Month: June 2008

Not much to update here. My friend Michael is here again, it’s his third time here since I’ve been here. He just can’t get enough of this place… He’s staying at my place for a while. Went to Luchiano’s place the other night. He had another get-together. As usual, there was really good food including an interesting white pizza with potatoes and rosemary.

I met an interesting Czech woman there. She’s working with a refugee organization here and is getting to see the country. She mentioned that she’s from the Czech Republic but had been living in Holland for a while. Since we were talking in English, I wondered how many languages she knew. “Oh, well of course I speak Czech and Slovak, I speak French about as well as I speak English, and I picked up Dutch while I was in Holland. I just started studying Arabic, so we’ll see how it goes…” Wow, I guess some people are just better at languages than others and I suppose that living in Europe will make it a little more important to acquire languages too. Still, it’s too bad I’m leaving, she’s someone I’d like to get to know better…

Not much left to do here. I got my exit visa, now it really feels like I’m going to leave! I still need to get down to the bank and recover the deposit I had to put down in order to get a residence visa. I’m also puttering around looking for cheap, interesting things to buy. Other than those things, all I really to do is pack and get on the plane. I can’t wait!!!

I was hoping to write about this once I was in Doha in order not to worry anyone. Yes, fighting broke out near Sana’a and they got within 12 miles of the city. It’s over now, so there’s nothing to worry about. I know it sounds bad, but things are under control. As usual, it’s difficult to figure out what happened, things that would usually be news are just rumors here. As far as I can make out, the government killed an important person in this area. That person lead some of the Houthis (a small sect of Shia muslims that are currently fighting the government up north) in that area, so his supporters decided to go all out in order to avenge him. It isn’t really clear why the government killed the guy, or even who it was that did it. I wonder if the parties involved even know…

There’s been an ongoing battle up north between the government and the Houthis. The war has been hot and cold over the last 4 years or so, but it’s pretty hot right now. I met a nice Christian couple last night and they told me about their experience up north in Sa’ada. How do I know that they’re Christian, they told me 3 or 4 times in our conversation… Anyway, they wanted to help, so they got together with a local NGO and they went up there to help distribute aid. There’s only one problem, foreigners are not allowed up there, certainly not Americans at least. The couple was letting the NGO “take care of things” and sure enough, they had no problems getting through all of the checkpoints getting up there. Once they got there, they were in hot water. Americans were not supposed to be there, and their presence made all of the people in command very nervous since they weren’t supposed to be there. Of course if the soldiers at the checkpoints had been doing their jobs, the couple would never had gotten up there.

It was a classic combination of do-gooders, Yemeni incompetence, and military paranoia. So after 36 hours in detention and a call to the embassy, everything was worked out. So yes, there are some problems here, and some of them might even be dangerous, but at least I have the good sense to stay the hell away from places like that. Don’t worry, everything is fine, people weren’t even talking about it, I had to ask around to hear about the fighting closer to the city. I’ll be home soon…

It rained quite a bit last night. I was on my way to get something to eat and go to the grocery store on hadda street. Luckily for me, I only had a quick dash from the dabob to the restaurant in the rain. By the time I had finished eating, it had stopped.

I still had to go shopping, and that led to getting a close up and personal look at the drainage situation on Hadda. I had written before about this, but now I was a pedestrian and it gave me a slightly different view. It turns out that the roads are indeed crowned. This means that the road itself was relatively free of water, it was all directed towards the edges. Here’s where the problem is… All of the water is directed towards the edges of the road, but there is no drainage system. There’s no grates or drains for the water.

Waterproof shoes are a wonderful thing. As a matter of fact, I highly recommend them if you’re coming to Yemen in the summer. Of course, they are only as effective as they are high. I’m really glad I have waterproof shoes, but I estimate that the water was 5-6 inches high along the gutters. I had to go down the side streets to find a place to ford the street. The good news is that I was one of the only people stupid enough to go shopping right about then, the store was deserted.

The sailia was a raging torrent. It was probably around 4 feet deep with a really swift current. People come out and admire the sailia when it’s like this. Actually, it was only men and boys last night. Maybe that was because of the hour, women are discouraged from going out after dark in the old city.

Anyway, the upshot is that I would avoid going anywhere within several hours of a heavy rainfall, it’s a mess and a little nasty. If you have boots, the city would essentially be yours, but I’ve never seen anyone wearing them here. There were several times that I thought that water had gotten into my shoes. Turns out it was just the cold water cooling my foot from the outside. I shudder to think of that water getting inside my shoes, how would I ever clean them? Of course the locals just waded through it with their sandals. I sure hope that they didn’t have any cuts on their feet…