okay.

Night Well Spent

Well, it has come to this... my and my housemates spent an evening looking up rude words in the student dictionary. Yes, Yemen is that boring.

It all started when I found that I couldn't write a Story Quiz for the book assigned to my level 5A class. The reason that I couldn't make a story quiz was that the administration didn't bother making me a copy of the book. The book was "The Body" by Steven King, which the movie "Stand By Me" was based on.

We weren't actually reading the Steven King book, of course. We have these "Pengiun Readers" which are based off of more popular works. They are pretty terrible, as you might imagine. Think of the awful books that always come out after a popular movie which is a retelling by some hack who can't come up with their own plotline. These are like that but about ten times worse. Occasionally there is even a "book" that is based on a movie, and those are the most painful (especially when the movie was originally based on a book and pretty much everything good about the story is lost.)

I am not sure why they do this. There are plenty of great books that are written at my students level that don't need to be patronizingly rewritten. One of the reasons, I think, is that because these books are designed for adult learners they want to introduce more adult themes. Unfortunately, in a society where women aren't even allowed to use Tampons these "mature" themes are a inappropriate. Miriam had to teach the Penguin Reader version of "Seven" (that movie with Brad Pitt and whats-his-name) and the deadly sin of "lust" was a bit much for the class (and had been edited out pretty much to the point where no one knew what the hell was going on.) Currently, I am teaching a version of "the Breathing Method" by Steven King where the protagonist at one point pulls up a woman's skirt while laughing manically in front of a bunch of horrified onlookers as he goes to deliver the baby from a recently decapitated woman. Not exactly culturally sensitive stuff, here. And I am also teaching "The Body" where four boys... well, read on.

So anyway, since I was supposed to give a quiz on Saturday and still didn't have the book on Wednesday, the last day of class I was in a bit of a pickle. Since giving a quiz with just two questions reading "what is the title of the book?" and "how many kids are in the book?" was not an option, I grabbed a copy of the book while the students were on break and flipped through to figure out what I was going to do. At the back of the book was a bunch of "discussion questions" that included having the students look up different definitions as well as writing about why the characters made the choices that they did. Without reading through the questions fully, I assigned those questions in lieu of a quiz.

So, imagine my surprise when, the next Saturday as I sat down to mark the papers (still without a book) I realized with horror that one of the words that they were asked to look up was "pussy". My housemates found this really amusing and Becky decided to look up the word in the comprehensive Longman's dictionary that was handed out to all the students. The first definition that came up was "a cat", which was harmless enough. The second definition read something along the lines of "a cowardly person" which was word for word what the student whose paper I was holding had written. I thought I was in the clear but Becky went on to the third definition which read "a rude slang for a women's genitalia" and added helpfully in small caps "Do NOT use this word."

I groaned and wondered how I was going to explain in my next interview how it came to pass that I was fired from my last job for having my students look up rude words as a homework assignment. Meanwhile, Becky was intrigued by the "Do NOT use this word" and immediately started to see what other words in the dictionary held the same helpful advice. Only this word had this particular warning, plus another offensive word for a homosexual man. We were pretty impressed by the listings for f*ck, however. They not only spent a half page defining the word but they included many of the idioms associated with it and even provided examples ("These speakers are really f*cked up" and "After three years with John I was totally f*cked up.")

Sadly, this was the most entertainment that we've had in a week. It's pretty quiet around here during Ramadan.

Happy Ramadan!!

Well, Ramadan is here and today is the first day. I was going to fast, but when my alarm went off at 4:30 to remind me to eat breakfast before the sun came up I turned around and punched it off and went back to sleep. (At least that is what I am assuming happened, considering I don't really remember the event.) I woke up starving and thirsty at 10AM into bright sunlight. Since I messed up the whole day I decided that the whole month was blown so I made coffee and oatmeal and decided to give up refined sugars and cigarettes instead. This was blown about three minutes later after I made the oatmeal and discovered that I was out of artificial sweetener.

The Yemenis know how to make it through this holiday. Although I think that fasting and feeling hunger is sort of the point, they get around this little inconvenience quite well by simply moving the workday to night and sleeping during daylight hours. This would explain why I am sitting in the computer lab at 9:35 PM waiting for my 10PM class to start that finishes around midnight. I have four cups of coffee in me and I still feel like I am going to pass out. I am not a night person. (I'm not really a morning person for that matter either.)

So as far as I can tell, the average Yemeni will get up around three or four in the afternoon (except for the women who have to cook for about three hours prior,) break fast at around 5:30PM, then start their day. Most people go to work at around 8PM and go to sleep around 4AM, as the sun is coming up before they have their "early" morning meal. It's the way to do it, I guess.

Election day went off without a hitch. The incumbent, Salah, got somewhere between 75-85% of the votes (depending if you are talking to a supporter or not) and there was no real violence. As my student put it, "just three people where killed". I guess that is a improvement over the last years. I went out and met a Aussie named Ben (an Arabic student whose blog can be seen here,) and although I suspect that they "Hey baby I love you" were a little more frequent then usual the city was pretty quiet.

Anyway, time for class.

Happy Patriots Day

Well, my blog seems to be getting quite the following as of late, with people all over the globe sending me messages. I guess that this means that I need to start writing more about Yemen and less about the infantile humour that resolves around the sexual things that my students inadvertently say.

So the elections are coming up. The date, I believe is September 20th, although I could be wrong. The hype surrounding the elections is quite impressive. My friend the Protest Mobile has been running around the city blasting Arabic music and pimping it's candidate... kids run around the streets waving flags and singing. Three-four story posters are erected (he he) on the sides of walls that show pictures of the desired candidate. Nothing like anything I have seen in America, although I missed the 2004 elections. This is all a bit much considering that the winner has already been all but pre-determined. The current incumbent, President Salah, has been in power for twenty-plus years now (yes, I know that I should know more about the history of my adopted country) and neither him nor the voters of Yemen are making any big plans to change things around now.

This election was supposed to be a touch more exciting because the President swore that he would step down after this term, leaving a nice big vacuum for all of Yemen to fight over. However, all my Yemenese friends grumbled that this would not be the case. There would be a couple of planned rallies and marches, I was told, during which the President would swear to uphold his promise to step down. Finally the pressure would be too much for him to take and he would reluctantly run again due to the fact that the people has insisted. And that's pretty much exactly what happened. It would be impossible to change the President anyway. There are pictures of him in practically every building in Yemen. Just replacing those framed posters would be enough to put this country way in the red.

We did comparatives today in my Level 1 and I taught my students to say "I am smarter than Bush" and "Bush is dumber than me", with "My President is more intelligent than yours" for the more advanced students. So maybe I am a traitor to my nation but at least my students managed to nail that particular grammar point. Oh yeah, happy Patriots day, everyone. Yet another holiday that for some strange reason isn't celebrated here.

Still at YLNG

Well, my replacement ducked out at the last minute and so I am still at the Gas Company, which I really don’t mind. I am only working for three hours in the morning and then I have a class at 2:30 at MALI. They are giving me an upper level course at MALI, which is a big complement because generally they save these for the more advanced teachers. Also, the upper levels are where it becomes possible for the teachers to make real friends out of the students because the students can say something besides “I like cheese.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the class I wanted at YLNG (see below) , but that class did send about five representatives storming into my classroom today asking—demanding, rather—that I teach them instead of the other teacher. I laughed and started to tell them to talk with the boss when my own class had a fit and said that I was THEIR teacher and that I would teach another class over their dead bodies. (OK, well their English wasn’t quite that colourful, being Level 1, but you get the idea.) I broke up the riot and told everyone I was staying put. All and all it was a huge complement. I think that this class needs me more anyway, they have a lot of potential and they need someone with a lot of energy to wake them up. The class is called "Samha" which is sort of a cross between "Dharma" and "Sangha" so I take that as a good sign.

Other then that, things are going well, getting over a breakup, preparing to travel to Mukulla, looking forward to Ramadan which starts in about three weeks. I am not really looking forward to teaching students who haven’t eaten in eight hours, however. I haven’t decided if I am going to do the fast or not, although I probably will.

Happy Labour Day!

Yet another holiday that isn't celebrated here... I didn't even remember about it until my friend from South Africa reminded me... I am not even sure what day it was (Monday, right?)

I am not going to be working at the Gas Company next term, they are bringing me back to MALI. This is a good thing because it means that eventually I will be able to work in Mukulla-- the capital of Hadramount, one of the more rural areas of Yemen, where I think that I will be able to pick up Arabic a lot more quickly and learn a lot more about the culture. I have been teaching one class from 6:30-8:30 at MALI, and the MALI students are a lot different. They aren't so bright as the students here, but they are more diverse and come from many different backgrounds and situations. Plus, I have a few women in my class!

Other then that, I am actually feeling a little depressed and lonely so please write me and cheer me up.

Watch out!

Inshallah, this is my last week teaching Technical English. We've spent the week working on writing paragraphs, which has been a lot of fun but also pretty challenging (see last entry). To teach the students to write a topic sentence, I would write an outline on the board and request a opener. It worked pretty well as I picked really controversial subjects (like "Should the USA have invaded Iraq?") and write pro and con arguments. This would undouptly start a plethora of angry sentences against the action that I would read out loud, agree with, then coldly reject. Eventually the students would get the idea and finally someone would write "There are a lot of different opinions about whether the US should have invaded Iraq" and they would get a round of applause and a prize. Perhaps in a month we will have worked them down to supporting sentences.

Next week I will go back to teaching Basic English again. Some of the new students just bribed me with chocolate cake and coke in a plea for me to be "easygoing" with them. (a very popular term here to to the fact that it is highlighted in the Cambridge Interchange Series that everyone in Yemen uses for teaching English). They were lucky because it was chocolate cake, so their little scheme will probably work pretty well. Actually, they are not my students but rather the students of another teacher. However, many of them approached me and asked me to teach them instead, saying that they had "heard about me." I was really flattered!!! I told them to speak with the boss and hopefully there will be a switch, otherwise, I am sure that whoever I teach will bring much joy. Here is a washed-out picture of me with two of my hopefully-future students. The one on the left is the Yemenese version of John Travolta.

As a goodbye gift to my technical students, I have prepared an exam where they have to write "should" and "could" statements based on the safety icons like this one, to allow them to practice writing statements such as "You shouldn't get to close too the rotating bar or your body could get sucked into the machinery and unless you are Elastagirl you are pretty screwed." (To my students: if you write that on your exam you flunk.) Took me the better part of an hour to find some really gory ones, and this one was my favorite. Hopefully they will find it amusing on what is generally a pretty dreary test day, especially considering that it is their Saturday. (We work Saturday to Thursday, with only Fridays off. Thank God for religion.)

In my hunt for icons, I came across this classic: http://www.safenow.org/. Brought back some good memories.

It's the Term That Never Ends!

This is the term that never ends
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends
Some people started teaching it not knowing what it was,
And they'll go on and on a'teaching it forever just because
This is the term that never ends
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends...

This term has been extended for yet another week due to the upcoming elections. This is the second time that this has happened, I should be on break by now. I guess that I really don't mind teaching it, but if I read one more bloody article on Gas and Oil I am really going to lose it.

Here is a sample of what I am having to read 45 copies of every other night:

Distallation or pick of oil and gas is a complex operation includes: rifining, distillation and distribution. After finishing the well which exsits at the oil and gas field and contains crude oil or natural gas, that have to pumped to plant of process by using a huge pumps that have a different characteristics to pump the hydrocarbons from the well...

After two hours of this I was nearly in tears.

I actually caught a plagiarist today and I got really excited tracking him down on Google. He was pretty slick because he didn't just lift it from one paper but rather from a bunch of different sources off the web. It was the most exciting thing that happened after reading 45 paragraphs on the oil and gas industry that I almost felt bad turning the essay into administration, considering that the student brought me my only bright spot of the day.

And the winner for the worst paragraph in the class is this masterpiece:

Oil Field Development

The oil and gas is very important to use in our live and we take oil and gas from field on from under ground to our plant and do many process for oil and gas to separate energy from another one and take that fuel to used take the natural oil to used as fuel and use the gas as fuel for transportation and as fuel for factory in the generating.

I would point out that there isn't a topic sentence nor is there a concluding sentence or supporting arguments due to the fact that the entire paragraph is, in fact, one sentence.

It’s All Okay, Teacher

I gave a quiz yesterday, and when one of my students handed his in, he told me “It’s okay teacher, you can take as many marks off as you want.” Gee, thanks, I’ll do that.

“It’s okay” is sort of the unofficial mantra of Yemenese students. If you’re late, gazing out the window, sleeping, or just don’t feel like coming to class this can be remedied by a reassuring “It’s okay, teacher” and a slight nod of the head. I am curious what the Arabic translation is because once I learn it I think that I could get away with murder.

This is due to the fact that they manage to pull some sort of Jedi Mind Trick when they say it. I have had students bring me their homework a week late and after I already handed out the answers, and when I point this out they simply utter those three magic words and before I know it my hand is reaching to take their assignment before I can stop myself.

There was one time that I took my students outside for an activity and while I was supervising them one of the students wandered off and answered his cell phone. When I went over to yell at him he gave me the Yemen “wait” gesture (bring all your fingers together to make a point, then hold up your hand in front of your face) and told me “Okay, it’s okay, Teacher” and continued talking. I walked away and it took me about ten seconds before I turned back and confiscated his phone after I came to my senses and realized that actually it was NOT okay.

Now we know how those guys managed to get past security in 2001:
“Hey, you can’t take that on the plane!”
“It’s okay, I can go ahead.” Nods.
“Uh, yeah, it’s okay. You can go ahead.”

Just goes on to prove how weak-minded myself and the rest of America are.

Well, it’s okay, I guess.

Surreal Yemen

I just nearly got decapitated by one of the massive “Safety First” signs that was hanging on the wall as it was blown off by the wind. They laminate those posters and then attach wooden poles to both ends to get the thing to lay flat, so I really was in peril. When I went to rehang it I couldn’t find the nail. Either it fell out or it never existed.

And that is just one of the many surreal things that’s going on around here. I am currently trying to teach oil and gas terminology to a group of oil and gas engineers. For you computer people out there, try to imagine teaching computer terminology to a group of students—you have to tell them what a loop is, a statement, etc. Now imagine your mother (who presumably knows about as much about computers as I do the oil and gas industry) teaching the same material and you will see the problem here. A “loop” is suddenly something that is found in a bit of string. For example, one of my students asked me what “spud” meant. I told them that it was a potato. They all looked really confused and I told them to use it in a sentence. The word from their readers refered to people spudding in wells.

Today I asked my students what they had learned in thier other class and was pretty appalled when they all started shouting “F*ck you! F*ck you!” at me. Turns out that they were trying to say “vacuum”. Fortunately we got that one cleared up before I turned in my resignation.

Meanwhile, my class at the main center is going really well where I am continuing to teach regular, basic English. Today on the plate is the grammar of “going to”. I am going to have them practice this one by pretending that they are physic and having them make physic predictions for each student. I am hoping that I will teach full time at the center instead of working at both places as the main center is quite a lot less strange…

It's getting pretty surreal outside Yemen as well. As far as I am concerned the only thing stranger then the JonBenet Ramsey case ten years ago is the fact that it has made front page on all major websites for the past few days, even through there is nothing to report that is more interesting then "John Mark Karr got on the plane..." "John Mark Karr got off the plane..." John Mark Karr reportedly had a drink on the plane..." This breaking news was briefly interrupted by Tiger Woods victory in some golf thing and finishing it up with the news that "Hillary" might run. This wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the fact that there was a deadly train crash in Egypt, a war (which is admittedly in ceasefire), and Iran was testing bombs and Korea is about to start testing nukes again. Nope, change the channel; let's hear about what John Mark Karr picked out of his nose in LA this morning instead...

Cafeteria Workers Write the Darndest Things

Today the menu said that we would be having "chicken, rice, vegtables, homos and bread". I guess that must be one of the ways that the punish people leading alternative lifestyles in this country. Needless to say, I avoided the meat.

Students Say the Darndest Things

I just had a student approach me urgently and say “Teacher, I need to know a word. I need to know the word for a man who can not give birth.”

Assuming he meant impotent, I gave him the proper word and he skipped away happily.

Earlier, in class, I had the students practice memo writing and one of my students was obviously very proud that he knew the meaning and usage of the verb “to erect”. His memo stated that he needed to erect a volleyball court and needed people to help with the erection. I read the rest of the memo, trying to hide my childish urge to giggle every time the word “popped” up, but lost it near the end of the memo when he called for people to “help me with my erection”. I decided that it wasn’t worth it to explain to him why he shouldn’t use the word that way and just crossed it out on the paper.

Just Another Manic Monsoon

I think that the rain here is just as heavy as the rain in Samoa, but it’s hard to tell. One thing that is for sure… it is a lot worse here because Yemen isn’t designed for heavy rainfall like Samoa is. With the exception of the thatched Samoan roofs, they do quite well to build the triangular shaped metal coverings complete with rain catchers and water tanks. Yemen, on the other hand, is known for an architecture style that includes flat-roofed houses. When it rains, the water pools at the top and eventually will leak into the home, having no where else to go.

This problem is one of the reasons why my friend is leaving his current place, and I always thought that he was exaggerating when he talked about his water problems especially since he wasn’t at ground level but rather about a half floor up. I was at his place helping him pack when the rain started. First, the roof leaked and caused a small waterfall that went down his front stairway and started to flow into his apartment. We tried to make a little dam but it was quickly washed away. After giving up the hallway for lost, we worked for a while and I went into his kitchen to get some more plastic bags for padding and found that a small lake had formed. The reason? Well, there was a “light well” outside his kitchen that had a area that was about 6 inches deep and about 10X10 feet, and after an hour it had completely filled up and the water was coming under the door. There was a drain, but it was blocked. After about ten minutes of rooting around in the filthy rainwater we found it and the water subsided. I never had these problems in Samoa, where it rained twice as much.

Moral: Being prepared for stuff like this really does make a huge difference. Samoa, I applaud you.

Things here are pretty quiet and good otherwise. Sorry that I don't have more exciting things to publish to this Blog, but all in all I guess that that is a good thing.

Castles in the Clouds

We’ve been having a lot of rain here, pretty dramatic stuff. The day will start out blue and beautiful and then the wind will pick up and we will get angry rain for about two hours. The other day it got so bad that they had to cut classes short and send the trainees home on busses due to the fact that the streets were quickly filling up with water. Tonight we are going to try to get to the Old City and take some pictures. There is a main road that runs through it that turns into a river during the rainy season.

Last night the power went off and we spent the first half hour doing class in the dark, or rather in the quickly fading twilight. The power popped back on right before it got too dark to read. I had gone home to rest before class, and it’s funny how much you rely on electricity without thinking about it. I walked to the kitchen in to make some oatmeal but the power on the water heater was out so I made a sandwich instead. After that, I walked into the TV room to eat while watching the news and pressed the "On" button about three times before I remembered that the power was out. I walked back into my room and decided to make coffee instead. I poured water into the coffee maker—you can see where this is going. After that failed I decided to listen to music and pressed the power button on the radio… well, you get the idea.

Yesterday morning we were waiting for our driver and I commented to the other teacher, Hutham, on the beauty of the day. She pointed to clouds that were comming over the mountains that surrounded Sanaa and said that that meant there would be rain later, and she was right. I noticed that there was small structures dotting the mountains. I asked Hatham about them and she told me that they were military installations. I asked her if they were currently operational and she said that they were. What did they protect against, I asked? She told me that they protected Sanaa. “From what?” Hutham just shrugged. I smiled and told her that hopefully they would never be used.

“They will be,” Huthham told me. “Someday.”

“I hope not,” I said.

“They will be,” Huthham repeated. I asked her what she meant and she just smiled cryptically. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she knew something that I didn’t.

May creatures all be of a peaceful heart

Not to sound like a total Space Cadet, but I have been doing a lot of reading in Buddhism recently, and I just wanted to share with you one of my favorite quotes. This is from the Karaniya Metta Sutta (or the Sutta of loving kindness) and was translated by Ñanamoli Thera and taken from the Access To Insight Website:

In safety and in bliss
May creatures all be of a peaceful heart.
Whatever breathing beings there may be.
No matter whether they are frail or firm,
With none excepted, be they long or big
Or middle-sized, or be they short or small
Or thick, as well as those seen or unseen,
Or whether they are dwelling far or near,
Existing or yet seeking to exist.
May creatures all be of a peaceful heart.

مشجولة!!

One of my students gave me head scarf, and here's a picture of me wearing the thing. The odd thing was that after I put it everyone oohed and aaahhed and told me how beautiful I looked. I thought that was really odd-- shouldn't it be the other way around? Wouldn't they be tired of seeing women with their heads covered? Is my hair really that messy and gray?

Anyway, the student that gave it to me had my name embroidered in it, but also strangely had his own which sent a very odd message to me. Not that I think that any Yemenese man within their right mind would want to have anything to do with me as I would bring a ton of shame into their family (being loudspoken and completely unable to cook.) He was pretty mortified that I had put it on right away, but what did he expect! Anyway, the next day people were pretty surprised that I wasn’t wearing it. I am not sure what they had expected either. The thing was pretty uncomfortable and kept slipping off. Most women here tell me that if I don’t have to cover I shouldn’t bother.

“مشجولة” means busy (mash-ghoul-a), and that’s what I am these days. I picked up an extra class at MALI during the 6:30-8:30 shift, so basically I am going for fourteen hours a day. This is only for five weeks, however, and then MALI is really going to owe me one. I am pretty glad to be working at MALI, it gets me a foot in the door at that community. Also, because the students are so diverse you get more a taste for Sana’a life. The students at YLNG are friendly and bright, but they are also terribly busy and don’t really have time for socializing. Plus, they are all men and it is very challenging to have male friends here in Yemen if you are a woman. After my first day at MALI I met a very charismatic woman from Gaza who promised to invite me over.

So, things go on as normal. Everything is wonderful, and I am having a great time.

Ooops

"Ooops" is one of the words that I actually had to teach my class, which surprised me, being the klutz that I am. I figured that they had heard it about a zillion times by now from me alone!

So I was teaching yesterday and one of the assignments was to listen to a phone conversation and correct an email address that is shared. In the book, there was a yellow piece of paper that the email was written on and I asked the student what that particular office supply was called. They gave guesses and I wrote “Post-It Note” on the board, and explained that sometimes products take on a brand name as their common name, and could they think of any? The class came up with Kleenex and Q-Tips and then drew a blank. Not thinking, I blurted, “how about Tampax?” My own horror at what I just said was eclipsed by the look of confusion on my students faces and I quickly stabbed the play button and started the listening before anyone had a chance to write down this new vocab word that I had unwittingly given them. It occurred to me later that not only did the entire class not know what this word meant they probably didn’t know what happens monthly to a woman that would cause the need of this particular item.

This was just slightly worse then last term when I had the students do some creative writing in class. We were playing the game that Sarah and our friends used to play back in grade school where you write the first line of a story, pass it to your friend, and they write the next line and fold the paper so that you can only see what they wrote. They pass it on and so on. Anyway, one of the students had written that the main character “ran away and quit his job and became a huge rubber.” I burst out laughing and told him that he meant “robber” and that a rubber was something very different. “What is it?” my students demanded. “Well,” I said, “in England it’s an eraser, but in America its a… um…” I stopped suddenly and turned bright red as I realized where I was going with this. “Well, it’s something very different,” I finally said lamely and quickly signaled my student to keep reading. “It’s a condom, right?” he offered brightly. I confirmed this with a nod and then stabbed my finger at his paper to get him to read and the rest of the class shared snickers at my embarrassment.

Thank God I have a class of guys, otherwise I might be on a plane back to Samoa right now.

Apparently the World is Going to Hell in a Handbasket

Well, I am back at YLNG and teaching Technical English. My classes consist of explaining to students that a light is "burnt out" rather then "broken" and needs to be "replaced" rather then "fixed". It's actually rather fun and proving to be quite easy. I thought that the next three months were going to be hellish. You see, before the break there were six different groups and they were at six different English levels and there were six different teachers to teach them. As any teacher will tell you, the amount of classes doesn't really matter, it's the amount of prep needed that will kill you. Anyway, I thought that I was going to be teaching all six different levels and was wondering how the hell I was going to manage to prep for all this and still be able to sleep. The first day I didn't even bother to plan something out. I figured that I would just do intros and some assessment to find out what the students needed. When I got to class, it was a bit of a shock because the classes had been scrambled up like eggs. In any given class I have 2-4 students from each level. I quickly learned that although this made teaching the class more of a challenge, overall my job was easier. You see, because the classes were so mixed they were basically all the same level and I could literally teach the same thing six times in a row. In addition, YLNG decided that six hours of teaching was too much and brought in another teacher, so now I only have three hours of teaching and I get three hours of prep time.

So in my spare time, I have been reacquainting myself with the news. Although I have CNN on the TV at home, they are pissing me off because every time that I turn on the channel they are doing some sort of "human interest" story. For instance, the other day I switched it on and there was a half hour segment interviewing some woman who returned to Beirut to start "a new life" and was complaining about the fact that she had to turn around and go back to New York after only being there for three weeks. I mean, I felt sorry for the woman, but at least she had somewhere else to go, and at least she got out of there! What about the people that were stranded… or worse, the people that actually LIVE there that have no where else to go and whose entire personal worth is in their house that just got bombed? I think that the problem here is that CNN is still an American station and when I sit down to watch it is about 2AM on the East Coast and they don't want to bother with the really good stuff. So in other words, I spent the last two weeks pretty uninformed.

First off, I was wondering why all my friends were suddenly bitching constantly about the heat. Then I read that there is a heat wave that is paralyzing the nation and there had been a national emergency called in New York. Also, even my more conservative friends are writing to warn me that Samoa might be underwater in about ten years. I guess that a lot of this is due to the "Al Gore Movie" although I doubt that even Al Gore has the power to alter the weather to make his point. One of my more conservative friends here was railing against the government claiming that they had covered up most of the evidence that could suggest that global warming could be a problem. (The weather here, by the way, has been quite pleasant although a little rainy.)

Plus, we are starting to look at a full-scare war in the Middle East involving yria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Iran with the US right in the middle bogged down in Iraq. Now so far, everyone that I have talked to seems to be okay with me being American due to the back that I didn't vote for the guy. However, I have started telling people who ask that I am a Canadian from Vancouver, just to be on the safe side. But I read today that Syria is calling up its reserves. Of course, all this drumming could be because it happened to be the Syrian Army National Day. And everyone is ignoring North Korea again, which is generally about the time when they start to do crazy things like fire rockets into the Sea of Japan.

I remain safe in Yemen. I honestly feel safer here then I did in Samoa, which is about to join Atlantis, or in Seattle, which is possibly within range of Kim Jong-il's rockets.

My First Demonstration! Oh Boy!

My friend got a warning from my embassy that there would be a protest which of course acted more like an invitation to people like me. A group of people would be meeting at Old Sanaa University and march towards the Lebanon embassy to protest Israel’s bombing of Beiruit. The first thing I thought was “that’s silly, why are they going to the Lebanese embassy? They should go to the Israeli embassy” and then I came to my senses. So easy to forget that I am not in America, even with the call for prayer reminding me five times a day.

My friend told me that these things “always start on time” so I aimed to be there a touch early. I hopped a shuttle and got there at 8:45, fifteen minutes before anything was set to start. I felt pretty conspicuous standing there, so I walked into the university and sat on a bench. Just when I was about to give up and go home, there was a racket outside and this gold-painted jeep that was covered with faded pictures of various figures and loudspeakers on the top drove up and started blasting Arabic music. I went outside and took a look at the protest mobile. It was painted (or rather, had been painted a long, long time ago) and was covered with various picture of important people who had been the cause of past demonstrations. There were four loudspeakers on the top, and a mess of fake flowers decorating the hood. I wondered if this guy rented out or what.

I stood around for another half hour while people slowly drifted in, greeting each other. I was the only westerner, and felt very conspicuous. There was a group of women there but they didn’t seem to want to have much to do with me. After a while my discomfort turned into sheer boredom and I headed to a local café and bought some bread in exchange for the privilege of being able to sit down and eat it. Finally, after a half hour, they got moving and I ran to catch up.

It was my first protest in about two years, and pretty much what you would expect except that instead of saying things like “Hell no we won’t go” they yelled “God is Great” and a few other remarks about various groups beginning with H. Everyone was very kind to me. At first I was a little shy with my camera, but when I dragged it out people started to point out things that I could take pictures of and the kids started begging to be in the shot. I have found that if you have encounter a group of camera shy people skeptical of westerners, the trick is to take a few pictures of the kids. People warm up to you right away.

After about an hour of marching we got to the Lebanese embassy. There was a bit of a tussle as the cops made a human wall to keep the less important protesters back while the featured protesters were able to walk up to the embassy and start making speeches using the protest-mobile. I hopped up on a ledge and got a good view from up high, snapping pictures with my crappy broken camera. At one point there was smoke and I jumped to try to photograph it and some kids saw me and called out to the crowd and they parted like the Red Sea. The kids pulled me through eagerly and I rushed ahead, nearly rendering myself blind when I almost walked into a smaller flag that was being burnt. Seriously, my eyelashes are a bit shorter. They burned it and stomped on it and I photographed it and everyone cheered and asked me where I was from. I told them I was Canadian.

So all in all, the protest was pretty much like the protests in Seattle. A useless outlet for anger and a way to make people think that they are doing something. Afterwards everyone all went off to chew qat and I was left alone wondering where the hell I was. A hour of marching can really take you out of the way.

Getting back to my non-existent Gypsy Roots

Went to my first “girl party" last night. One of the admins at my school decided to throw a party and she invited all the teachers. I couldn’t wait to go because this was my big chance to see “how the other side lives”, even though I am technically a member of the other side.

Now men are not allowed at girl parties, so this is when the burkas come off and the girls finally get a chance to really show their stuff. As I said, I am not sure what is worn under those burkas but tonight gave me a bit of a hint. The women would show up, fully veiled and immediately shed their black armour and out would come hair, bright clothes and jewelry. I sat there looking around and realized that although I had talked to these women dozens of times, I couldn’t recognize any of them. I poked one of my housemates and asked her to identify everybody.

I was amazed. With all that cover, you assume that these girls are shy. They are not shy. The music was turned up and the tables where moved aside to that everyone could jump up and give a quasi-bellydancing type dance. How could these woman possibly go back under when they seemed so happy to strut their stuff?

The room got hot and one of the woman expertly opened up the windows without so much as letting the curtains fall open for a second. I realized that even the windows in this country are designed for modesty. They have a special window at the top above eye level so that you can open them without the risk of anyone peeking in. As we were in the sitting room, most of the windows were fogged (like a shower door) so that you couldn’t see details inside.

I got into a conversation with a female Yemenese coworker who spoke of her travels in Egypt. What did she wear there, I asked. She said that she wore jeans, short sleeves and didn’t cover her hair. I asked her if she preferred it and she said that she did. I asked her then why she wore the veil in Yemen and she didn’t even seem to understand the question. It would be shameful, I suppose.

Anyway, after about an hour of this and practicing my limited Arabic, I got bored and grabbed my roommate’s hand and proceeded to read her palm. About halfway through I realized that the entire room was watching me, fascinated. Once I was done with Becky about twenty pairs of hands were shoved in my face and I spent the next two hours reading palms. Fortunetelling is probably another thing that isn’t exactly encouraged in Islam, so I made a big deal of the fact that only Allah knows the future. They agreed with me and demanded to know who their future husbands anyway.

Now I don’t really believe in palm reading and stuff (although I do have an interesting theory regarding Tarot and AI that I will share with you if you would like) but I must say that I saw patterns that I had never seen on a western hand. My skills at reading is basically limited to the information in a 50 cent booklet picked up at the candy isle of a grocery store that I didn’t even bother to read all the way through. Basically, you have three lines on your palm—the head line, the heart line and the life line, going from the top to bottom. Head line is your career, your life line is your heath and wellbeing and the heart line is your relationships. If it is a deep line the attribute is strong, if it has a lot of little branches you tend to get distracted in that area. The only other thing that I can do is to see how the heart and life lines connect and tell you how attached you are to your family.

But a lot of these girls had love and life lines that ran parallel to each other, even sometimes meshing. One woman had no love line, which I had never seen before. If you look at your own palm chances are that the two lines will form a ‘V’. This was interesting to me as intermarriage (especially between cousins) is very common here, and often a marriage will basically leave you in the same house with only a new roommate and a loss of your virginity as a difference. This would explain why the life line and the love line run together. To a lot of these woman, love and life/family are the same thing. What good is a love line when you husband is probably going to be picked for you by his parents? Most of the women had a strong head line (career) which would suddenly break off. This generally means that they have a lot of talent which is unused. In a society of housewives, is that surprising? (Anyway, as I said, I don’t believe that crap.)

Anyway, I was saved by the arrival of dinner (yummy!) and then we took off. It took me five minutes to find my burka. (I had to wear a long black robe, although I didn’t cover my hair, because I was wearing a Samoan dress with *gasp* no sleeves.) Took me a good ten minutes to find my burka from all the others. My roommate helped me look and asked me what it looked like. I told her it was black. (Ask a stupid question…)

Party On!

Well, the semester is over and now I am supposed to be on vacation, but in reality I am learning about the hell that goes into working as a teacher. I remember back in my college days how nice I thought it would be to have a job where you could go home and forget about it. Then when I got that job, I thought how nice it would be to be in a job where you were helping people and making a difference.

But all the students did really well and the pride that made up for that was all worth it. Specifically, the food at the party that they threw for all the trainees was worth it. We had a “trainee quiz” where they went around with a mic and asked impossible questions about thermal dynamics and such. My guys rocked. I was so proud!!

The next day my boss requested that I make an appearance at what I thought was the opening ceremony for a new high tech hospital in the region. What it actually was was a talk on hip replacement surgery. Fortunately, the guy who introduced the speaker didn’t have a very good grasp of English and said that the speaker was actually going to do a talk on “head replacement”. This sent us into giggles whenever he said “hip” imagining it was head. (OK, you had to be there. I mean, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel for entertainment here in Yemen.) Anyway, the talk perked up once he started showing xrays of people who had fake hips screwed into their hip bones. Made the ride home a lot more fun as well considering that everyone in Yemen drives like they are on a suicide mission. Good food there, too, especially the pudding.

But the BEST food was the food I sampled at French Bastille Day Party that my French roommate snuck me into. As I have told my friends, underneath this wanna-be hard-core roughing-it development aid worker is a little rich girl screaming to get out, and she headed right for that red wine. I decided to let her have it—after all, I owe her. I never let the bitch spend any money. I got to rub elbows with all sort of people including the French and Japanese ambassadors. (Although rubbing elbows was pretty much all I did—it was pretty crowded in there.) My friends got me out of there a gin and tonic short of my making a total fool of myself and we staggered home with me singing and greeting the guards in Arabic—much to their amusement as they were just as bored as I was during the head replacement talk.

Finally, Yemen continues to be very safe. What is going on in Lebanon right now is terrible but it is also having no impact on life in Yemen. I continue to live in a very safe part of town, have a very safe job and generally live a very safe life.

Everything is Fine

Just want to say that Yemen is (at the moment) not being affected by the situation north in Gaza and Lebanon, and I am fine.  Thanks to all the people who have shown concern!  I will keep you posted, although right now all I can say is that life is very normal here (by Yemen standards, anyway!)

I have some time off from work now so I will be checking email sporadically.

The Old City

This is me, Sonia, Mirium and Marty in front of the stunning backdrop of Sana'a's old city. Please check out the following video that Marty took which includes the call for prayer. Warning: there is sound, and it's a bit loud, but it isn't as loud as when you are actually there!
Click here for the MySpace Video.

Goodbye Earl, I mean Tim!

Well, my manager Tim is back to Wales for a few days for a family emergency and even though it's only for three weeks I don't know what we will do without him... We had a send-off at Al-Khaima (The Tent) and took this charming picture. See you soon, Tim!!!

A Wedding Night in Yemen

Ah, the singing finally stopped. Back to the normal noises of people blasting their horns which sound so peaceful in comparison to what was going on before.

There is a wedding going on tonight and it is (was) driving me crazy. Yes, I know that it is a cultural event but although I haven’t been to a wedding yet I understand that they are pretty silly. Hopefully I will be invited to one and be able to speak about it first-hand, but for now I can just talk about what I have seen looking out the window.

First, they string lights over the street. See picture to see what I mean. Then at around 3’o clock all the guys get together and they sort of parade around and people throw confetti over them and they sing and do a “dance”. I put “dance” in “quotes” because the dancing is a bunch of guys standing in a line and soft of kicking their feet and holding their arms in the air while people yell and whoop. Then the guys go off somewhere and you think “Thank God that’s over. Now I can get some work done.”

And you are wrong. So wrong. Because then they come back.

They come loudly marching down the street banging drums and stuff. First there is a sort of chant that is done over loudspeaker. They have two loudspeakers in different parts of the city (I am guessing that one is at the groom’s and one is at the bride’s) and they chant at each other for a while. It’s a really cool effect for about five minutes. While this is going on, the men come back and do another “dance”, this one consisting of walking around in a circle and holding your Janbia (a sort of strange curved knife that all the men carry, do a google image search on Yemen and it will probably be the first thing that pops up) over your head. And then the singing starts.

How to describe the singing? Well, when I was a kid my mom had a harmonica. Every now and then I would get my hands on that harmonica and start to make what I thought was beautiful music until my mother would run out and scream at me and then hide the harmonica in a place where she thought that I would never find it. Well, the singing sounded a lot like that harmonica. Plus you have drumming. And this goes on for a few hours.

They did, however, have some sort of a flute thing going on, and I wanted to find out what a Yemenese flute looked like and how it was played so I got dressed and went out to the street. But during the time it took me to cover my arms and ankles and find my shoes and camera they had all moved inside. I wandered around and tried to peek at the party but girls aren’t allowed. A guy came out and sort of shook his stick, yelled at me in Arabic and closed the gate in my face. So much for famous Yemenese hospitality.

I don’t know what the girls do, but the guys sit around and chew Qat. One of my friends said that he didn’t understand what the big deal about a Yemenese party was because the guys just sit around and chew Qat which is pretty much what they do every day anyway. There is also a procession which apparently involves a lot of kissing of the groom and a lot of speeches. In other words, it sounds just as boring as a Samoan wedding. What is with these traditional societies? After thousands of years you would think that these things would evolve into something resembling one of those cool fish that glow underwater and have their own bait in their mouths but instead they resemble more like the two toed sloth who hasn’t bothered changed since the first time it evolved.

Well, anyway, since the wedding seems to be over (I hope) I am going to get some sleep.

A Big Milestone For Group 73

I just found out recently that my old Peace Corps group just lost another member. I take a bit of credit for this since I was the one that was the first to leave willingly after working there for a while. The rest of the people were like "Hey, Tima left, her head didn't explode, she seems happy, maybe...." OK, so I am probably giving myself too much credit. But this is an important milestone because it means that my group, group 73, has officially lost the MOST people off all the other groups that are currently serving. GO 73!!!!!

Update: And another one bites the dust. Poor Pete (half visible in the white shirt next to Mike with the flower in his hair) bangted up his shoulder and is away on medical leave. Will there be anyone else?

Happy 4th!

Obviously, 4th of July isn't celebrated here, so I don't have any big plans. There was an embassy party last night but I couldn't get invited because it was just for important people and I guess that a drop-out Peace Corps working for a Yemense company who is contracting for a French company doesn't really qualify. Seriously, the woman on the phone just laughed at me when I asked if I could come. Well, pooey on them anyway. I will celebrate the same way I do everyday, by going to class and making fun of my government.

Anywho, here are a few more gems from the homework I graded last night:
"Since the first man put his leg on the moon, the space centure was
started."

And my favorite, from when students had to write about a best friend:
"Once I had an accident when I was traelling to Shebam. As soon as [my friend] new about that horrible accident, he came to visit me and slept with me in the hospital."

I guess that person would be my best friend too.

Big Mistake

Asked my students to submit an outline for a paper they had to write.

"But Teacher, we already have to read so much science stuff!!!!"

"Ok, fine," I said. "Then write an essay about the stuff that you are reading." Big mistake.

So here is Mahmoud's Outline (or at least part of it:)

I. Introduction:
It is a type of saturated hydrocarbons, with three general formula of CnH2n+2

II. Body
A. The classification of Alkalines
1. Chain alkalines
2. Aromatic or Cyclic Alkaline
3. The Alkyl Group
B. Physical Properties
1. C1 - C4 are gasses
2. C5 – C16 are liquids…

And it goes on. Boy, I just can't WAIT to read that essay. Should have made them write about the Palestinian conflict or bears or beavers or something more interesting then that.

As the Term Finishes...

Not much new to report, I have been working really hard at YLNG getting the current batch of trainees out the door.  I get two weeks off, then I am going to be teaching "Technical English", which hopefully isn't' a fancy way of getting me back into teaching computers.  I've gotten really close to my trainees, even the ones that give me a hard time and I think that they have really warmed up to me.  The fact that I never pass up an opportunity to take a shot at Bush (no FBI, I am not speaking literally) helps to indure me to them, I think.

They are pretty liberal too, which surprised me.  One assignment I gave them was to write responses to "Dear Abby" letters.  For instance, one of the letters was a woman saying that she didn't want to have children.  Rather then telling the women to lie down and do her duty my student suggested that she "convince [her husband] about your desire.  Why don't you tell him about kid's problems"  My favorite answer, however, was written as a joke.  The letter was from a mother whose 12 year old daughter had a boyfriend.  Mahmoud wrote:

Dear my daughter, I love you so much.  But I don't want you to go with any boyfriend until you marry.  You should wait until you get your favorite husband.  This is our religion, and this is our custom.  Any one who lets his daughter or his sister to commit adultery the God will enter him in his fire for ever and he will never get out from that fire, My daughter if you want your father to enter in this fire you go to this boyfriend.  But I am responsible for you so we will leave this country that is full of adultery and we will live in our country that has a conservative society.  We will leave from now soon.

To his credit, he laughed as I read it.  I think that he was trying to shock me.

According to another one of my students, In 20 years "people will be eaten by spoons and forks".   My other favorite from one of my more cheeky students is that "Yemen will be making loans to the USA."  Could happen!

Fun and Love at the Park

Last night I was invited to the Park by my Arabic teacher, Jamila (means beautiful).  It was a very unique and very Yemenese experience.

 

"That's great Kim,", you interrupt, "but why don't you show pictures?"  Well, two reasons.  The first is that I forgot my camera.  The second is that I would not have been allowed to take picture even had a brought a camera.  I wished out loud that I wish I had a camera, and Jamilia turned to me and asked "Why?"  She said it in the same way she might have if I wished that I had brought my cell phone while on an airplane.  It was the same "duh" response.  Turns out that it is not allowed to take shots in that setting.

 

Which is a big shame because it really was a site to see.  There were at least a thousand woman there identically dressed in their black baltos.  Most of the women did not cover their faces and so it was a real party and the only men around were the ones running the rides.

 

The rides were a disaster waiting to happen.  Among other things that were probably put together-- and being run-- by men chewing and high on Qat, the local stimulant drug that all men chew.  There were two rides that everyone but me went on, the first was something where you sit in a car and go around in a circle and the second was one where you sat in a swing and went around in a circle.  When the ride stopped, the woman would run up the the "safest" possible moment to grab their vehicle/chair, sometimes jumping on while it was still moving and pulling the former occupant off.  Then everyone would fight over the ride and finally the guy running would get bored and start the ride and everyone would run away to avoid getting kicked in the head.  A good time.

 

I had to leave a bit early to work on lesson plans, and outside the main gate there was a crowd of about 200 men looking worried and waiting for their wives to come out.  THAT would have been worth capturing on film!!

Politics Break

The latest bill to be passed in the House was named "Declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary."

It's a non-binding resolution that will reenforce America's committment to the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, and God help the man who votes against it (such as Jim McDermott, my hero.)

Yes it passed, 256 yeas to 153 nays.

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=288&chamber=H&congress=1092

The only thing that gives me hope is that this shows how desperate the goverment is getting.

Finally, some pictures!!

Went to the national Museum of Yemen today with my class and finally got some pictures taken. You can view the link here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=e1iyj8p.jbxrfs1&x=0&y=-tmupbc

Note: if it asks you to log in, take a closer look. There should be a link that allows you to view photos without logging in. Look for the link below the "Sign in" button that says: View Photos without signing in

There are also only 16 of them rather then the 50+ albums that I usally make you go through. No pictures of me, tho! (Pretty ironic considering that for the first time in a year and a half I finally have a fast connection where I can upload 300 pictures in the blink of an eye.)

A Day In My Life

So what is a day like for me? Pretty busy, actually, and here’s my schedule.

I wake up at around 6:30 AM. (Actually, to be fair I am woken up at around 5:30 to do yoga and stretches and review my lesson plan but more often then not I just hit the snooze and go back to sleep.)

When I do make it up, I take a quick shower and have my tea and oatmeal. I have to be out of the house by seven to catch the taxi to work. MALI pays for a car to take us to and from the gas company where I work.

Once there, I have about a half hour to get my lessons together and get to my eight-o-clock class. I love my class. I have 14 students six days a week for about four hours a day. We spent about half of that working through the book and the other half working on activities. My students are there from 8-4 and they get pretty burnt out when they are in intensive learning settings every day. So I try to have a lot of games and other things to stir things up a bit. As I said before, when I am doing my job right it’s more like I am babysitting then anyone else.

Right now the schedule is a bit brutall; we have class from 8-12:30 then another class from 5:25-6. I don’t mind too much, as that extra time lets me do work such as planning lessons and working on the internet during that time, but by the time I get back to MALI I am pretty exhausted. I have an Arabic class from 6:30-7:30, and last week I just had to break down and cancel the thing because I was exhausted and hadn’t studied. Basically I am away for 12 hours a day and still need to find time to eat and study.

That is my schedule from Saturday to Thursday. Friday is my day off, and unfortunately it’s everyone else’s day off as well and so all the jobs are closed (Friday is the Muslim holy day.) But at the same time it’s nice to have a day where I can’t do anything. I get out early of work early on Thursdays and generally go shopping at this time. There is a store called Shamil Al-Hairi that I love… especially coming from Samoa! It’s basially the Fred Meyers or the Wal-Mart (depending on your region) of Yemen. I love to go there and just wander around the beauty product aisle, marveling that there can be so much different types of shampoos and soaps (especially for a population of woman who have shown there hair to probably only about a dozen non-family members, if that!).

A lot of ex-pats here complain about the lack of variety of goods, about the people and about the general decrepit state of the country. But coming from Samoa, it all looks great to me. We have at least ten different types of ethic restaurants in this town, including Chinese places and Korean. We even have a Pizza Hut! The only thing that really gets to me is the taxi drives who blow their horns for every occasion, including giving a honk when approaching intersections to warn any unseen pedestrians or motorists. A good idea, you might think, until you stand on a street and it sounds like the middle of NYC traffic jam 24/7.

I live with three other girls: Becky, Miriam and Sonia. They are from America, Australia and France respectively, so we are a pretty diverse group. We have what can best be described as a college dorm type setup—we each have our own rooms which serves as a living/sleeping/studying area and then we have a common kitchen and room that we share. This means that in order to hang out all I have to do is walk out of my room. The walls are made of concrete which makes them a bit challenging to hang pictures on but makes each room a virtual sound vacuum. I have different hours then the other girls so I even get a few hours all to myself after I get back from work.

Right now I don’t do much outside of work, mostly due to the fact that I am learning Arabic and can’t speak to anyone outside of my house and work. But I have made a few friends and we enjoying touring the local restaurants and hunting around the dozens of stores. Fortunately most of my friends already speak Arabic (giving me hope that I can learn it) and they can do most of the translating for me.

I know that I am still in my “honeymoon” stage with Yemen right now, but I am still in love with this country. No, no pictures yet, I will try to get some up soon I promise!!!

Bowling, Yemenese-Style

Marty (with the green bowling ball), Marium, Becky, Tali (smoking), Zamzam, Cyanne (in front in the veil), Tim, and I'm the whore of Babylon on the right.

Arabic

Not much new, most of my time has been spent learning Arabic and teaching.

The format of the class turns out to be the same format that was used during the Samoan training for the Peace Corps, except that my students are more advanced in English then I every dreamed I would be in Samoan. I like to think that they have a bit of a head start having grown up with English all around them which I didn’t hear my first Samoan words until shortly after I discovered the existence of the country.

Here is some of the Arabic that I have learned:

صبح الخير! أبا كم
أبا أمريكية
أسكن في اليمب الآن
أتكلم أانجليزي, و ادرس عربي

Hello! I am Kim. I am an American. I live in Yemen now. I speak English, and I am learning Arabic.

OK, so I have a way to go. But I am learning pretty quickly. It’s actually been really tough not being able to speak Samoan. Very few people on the street speak English, and I have found that in my head I have two languages: English and “not English”. Imagine if you suddenly couldn’t use 90% of the words that you had in your vocabulary. It’s pretty annoying! But the other teachers here speak quite naturally and quite fluently and I so I have hope. Also, Arabic is a lot more constant rich then Samoan, and I find that it’s easier for me to pick out the words that I know.