Month: January 2008

Categories
Yemen

More on dowries

We talked about dowries some more yesterday and one of the women brought up an interesting point. She was in favor of dowries being as high as possible as a hedge against divorce. The idea is that if a guy hates his wife, he’ll think twice about divorcing her if he had to pay a really large amount. There really isn’t any stigma attached to a guy that is divorced, but divorced women live a shamed life. It’s unusual for a divorced women to be considered good marriage material, but it does happen… Anyway, a high dowry is one way for women to protect themselves here…

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teaching

Struggling a little

The new principle wants me to come to her with a list of topics that I plan on using for my conversational English class. I’m having trouble coming up with the 20 topics that she asked for. It’s harder than you might think… There are some obvious topics that can’t be brought up due to the culture here, there are a whole slew of topics that are just too controversial here (women’s rights/roles, Palestine/Israel, etc.), but the category that is giving me real trouble is the one encompassing all of the things that are outside of their knowledge due to a lack of education and insular culture. Talking about what kind of foods they like would be a short conversation, as would where they have travelled, pets, romantic relationships, etc.

Tami ran into a similar problem with her class. One day she asked them to bring in some pictures for the class to talk about, they all brought ID or passport pictures… She was expecting vacation pictures, pictures of relatives, anything really, but she got ID pictures instead…

So I’m struggling a little. I’m sure that once we start talking, the conversations will naturally flow, but in the meantime I need some topics to hand into the principle…

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Yemen

This is great…

Tami and her teacher were having a conversation about the American election process. Her teacher finally asked her if she was nervous about what would happen after the election. “Well, no, it’ll be a relief getting W. out of there…”
“But what if he doesn’t want to give up power?”

Wow, just… wow. Not much shows the differences in our cultures better than that statement. While I guess in theory if the president has the backing of the military, he could ignore the elections and rule via martial law, I can’t think of any American that thinks that that scenario is even remotely likely. Her teacher was expecting, at the very least, riots and demonstrations. I think we had some demonstrations in the last two very close races, I can’t remember any actual riots. Plus, the candidates were not the ones behind those things, or even their parties. Political stability, respect for the rule of law, and a transparent election system may be the most important things that separate the US from Yemen. The respecting the rule of law bit is sorely missed here, many of the problems here would be at least minimized if not eliminated if the government would just follow the rules…

Anyway, in this light, I expect the election to be pretty dull, but at least it’s going to be a good race:-)

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Economics

Here we go again…

There have been some complaints that the gas price is rising here in Yemen. The “official” price for 20 liters of gas is 1200 YR, that’s about $1.14 a gallon. Recently, there have been complaints that places are refusing to do 20 liters for that price, they “demand” 1800 YR instead. That’s a 50% increase, and that’s got to mean something. The government owned stations are still pumping at the official price, but if other stations can get away with charging 50% more, then I predict that the government stations will have long lines if not actual shortages. There’s no stopping prices, if price is rising, either supply is dropping or demand is increasing. In either case, there is less gas than there is demanded… The last time the government tried to raise prices there were riots. The same thing happened in Iran when they tried to raise the price of gasoline. As the price for gas keeps going up, governments (and especially ones like Iran and Yemen) can afford subsidies less and less. That’s one of the big problems with subsidies, people quickly become accustomed to the low prices and it doesn’t take too long before they feel entitled to them. When are governments going to learn?

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Yemen

ARGGH!

If I hear that Yemen is the “Ancestral home of Osama Bin Laden” one more time I am going to puke. This is one of the two phrases that always accompanies any mention of Yemen in the US press. The other phrase is “Site of the bombing of the USS Cole.” The Cole happened in 2000 and OSAMA WAS BORN IN SAUDI ARABIA!!! Sure, his father was born in Yemen, but so what? How come you never see, “Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Osama Bin Laden,” or even better yet, “Saudi Arabia, birthplace of more terrorists than you can shake a stick at…” Yeah, it’s fricking Saudi, not Yemen, Iran, Syria, Libya, or even Palestine, it’s Saudi fricking Arabia. Quit picking on Yemen, this place has enough problems, no need to saddle it with the responsibility of Osama too…

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Yemen

An intertesting discussion

I sat in on another class today and they were discussing whether or not high dowries were a problem in Yemen. They all agreed that they could be, but they disagreed about what a good dowry was. The debate went back and forth, finally they asked me what I thought. I had no idea of course. There were a little surprised that there isn’t a dowry in the US (I didn’t have the heart to tell them that most of the world had given that up a long time ago…). I also tried to explain how horrified parents would be if a man offered to “buy” their daughter. The students didn’t relate at all of course. I did concede that the man usually has to buy a ring, usually with a diamond. That mollified them a little, but they were still a little confused. In hindsight, I should have emphasized how the parents really don’t have a say in the marriage in the US. Just one more cultural bump to deal with, I think my conversation class will emphasize the differences between what is acceptable to talk about in Yemen vs. the US. Wondering how much a man should pay for his bride in the US will get him, at the very least, condescending stares….

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odds and ends

Getting things together

OK, I think I’ve got the apartment stuff taken care of. I’ve unpacked, thrown out the old junk, and mostly rearranged what need to be. I’m settling in nicely, it’s great to have my own place. When I left the other place, there was a family downstairs, and Karl and an American that Karl and I referred to as “the ghost.” He got that moniker because he made himself scarce all the time. He wasn’t interested in being social with anyone, and went out of his way to avoid us. The only way we knew he was there was by his incessant swearing in the kitchen. He really made a ruckus in the mornings. As far as I could tell, it was always about something silly, like dropping something. He really swore up a blue streak though. I asked Karl about him and Karl said that he had had enough, he moved out. He said the last straw was when he heard the ghost swearing one morning and he worked the phrase, “They’ll kill us all…” into it. When Karl asked him if everything was alright, the ghost responded that he didn’t want to talk about it and then slammed the door to his room. Why are all the weird ones American?

For some reason, the jet lag really hit me hard this time. It took several days before I didn’t feel totally out of it and/or want to go to sleep at 5pm. I’m also really feeling all of the laying around I did back home. I walked to the store and back and I literally was having trouble standing up, my knees were buckling. My legs are getting better, but I’m still not 100%. Well, there’s only one way to fix that problem…

The other business that had to be taken care of was the schedules for class and for work. My teacher is busy until the 30th, so I won’t have any classes until then. I want to stay with Mahmoud because he’s really making me work on my spoken Arabic. I’m forced to come up with some way of expressing myself and that keeps me on my toes. There’s a new manager where I work, so I had to go over all of the stuff that I thought that i had taken care of before I left. The good news is that they are really excited to have me there and are scrambling to get me into some classes. They’re going to form a conversational class for me, and I’ll take over a mid-high level class as well. It looks like things will be pretty much normal come Feb. 1. Whew! It’s been some work, but I’m feeling good about everything now…

Categories
Yemen

I’m back

I got back to the new apartment without any trouble. I’ve mostly unpacked, but the place is a total mess right now. I was pleasantly surprised to find the apartment very clean and tidy when I got there, I have since spread my crap everywhere… The previous tenants left a bunch of stuff behind, some of it useful, and lots of it that wasn’t. There was a whole trunk of clothes left behind, all of which was too small for me. I put it out in a heap outside the gate, it took all of 10 minutes for it to be taken away. I’m sure that whoever took it will enjoy that stuff. The shower gets high marks from me, plenty of pressure. I also slept well, I don’t have a bed, but I do have a real mattress. The last place had a bed, but the mattress was so thin that I was effectively sleeping on plywood. My new place is, on the whole, quieter as well. I don’t have the traffic, kids playing right outside my window, or the trash truck to make lots of noise. That’s not to say that it’s perfectly quiet, this is Sana’a of course… The call to prayer is incredibly loud, there’s no sleeping through that one. I don’t know if the mosque is really close or if they’re just really loud, but wow… My neighbor has a rooster, I’ve been told that I’ll get used to that, but I’m not so sure.

Anyway, I’m happy to be in my place, I should have it organized soon.

Categories
travel

In Doha

The flight was fine, but there’s a big difference between a 13 hour flight right after 8 hours of sleep and a 13 hour flight after you’ve been up for 12 hours… It wasn’t crowded at all, I had my three seats all to myself. I’m still too big to sleep on there though, even with the armrests up, I couldn’t find a position that didn’t have nerve pinching results. So I was dead on my feet when I got here, but the sleep did me good. I’m hoping that staying up for 24+ hours and then the regular sleep cycle of going to bed at 10 and getting up at 6 will keep my jet lag adjustment down to a couple of days. The flight to Sana’a is in a coupe of hours, I hope to be back online in a couple of days.

Categories
travel

I’m going back!

Well, tonight I catch my flight back to Yemen. It’ll be a long flight (14 hours) and I doubt i’ll be in any sort of shape to go swimming at the pool in Doha. Still, I got a couple of books for Christmas, and they have plenty of music and movies for me to watch, so I think it’ll be fine. My trip back this time was, if anything, a little more disorientating than last time. Everything reminds me of how rich we are, things here look almost perfect compared to Yemen. Now that I’ve been there for so long, that is what is normal to me. In truth of fact, a lot of the world is closer to being like Yemen than it is to being like the US. I’ll post more once I’m back and I feel like my head has cleared a little. Thanks to everyone that I got to visit, come on over to Yemen, it’s a worthwhile trip to make!