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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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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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…
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.
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.
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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!
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Revealed preference
I had a good time last, went over to Olga’s place and we chatted for hours. I met her in Yemen last year, so we had plenty of things to talk about. It ended up being largely a major bitch session…
“…can you believe that they’re like that?”
“..it was the most disgusting thing I ever saw.”
“… I mean God, how stupid can someone be?”
“… those poor women.”
“… the government is so screwed up…”
“… the men are clueless…”
and on and on until finally,
“(SIGH) I miss that place.”
quickly, “Me too!”
A tried and true maxim is that if you want to know what people really think, look at what they do and not what they say. In economics, it is called revealed preference, and it’s a powerful thing. Olga and I had plenty to complain about, but I’m going back for another year and she would love to go back for an extended time. Obviously Yemen is doing something right…
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Antarctic ice
A recent report says that ice in the antarctic is melting at an increasing rate. This leads to many worries about water levels rising since there is a significant amount of water stored down there. As expected, this news is being used to “prove” how global warming is ruining the planet. There’s only one problem, there isn’t an appreciable rise in temperatures down there.
This article in today’s Washington post is what alerted me to this. They mention that the temperature has not changed and they think that ocean currents are to blame for the melting of the ice. Shortly after that, the “scientist” says that they believe that CO2 forcing is what caused it. Umm, that’s not science, that’s conjecture. Hell, it isn’t even conjecture, it’s a statement of faith. There isn’t any evidence of warming in Antarctica, there isn’t any evidence of warming in the oceans in the southern hemisphere, but melting ice HAS to be caused by CO2 forcings on the “global” temperature…
Don’t get me wrong, rapidly melting antarctic ice is a big problem, I just wish that there was some science involved in determining the cause and any potential corrective actions that need to be taken. a similar situation in the arctic made people gnash their teeth about the plight of the polar bears and how warm things were. It turns out that the temperature had not changed significantly (so by definition, there was no warming) and with a little more analysis from NASA it was determined that changing sea currents are what caused the loss of arctic sea ice. It was also thouight that this trend would turn around soon. Before we jump to conclusions, we need to have some science done…
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Reading about Islam
I’ve been doing a little reading about Islam while I’ve been here. It’s been a little frustrating trying to learn about it in Yemen, nobody I talk to seems to have any more than a superficial understanding of their religion. Worse, they have zero experience with other religions, that makes it particularly difficult to converse or to find common ground.
I was reduced to picking up a copy of “Islam for Dummies,” Don’t laugh, it’s a decent enough introduction. I’ve also bought some books on Sufis and another on the various sects and divisions. I’ve learned a few interesting things…
Muslims see Jesus as a very important prophet, but not divine. This I knew and I though was one of the basic differences between Muslims and Christians. Muslims do believe in Jesus’ virgin birth, that caught me by surprise. They hold Mary in very high regard (she is supposedly one of the three “purest” women of history), that too surprised me a bit. Here’s the thing, with just a few questions about the virgin birth, things get pretty murky pretty fast.
If you accept the idea of Jesus’ virgin birth, it leads to some tricky issues regarding His paternity. If Mary was a virgin, then who impregnated her? She couldn’t do it herself obviously, it must have been God. It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to then consider God as the father of Jesus, or to put it another way, that Jesus was the son of God. I’m not quite sure how muslims wriggle out of this, it would seem to me that you either believe that Mary was not a virgin or you believe that Jesus was the son of God. What other choices are there?
I was also struck by the seeming silliness of the basic Sunni/Shia divide. The Shia believe that only members of the prophet’s family should be Caliph, specifically, only descendants of the prophet’s nephew Ali should be Caliph. OK, fair enough, but there are two problems with this. First, Ali’s decedents died out 10 generations after Ali. Many Shia get around this by claiming the existence of a “hidden” imam. The story with 12ver shia that the 11th “correct” caliph had a son disappear when he was 4 years old. That son is still alive and will return at the end times. Seems to be a bit of a stretch and a bit of a cop out made just to keep the shia way of doing things relevant. I dunno, it sounds weird to me.
The bigger problem with the Shia/Sunni split is that there hasn’t been a caliphate since 1924, and even then it wasn’t regarded by many muslims as being a true caliphate. Since then, the muslim world has gone very far away from a unified view of things and the chances of a new caliphate coming along to unify things is zero. So why still fight over whether or not Ali and his decedents were the right caliph all those years ago? It’s puzzling to me, and I need to do some more reading to try to understand why this is still considered important long after the disputed title has faded into history.
I plan on getting most of the way through my sects book on the flight to Doha, I hope to have a better idea of things and be able to do some more intelligent research this time around in Yemen.
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Michigan idiocy
The republican candidates are campaigning in Michigan for tomorrow’s primary. I don’t know why I’m still surprised, but I am. Every year, politicians promise that they’ll do things to improve the economy, to improve people’s standards of living. Just once, and especially in Michigan, I’d like someone to say that they aren’t going to do a damn thing for a particular state. It should not be the federal government’s job (and therefore everyone’s money) to help a place that has consistently shot itself in the foot. It’s one thing if every state is in bad shape. I could at least understand the argument that the feds should do something about it, but one state? C’mon…
If Michigan’s wants to improve, it will have to do it on its own. If the people think that the state is underperforming, they should take a look at some of the states that are doing well and then model their approach on the successes of those states. Instead, they engage in wishful thinking. It’s time that things changed in Michigan, and it’s time for the people of Michigan to do something instead of blaming other people (the Chinese, the Indians, etc.) and expecting other people to solve their problems.
Michigan, heal thyself!