Meeting the Sheik

The morning arrived to the tune of braying donkey and screaming children. I was invited on an early morning walk to the water hole with some local women, tried to speak using my school arabic, and had them folded over with laughter. Not sure if they were laughing with me or at me...
Breakfast of course was beans, bread, cheese, and tea. Then we gathered our meager belongings, hopped into the trucks again, and headed out the rough mountain road to the house of the Sheik! When we arrived, Mohammed was manning the giant bulldozer, dressed in traditional garb, and pushing giant boulders down the road from the Sheik's house. The house itself was huge, especially compared to the one story made-of-mud houses that are spread around the region. The Sheik's house was four stories, with a beautiful mafraj on the top floor. The house itself was on top of a high plateau, so being in the mafraj with the huge windows was like sitting on a cloud looking down on the countryside.

The Sheik, much younger than I thought he would be, was in a 'meeting' when we arrived. We spent our time until lunch walking around the top of the plateau and looking at the scenery. The wind was blowing hard and the view went forever - something out of Lord of the Rings - with qat. After we returned to the house, the Sheik let us shoot more guns!
Lunch was tasty, the girls we fortunate enough to be able to eat with the boys. Rice, lamb, potatoes, salta, aseet, bint al-sahan. After lunch the men stayed and chewed qat and napped.
(One of our teachers, Ramsey)
The four girls went into the main house to visit the sheik's wife and were lead up to the glory of a mafraj. The wife, Ourz, was originally from Sana'a, had had an arranged marriage to the Sheik, and was one of the smartest, most down-to-earth and clearheaded women I've met in Yemen. She spoke very clearly so it was easy for us to carry on a conversation. We had tea, ate cookies, played with her two youngest children (she has five, but told the Sheik 'no more!'). We also were treated to perfume and incense. After a couple hours with her, we unfortunately had to leave and head back to Sana'a. After a weekend of rather depressing visits with women, it was wonderful to meet someone as unique as Ourz.

So that was the trip!

Since returning to Sana'a from Beyt Qatina, we have had several adventures. I was invited to lunch at a student's house. The family spoke in the arabic dialect spoken in Ibb so I had very little idea of what was being said. The food was amazing, traditional Yemeni. The old grandmother insisted that I eat enough to roughly double my body weight. After lunch I sat with the men for a few minutes and then went and joined the women's room. I was taken in by the sister of Jalal, my student, and doused in perfume, had my hair brushed, and (in true Emily fashion) had make-up almost forcefully applied to my face. Big Katie and I discovered later, when I arrived home looking like a clown hooker, that this is the kind of makeup that is not FDA approved in the states because it contains strange chemicals to keep it from (ever) being removed. I decided that day would be the best day to wear the niqab for the first time. So Big Katie and I went shopping for jambiyyas in disguise! We did pretty well, haggling in arabic in order to buy our jambiyyas for much cheaper than was originally priced.

The next day we headed to the Hotel Movenpick, where the best ice cream in all of Yemen is. It's a monstrous Swiss hotel up on the hill overlookinn Sana'a. We had been a couple times before, and Big Katie had read that they were going to show the Olympics there, so we went to watch the opening ceremonies. After failing to show us the opening ceremonies, and having to face what Big Katie calls her "angry white woman face", we were treated to a day at the Movenpick spa! Now, I can't say I'm much of a spa girl - but I have never felt so clean.
My last couple of days in Yemen have been spent finishing up teaching (with a heated discussion on who is better, Iran or Israel? The Arab viewpoint is much different than mine - I think we're working off of different information), shopping about for last minute gifts (a giant poster of Ali Abdullah Salah, President/Dictator of Yemen for myself), and wandering around the Old City.
Tonight I leave for Roma. Since Sana'a is such a huge international hub, and Yemenia's nine planes take up so much room, it's necessary that my flight leave at 12:01 am. Hmmm, maybe not so necessary... But I will be out of Yemen and in Rome by tomorrow morning. The summer has been an amazing cultural experience, great for my arabic. But there is a flank steak waiting for me in Baltimore, as well as a wisdom teeth removal. In 10 days I will be home - al-hamdu lallah!

Thanks!

Hiking into Paradise

As with all backcountry trips, we arose with the sun at 530 am to a wonderful breakfast of cheese, bread, and tea. Today is our 'strenuous' hiking day and the plan is for us to 'go for a walk' (as the British say) for about 5 hours to a natural spring located in the bottom of a deep wadi (valley) called Hamman al-Ayun. After another very bumpy ride, we stopped at a farm in the middle of the perfect horror movie setting, dismounted from my cab-top throne, and headed off into the wilderness.

We crossed over the first set of small hills and opening up before us was a landscape that rivaled the Grand Canyon, if not in color then in shear colossal size. The group quickly separated into smaller hiking groups. I was hiking close to the front with the tribesman. You know the saying, “If you’re not the lead dog the scene never changes”? My view was of a goat on the back of the tribesman in front of me. While I was aware that this was actually the only thing on the menu for lunch, I was unable to keep myself from forming quite the relationship with it. Poor Jemima.

About an hour and a half after starting to hike, we completed our descent into the wadi and you will never guess what was there! In the middle of desert/mountainous Yemen! A river!
Hammam al-Ayun is a natural spring that erupts from the mountainside to form a river flowing down the valley through the massive boulders and over stones of every color imaginable. Blue, purple, orange, yellow, pink, green, shiny black. The river was interspaced with shallow ripples and waist deep pools big enough to float in. As the rest of the group arrived, all the boys got into their swimtrunks, the tribesmen went into the river in their shorts, and hooray for the girls once again swimming in shorts/pants and tee-shirts. But the water was incredibly refreshing after the hike down, and the giant boulders were perfect for laying in the sun to dry off.
Jemima kicked the bucket and soon was in a pot boiling for lunch. There was plenty of time for exploring, swimming, napping, and talking. Around noon (we arrived in the wadi around 9), the tribesman called us in for tea and goat! Yum.

What better way to celebrate your lunch of recently bleating goat than by shooting guns. Ak-47’s to be exact. Until recently, men carried their AKs everywhere with them. In the countryside, in the middle of Sana’a, it didn’t matter. A couple of years ago, carrying an assault rifle in the city was made illegal, but in the mountainous countryside, everyone and their mother has a gun. (‘Like who?’ ‘Farmers.’ ‘Yeah? Who else?’ ‘Farmer’s mums.’) Well, maybe everyone and their son. Anyway, while I had held a gun in Al-Hajjarain, this time I was able to shoot one into the opposite side of the wadi. Ah, the power.

After the tribesman had had their qat time, we started hiking out of the canyon back to the cars. The group separated again and strung itself out across the hills. The first group, about five of us and most of the tribesman, trucked it up the hills pretty quickly. A couple of us contented ourselves with playing the famous person name game in order to keep our minds off the hike. The tribesmen chose to smoke cigarettes while hiking almost straight up the mountains. These men are nothing but muscle – machines!

We reached the farm in about 2 hours and had some time to spend with the family at the farm house. Tea or qat? Tea please.

Everyone else made it up to the farm as the sun was setting over the mountains, and we piled back into the trucks for our now dark and bumpy ride home. A brief stop at a small store gave the girls an opportunity to have more tea with more women and the most adorable fat month old named Ahmed.

The evening meal was beans, bread, cheese, and tea, followed by the evening entertainment of mind-bending riddles. Following the brave souls of the night before, I slept on the roof under the brightest stars in Yemen. The Milky Way. Constant shooting stars. You can’t make me leave!!!

Beyt Qatina

I'm going to do this installment the same was as I did last terms trip to Hadramout, in three pieces. Each day was so full, I'm sorry!
And don't get excited, it's not my camera, the pictures are all stolen from friends.

7/31 - Day One

The second term big trip! I signed up for a “strenuous hiking trip” to the region of Beyt Qatina in the mountains south of Sana’a. It was a small trip, 14 students as opposed to my 60 person trip to Hadramout, with 3 girls and 11 guys. We met early on Thursday morning and headed out of Sana’a in a bus. 2 hours later (after passing Shibam and Kokaban, we pulled off to the side of the road in a valley of qat fields. Awaiting us were a pickup truck and a Land Cruiser made circa 1970. There was a hole in the floor of the Land Cruiser and to be quite honest, I doubted its ability to make it through the weekend. I had no idea what this car, both cars, were capable of. Let’s just say I have some new plans for the adventure truck when I get home.

We piled into our two new cars which were going to take us around for our trip, as our bus ‘couldn’t handle the roads.’ NO KIDDING! After about 10 minutes on paved roads, we thought the bus driver was just lazy. I moved from the bed of the pickup truck where 10 of us were crammed onto the top of the cab in order to have more room. Then we came around the bend and the wonderful paved road disappeared in front of our eyes.
In its place was simply a blasted path on the side of the mountain. Rocks and sinkholes included. Riding on the top of that pickup was like riding a mechanical bull. What a workout. There were several times we struggled to get up a 45 degree incline on straight rocks, but our trucks never failed!

Before heading to our house for the weekend, we visited a small, hilltop village for a rural wedding! We were all excited, made even more so by the gunfire we heard as we drove up. They used to do this at ever wedding in Yemen – a traditional shooting of Kalashnikovs to celebrate. It’s been banned in the cities due to a tendency of people to shoot each other accidentally, but in the mountaintops of rural Yemen it is a common form of wedding celebration. While the men talked guns, beat drums, and danced with their curved knives called jambiyyas (ah, the manliness of being a man), the women thought it would be even more fun to go and join the women’s party. In Sana’a the women’s wedding parties are a blast. Whistling and yelling, loud Arabic pop music (although if you’re lucky you just might get ‘I’m a Barbie Girl’), an overdressed bride, and the Mecca of 80’s prom gowns and sequins. Same thing right? Wrong... nothing could have been more wrong. First of all, the bride was 13. We sat in a dark room with a scared girl in a wedding dress a couple sizes too big, huge fake purple flowers and gold bracelets and tiara, and women who realize that this is not an exciting day for the bride. Silences mixed with words of comfort to the girl. But we thought it would be ok, we could eat and then be happy. In the rural villages the women eat the leftovers of the men. Literally. One of the guys took an after picture of their lunch. That was the before picture to ours. Once you got over the fact that you were eating someone else’s leftovers, however, the food was pretty good for the boonies!

We joined our male compatriots at the qat chew following lunch. I set next to a Yemeni man who, before we arrived, had apparently told another member of my trip that all he wanted was an American wife. I guess I’m all set! I consented to try a leaf – the evils of peer pressure! DISGUSTING! I know it’s bad for the economy, and I know how incredibly unattractive chewers are, and I know how its inhibiting agriculture, but honestly, the taste is enough to make me never want to touch it again. I don’t know how 80% of the country chews it for hours a day. Gross.

We left the wedding to head to our house for the next 2 days. A normal Yemeni farmhouse, the building had two rooms with cushions around the walls for us to live and sleep in. The locals chewed more as we played cards, after which we took an effortless stroll around the qat and coffee fields adjacent to the house. The highlight of that short hike was the local kids, who use small pieces of metal to slide down the irrigation tubes at breakneck speeds.

Dinner that night was a simple meal of beans, bread, cheese, and tea. Night falls early, especially because the house is in a wadi (valley) and the sun sets earlier for us. With an ancient propane lamp we were able to gather inside and play Mafia ( a game of deceit, lying, persuasion, and death – hours of fun!). Highlights included the consistent killing of the sole British kid in the beginning stages of the game leading to calls of a nationalistic form of racism, allegations turning as petty as ‘Well, he’s twirling his hair….’ (guilty, that was me, and it worked), and our big lovable Blake being unable to defend himself against allegations of being in the Mafia because “The light, it’s so round…and bright…I can’t take my eyes off it…”

Being in the country is not complete without an uncomfortable sleep – so bring on the floor!

P.S. Only thirty people from the Yemen Language Center in its 23 years have been to Beyt Qatina and we're pretty sure they're the only center that runs this trip into the tribal lands. Baller!!!

Teaching Conversational English

In a new addition to my Yemen routine, a week ago I began to teach a class in conversational English at a small English school in Sana'a. I had a class of 9 that rapidly grew to 22 as other students joined, hearing that an American was teaching, and other teachers from my school wimped out and left me with their students. It's an eye-opener for sure.
The class is about half male, half female. But about 90% of the girl students wear the full niqab, so I all know of them is their eyes! A little intimidating. But the second day of class I brought them my marker stash and we made name-tags. The students are all between the ages of 20 and 28, with university education either underway or already completed. Their english is pretty good. So far I've already been caught misspelling a vocab word on the board....embarrassing, to say the least.
The topics have been varied and interesting. The first day we discussed, at their request, Islam in America post 9/11. Baptism by flamethrower. I was asked that day what the secret was behind the US's relationship with Israel. Since then the subjects have calmed down. A day talking about women in the workforce and an assignment to write on the women who made breakthroughs into their fields - the first woman doctor, the first woman president, the first woman scientist. Instead I received essays on the first wife of the prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon him) and the first female martyr for Islam and the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him).
We also spent a couple days (at my request of course) talking about children's stories. For homework the students summarized, in english, their favorite childhood stories. The next day we listened to Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Alla Al-diin (Aladdin), "7 With One Blow!", "Don't Be Curious", a version of "The Little Princess" which they told me was a cartoon on TV. We also discussed the cultural influence on stories, the differences between written and oral tradition, fables and folktales, and whether grown-ups (such as ourselves) could still benefit from children's stories. The responses were great! and what they lacked in grammar and vocabulary they made up for in thoughtfulness.
The last class, my first day with the full 22, we discussed the government and the media in Yemen. One of the boys looked at me when I announced the topic and gasped: "But teacher, we will walk straight out of this classroom and straight into jail!" I think the color must have started to drain from my face as I realized maybe freedom of speech hadn't quite reached Yemen yet, but he laughed at me and said it was just a joke.
For today, they had to research other governments. I have 45 minutes to come up with a topic that has something to do with that...
But in the meantime, I would like to leave you with a fable summarized in English for you by Amani Abdullah. Not only is it there a lesson to be learned, but it's the only one I still have, as I returned the others last week. Enjoy.
"Don't Be Curious"
Once there was a little boy. His name is Ali. He was a little bit clever and good boy in his school. He liked cake more than anything else. He had a fault. He is a curious. He likes checking other's things without taking their permission. So his mother was so angry with him. Although she always told him to take off this bad behavior, he didn't care for her advice.
One day, Ali's mother thought of a plan, then she started it. She wrote a message and put it inside an envelope. She asked him not to open it at all and taking it to his grandmother. While he was walking, he thought of that message. He asked himself, "What did my mother write?" Because of his curiosity, he insisted to open that envelope.
Oh ... When he opened the envelope, the butterfly flied away. He tried to catch it , but he couldn't. He still had the desire of reading that message. He read that his mother requests her mother to give him a big piece of cake and canady if she found the butterfly inside the envelope. After he had read the message, he was very sad and grief. He though better of his bad behavior. He knew his mistake. therefore, he came back to his mother asking her to forgive him. He also promised her that he will never be a curious boy." Amani Abdullah


It's a great experience, and truly a window into the thoughts and minds of normal Yemeni men and women my age. And it's forcing me to practice my spelling.

Much love,
Katie

Ahhhh...Africa

In the break between summer terms, a group of six students (including myself) set off for the unknowns of Africa! We booked our relatively cheap flights for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, took our final exam for the first term, and headed to the airport. I wish I could say that this was a vacation to paradise. That I saw lions and tigers and tribal dances (oh my!). And, to be honest, that was almost the story I wrote down. But, while it was possibly the worst vacation I have ever been on, oh, what a story.

It began with a suppressed feeling that we were about to be abducted by aliens. The Amharic script, the national language of Ethiopia, was what I would have expected to see on the inside of an alien spaceship as it spirited me away to the Horsehead Nebulea to translate 'Battlestar Galactica' episodes to the alien general army commander. It told me where my floatation device was (under my seat) and, while I could use my laptop on the plane, I was not allowed to my printer or separate speaker system while the plane was in flight. And to think I left my printer at home. We flew over the Red Sea and landed in Djibouti! Despite the best efforts of my classmates, we were not allowed to get off the plane to get "Get Djibouti on the Dance Floor!" or "I've Been to Djibouti" teeshirts. We're so mature. We landed in Addis to cold weather. Cold. WHAT!! The summer season for us is the rainy season in Addis, and therefore it is colder than it is the rest of the year. Each afternoon is an afternoon spent gambling on whether or not you can make it inside somewhere when the freezing cold monsoon (with hail?) hits. It pours for about an hour, forcing everyone inside or into the buses or shoved under awnings outside of stores. A friend of one of our fellow students in Yemen met us at the airport and took us to our hotel. The Beta Abrham is a new hotel very close to the airport and located on the famous Bole Road - the heart of Ethiopian nightlife. We went to a traditional music and dance restaurant. The Ethiopian traditional dance, while very interesting and exciting, reminds me more of someone having an epileptic fit rather than a dancer. The traditional dance involves jerking your shoulders around very very rapidly while throwing the head back and forth. I don't think my body could physically do that, so maybe its mostly jealousy.
Our first full day in Ethiopia, we moved to a much cheaper hotel near the Piazza in the center of town. It was here that I discovered I no longer had my camera with me. Not my camera, my dad's camera. Shoot. So while everyone else went to explore, I spent the day calling the airports, the hotel, emailing the airport and the hotel, searching through my things. All in vain. I have since come to the conclusion that when I took pictures of the Djiboutian airport, it didn't make it back into my bag. My own fault. After calling and emailing, I went for a walk and encountered my first scammer (apparently, everyone on the trip had an experience similar to this). A young man named Soloman approached me on the street and started talking to me about the US and Ethiopia. After buttering me up for about 20 minutes, he mentioned how he was taking a big social sciences test the next week, but he didn't have the money for the book to study. If I would only lend him the money, then he could pass the test! To bad his story was repeated almost word for word in 'The Lonely Planet' under the heading of "The Notebook Scam." Unfortunately, he wasted 30 minutes on me that he could have used scamming someone else. That night, Big Katie, another girl named Anya, and I decided to journey off the next day to Bahir Dar and Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. The town was about 7 hours by car, so we arranged to leave at 4 am the next morning.

The next morning came quickly, and by 430 am I was wedged in the very back of a Land Cruiser, lying on baggage, as all the other seats in the car were taken. Three Ethiopians sat in the middle, two British travelers sat in the front with the driver, and Anya and Big Katie sat on the seats facing each other in the back. 45 minutes out of Addis, the driver hydroplaned on a wet road, side swiped another car, and went straight off a curve and we rolled down an embankment. Everyone is ok. Everything that could have gone right in a crash like that went right. The car was solid, the ground was soft, there were no trees. Everyone is ok. However, people were pretty banged up except for me - being wedged between the bags and the door, I actually barely moved at all. We got all the people and bags out of the car, I used my limited first aid supply to bandage up any cuts and bumps, Big Katie took a truck to the next village to get a bus, and off we went, back to Addis and to St. Gabriel's Hospital. The Ethiopians chose just to go home, but the Brits - Bod and Ross, a couple taking a year off from working with BBC to travel Africa and now in their 10th month on the continent - had the roughest time, having been in the front seat. Whiplash and a cut wrist and bruised jaw between them. Anya had a cut on her knee and a badly bruised arm that she thought could be broken and Big Katie had twisted around the muscles in her back. We all were checked over by a wonderful doctor named Dr. Yosef, got our (incredibly inexpensive) x-rays for those who needed it, and headed out. We went back to our cheap hotel, got our money back for the trip (which was a lot harder than it should have been. The fact that we had paid to go to Bahir Dar, clearly weren't there, and wanted our money back didn't have the quick results we wanted). After that we decided we were done with dirt cheap places, ran back to the Beta Abrham, and slept for the day. Waking up at dinner time, we decided to celebrate our survival by treating ourselves to come great Italian food. We were very very lucky!

The next day, God, feeling sorry for me that I really hadn't experienced Ethiopian hospitals as I had walked out of the crash with nothing but a scratch, decided to let me have a second chance. I awoke at 4 am with severe food poisoning from the spaghetti the night before, and by 8 was demanding that I be taken to a hospital. As I was rolled into the examining room, throwing up, I heard a laugh, felt a kiss on the top of my head, and looked up to see the same smiling Dr. Yosef asking, "Weren't you the healthy one yesterday?" One blood test later, and I had an IV in my arm replenishing my fluids and giving me a double dose of Ciproflaxin to kill all the bacteria in me. 3 hours later, I was feeling better and headed back to the hotel to sleep through the rest of the day, awaking only to eat crackers and watch BBC World news.

Our last full day in Ethiopia, I decided that, regardless of my health, I had to get out and see at least a little bit of the city. We had a wonderful breakfast of pastries and headed over to the Zoological Museum. Addis has more traffic circles than stoplights, and in the middle of each one is a splendid monument to some massacre or king or event in history. The Zoological Museum was a true pleasure. It was only 5 rooms, but each one was packed with the mammals, bird-life, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and marine life that Ethiopia possessed. There were giant snake skins on the wall, frogs crammed into jars, bats (that according to Big Katie, looked as if someone had caught them by slamming them between the pages of an Encyclopedia), every bird ever found in Ethiopia, all the great mammals of the plains as well as the small mammals of the forests - all stuffed to perfection. We met a 'bloated leopard whose stuffer did not know when to stop stuffing' (according to 'The Lonely Planet'), a crested bustard (a funny looking bird from the bustard family), a zorrilla (a kind of skunk), locusts, tortoises, giant fish, antelope, warthogs, elephant femurs next to human femurs, anything alive at Ethiopia at one point or another. We also were lucky enough to be the only people in the museum at the time, and got a personal tour from the museum's director explaining the zoological background of each animal to us. Wonderful!
Next on the list was the Ethnological Museum, located in the middle of Addis Ababa University. The walk through the university itself was wonderful - so incredibly green! The museum itself was also the headquarters of the Institute for Ethiopian studies at the university, and was located in Haile Selassie's former palace. Haile Selassie was appointed Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 and reigned until 1974. His rise to emperor sparked the beginning of the Rastafarian religion, who honors him as the religious symbol of God incarnate. Anyway, this museum took us through three sections : Birth and childhood (birth customs, childhood games, traditional stories, childhood clothing), Adulthood (marriage customs in different tribes, war, religion, farming, weaving, house construction), and Death (burial customs, burial structures, etc). The also had the bedrooms of the Emperor and Empress preserved, including the bullet hole in the mirror from the coup and the all important bathrooms. A young boy from Michigan wrote in the guestbook, "I really feel good about the Emperor's bathroom."
After this Big Katie and I headed back to the hotel for naps, as neither of was were 100% healthy. We met Anya and a new friend from Portugal, Pedro, for another traditional dinner with traditional music and dance. Pedro is doing graduate research in Addis, and explained that the government is rationing electricity, so his section of the city doesn't have power every Monday. But the dinner was great and the music was wonderful. It was a great last dinner in Addis.

Our last morning, we decided to head into the Merkato, the largest open air market in Eastern Africa. It was HUUUUGE. It went on forever and seemed to have everything one could ever want. Except, however, the Beyonce tee-shirts from when Beyonce performed in Addis. Big Katie and I saw them on the streets and decided that no trip to Ethiopia would be complete without them. We failed. By the way, Ethiopia is on the Coptic calender. This not only allows them to say, for serious, that they have 13 months of sunshine, but it also means that they are about 7 years behind the rest of the world and so just had their Millenium celebrations last year.
After wandering through the Merkato for about 40 minutes, we caught a ride back to the airport and flew home!

Looking back on the trip, it was an experience of incredible variety. We got an upclose and personal tour of the hospital systems, but ate well, saw most of Addis, and arrived back in Yemen safe and sound. Unfortunately, there wont be any pictures, but I'll try and snag some from Big Katie when she gets them on her computer.
Much love,
Katie

Aden

This past weekend I was supposed to go to Aden with my new roommate Wendy and her Yemeni friends Majed and Hassan. Everything was good, we got our travel permissions, our passports copied, etc, etc. However, at the last moment, we were told by our school (after they gave us the travel permission...) that we weren't allowed to go with Majed and Hassan. We weren't told why, but guessed that it was two foreign women traveling with two Yemeni men. I miss the US. So we thought our weekend was shot until we were told that another group of students had rented a bus and were heading down to Aden to meet a friend of John's, a YLC student. They offered us a spot on the bus and we said, hey, why not.
The bus ride to Aden took about 8 hours. We drove through the mountains west of Sana'a for several hours, and by the time we arrived at the coastal plain it was already dark. If you had asked me, after sitting squished in the front row for 8 hours, if this trip was worth it? I would have said no. I want my bed. But then again, our room had been infested with bedbugs and had to be bombed, so the bed I wanted was actually on the roof of the center. OK, I'll give this trip a chance.
We arrived in Aden at 1030 at night and picked up Amr, John's friend who he had met while studying at the University of Wisconsin. He was great, hopped right into our bus to head to the hotel, and passed out an itinerary he had printed out for the next day. Wake up: 530 am. There is no way this trip is worth it. We arrived at the Al-Bousi Plaze Hotel in Crater, Aden, and finally fell asleep to replays of the Euro2008 on Al-Jazeera Sport around 12. Wendy and I had spent the previous hour deciding that, since we weren't technically in the group, we could definitly skip out on that 530 stuff and just go to the beach whenever we wanted.
Well, I woke up at 6, everyone was still getting going, and Wendy and I thought, hey, why not? (Seems to be quite the theme). BEST DECISION EVER. The entire day was packed full of stuff only a local would have taken us to and we saw more of Aden than any guidebook could have pointed us too. Plus the weather in Aden is close to unbearable. I know I said the weather in Hadhramout was rough, but at least that was a dry heat. Aden is consistenly in the high 90's and has the humidity of a coastal town as well. Amr's schedule was designed to have us inside napping during the hottest part of the day - smart man.
We started the day off with some hiking. I mentioned earlier that our hotel was in a neighborhood in Aden called Crater. Think about it... I slept in a volcano!! Inactive, sure, but I slept in a retired volcano! The island at the tip of Aden that forms the harbor is a volcanic island, and the neighborhood of Crater is located in the old crater of the volcano.
This is Wendy and me on the side of the volcano with Crater in the background. And you see the island on top of Wendy's head? The Qu'ran says that, on the Day of Judgement, that little island will be dissolved into flames as the last sign before the ultimate judgement. I stood on top of that island a few hours later, daring it to even try to end the world. I won.
Anyway, also on the wall of the volcano was the 'Zoaroastrian Tower of Silence." Kind of creepy. The Zoaroastrians believe that your body is to dirty to even go into the ground or be cremated after you die? So they left you in these rings of stones inside a tower and let the vutures eat you. Sounds like the least sanitary of them all. I don't think they still do this. I hope not.
Anyway we climbed down from the crater wall and headed to climb the 'Judgement Day' island to the castle up top. It was a rough climb but the castle at the peak gave us an amazing view back into Crater as well as the Indian Ocean. Graffetied onto the walls were several anti-American messages - "Bush go to hell", etc - but they were scrawled right next to several other messages proclaiming the authors support for "LIVERPOOL" or "ARSENAL" so I guess politics are on the same level as football.
I took the opportunity on top of the castle to claim the island and entire Indian Ocean as my own.
Unfortunately, I left my flag at home, so the government of Yemen decided to ignore me.
After the castle, a most of the group headed for the National Museum. Wendy and I decided that, after the National Museum in Sana'a and the National Museum in Hadhramout, we couldn't take the confusion of which museum was the true National Museum. So we opted to walk around Crater and take in the sites. Like garbage cans (noticably absent in Sana'a) and bright colored clothing (what! not black!). We joined up with the crew for a nice lunch of chicken and rice. It was great to have something culturally unique to Aden... After lunch, Amr's itinerary had a couple hours dedicated to naptime, but 6 of us decided that we had already been in Aden too long without getting in the water. We (I) convinced the driver to drive us to a hotel beach on the other side of the island where the girls could get in in swimsuits (and t-shirts, and shorts). The range of beach wear in Yemen is incredible. We did have the true tourists flaunting their bikini's, we had younger girls in t-shirts and pants, and we had the Yemeni women in the water in the exact same thing they wear on the streets of Sana'a. Balto, hijab, niqab and all. I can't even imagine how much sand they must take home with them. I swam in my third ocean! After the swim, Wendy and I returned to Amr and his itinerary, though the rest of the group stayed at the beach.
Amr took us next to the Aden water cisterns. Of the 52 interconnecting chambers built some time before the 10th century AD, only 13 remain. But they hold more than 15 million liters of water when full! The cisters collect the rainwater running off the crater wall. They are HUGE.
I think my house this year would fit into this cistern with quite alot of room left over. We had tea time at the cisterns and then headed to Al-Rehab Mosque. Amr has several friends working at the mosque who were thrilled to show us around the mosque, which is located in the middle of the Al-Rehab shopping center. First we stopped in at the Muslim education center, where the have all kinds of Muslim literature for free. Some of it was interesting - Muslim Faith and Modern Science. Some was Helpful - I now have a Qu'ran with the English translations - granted, this is the edition put out by the Wahabi's in Saudi. Perhaps a little biased. Some were, to me, quite funny - "Let the Bible Speak," a chronicle of all the sex, incest, and racism in the Bible. "The Virtues of Polygamy," on why polygamy is actually more selfless and helpful than monogamous marriages. You get the idea. The best part of the night was being able to watch the evening prayer. Normally non-Muslims aren't even allowed inside a mosque, let alone allowed to watch prayer. But I guess if they're really trying to convert you, they'll let you in. Being able to watch prayer was an amazing experience, especially in the quirky ways it differs from Catholic masses. The actual prayer starts before most of the people arrive. Only men were in the section we were looking down onto, and they file on, shoes off, and line up shoulder to shoulder on the lines in the carpet. No pews. No kneelers. Each row is filled up before the next one is started (Quite different from the Christian practice of only sitting on the aisle and making people squeeze by you to fill up the row). Kids are running around the back, but when prayer starts they are lined up between big adults doing the prayer calethenics right alongside their fathers. There was something very peaceful in watching the simultaneous standing, bowing, sitting, prostration, sitting, standing. People who came late simply did the same movements and prayers at their own pace.
After watching prayer, we sat in the office of the Imam and were lectured to about Islam. It was sad, in a sense, because I had so much enjoyed watching the prayer, to be told that women were equal! There is only one God Allah and Mohammed is his prophet! To have my religion put down so that Islam could look better. If our lecturer had taken a more objective approach, answered our questions less subjectively, and not slipped in a line that Muslim men could marry non-Muslim women because, obviously, their children would be raised Muslim. But Muslim women could not marry non-Muslim men because they are too weak to have their children raised Muslim. The lecture sparked a lot of the debate in the bus on our way to the fish market! Where wer bought fish and took them to a local restaurant to be cooked and eaten. The day was so full it felt like several days, and once again we fell asleep to replays of Euro2008.
Another 6 am wakeup and Amr took us to a local beach to swim. Again, we are all in shorts and t-shirts over our bathing suits, but it was a little bit chillier because it was so early.
I built a sandcastle, threw rocks at it, and then tried to build it up again. I can only imagine what the Yemenis watching me were thinking - "Ah look at the American. Building something up, bombing it to hell, and then trying to rebuild it again. The parallels are just to easy."
Finally we said goodbye to Amr and headed home. The driver wanted to go through Ta'iz and Ibb on the way back to Sana'a instead of the way we came. He claimed it was the same distance so we said hey, why not. LIAR. It took us 9 hours to get home but it did take us by Ta'iz, through the village of Al-Qaeda, and through the town of Ibb. Ibb is a region of green. Brilliant green everywhere. It's so unlike anywhere else in Yemen and I took so many pictures and ah. It was so refreshing to see green mountainsides and green fields and grass.
It also thunderstormed as we went through the area, to make the experience complete. The rest of the bus ride involved keeping ourselves from jumping out of the bus. We sang, played song games, and kept asking "Are we there yet?"

Overall, definitely a trip worth taking. So anytime someone asks you, "Wanna go to Aden?" all you have to do is think, "Hey, why not?" and go. It's a volcano. On the Indian Ocean. Fantastic!

Tomorrow I leave for Ethiopia for the break between terms. Hopefully the pictures and stories will surpass anything I've seen so far!

Much love,
Katie

Wadi Hadramont - Seiyun

Woke up early this morning, our last day in Hadhramout, to take pictures before the dust and haze got too bad. The above picture is a panorama taken from the roof of our hotel. A quick dip into the pool and breakfast before we hopped back into the bus for the quick ride into Seiyun. I rode with the police again and told them the 'talking muffin' joke in Arabic! Success!
In Seiyun we took a quick trip to the National Handicraft Heritage Museum and Souq. A mess. But then we walked around the main souq and through the National Museum in Seiyun, which used to be the Imam's palace when the city was the capital of the Kathiri Sultanate.
After the museum we went to a fort on the outskirts of Seiyun that had completely fallen into disrepair and had just finished being restored. They had done the restorations using the same building material and tools as the original builders, hundreds of years ago.
The director of the fort met us at the door and walked us through the history of the fort before allowing us to walk around inside. It was hot, almost 110 F, and to be honest, most of the day consisted of reluctantly climbing out of the air conditioned buses and wandering around, waiting to get back in. We spent the morning in Seiyun and then did lunch and the pool one last time at the hotel, hopped in the airplane, and back to Sana'a we went!
Although the picture is a bit hazy, it is the only picture I have that shows the two separate levels in Hadhramout. The bottom part of the picture is the bottom of the wadi, and mid-to-upper section is the plateaus separated by the different wadis themselves.
All in all, it was a great trip. Hadhramout is a region unique from the rest of Yemen in both the people and the geography (and the weather - brutal). But definitly three days well spent.