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