Category: Yemen

Today was one of those days that I could have been in a really rotten mood, but because I’m off to China tomorrow, things didn’t faze me, much. I was running around doing things when I realized that I hadn’t eaten yet and that I wanted pizza. I hopped on a dabob, and 35 min later I was at Pizziaola, the best pizza in town. Of course I had neglected to look at the time, it was 5 O’clock. No problem, right? Wrong, nothing opens for dinner until 7pm. Grrrr… OK, back home many restaurants don’t start serving until later, but there are at least some that are open at 5pm. I was starving, but I decided not to take the dabob back and forth again. I hung around the far end of Hadda street looking around and killing some time at an internet cafe. I was there at 7pm sharp, dying of hunger. I had a salad (a so called Caesar.. It was pretty good, but it was no caesar salad), garlic bread, a pizza, and 2 pepsis. It’s the last thing that worries me, I wonder if I’ll sleep tonight? No biggie, I’ll pack and then hang out on the internet until I get tired. Well, I’m typing in the dark, we have just had our second power outage of the day. I’m hoping that it’ll come back on soon. My next post will probably be from Dubai, I’ve got about 13 hours to kill in the airport. Yeah free wireless!

Unesco is threatening to take the old city of Sana’a and Zabeed off of its list of world heritage sites. Unesco claims that neglect “by the government” and people’s modifying of their houses is changing the character of the cities. I understand that Unesco sends money to these places for being on the world heritage site, but this is a little weird to me. Paying the government to take care of people’s houses and to enforce restrictions on what they can do with their own property is odd. And that’s assuming a well functioning government was in charge. In addition to the ethical questions, Unesco sending money to maintain the status quo creates some really perverse incintives. First of all, people that have money move out of these places to houses that they can do what they like to them. People that stay have little to no incentive to take care of their properties since it is the government’s problem… If I were one of the officials that received this threat, I would respond like this:

To whom it may concern:

We received your letter stating your intention to remove both Sana’a and Zabeed from the world heritage sites list if the modification or deterioration of buildings in these cites does not stop. As you know, Yemen is considered a developing economy. We have made some significant advances and instituted structural changes that will allow us to grow. Our government services sector is stretched to the limit. As a matter of fact, many of our citizens are unable, due to a number of reasons, to avail themselves to the government services that are offered. As such, we have neither the time nor the money to police what people do with their own houses or maintain private property for them. If you are truly interested in preserving these buildings and in helping the Yemeni economy, we suggest that you buy, restore, and maintain the properties that meet your specifications. If you are unwilling or unable to do so, we respectfully ask that you get off our backs. Whatever agreement that had been reached before we will gladly repudiate in exchange for the freedom of our cities to grow and change as the residents desire. We realize that it will break your hearts to see residents of our city to live in newer buildings that fit their desires, but we feel that it is worth it.

With all of my constant carping, you might wonder why I also want people to come out and visit. Well first of all, I miss you guys! Secondly, this place is a pretty amazing place to visit. The general consensus among students here is that 2 weeks would be the optimal amount of time to spend here. It’s long enough to see the sights (and there are plenty) but not long enough for the “adventure” to turn into a pain in the ass.

First off, the sights. This place is truly beautiful and there is a wide range of geographic variety. The mountains, the sea (Arabian and Red), the plains, the city, etc. The old city of Sana’a is worth the trip alone. There is no other place like it on earth, it is a UN world heritage site, and it is old. It’s best to visit the plains (which hook around the west and souther parts of the country along the water) in the fall or winter, otherwise you’ll get a full dose of Saudi peninsula heat and humidity. The other parts of the country are at a fairly high elevation, so they can be comfortably visited any time of the year.

For you westerners out there, the culture here is definitely worth experiencing. It is completely different from America and that in itself makes it worth seeing. Different food, different customs, different clothes, you name it, it’s different here.

If you are interested in an education in arabic, this is also a great place. Everyone speaks Arabic, Yemeni dialect to be sure, but Arabic nonetheless. If you are a muslim, this place also has many religious schools that date back to the time of the prophet Mohammed (MPBUH). To say that this place has a long history of hadith study is an understatement…

And lastly, it’s a really cheap vacation. This place is pretty poor, there are some significant downsides to that. But like I said before, with only 2 weeks, it retains it’s “adventure” status. A really good meal, as good as you can get in a restaurant here will set you back about 10 bucks a person. Typical meals will cost between a buck (for street food) and 5 bucks. The best hotel in the old city runs 68 bucks a night. The regular ones are closer to 35 a night. Once you get outside Sana’a, you can expect the price (and quality) to drop. There are what are called 5 star hotels here, but most people I talk to say that they are really more like 3 to 4 star hotels. They are very expensive (100-150 a night) and are never near anything that is worth seeing. I would recommend skipping them.

But what about safety? Isn’t Yemen a lawless, American hating hot bed of muslim extremism? I have to admit, I was appalled when I read the latest bulletin from the state department. It made it sound like the place is a powder keg and they do nothing but hate Americans. I have never had anything but positive reactions to the news that I am an American. Even people that may not be crazy about me would be very upset if something bad happened to a “guest” in his country. Sana’a is the safest city I have ever been in crime-wise. I never hesitate to walk through the city late at night, crime like theft and robbery is almost unheard of, especially against foreigners. I have a feeling that the combination of lack of illegal drug use, conservative muslim upbringing, traditional respect for guests, and very harsh punishments account for this.

Having said that, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if areas further north were more anti-American/west. The areas around Saudi are the very definition of conservative and poor. This isn’t anything to worry about though there’s no reason to go up there. I relate it to American cities. Every city has an area that it is not wise to go into, especially at night alone. Once again, there really isn’t any reason to go into those parts of cities any way. The worst part of Sana’a is safer than the best part of DC or NYC crime-wise. Even if you did want to go up there, the police won’t let you… You don’t have to worry about people from up north coming down to cause trouble either. They, along with most Yemenis tend to stick close to their tribe and homes. There’s really not much of a reason for them to come down here.

So, in short, this place is a very interesting, beautiful, cheap, and SAFE place to visit. I really hope that some of my family gets the chance to come out here (Nathan, are you reading this?) but I encourage anyone that is thinking of doing it to just do it. You won’t regret it….

I went searching for my vacuum tubes again. I had hoped that there would be a stash of them here that I could get for cheap. I’m running into the problem that when vacuum tubes were king, Yemen was still in the stone age. By the time they started to use electronics, the tube era was long past. Still, the Brits were here for ages, and south Yemen was allied with the the Soviet Union, so I’m holding out hope… Anyway, the last time I went looking, someone told me to go look down Zubayairi street. so I went there. I started to ask around and someone told me that a place on the other end of Zubairi might have them. Back to Bab-Al-Yemen to go searching… I wandered around, showing people the picture I have. Most had no idea what it was, but several pointed me towards a street. I wandered up and down the street, no one seemed to have any idea of what I was looking for. Oh well, lots of exercise, maybe down in Aden there might be some… hmmm.

I did manage to find where the “taxis” for longer trips are. They have these rows of cars waiting, each row is to a specific destination. The cars are a mid sized one, and the squeeze 6 or 7 into them. I don’t think I’d be too keen on an 11 hour drive down to Aden in one of those. A little too “cozy” for my tastes. Still, it’s good to know, maybe I can take a cheap trip down to Taizz one of these days.

I may survive this place yet, I went to a thoroughly western coffee place today. I don’t drink coffee, but they do have cheesecake (actually it’s very good!), brownies, etc. I enjoy the Arabic sweets I’ve been eating, but it’s nice to have some comfort food sometimes. I’ll probably go there whenever I end up on Hada street looking for dessert. I also got a tip on a place way down on Hada that sells bacon, ham, and some other pork stuff. This is just hearsay at this point, but I am really excited. Decent pizza, cheesecake, and now possibly pork, life here is looking up!

There is a flurry of activity going on after the first “Invest in Yemen” extravaganza. Some of the things sound quite good and I’m impressed by what has been proposed. One of the best things is the elimination of an entire division of the government. I don’t remember the exact names of the departments, but there are currently two different departments that foreign investors have to go through to get the required permissions. The president has make it clear that he wants what he calls a “Single window” approach. I think that that is his goal, to be able to go to one department (and perhaps one person) and take care of everything that relates to opening a business here. To start, he has ordered (not really sure how this works and who has jurisdiction over what) the elimination of one of the departments so that there is only one that is responsible for these sorts of things. That is going to be huge, making things simpler is much more attractive. It also removes a potential layer of corruption. In an ideal world, those positions in the old department would just be done away with and the government shrunk a little. My cynical view is that those people will probably just be reassigned to other parts of the government.

They are also going to lower tax rates (although they want to impose a sales tax), have generous land privileges (they will just give you the land if the capital investment is over $10 million), and try to get the weapons thing under control (see earlier post). One of the more refreshing things has been the admission of the amount of corruption and the toll it has taken on the economy and the investment world. Admitting there is a problem is a first step… only 11 more steps to go, LOL. A recent article in the paper talks about how the military police will start to crack down on traffic incidents involving military vehicles. It has become a bit of a problem, more than a few military people flout the laws, cause accidents, or otherwise just bully traffic. The police have also admitted that a lot of the vehicles that have the blue police license plates aren’t police vehicles at all, they only have them so that they can get through customs check points. Once again, they didn’t give any details on how they hope to combat this problem, but it is refreshing to hear them admit some of their problems. Here’s hoping that it is the start of a real reform that will move this place forward. Yemen, I’m giving you a break for a while, but don’t regress!:-)

Yes, that has always been an oxymoron, but the government is going to attempt to limit and control weapon ownership soon. The idea is that so called medium and heavy weapons will be banned altogether whereas “personal” weapons will be allowed with a permit. Pistols and kalashnikovs are considered personal, so I guess medium weapons would be higher caliber guns and heavy would be tanks and things that can take out tanks and airplanes.

This is going to be difficult. Tribal traditions place a lot of importance on weapons. Some Sheiks have their own armies and are at least as well equipped as the government’s army. I’m pretty sure they are the real targets of the new laws. I can’t imagine trying to disarm the Bedouins, that just wouldn’t happen…

We’ll see how much political conflict there will be over this. These laws are a pretty straightforward defanging operation, and people have every reason to be nervous about this government subjugating them. Here’s the thing, Yemen really needs to get the weapon thing under control. It isn’t as though there’s a lot of gun violence, but government control is vital to allowing the country to grow. People have to be under the same justice system, the same laws, and be on the same page if they are to improve economically. Right now, the “justice” system consists primarily of scattered tribes and their customs. Sheiks have their own jails, and revenge is an accepted way of settling conflicts. I think that Somalia has made this government a little nervous. Yemen is in much better shape than their neighbor across the horn, but one can imagine things getting bad over the years. I’m not usually a fan of a stronger government, but this is a case where the government’s weakness is holding back the development of the country. I wish them luck…