Month: October 2007

Categories
Yemen

It looks like I’m not the only one…

I read a recent op-ed in the Yemen times that summed up my experience of Ramadan. The editor apologized for the thin papers out out during Ramadan. She then said that they tried to put out the normal papers, but because of the fasting people were apparently unable to work, or think (her words). She then pointed out that Yemen is the only place where you are not expected to continue with your regular life during Ramadan. You are supposed to fast during the day, so the Yemenis turn day into night. They stay up all night and sleep during the day. Not only does this screw up productivity, but it also calls into question the entire reason behind Ramadan. If the fasting isn’t difficult, does it have any meaning? Yemen basically shuts down for a month and a week. I agree with the editor that a country as poor as Yemen can ill afford throwing away 8% of their productivity a year…

Categories
Rants

Gah!

My money is slipping away quickly. I’ve renewed my health insurance, I finially paid my rent for october, Just paid a million riyals (rounding to the nearest million of course)to get my visa extended, I need to pay for my tuition, and I’m going to buy an airline ticket to go home for Christmas. A while back, I had made a calculation that said that I could be here until september of next year, but I’ve veered from my budget significantly. The big blows have been the two round trip airline tickets back home. They were necessary though, I needed them for my sanity. They were worth about 4 to 5 months of living here though… I’ve also strayed from my food budget. I’ve given up eating on the cheap, the food just isn’t that good. It’s not that I’m spending a lot on food, but more than I budgeted for. Even the best places to eat are only on a par with the restaurants back home, and I’m usually eating at places cheaper than that.

I should start teaching soon, so that should take up the slack in my money supply. At this point, I will come back after Christmas for at least a couple more months. If I’m getting what I hope I can get from the school, I’ll do another year here. I should find out soon enough…

Categories
Rants

Bank issues

A few weeks ago, I tried to withdraw some money from an ATM here while it was being filled with money. It spit out the card and told me to wait. When they were done, I put it back in and there were no problems. A little while later my father informed me that my bank had sent a letter informing me of “suspicious activity” with my ATM card. I had to call them up and verify the transactions (including the botched one). Today, I went down to the ATM and it told me that my bank has refused the transaction. What the hell? I’ve been using this card here, in Dubai, Istanbul, Greece, and Malta without any problems for the past year.
Now
they’re suspicious… It isn’t a huge deal just yet, but I need to straighten this out, it’s the only way I have of getting money here. Yemen is strictly a cash economy, credit cards are all but useless here. Well, I guess I’ll call them again, wish me luck…
Categories
Arabic

Classes start tomorrow

I haven’t been doing any Arabic studying for a month or so. I have been talking on and off, and just like my other breaks, I feel that I am more comfortable with the Arabic that I know. Of course I also realize that there are some words that I have forgotten, they just aren’t coming to me when I need them. That’s easy enough to fix, review is always easier than learning new stuff. I’ve also been scanning some of the Arabic newspapers and I feel that I’m getting more out of them. I still can’t sit down and read them, but I’m getting the idea of a lot of headlines now. there’s two problems with me and the headlines. The first is that I just don’t know all the words. That’ll come with time. The other problem is that often times the headlines don’t make any sense. They only hint at what the article is about as opposed to summarizing it. Many times, I don’t really know what the article is about. I’ve been told that this is on purpose.
The newspapers in this part of the world tend to be written in a more literary style than the US. I’ve been told that this is because when they were released from colonial rule, they didn’t have any newspaper tradition at all. The governments went to the only writers that they had access to, men studying Arabic and Arabic literature. The press here is frequently criticized for being too editorializing and not facts based enough. I’m betting that their headline writing is a symptom of this.
I’m hoping that in the next part of my class, we’ll concentrate more on the papers and perhaps doing some more word drills. I’d like to have some text in front of me and be forced to identify the subject, object, predicate (which doesn’t necessarily involve verbs), masdars (gerunds to us English speakers), participles, etc. It’ll be about as thrilling as it sounds, but it will help me considerably. The dictionaries for Arabic frequently only list the roots of words, so if I’m looking for a participle, gerund, plural, or any other number of variations, I could very well be out of luck unless I can spot the root. If I come across a word I don’t know (which is very frequently in the papers), I usually need to know what part of speech it is in order to look it up.
I consider this progress. At least now I know what I need to know in order to learn more… I’m also hoping that studying will be more interesting if it’s primarily reading. We’ll see how it goes…

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Categories
Economics

Sounds like a good program…

If you’re interested in how developing countries can improve, this show sounds like it will be interesting. It’s nice to see how people can help themselves instead of relying on the government to come to their rescue…

Hello.  Thank you again for giving us coverage on the Milton Friedman biography which aired on PBS in January.  We alerted you earlier in the year to our new program

The Ultimate Resource
.  I am pleased to announce the program is scheduled to broadcast on PBS starting November 2, 2007 at 8PM EST.  A list of broadcasting stations is available here:
http://www.freetochoosemedia.net/production/ultimate_resource/press/ur_station_listings.pdf


The program was filmed on location world-wide.  In Ghana, we document parents striving to choose the best schools for their children.  Knowing school choice is a topic of much interest, we thought you might want to alert your readers to this program.  Below, you’ll find links to the segment on school choice, as well as other segment previews.  

Direct link to the Ghana segment dealing with school choice:

http://www.ideachannel.tv/video/videopreview2.php?video=victoria_long

Link to all previews of
The Ultimate Resource:


http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/production/ultimate_resource/press.php

Link via YouTube to the Ghana segment dealing with school choice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7efh-2J1A4
 
The program features some of today’s most leading experts.  In Bangladesh, we interview 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus.  In Peru, we speak to economist Hernando de Soto.  James Tooley, Professor of Education Policy, is featured in the segment on school choice.  And scholar Johan Norberg meets us in Estonia to discuss the country’s huge leap in economic grown since the fall of the Soviet Union.

We would appreciate you alerting your readers to the PBS broadcast of
The Ultimate Resource
.  Please let me know if I can provide additional information or a DVD screener.

Kind regards,
 
Christina Belski, Promotion Coordinator
Free To Choose Media   
Phone: 814-833-7140
Email:
christina@freetochoosemedia.org

Web:
www.freetochoosemedia.org
 

 
Categories
Arabic

Good Luck

We just got in a new housemate from Italy. We talked with him for a bit last night and got some basic info about the whys wheres and hows of him being here. Turns out that he’s a programmer and his employer wants someone that can communicate in Arabic and/or read instructions in Arabic so that they can branch out into this world. So what did they do? They sent him here for 3 weeks. He doesn’t know a lick of Arabic and he will be here for three weeks to learn what his boss wants. He’ll be taking 6 hours of class a day, but even with that, there’s no way in hell anyone could be useful in this language in three weeks. With 6 hours a day, the chances of him remembering a majority of what they go over in class is close to zero. I’ve been in this country 8 or 9 months and I’m just now getting confident enough to talk to people regularly. No, I’m not the world’s best language student, but still, this is a tough language, three weeks? Give me a break…

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Categories
Yemen

Heart health in Yemen

My uncle just had a heart attack a couple of days ago. He went into the hospital complaining of chest pains and subsequently had the attack while he was there. They took care of him, installed a stent, and it sounds like he’s doing OK. If you’re going to have a heart attack, having it in the hospital is probably the best place to do it…

I started thinking about what would have happened here. People tend to avoid the hospitals here, and for good reason. I have yet to hear of a good report of any hospital here, and the amount of questionable medicine practiced here is unbelievable. If someone felt chest pains, they probably wouldn’t go to the hospital. If they had a heart attack, they would just have to pray that they would survive it. Even if it happened in the hospital, I’m not sure there’s too much that they could do. I’m pretty sure that installing stents and angioplasty are out of the question. My teacher’s uncle was in really bad shape, he needed heart bypass surgery but get this, they don’t do that in Yemen. Bypass surgery is serious stuff, but it is fairly common in the US, it just isn’t done here. They just don’t have the expertise. Luckily for my teacher’s uncle, a team from Europe was here to train people, so they used him as a teaching aid.

We moan and gripe about our healthcare in the US, but the fact is that a homeless man now can receive better care than the president of the United States did in the 1950’s. We’ve come a long way, and Yemen has a long ways to go…

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Categories
odds and ends

Some people are leaving

One of my housemates left today and I can’t say I’m unhappy about it. He was unusual for a housemate that I didn’t care for in that he didn’t do anything big wrong, but he did every little thing wrong. He didn’t do his dishes, he (and his room) smelled, he constantly interrupted me while we were talking, was always asking to borrow things, and generally got on my nerves. He was from Austria and lectured me several times about the domestic American political situation. If that wasn’t bad enough, he even made me jealous by doing things that I can’t do through his connections at UNDP. Anyway, he’s gone, and after we air the place out a bit I’m sure I’ll get back to normal…

Morris also left yesterday. He’s an odd guy, probably in his mid 60’s and from North Carolina. He’s had an interesting life, including living in various parts of Africa for 13 straight years in the 80’s and 90’s. He is the only person I have ever met that could drop lines into conversations like, “That reminds me of a time when I was working on a railroad in Gabon…” An educated redneck, that’s what he called himself, he’s got degrees from American U. and UVA. While he had many interesting stories to tell, he could be a bit difficult to be with for a while, hard drinking and smoking are two attributes that describe him well. With a few drinks in him, his North Carolina redneck self came out, he dropped N___ bombs without compunction.

We get an odd group here at the school. i guess it’s fair to say that it takes an odd person to come here at all. Even the people I don’t like add a little something to the experience here, I’ll remember all of them.

Categories
Yemen

And just like that, it’s over

I had just started to get into the swing of Ramadan. I got used to the idea of not drinking or eating outside, I even switched my sleep schedule to align with everyone else’s. Usually, things would be pretty loud all night. People were walking and talking up and down the streets and starting around 1:30 AM, the prayers and chants were blasted throughout the old city. The other night, Michael and I were up talking. We chatted past 1, then 2, and around 3AM we realized that it was totally silent, wow, Ramadan was over.

Then started Eid Al-Fitur, a 5 day celebration. The first day was very much like Christmas day back in the states. I felt like it was 9AM on Christmas morning, not a thing was open and there were very few people on the street. Later on in the day, all the kids came out with new toys and new clothes. Many of them had toy guns, which from a distance looked a little too real to me. They were very charming, “shooting” each other and especially the foreigners. Tami got a blast in the face from a water gun… Many of the girls were wandering around in their new dresses and other types of clothes, showing off their purses and other accouterments. There seems to be more open today, I think things are getting back to normal.

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Categories
odds and ends

Bleah

I’ve got a slight cold, that plus the really dry air here is making it uncomfortable for me at night. Last night I basically didn’t sleep, I was up until 8AM. I’d like to blame it on the noise, but I think it was me… The good news is that I’ll probably crash tonight no matter how much noise there is outside…