This is in part a response to Taryn's entry:
Last week on Thursday, which is our Saturday, a few of the teachers went with all of the ACCESS students to clean up debris from a bird sanctuary. The reserve is a beach and pond in a rectangular shape maybe a couple acres in size. I'm not sure the history of it, but one end is the airport and one side is a highway. On the other side of the highway is the port and the bird reserve apparently goes dry every summer. So I'm not certain if the highway was built with the intention of creating the reserve, but my guess is that the birds were an afterthought and the road was built during summer. The road is strange to drive on because you're surrounded by water on either side for a mile, and then you reach the airport.
We arrived early on busses and I handed out gloves and garbage bags to my group of around twenty students. Most of the gloves broke instantly because it was already brutally hot and their hands were sweating, and most of the bags broke too because the students (bless their hearts) easily overfilled the bags. The sheer amount of trash was really daunting, it would take days of committed preservationists to clean this beach. There was really just a deluge or rubbish. We couldn't have cleaned this beach if we went at it all month. The students filled up the bags in less than half an hour and the (dis)organizer skirted off to go get more while the rest of us just stood around in the sun and blistered. When the bags were full, most of the students took off their gloves and tossed them onto the recently-not-really-cleaned beach.
The mindset here doesn't really consider garbage, although there are a noticable amount of street cleaners which walk around with buckets and brooms picking up litter. The whole scene was a farce: the country doesn't care about the wildlife on the beach much less a group of teenagers faced with an impossible task and insufficient resources. When I told one student to help another carry a full bag to the road to be picked up by the garbagemen, he looked at me and said, "there is no reason teacher," and then a few minutes later he did go and help.
After standing around for over an hour with my students and talking about soccer and qat and universities, some well dressed men showed up and I was introduced to the governor of Aden. He talked to the students for a few minutes until our (dis)organizer showed back up and the students and I had our picture taken with him which I thought was pretty neat. Maybe if this beach clean up act is publicized it will garner more support and actually be successful in the future. After he left the students told me that he was new, but still a good governor for Aden because he's from here rather than being from the north like most of the politicians, so he's interested in the area and hasn't really had time to get too corrupt yet. I liked him because he shook my hand and then totally ignored me and talked to all of the student in arabic.
With the (dis)organizer back we were given more bags, which again took less than half an hour to fill, and then the students were yelled at. They were threatened with having their scholarships revoked for not working. After her tirade, she then asked us teachers for names of students who weren't working so she could personally chastise them. Clearly, we didn't give her any names, even if we could have. When we left on the bus, I looked back at the beach and saw that we didn't even make a dent in the litter. However, there was a single bird flitting about on the water.
A week later there was an article in an arabic newspaper about the clean up with a picture of Taryn shoving trash into a bag. This was really disheartening, partly because I really wanted my picture with the governer in the paper, but also because I felt that the differences between the two picture options result in differing public opinions of the beach clean up. Showing a white woman engaged in this activity I feel removes the locals from the ethic of preservation which were at least the intentions of the clean up even though the actually task was far from accomplished. Whereas if there were a picture of the governor supporting all these kids cleaning up areas in their home, it might actually resonate with the city and inspire more people to value activities like this. And even though the task didn't really do anything, a story in the paper with a picture inducing relatability would be a start.
29 March 2009
28 March 2009
photos
I've set up a photo album on flickr that I'll be updating. Here is the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33702271@N05/sets/72157615982633868
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33702271@N05/sets/72157615982633868
rice and nice things
On the first day of classes I played an ice-breaker game where everyone told their name, their age, where they're from, what kind of music they like, and what is their favorite food. The responses, for the most part, were not helpful. "My name is abdulkhaleq, I am nineteen, I am from aden, I don't listen to music, my favorite food is meat."
"Okay, what kind of meat is your favorite?" And then they would stare blankly at me and just not say anything. This is something we've been working on in class and now when they don't understand what I'm talking about they at least let me know, that first day it was a little disconcerting. Half the class said their favorite food was rice, the other half meat, and one or two suck-ups said Italian because that's what I said my favorite food was when I modeled the game.
In a later class we did a writing activity where the students imagined they were on vacation and they wrote a postcard to a friend back home. It took a couple tries before they were able to actually imagine being somewhere not in yemen before it proved to be a worthwhile activity (also, apparently postcards don't exist here, I haven't found any and whenever I ask after them nobody knows what I'm talking about, so if you're waiting for one from me, don't hold your breath). On at least half of the postcards the students turned in they wrote to their friend that they ate meat on their vacation.
Most yemenis eat meat so rarely that they can't tell a difference between different animals. Going to restaurants, we generally order rice and hobs (this pancake bread thing that doubles as a utensil used to eat everything else) and they ask if we want chicken or meat to go with. Meat can be goat, sheep, or beef I've learned, and, unlike chicken, is wicked expensive.
The majority of my students are able to study thanks to the ACCESS program's scholarships. They come from extremely low income families, even by yemeni standards, and are able to eat meat once a month if they're lucky. Almost everybody is very skinny, which may be partly cultural, I am coming from a place where obesity is encouraged. Rice is obviously the staple, it's always served with meals and the hypermarkets all have a very abundant rice aisle. Rice prices in the states were going up when I left, and here, even with a saturated rice market, it isn't cheap by any means either. Some of my students come from far away and are living by themselves in order to take advantage of the ACCESS scholarship. I had a phone message one morning from a student's father asking whether or not he's going to class everyday and how he's doing in general; he's actually one of my best students, and I see him around khor all the time, happy and hungry.
"Okay, what kind of meat is your favorite?" And then they would stare blankly at me and just not say anything. This is something we've been working on in class and now when they don't understand what I'm talking about they at least let me know, that first day it was a little disconcerting. Half the class said their favorite food was rice, the other half meat, and one or two suck-ups said Italian because that's what I said my favorite food was when I modeled the game.
In a later class we did a writing activity where the students imagined they were on vacation and they wrote a postcard to a friend back home. It took a couple tries before they were able to actually imagine being somewhere not in yemen before it proved to be a worthwhile activity (also, apparently postcards don't exist here, I haven't found any and whenever I ask after them nobody knows what I'm talking about, so if you're waiting for one from me, don't hold your breath). On at least half of the postcards the students turned in they wrote to their friend that they ate meat on their vacation.
Most yemenis eat meat so rarely that they can't tell a difference between different animals. Going to restaurants, we generally order rice and hobs (this pancake bread thing that doubles as a utensil used to eat everything else) and they ask if we want chicken or meat to go with. Meat can be goat, sheep, or beef I've learned, and, unlike chicken, is wicked expensive.
The majority of my students are able to study thanks to the ACCESS program's scholarships. They come from extremely low income families, even by yemeni standards, and are able to eat meat once a month if they're lucky. Almost everybody is very skinny, which may be partly cultural, I am coming from a place where obesity is encouraged. Rice is obviously the staple, it's always served with meals and the hypermarkets all have a very abundant rice aisle. Rice prices in the states were going up when I left, and here, even with a saturated rice market, it isn't cheap by any means either. Some of my students come from far away and are living by themselves in order to take advantage of the ACCESS scholarship. I had a phone message one morning from a student's father asking whether or not he's going to class everyday and how he's doing in general; he's actually one of my best students, and I see him around khor all the time, happy and hungry.
23 March 2009
AMIDEAST
To say that the Yemeni public school system is the worst on the planet is a gross understatement. Children start school when they're seven, continue for a few years, then give up and drop out. It isn't uncommon for them to stop before high school.
A few years ago Yemen had to make a financial decision to either fund education programs or anti- terror/militarism. Of course they chose the latter. A typical scenario that plays out is the government promises tribes to build a school or well or clinic and then just doesn't. So the tribes arm themselves, kidnap some foreigner, and ransom them to build their own school or paved road or cell tower. So the government now is just buying the tribes' munitions instead of making good on their promises, and the tribes spend the money to build a school or satellite or bridge. I hear there are huge munitions depots in the north just crammed with weapons that the government isn't doing anything with. The good news is that the education is improving, or at least becoming more wide-spread and institutionalized. The bad news is that tribalism is still proving to be the better system and more autonomous, which isn't really such a bad thing unless you're the US and are hell bent on prosthelytizing democracy by which you're more easily able to maintain an iron curtain. I mean without the US's financial influence to root out "evil" there wouldn't have been funding for tribes' infrastructure, educational and otherwise.
AMIDEAST, where I teach, is an American based non-profit started in the early fifties with schools all over in the Middle East and Northern Africa. They've had a presence in Yemen since the fifties but didn't get an actual school until the eighties. Now there are three, the original in the capital Sana'a, where I teach in Aden, and a small satellite at Al-Mukallah in the Hadramawt region. As a teacher here, it's bittersweet. The resources available to us are meager, but the best in the region; the students, view the school as nothing short of phenomenal. Most of the students at AMIDEAST are on scholarship from various programs like ACCESS or YES and must do well in public school to keep their scholarship. Our students are supposed to be at least sixteen, but I have one who is fourteen, so the rules are slippery. AMIDEAST teaches only English, but offers test preparations to get into English speaking universities and to do foreign exchange at the high school level. So all of our students come out of this shoddy public system. For lower levels, the students essentially have to learn two things. Obviously, the students learn the English language, but they also learn how to be real students, how to think for themselves, form opinions and use their own creativity. So it's tricky to teach here because we use a different approach from what the students know, that is, we use what the rest of the educational world uses. But, once started, the two lessons work in tandem to reinforce each other. The students are motivated because they're either afraid of losing their scholarship or because they shell out for the classes from their own pockets, but they're also encouraged to learn once they stop using the backwards epistemology they know from Yemeni public schools and find that learning English is easier than anything else they've studied. The upper level classes are a breeze.
I should add that after talking to a number of current and past AMIDEAST students, I have a lot of hope for the country and its infrastructure. The people are inspired to help their home enter the twenty-first century, they think about the global future, and what that holds for Yemen. But, I'm only getting a small demographic that distorts the Yemeni population as a whole. The majority of people here are grossly undereducated and just don't have a concept of how bleak their own future is, much that of their country, especially within a global context. Leaving the the insular AMIDEAST bubble can be severely depressing.
A few years ago Yemen had to make a financial decision to either fund education programs or anti- terror/militarism. Of course they chose the latter. A typical scenario that plays out is the government promises tribes to build a school or well or clinic and then just doesn't. So the tribes arm themselves, kidnap some foreigner, and ransom them to build their own school or paved road or cell tower. So the government now is just buying the tribes' munitions instead of making good on their promises, and the tribes spend the money to build a school or satellite or bridge. I hear there are huge munitions depots in the north just crammed with weapons that the government isn't doing anything with. The good news is that the education is improving, or at least becoming more wide-spread and institutionalized. The bad news is that tribalism is still proving to be the better system and more autonomous, which isn't really such a bad thing unless you're the US and are hell bent on prosthelytizing democracy by which you're more easily able to maintain an iron curtain. I mean without the US's financial influence to root out "evil" there wouldn't have been funding for tribes' infrastructure, educational and otherwise.
AMIDEAST, where I teach, is an American based non-profit started in the early fifties with schools all over in the Middle East and Northern Africa. They've had a presence in Yemen since the fifties but didn't get an actual school until the eighties. Now there are three, the original in the capital Sana'a, where I teach in Aden, and a small satellite at Al-Mukallah in the Hadramawt region. As a teacher here, it's bittersweet. The resources available to us are meager, but the best in the region; the students, view the school as nothing short of phenomenal. Most of the students at AMIDEAST are on scholarship from various programs like ACCESS or YES and must do well in public school to keep their scholarship. Our students are supposed to be at least sixteen, but I have one who is fourteen, so the rules are slippery. AMIDEAST teaches only English, but offers test preparations to get into English speaking universities and to do foreign exchange at the high school level. So all of our students come out of this shoddy public system. For lower levels, the students essentially have to learn two things. Obviously, the students learn the English language, but they also learn how to be real students, how to think for themselves, form opinions and use their own creativity. So it's tricky to teach here because we use a different approach from what the students know, that is, we use what the rest of the educational world uses. But, once started, the two lessons work in tandem to reinforce each other. The students are motivated because they're either afraid of losing their scholarship or because they shell out for the classes from their own pockets, but they're also encouraged to learn once they stop using the backwards epistemology they know from Yemeni public schools and find that learning English is easier than anything else they've studied. The upper level classes are a breeze.
I should add that after talking to a number of current and past AMIDEAST students, I have a lot of hope for the country and its infrastructure. The people are inspired to help their home enter the twenty-first century, they think about the global future, and what that holds for Yemen. But, I'm only getting a small demographic that distorts the Yemeni population as a whole. The majority of people here are grossly undereducated and just don't have a concept of how bleak their own future is, much that of their country, especially within a global context. Leaving the the insular AMIDEAST bubble can be severely depressing.
20 March 2009
A Lady Among Ye Men
One of my coworkers, Taryn, writes a blog about some of her activities, oftentimes doing things that I'm involved with as well. She, Matt, and I arrived here on the same flight, so our experiences are fairly linked (no pun intended). Like me, she has zero teaching experience. She's from Seattle and is pretty animated. http://tkhanley.blogspot.com
18 March 2009
Obvious History and Geography
Yemen has been conquered a lot. The most obvious time being when the Islamic Caliphate took power in 630 AD, before that there was a lot of tribalism (still is, too) and rule from various powers you've never heard of so I won't mention them. Previous to the Suez Canal, the Port of Aden was a major hub for commerce, and has been held throughout the centuries by the Egyptian Ayyud, the Ottomans, and the Dutch. After the construction of the Canal Aden has been controlled by the British and the Russians most recently. Some of the traffic circles show this history with sculptures of an Ottoman bridge now gone and a Dutch style windmill. My apartment is former RAF barracks by the airport, and my landlord is half Russian and half Yemeni left over from the Russian rule. Because of the tawdry influence of foreigners and the seafaring type, Aden has a long reputation for being fairly liberal and tolerant. Rimbaud lived here for a while, and I feel incredibly safe. Also, because of the deluge of historical influences, Aden is known as the New Orleans of the Middle East (thus my blog title). Beirut being the Paris, Dubai the New York, and probably other Occidentalist names have been made to undermine the autonomy of the region as if they couldn't do that themselves. Anyways! North Yemen and South Yemen unified to form the country as it is now in 1990, and Aden has adhered to traditional Islamic mores most noticably by covering up the women and prohibiting alcohol to make the Sana'ani more comfortable here or something. The north/south fued is very noticable as I'm sure I'll continue to mention. The geography of the city of Aden itself(see map) is actually four different cities on a peninsula and bay. Crater is the old city (rebuilt unfortunately) located within a dormant volcanic crater. I live in Khormaksar to the to the north, and there are others that I have yet to explore enough to warrant writing about, such as Tawahi, the Aden Free Zone, and Little Aden across the bay.
17 March 2009
blast kills four
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/03/16/yemen.blast/index.html#cnnSTCText
This was about a twelve hour drive from Aden, so I'm safe. The article doesn't say this but I guess a lot of Koreans here are missionaries. Hadramawt is a notoriously fundamentalist region.
This was about a twelve hour drive from Aden, so I'm safe. The article doesn't say this but I guess a lot of Koreans here are missionaries. Hadramawt is a notoriously fundamentalist region.
16 March 2009
salaam
Greetings! Hello to all of my family, friends, enemies, etcetera. This is the blog about my life, probably for a year, living in yemen and teaching english. I arrived last Saturday, the seventh of March. I apologize that it took me so long to set up this blog. I know a lot of you have been curious about this excursion. However, right now I need to plan my lessons for this afternoon. Hopefully, after a few more days I'll get into a good routine with the school so I can post regularly about life here in Aden.
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