the camel tour would have been so much more comfortable

I just returned from Cairo, having affirmed everything I remember about Egypt and rediscovering one or two new things: I love Egypt and I love Zamalek and I love the Nile; I hate Egyptian men; Egypt seems a lot more liberal when you’ve just been living in Yemen and I love December weather in Cairo!
Back in Yemen, my friend Jenny and I have 6 days to travel the country, see a few new places, and make endless copies of our travel permit. Our story begins (and will later end) with that travel permit. See, to leave Sana’a you must have a registered itinerary and the Ministry of Tourism must have issued you a travel permit; mush mushkilla (no problem), ca? La. Mushkilla kabeer! See the idiot at the visa office put study rather than vacation on our visas, so we had to go in person to get our permits, then wait until the next day to leave. In order for them to be able to “put your permit in the computer” you cannot leave Sana’a the day your permit is issued, despite the fact that none of the checkpoints have computers. Instead, you make a disgustingly large number of copies (15 checkpoints, really?) and wait….
Our itinerary was 2 days in Aden (on the Gulf of Aden in the Arabian Sea), then 2 days in Hudayda (on the Red Sea), all falling during the Eid holiday. This holiday, much like Christmas, means a huge rush of travelers and full buses throughout the country. Throughout the Middle East and North Africa there exist shared taxis referred to as bijoux and these ancient Pujeux station wagons were to be our primary mode of transportation throughout the trip. Alternately interesting, terrifying, smelly, qat filled, and reverberating with the sounds of “Smack That”, Koranic recitations, Arabic pop, and Jenny and I muttering “no, don’t, get your hands away from me, no, still too close.”
Aden was filled with beautiful sun, fine-grained sand, a few Yemeni friends (our escorts/guides), and burquahs. At the beach. Have you ever seen a woman try to swim in an abayya and a burquah? Don’t. It’s not pretty. Almost as pretty as me swimming in a t-shirt and pants… it was haram-alicious in the extreme as Jenny and I attempted to dry our soaked selves in between being questioned by curious Yemeni women (one of whom—gasp—removed her face veil for a photo op with us!) and dodging sketchy men and their camera phones. Worst. Invention. Ever.
The highlight of Aden was our night-time beach adventures. All along the corniche, snack/shisha bars place tables on the beach where you can drink shai ma nana (tea with mint), smoke a shisha, and eat late into the night; we sat for hours, breaking up chatting with moonlit walks/runs on the beach (sadly, not at all romantic). But then again, being splashed and chased by one’s rather tubby Yemeni friend is not generally a romantic occurrence.
On to Hudayda, a modern and generally unimpressive city with a pretty, albeit shabby corniche and one geographical advantage: it’s near Jebel Bura. Jebel what? One of four nature protectorates in Yemen, of course, and one few have heard of. As you drive through semi-arid scrublands and agricultural fields, you begin climbing a small mountain and suddenly a lush, green oasis emerges cause, well, a river runs through it. The almost tropical environmental was filled with vines (still got a few scratches from that one), frogs, insects, and BABOONS. BABOONS!!! Now don’t get me wrong, quality Yemeni management means that the UN-paved road is now dirt in several areas, the visitor facilities are highly deteriorated, and the educational services are nonexistent (plus our minibus driver was a little sketch), but the natural beauty was unexpected and relatively unspoiled. Never fear: still found a few red plastic bags—they are inescapable.
Directly following this delightful jaunt was a visit to a natural hot spring hammam known for its vigorous massages. And if by hammam one means two pools of hot and very hot sulphuric waters covered in a plaster structure oddly reminiscent of the Greco-Roman catacombs in Alexandria, then it was a hammam indeed. No actual washing facilities though; strange. And that infamous deep-tissue massage? Well I’ll stick with Thai-style cause that doesn’t involve me baring my top half to a room of blatantly staring women and young children. That 3-year-old boy perched about 2 feet from my head? Let’s just say I hope he has a good memory cause that’s the most he’s probably going to see of a woman until his wedding night. Lucky little thing. From one angle, we were the only Americans these solicitous and pushy women had ever seen; I’m still trying to rinse the taste of sulfur out of my mouth after being literally pushed under water to calls of “mithl hinna” (like this.) From a different angle, I am by far the palest human being they have ever seen; seriously, after a few months in Yemen my stomach is eggshell pale. We will be the topic of much conversation over the coming days/weeks/months/years.
Another bijoux ride home completed the adventure; this one mercifully brief and devoid of frightening driving maneuvers. And so here I am, back in Sana’a, adorned with rockin’ antique Yemeni silver bling, and suffering through the horrors of packing.

All Roads Lead to Stupid

My trip to Egypt has provided further proof that domestic or international, here or there, in the US or not, travel inevitably leads to an exacerbating level of stupidity on the part of ones fellow travelers. Having now learned to tell people they are idiots in three languages, each additional language merely extends the length of one’s anger.
First, dear sir from France: you are from France, a place I understand to be quite civilized. Ergo, why do you feel that attempting to go through the metal detector with your headphones and belt on THREE TIMES is a good idea?
Second, to the idiotic mother who took my seat. You are your 5-year-old have middle seats in different rows. Did you just discover this? Did you pay any attention when they handed you your ticket and seating assignment? Are you just not that bright? Well thanks to your inattentiveness, laziness, or apathy you are in my window seat near the front of the plane while I am in your daughter’s middle seat at the back of the plane. I hate you. And the camel you probably rode in on from Hadramawt. Wearing a burqua is not an excuse to act like a total idiot and inconvenience your fellow travelers, none of whom are particularly thrilled about being on an all-night flight and are planning to get at least an hour or two of sleep.
Oh, and if you are sitting at the back of the plane and are carrying a basket large enough to put a moderately-sized sheep in, find an empty overhead compartment to place your abnormally-large and rather unattractive piece of handicraft in before reaching row 37. Fikra jaeyda (good idea)! Oh, and Eid Mabruk! On the days of Eid, many families will be giving money and sheep’s meat to the poor and committing acts of kindness and benevolence toward others. My friend Hassan’s family will have two sheep slaughtered to give to the poor of Cairo; you are not off to a good start (and if one more taxi driver tells me “seddikka, it’s Eid” while trying to rip me off, I will put the Evil Eye on them.
My blue eyes already make me more likely to possess and transfer the Evil Eye, an unfortunate fact I became aware of when one of my neighbor women began hiding her youngest daughter from me. At first, I thought “hiding her child from the decadent westerner”, but seeing as how this behavior continued with me in an abayya and a hijab, we’ll chalk her avoidance up to fear that I would curse her littlest child. Right, like I have nothing better to do. I think her daughter is probably in greater danger from the cars in the street, where she regularly plays, but that's just my silly little opinion.

The Last Outpost of Civilization and Temptation

The Russian Club
Even the same sounds sketchy—The Russian Club. Recalling to mind cold days, scantily-clad women, and cheap vodka. Well the club’s location in Yemen necessitates that the vodka be not all that cheap, and it’s not really THAT cold, but scanty clothing was in abundant supply and the place was packed with people ranging from 20 year old Thais to Embassy workers, local Yemenis, and 65-year-old Arabs. So about it being a little sketchy…
The music leant a little too much toward the Euro-techo bent, but the dance floor was packed (the 9 people I was with at times took up a substantial percentage of the dance floor) and the so-so music compensated for by the gin and tonics. We danced and sang, and as the alcohol flowed, the Europeans’ dancing got a little dirtier (okay, more American) and everyone got friendlier. It was a very “last outpost of civilization” sort of a vibe, down to the crusty old barkeeper, his English and Arabic both broken with his heavy Russian accent, the vodka bottles kept in the freezer, the palm-thatched bathrooms outside, and the dozen different languages being spoken as a Thai pop group pleaded with Ryan and I to “be in the picture, pleeeeease.” But the dancing was good and the company entertaining. Nothing like having to explain to your sober Yemeni Muslim friends at 4am exactly why the German girls and British are being so friendly toward one another. Well, sometimes when people drink, it lowers their social inhibitions, and… you get the picture.

It’s one of the questions frequently asked by Yemenis who have never drunk alcohol; what happens, what does it feel like, and what is the purpose. As with all humanity, endless curiosity about the unknown. Here, the unknown includes me and while the curiosity (at times bordering on confusion) toward my existence is at times entertaining, it is also the reason why I could never make Yemen my permanent residence. Over the past week, friends residing here have encouraged me to come back for a longer period of time and while I love the culture, the people are kind and incredibly friendly and helpful, and the random occurrences endlessly entertaining, I cause a spectacle every time I walk down the road without the burqua (which would be all of the time). In Egypt, the men were/are forward and often offensive, but my presence doesn’t cause quite the stir of passion and curiosity that it does here.

The Lebanese Club—exponentially sketchier than the Russian Club
“Wait!” you say. “What? How? Didn’t you just say the Russian Club was pretty sketchy? What is this Lebanese Club business and how can it be sketchier? The Lebanese aren’t sketchy!” They’re not, but the club without doubt is…
On the upside: I saw Yemenis breakdancing, learned some traditional Arab dances (not gonna lie, all I could think was “ELECTRIC SLIDE!!!”), and had a night of entertainment courtesy of my friends and I mocking various other people in the club. On the downside, I was the only girl in the entire club who was not a prostitute and either Yemeni or Ethiopian. This, of course, has both positive and negative aspects: positive, classiest girl in the room; negative, the only one not dry humping every pole and wall in sight; positive, not dry humping every pole and wall in sight; negative, I was shocked by some of the dancing. I, a blue-blooded American, was shocked by the scandalous nature of the dancing… let’s just say that one of the twins popped out at one point. While the Russian Club screams “last outpost”, the Lebanese Club reeks of secret hedonism and a slight dirtiness. The overwhelming presence of women who have resorted to prostitution, by choice or forced by circumstance, added an air of near desperation.
In order to counter this air, I shall add photos of the people I study with for your amusement

Historical Ruins or Just Ruins?

I set off in the morning in a taxi to the National Museum and 2-3 hours later I arrived back home, safely. The beginning of he taxi ride itself was not remarkable save for that the taxi driver had a small, tropical bird perched on his shoulder. Stupid thing bites.
As we approached our destination near Midan Tahrir (the city center), the road was closed. Not unusual—Yemeni police are notoriously prone to PMS-like mood swings and traffic flows according to their whims. But then a second, and third, and fourth road were closed, so we descended from the taxi and decided to hoof 15 minutes on foot—no big deal. But there were lots and lots of police, then lots of police and army personnel. Bizarre. As we approached the Midan Tahrir, I heard faint shouting and saw military vehicles zipping about the street at unsafely high speeds; also present were a scattering of the trucks armed with anti-aircraft guns found so frequently in the Middle East. Of course, the ubiquitous crowd control tear gas and batons were in evidence.
Even more foreign was the absence of cars within the Midan Tahrir. Along the side of the square 100 people shouted, but thousands more were being held out of the circle by a flotilla of thousands of police officers (not in any way scary) and army personnel (actually kind of scary). Across the square and almost to the museum we stopped to take a photo of a pretty cylindrical building in an alleyway, turned around, and 60 people were running at us, policemen with batons close behind. After briefly considering running, we moved to the side of the alley and the group went past us. All of the men would later be arrested by this group of police. About 10 minutes later we also heard machine gun fire from the general vicinity (which we had skedaddled far away from), but no one was badly wounded.
Because this is Yemen and because I have horrid luck, the museum was, of course, shut. Utterly defeated, we decided that we were t least getting breakfast out of this one and walked about looking for an open kebab restaurant. While kebab for breakfast may sound odd, it’s a traditional breakfast in Old Sana’a and actually pretty yummy. Sitting down, we here chanting and lo and behold, up marches yet another group of men waving enormous banners, chanting anti government slogans (democratia was a frequent refrain), and sitting down in the middle of the street. No worries; this was a peaceful, well-educated group of demonstrators intent of expressing their concerns with domestic politics—no American flag burning, but rather a group of people encouraging me to take photos, explaining their grievances in a medley of Arabic, English, and impassioned hand gestures, and moving out of the way for the police cruiser. Had it been anywhere else in Yemen, they would have been armed with assault rifles, but the Sana'ais aren't quite as gun crazy as all other Yemenis or most Ameicans. Let's just say that the ruling party (whose leader has now been "elected" for over 30 years!) is growing less popular by the day.
Forty minutes later I returned to my institute having still not seen the museum, but having been present for one of Yemen’s pivotal political moments.
The next day, my very tired looking teacher described a very different scene on Zubairi Stree, complete with serious police brutality and an angry, confrontational crowd of protestors. Glad he was there for it, as part of it, even gladder I wasn’t…
My next entry will feature clubbing in Yemen. I will endeavor to answer the critical and timeless question: how sketchy can it get?

Yemen, 3: Lindsey, 1

Yemeni's love Obama! Whoo hoo! Mind you, when the results came in I was sitting by myself at 7am downstairs screaming and jumping up and down, but since this utter failure to get excited about the elections, random people keep telling me "Mubarak! (congratulations)"
I am currently wearing the world’s sexiest balto (think witch costume). However, baltos are not sexy, so this is an inherent contradiction that I think I am just going to have to work with…
Regardless, it’s rockin. These big black tents aren’t too bad when you convince the tailor that creating a waistline is possible and add pearls. The lack of a burqua is also a huge bonus.
This past weekend I had a Yemeni cooking lesson with my teacher’s wife. Now, unlike my teacher, she speaks about 5 words of English and my verbal Arabic is still limited to highly useful phrases like “the picture is next to the door, the pen is between the book and the notebook, I want to go to the store to buy a pomegranate, and the names and occupations of various family members. For some bizarre reason, “knead the dough and then create a round ball” hasn’t come up in class yet. However, despite a couple of hours of somewhat awkward non-conversation, broken my a fun look through a photo album of her wedding pictures and family, I can now make a layered, honey-covered pastry known as bint al sahan (literally “the daughter of the pan”) and a yummy yogurt-spice-bread number that I can’t remember the name of.
Now she is 18 and pregnant, and after spending the afternoon together hanging out in her house, I suddenly thought “wow, I understand why she wants a baby. In fact, if I was her, I’d want a couple of little squirmy things rolling about.” And we are all familiar with how I feel about children, now aren’t we? About the same way I feel about coming back with a Yemeni husband. In fact, that is one of the few phrases I can say fluently “I am not married, I do not want to be married, my Dad doesn’t want me to get married.” Why? While it is tempting to inform the legions of confused women in question that we just haven’t found someone willing to pay the right price for me, but that my father is surely in negotiations as we speak, I have generally tried to stick with badly worded explanation of being 23 and unmarried being normal and A-OK in America.
The concept of not wanting children at all is even more foreign and I haven’t tried it. As women bear the primary child-rearing responsibilities and rarely work outside the home after marriage, it is seen as one’s sacred duty. With the exception of family, men and women live in essentially parallel, but rarely overlapping spheres of existence. Women have their houses to maintain, children to raise, and family and friends to keep up with, while men work and chew qat and, well, chew some more qat…
I blame qat chewing for the failure of the Yemeni government to be anything like efficient. All those tests I took and the special paperwork I filled out before I came so as to obtain a special visa? Yeah—to no purpose. Due to a failure of their embassy to appropriately mark my visa or pass on the information, I got to retake the blood tests and convince them that no, really, I don’t want to overstay my visa and illegally live in Yemen for months on end. I just want to stay till December! And for the record, having one’s blood taken by a woman in a burqua is rather disturbing; all you can see is her eyes and you can’t really understand what she’s saying as the large folds of fabric impede talking and she has a large needle. Bad combination…

Weddings, As American As Apple Pie, and Why Desert Drivers and Rain are a Bad Combo

Photos of: the fish market, a view from my room, and the Old City of Sana'a. Just some random shots of where I live!
This past weekend I forsook adventures outside the city and spent some time around Sana’a, attempting to memorize words I can barely pronounce and generally lounging. Now you’re thinking, lounging? Why just lounging? Kind of a waste of time…
Yes, but this weekend saw the northern front of a tropical storm hit Sana’a and we were more than a little bit wet. I’m not talking “the entire city flooded and I am on my roof in a liferaft” wet, but wet enough to be a little cold (didn’t bring the GorTex) and to bring out one of the world’s greatest terrors: Yemenis driving in rain. Now Yemeni drivers are bad—really, really bad. They’re what Egyptian drivers would be if a: there were less people on the road b: there were less police officers on the road and c: there were more motorcycles. Crossing even a 2-lane street is harrowing at the best of times as just when you think you’ve crossed that final lane and passed that final car, a crazed 20-something motorcyclist darts out from behind the debab minibus and makes a fervent attempt to smash into you. Add lots of water. Can we say hydroplane?
Meanwhile, I spent the day avoiding the maniacs on the road by studying, attempting to watch the news in Arabic on AlJazeera; about the only thing I can currently understand in any detail is the weather report. My key secondary homework avoidance tactic was an attempt to cook apple pie. All things considered, this was an extremely successful endeavor. And if the Europeans didn’t already consider me stereotypically American, this pretty much wrapped it up…
And finally, yesterday I enjoyed my first ever Middle Eastern wedding!!! It was a very fun affair, but very different than your standard western wedding… It was the wedding party of my teacher’s friend and consisted of 2-300 of her nearest and dearest female friends, family, and neighbors. The party is held in a rented mafraj—a big room lined with low Arab-style couches above a room lined in mirrors for the burquad and baltoed women to make last-minute alterations to their party costumes. In Yemeni weddings, there are two separate parties at two separate locations, thereby allowing the women to unveil and enjoy themselves dancing, singing, and celebrating. There is no food with the exception of maybe a little cake and some water at weddings; rather, people bring their own food if they choose to eat, their own hookahs if they want to smoke (and there was lots of smoking), and their own qat if they want to chew qat***.
The women resemble a flock of sparkly, beaded, butterflies, with everyone dressed to the nines in brightly-colored junior-prom/80s style dresses. Some of the younger girls, especially, were gorgeous and tasteful; seeing what women look like with hair uncovered was a fun adventure. But then there was that one woman, who at 40 and quite voluptuous, was wearing a baby pink crochet bikini top and miniskirt; I am still recovering from the shock of having that image burned into my retnas.
An hour or two into the party the bride arrives and begins her slow walk from the entrance of the mafraj to the gold and fake-flower covered dais at the front of the room. She wears a white, western-style gown in this case with a full hoopskirt and lacy-white veil. Her henna is not just on her hands and feet as is common in many Arab countries, but consists of small floral patterns on her arms, legs, and torso. Upon entering, a song unique to Sana’a is played congratulating the bride and reminding her of her imminent departure from her mother’s household. The younger women and her relatives crowd around, clapping and singing, as she walks and stops, walks and stops her way up a raised runway (it took about 15 minutes, which is apparently a fairly fast walk). Walking too fast is a sign that she is anxious to get married and apparently leads to serious harassing from the bride’s female relatives. Well my Arabic isn’t great, but the phrase “la la la, mashallah” is pretty easy, so myself and Hanna and Nicole (two German students here) were able to chant and sing with the best of them. Tragically, I am unable to do the cool tongue whistle wedding call and even more tragically, you’re not allowed to take photos, so I have no schnazzy shots to adequately describe these gowns. However, I will take photos of some of the dresses in store windows (well, many of them can’t really be described as dresses—I’d put them in the lingerie category) and if you’re lucky, I might even bring one back for you. (Kate, Erin O’Shea… just you be ready!)

*** Qat is a tree whose leaves have narcotic properties; almost everyone here chews the leaves for a couple hours per day, the result apparently being a cross between caffeine and amphetamines. It is also notorious as the source of the cheek bulge that causes many Yemeni men—from my taxi drivers to shopkeepers to businessmen—to look like chipmunks every afternoon and speak like they're playing the game "chubby bunny". As though Arabic wasn’t hard enough to understand to begin with…

Manakha and the Mountains

So I will never be an absolute language genius. I keep running into Europeans of various varieties who are here working on their Arabic. The difference between me and them is that they speak at least three languages fluently. I speak one. This one is sometimes debatable. New language tactic: distract the professor by asking complex socio-political, historical, or cultural questions and get off tangent. This tactic is working surprisingly well so far, especially in my morning class, as I ask questions about the school system, political parties, tribalism, and marriage.
This weekend I went to the Haraz Mountains and the city of Manakha. I had two days of fun hiking adventures and rather hysterical personal interactions. The first day we went to an Ismaili mosque and hiked from the mosque (precariously perched atop a freestanding rock formation) back to our hotel. We were 7-8,000 feet up in a string of arid, terraced mountains. Lots of cacti, lots of sedimentary rock, and lots of terraces. The towns are perched at the tippity top of the hills, protected by “fortresses”, and the hillsides beneath the towns are almost entirely terraced in order to allow the towns to channel water into their crops: tomatoes, corn, sorghum, potatoes, peppers, coffee, and qat. This collection of food, all of which show up endlessly in Yemeni food, lead one to determine that the food here must have been total crap before New World contact. The closest I can come to describing the food is a cross between Mexican and Ethiopian. I was hoping for a little bit more Indian influence, but at least the cuisine doesn’t suffer from the blandness that Egyptian food so frequently does.
As the photos indicate, this area is a great base for hiking; in fact, hiking is really the only reason to visit. This left me fairly confused by the width of some of the other tourists—did their guides have to roll them down the hill and hire a donkey for the journey back up (call PITA!) or did they spend most of their time in the Land Rover? Not quite sure, but its an interesting prospect to consider. Equally entertaining was the live entertainment the second night: and by live entertainment I mean both the other tourists and the trained performers. An odd collection of humanity gathers in a out-of-the-way country like Yemen. In addition to the rather “chunky” Spanish woman was what appeared to be a collection of youth on their way to Jesus camp. A very creepy Christian missionary sort of vibe… in actuality, they were Danish, but we have yet ascertain why they were wearing suit shirts and work-style hiking pants. The entertainment involved lots of spinning, singing, oud playing, jambeya waving, and rifles. It also involved a couple marriage offers and one highly tempting offer of a husband, kids, a house, and not having to work. Because those are my four greatest life goals!!! No fear, I politely explained that despite being an “old maid”, I actually had no intention of living in a small village where the modern amenities have yet to grace the 21st century (or the latter half of the 20th, for that matter). I think that might top the 50 camels though! I am increasing in value! Whoo hoo!!!
Day two featured a “4.5-5 hour hike”. Beautiful scenery and more terraces, cities perched at the edge of 1000 foot cliffs, and tea with a gun dealer. Right… at less than 3.5 hours including the tea break with the gun dealer, much of it on the road, I had to attempt to explain to Wassam (our guide who works at the institute) that it’s not actually a 4.5 hour hike, it’s just that the girls he went with last time were total candyasses.
Speaking of candyasses, I have now retreated to the glories of Coffee Trader, an American-owned coffee shop boasting good music, nice styling, and decorative coffee. Yeah, I have a bunny rabbit in my latte and it makes me happier than it probably should!!!