Month: September 2007

My newish roommate hasn’t shown himself to be very prepared for this place. Tomorrow he will go on a UN sponsored trip to some mountainous areas down south. We had a power outage of course, so he was having difficulty packing. He asked to borrow my flash light. I said sure, I wasn’t using it. He goes into his room and comes right back out. “Hey, I’ve got some sort of problem with my ATM card and I can’t get any money out of it. I have 2000 riyals right now, could I borrow another 2000 riyals? I’ll pay you back on friday…” I was dumbfounded. OK, things happen and banking in Yemen from anywhere can be a bit of a pain. What surprised me was the fact that he was willing to go on a 4 day trip into the outlying areas of southern Yemen with the equivalent of 20 bucks in his pocket. Not only are credit cards useless out there, there are no ATM machines either. Everything is done with cash, how can you even think that 20 bucks will be enough? I tried to loan him another 8000, he would only take 7000. The boy doesn’t seem too with it, or incredibly naive, or maybe just really inexperienced. Maybe all three…

If you look for negatives, you’ll find them. After typing up my little rant on revenge (see below), I went to Tahreer to troll for some English newspapers and some juice. There’s a parking lot next to Tahreer, but it’s never used as one. Every time I go by there is either a pick-up game of soccer (or football to all you non-Americans) or there is a guy that rents out time on motor scooters and ATVs. It’s a strange thing, people pay some money and then they zoom around and around the lot. One end of the parking lot has the entrances onto the main road and the other side has a high wall. I noticed that the kids on the scooters were blowing the horn constantly. There is no reason to blow your horn as you approach a wall, it isn’t going anywhere. No, they are just exercising their annoying tendency to make as much noise as possible. Just then, I remembered something that happened today. As I came home from class, a guy was fiddling with his motorcycle by the house. A little kid came up and asked him something, the guy pointed at something and the kid proceeded to push the button. Needless to say, it was the horn.

Just as that oh so pleasant memory was sinking in a little kid came careening towards me. He was on one of those things that are half wagon half bicycle. It was empty, but just like many other kids on bikes he decided that it would be “fun” or perhaps “funny” to scare the westerner. Kids do this all the time, and it’s really annoying. So I didn’t move at all. He managed to come to a stop before hitting me and I gave him a look showing my distinct displeasure. I had almost hoped that he would hit me, almost. I muttered a little something under my breath (best not repeated) and threw his wagon part out of my way. He had a suitably scared look on his face as he biked away. Oh come on, I wasn’t going to do anything to him, he was probably all of 8 years old. I may be many things, but I don’t beat up kids…

It’s days like these that make me worry about my teaching gig coming up. I’m afraid I’ll come into class and start off with some new words for them like, “Myopic, selfishness, pig-headed, ignorant, egocentric, self-absorbed, and thoughtless.” I wouldn’t actually swear in class, that would be unprofessional. I just need to sit down and do my homework, and tomorrow I’ll make an effort to stick to the lesson…

I attempted to have a discussion with my teacher about revenge. Not such a good idea it turns out. I got the ugly mentality that I expected. I had brought up the new gun ban and he basically said that the law would have no real impact. There is too much “cultural” significance for the men to give up their guns. Whenever I hear this, I can’t help but think that it is just another pissing contest for men to engage in. From my eyes, it always looked like they were trying to make up for “something.” Anyway, he then talked about how they like to shoot into the air during celebrations. “Isn’t that dangerous?” He said that they didn’t care, most of them have a very fatalistic view. They will die when they are supposed to die. Whether it is from a bullet or a car crash it doesn’t matter. If you were meant to die that day, you were going to die. Wait a minute, that doesn’t exactly jibe with the whole concept of vengeance. That’s when things got somewhat heated…

He was predictably appalled at the idea of the government handling justice. You should do it yourself is the overriding feeling here. His argument against even a good government administering justice was that those are man’s laws, not God’s. I tried the whole “God is the only just judge,” idea. I thought that idea would have some traction, but no. He complained that it would take too long and that the government could get it wrong. “Well, couldn’t a person carrying out God’s laws get it wrong?” He would not listen, and even refused to accept the idea that people might misapply God’s laws. More importantly, he did not see the connection between the desire for vengeance and the current situations between warring tribes and never ending vengeance quests (Someone from one tribe kills another, so that tribe kills someone from the offending tribe, so they kill back, repeat for a 100 years..). “That is different,” he said, “Those people are not following God’s laws.”

Blink Blink

He didn’t see the connection. The idea of mechanisms doesn’t have a lot popularity here. In most people’s minds here, justice and vengeance are the same thing. If they can’t see the obvious problems with vengeance, what are the chances that they will understand the concept of a civil society? Honor and saving face is everything here, sometimes to the detriment to everything else. I didn’t have the guts to tell him that if he wonders why western people sometimes think that Arabs are “animals” or “uncivilized” he need look no further than their obsession with vengeance.

There is a new law going into effect right now that basically bans weapons in the cities of Yemen. The police have been stopping cars and doing searches and the general consensus is that they are stopping many people from carrying weapons around. It isn’t clear if it is an outright ban on guns or just banning them from being carried. It’s also not clear at this point if this was a presidential directive or something passed by parliament. I’m pretty sure that the right to own weapons is in the Yemeni constitution, but that has never stopped the president or the legislature from passing laws that they wanted to. It is fairly common for a law to be enforced even when everyone knows that it contradicts the constitution…

There are always potential problems when it comes to banning guns, especially when they were so common before. The most obvious one is that not everyone will be willing to give up their weapons. Especially here in Yemen where they have tribal significance, carrying a knife (the Jambiya) has long been a measure of your “manhood” here, guns just add to that. The other potential problem is one that we see in the US quite a bit. If everyone gives up their gun, that means that anyone that smuggles one in is free to do what they want. Washington DC is a prime example, they have had one of the worst gun caused homicide rate in the nation despite having one of the strictest gun control laws. That law has been struck down (it is pending in the US supreme court), with any luck the homicide rate will drop once that gets through the system. I don’t think that will be as much of a problem here. From what I gather, armed robbery, muggings, etc. are pretty rare here. In addition, there isn’t nearly the drug trade (and the associated violence) here that there is in the states. The main problems here are disputes (usually land and/or tribal related) that escalate into gun fights. The government is also claiming that the vast quantities of guns scares off tourists and even foreign investment. Those sound plausible enough…

I see this kind of like the Va. Tech shooting conundrum. If people were carrying guns, that nutjob wouldn’t have been able to rack up such a high body count. On the other hand, if guns were really common on campus, you could expect that the number of stupidity related gun accidents would rise. In the end, there is a relatively small chance that a lone gunman will go around shooting the place up, so it makes sense to limit guns on campus. Here, the chances of being robbed or assaulted are pretty slim, so limiting the number of guns makes some sense. It will be interesting to see if the lack of armed assaults were due to the deterrence factor of many people being armed. Will the would be robbers now feel that they have free reign? It is a common belief that most women here have a gun under their balto. My usual quip is that you need to be prepared, you never know when you’ll have to extract revenge…

One of the more interesting parts is that most bodyguards will no longer be able to carry weapons. People guarding certain government people will be allowed to carry pistols. I suppose the president can always assign some army troops with heavier arms if he feels the need to do so. I’m curious to see how this goes. Seeing a sheik with 3 or 4 Kalishnikov toting bodyguards is a pretty common sight. You can be sure that they will fight the new law tooth and nail, or at least claim that they are an exception (the typical “above the law” attitude that most sheiks seem to have.) The paper has already witnessed one sheik flaunting the rule, I want to see how the government reacts. My guess is that the government will allow certain ones, the ones the government needs favors from, to get away with it. The hell of it is that most sheiks do not need armed bodyguards, it is a status thing. They don’t feel like VIPs unless they have an armed entourage. I will be following this intently…