political parallax

Rereading the last post makes me want to vomit so here is something else:
Aden has a fairly small expatriate community, most of whom know of each other, if they haven’t met a few times anyways. On Thursday (which is like Friday in the west) my Italian friend Federica who was just recently let back into the country hosted a dinner party for about fifteen people. I went with my friend Faie who was the only Yemeni person attending, I was the only American person and one of just two not working for a development or relief organization. The other was a Somali-Italian named Mohammed with an interesting story I will share.
Mohammed looks ethnically Somali with the typical high cheekbones, large front teeth, close-set eyes, and a skin color darker than you can imagine. Until recently though, for most of his 23-year life, he has carried an Italian passport. He grew up in Italy with his family and started playing basketball on the Italian national team. Somehow, while he was visiting friends or family in Somalia (probably Puntland not Somaliland but I’m not certain), his passport was stolen or lost or expired or something. For a year and a half he hasn’t been able to return to his family and friends and girlfriend in Italy. Despite knowing only Italian and English, knowing neither the Somali language nor Arabic, he’s spent time in Somalia, Djibouti, and now has come to Yemen as a refugee.
There are a number of refugee communities around Yemen, mostly along the coast. They are primarily fenced-in camps where refugees await some sort of living or work permit in-country. Within the Aden municipality there is a neighborhood, Basateen, designed specifically for refugees, mostly Somali. The schools are overcrowded fitting eighty students into a classroom designed for twenty; there is a clinic providing healthcare for those proving they are identified refugees; there is a community center where relief and aid workers spend time; the neighborhood lacks running water in nearly all the clapboard homes and shops but it has been made available to the madrassa or Islamic schools.
On occasion my school makes activities for the scholarship students, one of which a few months ago was to tour Basateen, and then engage in a cultural exchange with the refugees. It was rather hot and dusty wandering around the neighborhood and the students absolutely hated it. In the community center after the tour, the students had brought food to share with the refugees, and the refugees brought treats to the students to complete the cultural exchange and broaden understanding. My students did not partake in the Somali food and the conversation was pretty limited, although it wasn’t entirely their fault. We were hosted by a Somali woman who was too shy to really talk and a man who mostly wanted to kvetch about conditions instead of sharing a story to personalize his experience and to practice his English despite there being a Somali-Arabic translator. The students could not have cared less, and with a decent reason they all identified later in a forced writing session. Yemen has enough of its own problems it needs to deal with.
Even for non-Yemen standards, Federica’s dinner party was exceptionally good fun. She brought real cheeses from Italy, different pork products, and red and white wines which we all appreciated a bit more than we probably should have, especially Mohammed. And let me tell you, after a few glasses of wine he became the most Italian person I have ever met. His emphatic gestures and lyrical accent are unmistakable, practically a caricature. He lives in Basateen and predictably, he hates it. He told us some about living in the especially devout neighborhood, “I watcha a movie and they saya ‘Whya you do that?’ I listen toa music and they ask ‘Whya you do that?’ I playa a basketball and they saya ‘Whya you do that?’ Fucka man! What I asupposed to do?” He’s been away from Italy for about eighteen months already. He can’t get a job here in Yemen because he doesn’t know Arabic (or Somali). He can only wait for the Italian embassy in Sana’a to hear from Italy about his passport approval which probably isn’t going to happen on his own due to Italian xenophobia and racism. As he succinctly puts it, “Burlesconi is justa Mussolini witha another name.”
His story reminds me of course of Taryn’s incident during our first couple months in Yemen. Her passport was stolen and she was not allowed into the American embassy despite having registered. Our friend Matt wasn’t admitted then even though he had registered and was carrying his passport. Recently, the American and UK embassies have closed some days due to threats. Additionally, scheduling an appointment for something as simple as getting extra visa pages in my passport (which I need before I can get an exit visa to leave Yemen), is something I have been trying to do since before Thanksgiving. These stories beg the question: just how well is the social contract working?
Through this year in Yemen I have learned intimately the inner-workings and goings-on of a foreign body politic. This knowledge is a perspective gained which I will be able to draw upon all of my life when combating the political malaise throughout America. I, too, am often guilty of this stultifying apathy because it is more often difficult to see just how political decisions affect you without seeing an alternative. For this I am very grateful, it has been an unforeseen reward to my experience.

thou doth protest too much

Yemeni society is a very walled culture. The most obvious example is architecturally. Every home has a wall around it at least ten feet high, often with broken glasses cemented into the top to prevent burglary, which is unheard of. Behind the walls are sparse gardens of potted plants and broken tile floors. Geographically, the majority of the Yemeni population has been isolated in high mountains for millennia, developing an extremely unique society. Somewhat surprisingly, they are less prone to xenophobia than to an incredible fondness for sharing their culture.
The largest wall exists between genders. All aspects of society here are divided between men and women. Many, although not all, restaurants have blocked off a family section where women can sit. The paradigmatic example of this is that even at a wedding there are two parties. The civil union of a man and a woman is celebrated by the men throwing one party for the groom where they eat and eat and eat and chew qat and dance and drive around in caravans blocking traffic. Meanwhile the women throw a party for the bride where I hear they wear revealing clothes and dance and ululate and put on excessive amounts of make-up to counterbalance the majority of the time when they are oppressed. Many marriages are still arranged by the parents, with only an iota of informed input from the couple.
Technology is a force acting to break down some of the walls constructed. At least once a day, my phone rings from mystery numbers, but I never answer. Sitting at home the other day, I received a text message from an unknown number that read:
TEL L ME WHEN YOU SAW ME DID YOU CRY
This one came maybe two weeks after another memorable text from the same number:
THERE’RE SEVEN HEAVANS. I HOPE SEE YOU IN FOURTH and YOU FEED ME A HEALTHY FRUITS
And before that:
YOUR sea of knowledge is my strength,,, THANKS YOU TEACHER
There have of course been others from wherever of lesser note, mostly where they spell my name wrong. I have not responded to any of them. I suspect they come from students, and I make sure to include their spelling and grammar errors in a class warm-up activity where I write some things on the board and have the students correct the mistakes.
The wide availability of western television and movies has broadened the minds of the youth, but in a limited way. Western movies that play on television here do not include kissing between unmarried couples, sometimes to the discredit of the plot. For example in the chick flick Never Been Kissed, the movie leads up to the obvious ending which is cut out and goes straight to the credits instead, leaving the plot in a mild state of suspense. (Yet rape is shown no problem in more graphic detail than I am comfortable with, as long as the couple are married.)
As a result there is a very small scene of dating. AMIDEAST is the only school in Yemen with coed classrooms, and in staff meetings we are told to clip the wings of fledgling romances, lest we make ourselves to be a target. A couple students have confided in me about their having a girlfriend; the first to do so in fact has recently married.
For others who are not given the advantage of forced coed conversation, there is Bluetooth hotspots, most notably Aden Mall. I was at the mall with my Moldovan friend months ago when, with his Bluetooth on, he received a message that reads something like this:
If I were to put you into my heart it would surely explode
One thing I haven’t heard about here are free parties like you hear about in Iran, but I have my suspicions. Even at the for-lack-of-a-better-word brothels most of the prostitutes wear abaya (black dress) and higab (headscarf), if not the burqa (veil) as well. The coverings are definitely a constructed wall, one that hides a mystery of anonymity. And through this there is a definite safety. The Muslim world is often criticized in the name of female liberation on the issue of modesty, but this condemnation comes easily from those who do so without understanding. Women here do not victimize themselves like they would in the west, they instead smartly focus on the freedoms they gain by wearing coverings. In fact, the only times people here compare their culture to that of the west is when they illustrate how it is so good.
This perspective among Yemeni people is perhaps the greatest challenge of living here. When faced with an issue, I think about ways of dealing with things until I find a solution. Yemeni people do the same, but it is always a different solution than I would have found, and so I never understand their thought process until it is finished and they present their solution. This is the most challenging aspect of life in Yemen, and of the walls, but simultaneously the most rewarding.

not exactly open sesame

People are unbelievably in love with Allah here. There are a handful of phrases they use all the time, "inshahallah," "maashahallah," "humdoolillah," "al-hamakallah," and the most popular "bismillah," or translated "in the name of Allah." I fully support doing things in God's name, no problem there, but the hackneyed use of it drives me crazy. On a good third of all of my students' work, be it writing assignments quizzes worksheets, they have written on the top of the page either in English, "In the name of God," or the same translated in Arabic script. That is easy to deal with, when they begin speeches by saying "bismillah," in Arabic and under their breath, it's then that I really don't know what to do. Sometimes I chastise them for using Arabic in the classroom, but most often I just let it slide.
The time that irritates me the most is on mass transit, which are these Toyota Hiace vans which need more than a little TLC. The dabub experience is something that words will never do justice. To flag one down you stand on the street and wave a pointed finger in one of three directions which means practically nothing but everybody does it anyways. Then they'll stop and you get on and climb over two fold down seats to sit in the back where the ceiling is low and you have to crane your neck or hunch over and the springs of the seat are sticking into your cheeks. Then it takes off at breakneck speed and detritus from the ceiling or seats or just the dusty road are blowing into your face on a hot wind, before the driver slams on the brakes twenty yards after they started because someone wants to get off (and here, get off is more correct than get out because the sliding van door is permanently open). But it's the person in the very back and four people must get out to let them off which requires folding down two seats and then everyone must pile back in before the dabub goes again. And repeat twenty yards later. When full, the dabub can uncomfortably seat fifteen people including the driver. But, there is an etiquette for public gender mixing. Men and women do not sit on the same bench, or row of three. So to accommodate a boarding woman there is a big shuffling and consolidating of men to clear up seats for the ninjas. Then, when you want them to stop to let you off all you do is tap coins on some metal which they hate, just knock on the metal which most of the time they don't hear so well, or shout "nazil," which I have no idea what that means but it seems to do the trick because then half of the passengers also shout "nazil" to the driver and he slams on the brakes, four people get off and seats are folded and you squirrel out onto the street and give anybody in the front seat (driver or passenger) your twenty riyals. Today, as I was riding in a dabub to somewhere, this shuffling to let people off occurred a bunch and the man closest to the road had to reboard four times. Each time, as he was climbing in, he said, "bismillah." Piousness has ceased to impress me.
The other common phrase is "inshahallah," which means, "if Allah will allow it." It is used everywhere at all times. In the classroom it's really annoying:
"All right class that's it for today, see you tomorrow."
Followed by sixteen voices, "inshahallah teacher."
Or, "No homework tonight, just study for the quiz tomorrow."
"Inshahallah teacher."
Or, "Remember that your writing homework is due at the beginning of class on Saturday" (like a Monday, after the weekend).
"Inshahallah teacher."
This really gets on my nerves. I think, "No, not 'inshahallah teacher.' If you don't do the homework then there will be consequences handed out by me, not Allah." Teaching is not a great megalomaniac rehab. Recently though, I've learned how to use this magical phrase, on the dabub. Leaving certain busy areas, the dabub waits until it is completely full before going, and for some reason I'm always the first person on so I climb into the far back and wait ten minutes until it is full with a good multiple of three gender ratio. Coming from the mall to my house is too far to walk but still a short distance. When I shouted "nazil" and the following chorus urged the driver to stop, these three women sitting on the folded down seats glared at me through their burqa slits and contemptuously asked me, "nazil?" As in, are you really serious that I have to get up and off to let some white punk in the back off?
So I replied, "inshahallah," and there was no more animosity. These are magic words.

not worth $18

This is something I wrote that I didn't intend to post here on the blog. But, it's mildly relevant and is easier than writing something new for you. Also, accompanying photos that went with this writing sample into the application.


The Insects Are All Around Us

Where I've been, Portland Oregon, is obsessed with apocalypse. It’s impossible to go anywhere without seeing at least one zombie. Oh, okay, all the barstaff are zombies this night. A zombie bicycle gang just rode by, sure. Your neighbor is killing the aphids on her organic heirloom beefsteak tomatoes and bellowing for all the neighborhood to hear, "BRAAIINS!" The usual crazy screaming guy of big cities, the one who stands on a street corner talking about prophecies and the rapture to anyone who will listen and even to those who won't: he isn't in Portland. Impending doom is just too real there for that public decrying. My university offers a Philosophy of Disaster course (which I aced). My roommates and I used to drink wine on the porch and talk about what will happen when transportation collapses, while our neighbor with the bad hip takes 45 minutes to unload her groceries into her house. We schemed escape plans. When the food riots start I'll know exactly what to do. I'll know where to go, how to get there, and who I am going to take with me. This is why my generation rides bicycles, not because we are over concerned with emissions, which of course we are, but because with bikes and my wilderness survival training I will be able to get me and my select friends home to my parents’ ranch in eastern Oregon in just a few days. This is why I don’t move to New York. Instead, I moved to the place I thought to be a hinterland, where the Sword of Damocles doesn't hang over our heads like a pendulum of time running out.
When I got off the plane in Yemen I noticed that there were more burqas then when I boarded. Ninjas are stealthy like that. At first, they are glaringly obvious. Ninjas selecting the best eggplants at the produce stand, ninjas bowling a perfect turkey at Bowling of Islam, the ululating of ninjas echoing off the crater walls as they zip by on jet-skis. But after a while they began to be unnoticed by me, which is the main purpose of wearing abaya, higab, and burqa. And then there was a brief period where it was seemingly all I could do but to make lusty eye contact with them before finally mellowing out and realizing that this is my real life here. To get here is a whirlwind tour of desertification, decrepitude, and dilapidation. From the airport, don’t get a taxi but instead walk over a few dunes to avoid paying the airport exit tax and wave down a yellow and white van, there’s a million and they're impossible to miss (no, really, spend some time here and you will get hit by one). Don’t worry about shutting the door behind you because it’s probably tied to the frame of the van with the seatbelt cut out from your seat. The van will make one turn around a roundabout by the rusted military jet and then when you see the largest picture ever of the mustachioed president tap a few coins on something metal and get out. Cross the plaza where the shoeless children are playing soccer on the cobblestone to the giant burnt out tv. Don’t feel guilty about not giving alms to the beggar, the old man is probably a spy and seems happy enough so he must be well paid by the police, a passing "salaam alaykum" is all that is required. Next make sure to walk on the right side of the street to avoid the white rain of the Egyptian ravens, then over the rope speed bump and through the cement blockade. Don’t mind the skinny dogs sleeping on the piles of sand, Scabies and Rabies are more afraid of you. Find the blue metal door on the white wall with the broken green glass on top and press the button to make the sound of screeching falcons and alert the guards. Don’t fret about their interrogative remarks, just drop my name and they’ll let you in through the metal detector. Here, if you wish, you may remove your burqa. The path splits where the termites are devouring the corner of the building, turn left there and follow the corridor past the prayer rooms and around the corners of the building’s exposed visceral wires and ducting which lead to a dead end. Find the wall with the door handle and pound loudly so I can hear you because I am in the basement flat, or the Bellows as its name is known here. My music is turned up and I am drawing pictures of robots and imagining someplace where I don't have ants in my pantry.
This is where I am. I just killed the biggest cockroach on the planet. Normally they get away from me but this one was too fat to escape down the drain. Seriously, it was like a small horse, you could have put a saddle on her. She was in my kitchen, the scuttling of her feet muted by the gas leak, a sound which is in turn softened by the muezzin’s call, reminding me of my shameful walk home. Every day, I am able to clock out just in time for my colleagues to pray at Maghreb (sundown). This means that as I am walking home, the prayer room of the school is full and often overflowing into the narrow corridor behind, blocking my pathway. Rather than highlighting our religious differences by watching and waiting for them to finish, I simply walk behind them when they bow to prostrate themselves before Allah. Normally this goes off without a hitch. Today however, the last man stood up before I could slip past. Okay, no problem. I turned around and would just wait for them to kneel again. But, here too the man on the end stood up before I could make it by, and like Pharaoh in the Red Sea, I was trapped with no way to escape short of divine intervention. In a cadence they stood up, obliviously, closing me in until I knocked a few over like pious bowling pins. After this holy awkward moment, I took a cold shower.
Aden is hot, let me tell you. In Aden I had been saying to myself, there is nothing worse than a hot wind in your face. But yes, yes there is. I know this because a while ago I took advantage of an opportunity to go to Dubai. The 45 degrees Celsius Gulf sun mixed with a balmy four hundred thousand percent humidity and then a peppering of brutal dust blowing off the Empty Quarter and right into your face make a most unpleasant sandy, sweaty tourist-underpants stew. After my fourth change of clothing, sometime late evening, I had a moment. I found myself riding alone in the backseat of a massive air-conditioned suv going through the desert from old Dubai to new in what my dad would call two-dot fog (as in, the fog was so thick you couldn’t see more than two dots on the road ahead of you), but was actually a sandstorm. When the Da Rude song Sandstorm came on the stereo, the two German men in the front seat started talking about their “yout.” I sort of rolled my red eyes and that was when the towers of new Dubai came into view. The vivid neon, blurred through the sand, disappeared three-hundred feet up into the haze. In unobstructed daylight, that was about the elevation where the construction is still ever-so-slowly completing these surreal monstrosities. The song changed to some other techno hit and my moment was over, but in that moment I simultaneously came to three conclusions: 1: I am on drugs. 2: I have been abducted by aliens. 3: The apocalypse is upon us.
New Dubai is clearly extra-terrestrial, the most unearthly thing about it being the lack of green space. There's a timeline in the Dubai Museum detailing where traditional Emirati life diverged by the arrival of the aliens. You can see explicitly when they landed their spacecraft, now called towers. The omnipresent feeling of being drained, or probed, is thrust upon you by the twinkling lights juxtaposed in the hostile environment. Somewhere, I thought, a mistake had to have been made.
My error was not in guessing how the apocalypse would happen or when, but in what would occur afterward. Like vultures, insects wait for us to undo ourselves, knowing now as well as we that the end is nigh. And we humans sit passively as if on display in an alien zoo. We sit in our ivory towers of academia, mindless and zombie-like, feeding on brains. We seclude ourselves stealthily like ninjas daring the world to pass us by just one more time. Well I’ve seen the coming apocalypse with my own bloodshot eyes, there’s little more speculation. If it happens the way it's panning out then the cockroaches can have it, they deserve it. But as for me I'm not going out this way, I'm going feral and creating a future where I belong. This is where I'm going.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33702271@N05/sets/72157622621763127/

not an admissions essay

So I’ve registered to take the GRE, and I’ve been studying for them, which is... soporific, and... exegent? And I hate it; I’ve forgotten how to do long division (Einstein complex?). This is a really nice activity though, for Yemen. It makes a good use of all my solitary hours, and AMIDEAST happened to have three current GRE study books in the library. Scores are good for five years, and I assume that within the next five years I will want to attend grad school.
My interest is to study Conflict Resolution. Which we all knew was coming because a) I’m a squishy hippie and b) if you remember the story, my very birth was an act of peace. My older brother and sister claim that the last time they fought was before I was born, arguing if I were to be a brother or a sister.
At my university most people were overly idealistic bleeding hearts, and I really prided myself on my common-sense agrarian background, on having being rooted in reality and not some utopian dreamscape. One of the things university espoused was that militarism exists as one of the greatest causes of environmental destruction throughout the globe, a fact to which I totally agree. After spending time here, I realize that this axiom means American militarism exactly.
America was birthed out of violence. From the advent of European settlement, practically every step of our history as a nation is hinged upon violence: The slaughtering of the natives; the war for independence (whereas Canada achieved independence comparatively peacefully); the virulent and obscenely racist, classist, heterosexist, etc. prison-industrial complex within our borders; to our imperialist military expansions outside of our borders.
Not just our collective history, but our personal histories also are overflowed with violence. We are inoculated to violence in our so-called children’s television programming like Tom & Jerry. When my students learn that in high school I had a gun and would go hunting, they are totally bewildered, they think I’m part of some fascist militia. The sad thing is that it's partly true, in elementary school I was in the paramilitary organization Cub Scouts of America before my folks got better sense and yanked me out. Our textbooks project this violence onto everywhere else too, like when describing tribal warfare in Afrika; reading a high school history text you would think that wars are the only events in human history. Violence resonates in nearly every aspect of American society, extending especially to our military and its expensive weaponry.
However, the entire concept of military and weaponry between America and the rest of the world are distinctly different. The military here performs a different function, a more practical role as a peacekeeping organization. Here, there are many different political factions (as opposed to the US's blighted bipartisanship), each with their own agenda and often with their own small militia. The state’s military allows the different groups to have there disputes, which are admittedly frequently bloody. However, the military does not step in until the warfare extends to unwilling participants, or the public. It is used to maintain a sense of order, used to preserve the social contract, uphold the theory that government makes everyone’s lives better. The military bests us when we resort to our brutishness. There is even a reverence among the people for the soldiers, an admiration that does not stretch to include government groups or the police, both of which are egregiously corrupt.
What’s strange to me is when the Yemeni people (well, and anybody else really) explain to me and warn me about the dangers within their country. The risk of kidnapping (which I hear is almost always given as a choice) is minute compared to the eighteen people kidnapped every day in Mexico. The threat of random violence or even typical tourist annoyances like being pick-pocketed is extremely minimal compared to Detroit or even Portland. As a foreigner generally and a white American male specifically, I am acutely aware of myself here anyways, but most prominently I recognize my inbred malice. Comparing myself to the ordinary Yemeni, I am Pol Pot. I see red in my worldview and it is more than a little disconcerting.
My current question though, is whether studying Conflict Resolution in America is a good choice. The programs are not very renowned or reputable outside of the states, and rightfully so. They were spawned from within a violent system and can deal only within it. International programs are head and shoulders better than American. Would it be more prudent to study outside of America to get a better education or would it be foolhardy since I’m going to be working within the American framework? I don’t know yet. I still have five years.
Quoting addendum: I couldn't really find a good spot to fit this quote into the text, but I really really like it so here goes: "'Give me liberty.' There really shouldn't be another choice here."

price of life

Last weekend, I bit the bullet and went to a barber. Or rather, a "saloon." (I taught my class the difference but they didn't think it as funny as I did. Typical.) The Iraqi barbershop is rumored to the be the best and I had been wanting to go for some time. The barber spoke minimal english, so I used a lot of gestures to explain what I wanted which of course didn't happen. I don't think I've ever gotten what I wanted when I pay for a haircut so I wasn't really feeling at such a loss. I was more feeling that I should grow a goatee and start coaching women's lacrosse. But, I showered and look/feel less like a creep now. The amazing part was the price, two hundred riyals, which is only a dollar. Still more than dad would pay. I was shocked though, that's dang cheap. At this rate I can fulfill my personal dream of getting my hair cut every week (if I can settle on a decent look) for a year for the price of two cuts at Bishops, but minus the High Life.
In general, things are cheap here. The exchange rate is roughly one US dollar equaling five hundred Yemeni riyals. But the biggest note is a thousand, or a five dollar bill, and prices generally reflect this.
Food is inexpensive for the most part. I buy produce from the vendors on the street corners. I'm faithful to one stand in a cluster of stalls. For an eggplant, a koosa, a couple carrots, and a chili it's fifty or a hundred riyals and enough for dinner. But to cook I have to buy gas, which is done by waiting around for the kid with the propane tanks in his wheelbarrow to come down the street, banging on the tanks with a stick so you can hear. Haven't had to buy yet so I'm not sure how much that costs. Food in most restaurants is wicked inexpensive and delicious mostly. Taryn and I get lunch together often at a traditional place. Waters, sometimes a soda, two small bowls of brothy soup, a salad which is just cucumber and tomato slices, zahowiq which is this delicious pink salsa with cheese, a boiling-lava hot stew called falsah, another broth to pour in the cast-iron stewpot, khobz which is the bread made from just flour and water to eat the falsah and zahowiq, a couple bananas dipped in orgasmic honey, two cups of shai (tea, and not chai), and another banana each to go, all for 8 hundred always, or four dollars. Dinner is even cheaper.
Meat of course is very expensive, as it should be. Chicken is cheaper (and real, unlike the American anti-agriculture freaks). Some places you can bring your own, which is definitely what to do with fish. The fish market is awesome, but a rip-off when you're a foreigner. You buy your red-at-the-gills fish and take it across the street to the mukbazza and they bake it or something with red spices in this big kiln sort of. I've had the most amazing shrimp of my life here. A few hundred riyals.
Unfortunately, buying water is necessary. The most inexpensive way to go is by filling up a tank if you live close enough to a store with a bigger tank (you have to carry it, I guess you could toss fifty riyals to a kid, but my conversation skills/ macho pride prevent me from doing this). Otherwise it's all bottled. I spend maybe two or three hundred riyals on water every day. The tap-water is safe to drink, no bacteria or anything, but its salt content makes it terrible, along with other metals which destroy the teeth. But cooking and brushing your teeth is fine with the tap (except at places with a really big water tank with crows that fall in and drown and then people start getting typhoid, like at the school). I'm not sure about dental services here, haven't looked into it and probably won't; you can sometimes tell where people are from by how brown their teeth are from the awful water. Dental floss is about four or five dollars for a spool, so most people use a miswak, or stick that you sharpen and scrape against your teeth, which is probably cheap. My students just give them to me because they're so tickled I use it. About once every month or so one of the older students is in hospital with kidney stones because of the salt content in the water, so I've been keeping cranberry juice in my fridge, at 8 dollars for a liter. It's worth every penny, and I'm pretty sure the price reflects an actual cost. Where is cranberry juice from? New England or the Pacific Northwest? Really the only other things I keep a stock of are peanut butter (which, according to these two adorable French girls who were backpacking through and sleeping in my mufraj, is ridiculously American) at two dollars a jar and Nescafe which is maybe four dollars for a month's worth. You can buy local coffee which I'd really like to do since coffee originally comes from Yemen, originally exported from the port town of Moka, where the drink gets its name. But to buy local beans you go to the real market and pay per kilo from a burlap sack, which is what to do for most grains and spices. Also, coffee pots are wicked expensive, filters are nonexistent, and for just one cup of joe in the morning, I'm willing to forego this for a year.
Booze, is forbidden, and expectedly expensive. You can find it of course at a couple tourist hotel restaurants, at the Chinese restaurant, and at the so-called brothels for lack of a better word. A can of Heineken at the Chinese restaurant is four dollars. A bottle of bath-tub grade alcohol can run as cheap as twenty bucks at the brew-thru or upwards of sixty (after bartering) at some of the brothels. You can however, buy just a half or even quarter of a bottle. The cheap, grow-hair-in-your-throat whiskey is Teacher's brand.
Transportation makes a lot of sense here. The yellow and white Toyata Hiace vans, or dabub, are everywhere and can get you to almost everywhere for between twenty or forty riyals. The dabubs are really really great for so many reasons. They can fit fifteen people plus a driver who is almost always chewing qat, and there are no seat belts. Sometimes even, a seatbelt has been cut and is used to tie the side door to the frame of the van to keep the door permanently open. The dabubs are almost always total pieces of junk, dented and smelling like they've rolled off a cliff and into the sea, sputtering, sweaty-sticky hot, and the seats are always too small for me. This is mass transit though, and not public, reflecting an organically grown infrastructure to fill the failures of government. There are buses which run, and are thirty riyals if you want to save a nickel, but the one time I tried the bus it went the wrong way. Taxis exist, and aren't too bad, maybe three or four hundred riyals to get pretty far. Long-distance bus is cheap too, as are the shared taxis. I can't remember exactly how much we paid for the five hour bus ride to Ibb, but much less than a thousand riyals. Airfare can be inexpensive in the region also. I've seen deals for round-trip flights to Dubai for under a hundred (but with a six-hour layover in Kuwait (look on a map)). Some travel agencies in Aden will comp your flight to Sana'a if you must connect through there.
I was researching sending stuff home, like for Christmas, and was shocked and dismayed to discover that to FedEx 8 kilos from Aden to Oregon would cost minimum of six hundred dollars. I sent some postcards in June for a dollar each, but I don't think any of them ever arrived. So, like in America, Quail Mail is still the best option.
Rents are comparable to America. A decent place is around three or four hundred. You can find cheaper, but you definitely get what you pay for. My last place was three hundred for two rooms and air conditioning in the living room and I'll have permanent scars from the termites. Utilities are cheap: ten or twenty dollars for water and electricity every month, five bucks for phone units every few weeks. However, it's 79 cents per minute to call Oregon, and since I can only load 8 hundred riyals on my account, the most I can get is a five minute call.
Enough. I'm attempting to keep the blog up, for this session at least, since I have stumbled upon a decent connection to the internet.

i hate blogging

in case you didn't know. A blog is like a plant you get as a gift and feel obligated to water but eventually, like everything else done out of good intentions, it just dies. Sorry.

it's fucking hot

People really understate the heat and humidity of the Arabian peninsula. It's a sandy swamp where your skull becomes a furnace to roast your mind into a chiseled crisp. The torrid temperatures are often compared to a burning heart, browbeaten with unyielding love. To use that analogy correctly, it's really a kind of hotness that stems from a weekend of uncompromised lust, the kind that would leave you with an exotic wetness demanding you go see a specialist about. This burn is dangerous and you know it and you'd give anything, give up any part of yourself to be able to give in to it. But you just can't get used to it and so you fight it, and it just gets worse; it's only the beginning of July. Nobody here even jokes about it when they say, "just wait for the summer," emphasizing the article as if to indicate that each summer redifines the concepts of struggle and insufferability. It's easy to see why people here are so devout and pious, a brimstoned and fiery hell could be a consolation prize after a life lived here. What fresh devices the devil must employ to be effectively fearful. In the end though, the heat just epitomizes the fatilistic passive aggression. Human mortality is an empty threat the sun uses to tease us. That's probably the worst part about it: the heat is mere torture. It doesn't kill you, just makes you want to die.

powpowpower

Arabic is not an easy language to learn. For every rule, there are ten exceptions to it, at least, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
First, there are more than a handful of letters that don't exist in English nor in any other Occidental language. There are letters for the four 'k' sounds, two 'h' sounds, two 's' sounds, two 't' sounds, two 'd' sounds, three 'th' sounds; there are no 'p' or 'v' or 'ch' sounds. There is also the ordinary glottal stop, as well as the "violent, tense glottal stop" which is made by using muscles whose only other function is to aid vomiting. There is also the dark 'l' found only in Allah. The most difficult though, is the special H, which unfortunately is pretty common. Of the vowels: there are three written, two of which are also consonants, and three unwritten. They make 8 standard vowel sounds. More, certain letters are elided in pronunciation by their proximity to sun or moon letters. Arabic is phonetic, which would be nice if all of the sounds are written, and if it were physically possible to pronounce them all. But the phoneticism is still handy, although since it's script (or Squiggley as it is more aptly known) there are hundreds of accepted ligatures. Each letter has a few different forms depending on where it is in a word. Arabic reads right to left, except numbers. The numbers used in English are actually Arabic numbers and the numbers used here are actually Indian, don't ask me why. Transliterations are always different too, some are phonetic and some aren't, some use letters where others use apostrophes, and the apostrophe could mean any number of sounded or not-sounded consonants (really, I don't even know what a syllable is anymore).
Lexus depends always, entirely on context. There are three words which can mean yes or no depending on the question's context. I read a word the other day which could mean white, black, or light red. The joke is that most words mean one thing, the opposite, or something about a camel. Grammar structure is different than English, but I won't go into that.
That all is actually the easy part, first you must decide which Arabic to study. Fus-Ha, Quranic, Modern Standard (MSA), or whatever local dialect is spoken where you are. As I understand it, Fus-Ha is the traditional language that all current Arabic has stemmed from. When the Quran was being written, scholars decided that Fus-Ha wasn't adequate to write the holy scripture, so they pretty much invented Quranic Arabic out of love for Allah (which, good grief, that's pretty awesome). By studying Quranic you would inevitably learn Fus-Ha, but unless you're devoted to reading the Quran, there's not much point. MSA was formatted for the business world and as far as I know nobody uses it, but for some reason two-thirds of all learn Arabic books I found in the states were teaching MSA. What's spoken everywhere is any number of local dialects. In Aden they speak Adeni, and cannot be understood 100km away, at all. Moroccan Arabic is immensely different from Yemeni, as is Egyptian or Lebanese. The good thing is that newspapers and tv all use Fus-Ha, so most people understand Fus-Ha. The bad thing is that when you speak Fus-Ha only, you're responded to in the local dialect. A friend of mine who speaks Arabic actually just went to Morocco and said he relied on his French. Since humanity basically started in Yemen, there's a language tie here also. In Yemen as a country, and Ta'izz as a city there exists the purest Arabic and quite a number of people come to study as a result. That, and it's wicked cheap if you exclude the travel overhead. Having a native speaker is essential, so studying outside of the Middle East is fairly futile.
Arabic is difficult to learn for more than just linguistic reasons, but political as well. Within the American media industry there are only three Arabic translators, and given the geolinguistic issues I mentioned above, I find it hard to reason that those three can accurately interperet concepts coming from somewhere that is so foreign to American that it is almost its opposite. The three are all registered republicans, and they all recieved their language training from the military. In fact, outside of the military, there exist only three scholarships available to Americans for studying Arabic. As of 2007, there haven't been any American Fulbrighters awarded Arabic language study in almost ten years. This reeks. And I'll tell you why:
People here want you to learn their language. My students are always teaching me words. As soon as my classes learned how to give advice using 'should,' they all told me I should learn Arabic. Every single Adeni I've met has asked me where I'm studying Arabic and when I tell them I'm not they offer to teach me or to find someone who will. Whenever a foreigner says one word in Arabic, we are immediately met with the excited response, "Oh you know Arabic?!" People here are incredibly kind and helpful to begin with, but extravagantly so when it comes to their language.
So, I'm very slowly learning Arabic, both Fus-Ha and Adeni. I can count to six, I can tell people where I'm from and that I'm a teacher and that I don't know Arabic, I can buy produce mostly with pointing, I can use mass transit which strangely enough involves even more pointing, and I can tell people that I really like Yemen and think it's beautiful. Well, in so many words.

headlong

Ah. So everything here has returned to relative normalcy.

may be better than quail

Woa. Today, 16 May, I recieved my first batch of mail which included a package from Aunt Carol sent 20 March, and two postcards from my sweet friend Athena in the Eugene sent 6 May. So that's how long it takes. Write me letters. If you send packages, I hear DHL is the cheapest and quickest to get here. There's a rumor that I may be able to transfer to a different city for the next session, starting mid-June, but as far as mail and stuff, we can worry about that later.
The political situation is hairy right now. Next weekend on 22 May is the national holiday celebrating the anniversary of unification between North and South Yemen. In the past weeks the North-slanted government has been cracking down on separatist movement in the South. Separatist rallies have turned into riots then quashed by the military and resulting in some deaths. Seven newspapers have been effectively shut down for promoting disunity. They're still printing issues because the legal process to shut them down takes too much time or money, but the military has been collecting the printings before they ever reach their audience. The editor of one of these papers, al-Ayyam, centered here in Aden, has been wanted for a year in connection of a murder (the details on this, as always, are fuzzy) and the military on Wednesday sought him ought. They stormed the office in Crater, Aden which was protected by the paper's own guards/militia and resulted in three deaths and the arrest of the editor. Taryn's friend who works/ed for Ayyam is fine. I'm not sure what the coming week has in store, but I imagine that if nothing epic is triggered by the 22nd, everything will be alright after that... for a time.
PS: OMGZ MAIL IS AWESOME!

marginals

Unity between North and South Yemen was made in 1990 and there was a civil war in 1994 to little effect but the repeated marginalization of the south. Civil war in Yemen is going to happen again but nobody really knows for sure when. There has been some civil unrest here in the south which has prompted reactions from the governing north. Seven have died in Mukalla (where I'm trying to get transferred) during rallies held by secessionists that have turned into riots by the pro-government militia Guards of Unity. The newspaper al-Ayyam, the employer of a friend of Taryn, has been shut down along with six others for allegdly promoting a "harmed national unity." Revoking freedom of press and speech will undoubtedly fan the fire.
Yemen still has no cases of swine flu, or H1N1. Similar to in Israel, under sharia, referring to pigs is Haram. Unlike Israel though, we're not stupidly calling it the Mexican flu.

mayday

One session down. Matt's moved to Sana'a so I have a room to myself (with no view) now. Taryn went with him over the break and got her life stolen from her. Over lunch she told me the tale today -which is our first day back- and it sounds pretty horrific.
I on the other hand, spent a bunch of my time off nerdily reading about grammar and punctuation and usage (turns out the Guide to American Usage by Bryan Garner which I picked up in a thrift store in Bend of all places is the new Bible, or Linguinomicon rather, having pretty much ended the usage wars haughtily faught in the imaginations of dictionary and grammar editors). Not that that's going to do any good for my writing but it just means I'll have more self-confidence when I correct your terrible grammar. Which reminds me, this site is all around fantastic and you should check it out.
Anyways, Taryn got her passport stolen along with all of her banking information and any other personal information. And this happened in Sana'a, not Aden where she lives and works. Fortunately the American Embassy is in Sana'a, right? Physically, yes; effectively, it doesn't exist. How do you prove your citizenship without a passport, and how do you get anywhere in a beauracracy quagmired by bribery after you've lost all access to your money? Her situation right now is the nightmare of any foreigner; I'm feeling homesick, vicariously exposed, and am not taking this incident lightly. Her first vacation was ruined, decimated really, and basically invalidated her first three months of work here or at least that's how I would feel. After two months she should be able to get a new passport so that she can then reapply for all of the visas and not be living and working in Yemen illegally. It's a crappy situation for her right now that makes us all feel slightly unsettled until it gets sorted out.

do i speak how i write?

Before starting this saga, I mentally framed it (created a mission statement so to speak) thus: I'm moving to someplace I've never heard of where I don't know anybody to do something I've never done before. Sink or swim. The school will buy me a plane ticket home or to wherever I want to go if I complete a year's worth of work, or seven seven weeklong sessions. But, I realized that this was a pretty aggressive and crazy plan and so, making good on a 2008 resolution, I set up a plan b. Actually, teaching English abroad was also a plan b which I'm really proud of myself for putting into effect finally. I will reconsider my year after two sessions, after fourteen weeks, after three months because "you can do anything for three months." Whatever my decision here, I will create a new plan.
Well, I've learned a lot about Yemen, met a lot of people, and as of this week have finished my teaching my first session. This last part was my greatest apprehension and I feel warrants some thoughts since I'm realistic about the future and pretty much I "gotta go to work, gotta go to work, gotta have a job." *Wince. This is my halfway mark.
Teaching is pretty easy. I feel really comfortable with the students and they both seem to like class and are learning. All of my students passed and none of them said it was easy which I consider a good thing. Connecting to my students is probably my strongest suit as a teacher, which makes the material accessible for them. The problem is curriculum and what to do with all the time. The school is designed around a schedule of standardized tests and essentially my job is to get students to pass the tests, to give them what they pay for which is a certificate saying they know English and not the actual knowledge of English. This part annoys me because a lot of the time I have to slow down to adhere to this schedule rather than work at the pace the students are learning. I feel that the students could learn a lot more for what they pay if it weren't for the damn tests. My classroom is micromanaged. So my job is a lot of the uneconomical killing of time which causes me to think about it at home, which I loathe. Anyways, ultimately, the job's okay, I could do this for a year and could teach for the rest of my life but probably not English and probably not abroad.
Work, however, isn't the majority of my life and decidedly so. I've noticed that the things I miss most are nontangible and more than just inconveniences like brown outs and water shortages at night. There's quality of life issues stemming from the lack of freedom of speech, press, gender equality, and recognizable justice. The deep cultural differences are a taxing struggle that becomes more insurmountable with time. The tolerated, even promoted classist, racist, heterosexist cultural norms are an acid that eats away at my psyche. And that scares me, a lot. In the face of this, I don't know how long I can hold out before either I burst and say something imprudent or before my foundation of Americanism (which is admittedly ethnocentric and inherently flawed by the double standard of relative morality) is left in ruins. This begs me to wonder what precisely were my motivations for this endeavor?

pics

I've set up a flickr album which you can check out here I'll add pictures to this fairly regularly which you can check out. You can also see pictures from my other life if you dig around. This link is on my link list too, on the right side of this page, listed as My Flickr. -bencarver

the inevitable

With Matt and Taryn, due mostly to their social graces, we have made some friends with Adenis all seemingly named Muhammad. They espouse extremely gracious hospitality and have taken us around the area on various excursions. Most notably, finding Matt and I a place to study Arabic for free, finding Taryn a family to study with since the Islamic Center is for men only, and taking us (and a Spanish backpacker I met who was sleeping on our couch that weekend) on a boat trip to secluded beaches complete with meals on the beach. Matt and I chose not to study Arabic just yet because the timing is bad this term with our training at the school. And also, Matt has this fear of/ interest in being converted to Islam, which somehow always manages to come up into conversation at least once whenever we are kicking around with the Muhammads. One of the pillars of Islam is to talk about your faith with whomever will listen, not proselytizing or evangelism, but informing the interested, as far as I can tell. This led to them going way out of their way to arrange for the three of us (along with whomever else would go) to attend an evening prayer at a mosque followed by a discussion with the sheikh and a few elders from the school. We all agreed to go and Matt flaked out last minute which I probably won't ever forgive him for.
Taryn, dressed in abaya out of respect, and I watched the prayer from one of the classrooms in the school with a teacher. The mosque was pretty, but not very inspired. After the prayer and recitations from the Qur'aan, Taryn and I met with the sheikh and other imams in a room to have a discussion which was probably one of the most awkward and uncomfortable couple hours of my life. This meeting never would have occurred without Matt shewing interest in/fear of Islam all the time; they wouldn't have arranged it for Taryn because she's female, and I could really care less about religion in general much less Islam specifically. Not to say that I won't listen or learn about it, but I'm not going to go out of my way, nor allow other people to go out of their way, so I can know more about it.
The sheikh wanted to discuss the tenets of Islam and I wanted to talk about politics. I asked him how viable he though it was for countries to base their political system on religion in the midst of globalization, to which he replied that there won't be a problem when the rest of the world reverts to the natural state of Islam. Clearly. Then I was told I shouldn't ask questions about politics. So we talked about media bias and how everybody in the middle east believes that everyone in America thinks that everybody in the middle east is a suicide bombing terrorist. To which I responded that I certainly don't know a single American who believes that all middle easterners think exactly like bin Laden because nobody is stupid enough to believe that, just like how I've yet to meet a single middle eastern person stupid enough to believe that I think exactly like GWBush simply because I'm American. We're all just people, after all, and almost all of us are too busy living our lives to complicate things with malice. And yes, it sucks that there are fundamentalists and extremists like Al-Qaeda and the Westborough Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas that have tarnished the public images of religion. Well Islam could easily have good press if American media wasn't run by "the Jew," after all, Americans hate mice but they love Mickey Mouse. Right, but that Scandinavian paper made the prophet Muhammad into a cartoon and Islam got all butt-hurt about it. So maybe media isn't an even topic either. The third conversation choice was, of course, personal faith.
Islam, as I have understood it, is about a deeply personal relationship with Allah that is not mediated by a priest or pope or idol or what have you. This is partly why Muslims are not overly evangelical, because ultimately, faith is up to the individual. Taryn, wisely used her gender to just not have to talk about any of this as it devolved into an interrogation of my faithlessness.
No, I don't believe in God.
No, I'm not an atheist.
No, I don't think about what will happen to me when I die.
No, I don't know how I was created and that's not relevant anyways.
No, I don't know my purpose in life I don't wonder about it either.
No, I don't feel empty or lost or that something is missing.
Yes, I am perfectly content with my life in general.
At this point, they were dumbfounded and salivating. I explained as simply as I could, that I'm just not compelled for religious belief. I'm not interested in taking a leap of faith; if I can't by definition know, then I why I should care to find out is beyond me. I said I wasn't trying to be difficult and graciously, the sheikh said it was getting late.
We shook hands, I thanked them for their time and for going out of their way to accommodate Taryn and I, they gave us some books on Islam and some perfume, fed us, we went home, and I told Matt I converted.

amriikii francophilia

Aden is sometimes described by expats as a place that takes a lot of initiative. There's no safety seal on anything here. You can do pretty much anything you want, but it takes creativity and direction. Indecision just doesn't work. Most social activities here do not revolve around food, which is a novelty I'm still appreciate of, and tend to last three hours longer than I'm comfortable with. That said, I've been a little bored. My home-life is annoying, and there just aren't places to go that I'm used to, such as coffee shops, community centers, libraries, or bars. There's no place to escape in solitude. But, I've been making do. My colleage and friend Catherine, who is from South Africa and is generally awesome, and I have been talking about making a zine to cover the cultural and social events that do occur. It would, of course, be done tongue-in-cheek, because really, these happenings are laughable.
On Wednesday, which is the last day of my working week, Catherine and I went to the French cultural center a few blocks from AMIDEAST. After getting through security, we met a woman and man who worked there, were given a tour consisting of their classrooms and library, which is larger than the one at AMIDEAST, but all in French (or Arabic). The French center shares a shaded courtyard with the German cultural center, which we were also toured around. The Germans also have classrooms, a small German library, and a kitchen complete with espresso machine. Catherine and I were able to sit with the German cultural representative Christian in the courtyard and drink espresso and talk for almost an hour. Both centers hold events such as movie nights and dinners to spread cultural awareness, and do so in their compound to allow the removal of the veil and a less Islamic atmosphere. Because of this, it does however, exist as a target.
The nieghborhood where I work includes a couple English schools which allow coed classrooms, a couple foreign embassies, the UN, and a couple foreign consulates. Local threats (as opposed to specific) are made to the area continually. The UN has been running at half staff for a few weeks now, and just this week AMIDEAST installed a female security officer, as well as starting mandatory bag and ID checks, which is annoying.
So the French cultural center was a welcome discovery, providing me with the possibility of a place to forget and also to refresh.

maybe an apricot

There are five new teachers this semester at AMIDEAST, and the school director Edward has led us on excursions around Aden three times now. The first was a driving tour to show us the layout and familiarize us with the different subcities followed up with an afterschool special by the sea about the USS Cole and the perils of qat. The second time was a hike of the Tanks which are British built cisterns in the crater canyons and then a walk around the shops in Crater itself. While I don’t particularly like Edward, I do appreciate his company for a couple reasons, the first being that he makes an excellent guide of both the geography and the culture, if a bit jaded.
Whenever I start a new job I like to imagine what it might be like as a career, and this is fairly easily evidenced by looking to the older generation. From my perspective, things generally turn out two ways, each with good points and bad. For instance, while rafting, I looked at Charlie Baldwin and Rob Dees as one outcome. Both guys are happy and make excellent friends, but neither have achieved the kind of stability in life which I desire. The alternative I saw was Dave Slover and Carrol White (although I dreamt of Mark Angel). Both are secure with their lives, but have been embittered by years in the river tourism industry and lack a contentment of place. As I saw it, rafting was not the life for me.
Starting out in the TEFL industry, I am eager to consider my options. The school director Edward is the son of an American emissary in the Levant, came to Yemen on a Fulbright scholarship, and he and his wife have been living in Yemen for the majority of the past decade. I don’t know how they met nor how he came to take her job as the director of the school. As the only western person working within the TEFL industry who hasn’t reverted to Islam, he currently stands as the only guide I know to offer a glimpse into what it would be like should I choose this as a career path. Having said all that, he’s a real fruit.
On Friday, the holy day, the last day of my weekend, Matt and I went on a hike with the school director Edward and his wife in the afternoon. Taryn was sick, the sky was unusually overcast, and I was annoyed for no particular reason, so I let Matt do most of the talking with Edward and his wife as we hiked to a fairly secluded beach. They chatted about Yemeni politics after the civil war, Middle East viewpoints on the Iraq war, the relevance of the recent kidnappings in Sana’a, and (the lack of) contingency plans. Given the setting and considering the company, I was irritated less by the content of conversation than I was by the choice of topic. Everything came to a head for me as I was lounging on the beach staring at the point where sea becomes sky, and Edward, returning from a swim to block my view, asked me, “So what do you miss the most?”
“Uh,” I paused, “that’s sort of a loaded question.”
“No it isn’t a loaded question at all,” he scoffed. “I mean you can’t get a bacon cheeseburger or go see a blockbuster movie here like you could.”
“Sure. I miss bacon… bands, beer, bikes, blues, books, booze.”
What I miss the most though, are my friends. I miss being around people who would never ask me such an impossible question. I miss the rich history I had developed in Oregon, where my intentions could be understood with just a knowing look. I miss the bonds I have made that took years of tiring experiences and which as a result are stronger than I ever thought possible. That is to say, that I’m just impatient to form those connections with people here, and reluctant to do so knowing that my stay is intentionally temporary.

Corrections, Addendums

My friend Ryan has clued me into an error I've made regarding something I wrote. The arabic word lehm (لحم) means anything that isn't chicken or fish. Thus, meat. The statement I made that most Yemenis can't tell the difference between goat or sheep or beef probably came as a result of the few times I've had meat here. It's cooked to charcoal and I can't tell the difference, especially since it's all just "meat."
In my class last week we played Two Truths and a Lie. In teams the students wrote three statements about themselves, two true and one false and the other team had to guess which was the lie. One of the girls made a statement that she could cook meat. And the other team assumed correctly that she hasn't had the chance to try to cook meat, and they guessed that to be the lie, which it was. I asked her then, "So you can't cook meat?"
"No," she replied, "my family doesn't eat meat."

first sunburn

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.