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!
16 May 2009
08 May 2009
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.
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.
02 May 2009
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.
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.
27 April 2009
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?
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?
22 April 2009
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.
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.
19 April 2009
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
