My Yemen Blog

I read another children’s story in class today. It reminded me of the last time I read one. The first time I read one, I blogged about my reaction but I can’t find the page. That story was about a man that wanted to build a house. He had an axe head, but no handle. He went to the forest and asked the trees (they were sentient) for a small piece of wood so that he could make his axe. The trees decided that they would give it to him if he promised never to come back. He agreed and he got his handle. He made his axe and then decided that he still wanted his house. So he went back to the forest. The trees asked him why he had come back and he said that he had changed his mind, then he cut them all down (killed them) and he lived in his new house. Charming, eh? The point was supposed to be that you shouldn’t give people the seeds of your own destruction, but it comes off more as a story telling you that you can get what you want if you’re willing to lie and betray people that trust you…

This one was just as bad. Here’s the plot… A man lives in a cave and one day he notices an adder living in a small hole in his cave. Because the snake doesn’t do anything to him, he leaves it alone and they live together without a problem. One day, the snake leaves and the guy looks into the hole where the snake lives and sees several baby snakes. He decides to take them and see what the mother will do. So he hides them somewhere and leaves. The snake comes back and sees that her babies are gone. She looks everywhere and can’t find them. She decides that the man has done something to them, so she poisons his water jug. She then leaves and the man comes back. He puts the baby snakes back, unharmed. The snake comes back, sees that her babies are fine, then goes over and spills all of the water so that the man isn’t poisoned.

What a pointless story, right? Wrong! We are supposed to learn the value of faithfulness and being a real friend from this story. You see, the man tested the friendship of the snake, and the snake saved the man when she realized that she was being tested…

I struggled and struggled trying to figure this out. I assumed that I had missed something. Mahmoud was very patient and explained to me that it was not only important to test a friendship, he actually used the word necessary. Why? To see if they were really your friend of course. I still didn’t want to understand, so he asked me if he took my kids, just for an hour, and then returned them after I had been looking for them, wouldn’t that be funny? Wow, he actually made me really angry. I told him to remind me never to leave my kids around him… Then he said, OK, maybe not your kids, how about my cell phone? I said, in English because he doesn’t understand it, that we have a name for people that think that’s funny. We call them assholes. Then I told him in Arabic that that’s something I would expect a 7 year old to do. He said, maybe in America, but that is good here….

I shouldn’t be surprised, it was at his house that I was laughed at by 5 Yemenis when my leg cramped up. I was in serious pain and couldn’t stand up or stretch, and they thought that it was hilarious. A culture that teaches that it’s important to put your friends to the test to see if you can trust them and delights in frustrating or terrifying (missing kids!) their friends for comic relief has some serious issues. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if that culture looks a lot like what it looks like here…

As long as I have been here, I have seen children pushing broken parts of strollers, bicycles, roller skates, or anything else with a wheel around in front of them. Neither I nor my fellow students could figure out what that was about. I think I’ve figured it out, I think they are just emulating the hordes of teenagers pushing wheelbarrows all over the place. Every little kid wants to be like the big kids, I’m surprised it took me this long to notice…

I also had a student tell me something that really rang true and I think helps explain a lot here. I told her that she was doing well but that she needs to practice her reading skills. She told me that she hated to read. I figured she hated it because it was difficult, but she told me that she really doesn’t like to read in Arabic either. Of course! What, exactly, are they going to read? There are no libraries like we know here. Almost all of the books I have seen in Arabic are either religious or some other type of nonfiction. She could try to read the Koran, and maybe a newspaper, but there’s really not a lot here for kids or adolescents. You can imagine the consequences of entire generations, even the educated, not wanting to read.

It also helps explain why everyone I’ve met emphasizes learning to speak Arabic. I try to explain to them that no one speaks it in the US. In my mind, it’s a lot like learning Latin or Sanskrit, there is stuff to read, but no one uses it in a conversation. But they insist, “How else are you going to talk to people here?” Well, first off, I have never had any actual plans of living here for an extended period, and second, the people here do not speak Arabic, they speak a dialect of it. Once again, I have tried to explain that my effort needs to be in the direction that will allow me to read the things that I want, but they really don’t understand. I have a feeling it’s because they themselves don’t read.

I want to say a few more things about the people I’ve met here. I think that if you ask anyone who has been here what they think of the people here, the word “nice” will be the first thing they say. It’s true, they are very nice and very hospitable. This is one of the main reasons why visits here are so fun. As an American, I never really got used to complete strangers inviting me over for lunch. This is probably the main reason why I’ve been able to stay here for as long as I have without going totally insane.

On the other hand, there is still an enormous divide between our cultures. No amount of kindness or hospitality can bridge it. This is where my real frustration lies. Once we get past the small talk, there’s nothing much left for me to say. Nothing without getting really angry or getting them really pissed that is. Conversations inevitably drift around to impasses like Jews, colonialism, racism, sexism, etc. I literally don’t know what I can say without my hosts getting really offended.

As I’ve blogged before, I dream of the day when I hear a Yemeni admit that the problems here are really all caused by Yemenis. Even if the US and Israel didn’t exist, this place would still be a mess. I have yet to hear that admission. Questions like, “Do you think Jews run the world,” and “Do you really think Arabs were to blame for 9//11?” Drive me crazy. The implication of that second question is that the whole 9/11 thing was a vast Zionist/American conspiracy. I’ve been told by several people here that all of the Jews were mysteriously absent from both of the towers that day. Yeah right… Hatred of Israel is deep seated here. I’m not sure if it’s justifiable or not, but I do know that they carry that hatred to absurd lengths.

To be fair on the issue of race, it’s (usually) a little more complicated then just plain old racism, though no less odious. There is a very rigid class system here, what we see as racism is really more classism than anything else. Yes, they do dismiss out of hand the idea that a black man could marry their daughter or assume any real power, but they feel the same way about butchers, barbers, and musicians. It is simply much easier to identify what class the black people belong to by sight… I have been told that Barak Obama shouldn’t become president because he’s black. I’m not sure if that’s racism or just the ignorant application of their own class system to other cultures. I think the reason that the classism/racism isn’t as nasty here as it has been in the US is because unlike the US, a black man simply cannot marry a woman from a non black tribe, he cannot achieve any position of power or prestige, he doesn’t even have his choice of what job he can have. I’m willing to believe that violence would not be too long in coming if a black man ever did any of those things here. I hope you can understand why I have so little patience for this no matter how “nice” the hospitality might be…

The same situation applies to the sexism here. It is deep seated, and they often use a religious justification for it. Nothing is expected of women here other than to be a mother and take care of the stuff in the home. A lot of what we see as sexism is simply disbelief that women actually want to do anything else. When women start to become more educated, or just better at something than the man, blow-back in inevitable. Men are raised to believe that they occupy a privileged place in society, and most of them defend that idea no matter how ridiculous it makes them look. The society is segregated along sexual lines, men and women just do not mix here.

Talking about women is an especially painful thing to do here. All of the single men I’ve talked to are both in awe and slightly repulsed by women. It’s a really strange combination. Everything male is considered superior, so there is always the feeling that there is something lacking in women. On the other hand, there is natural attraction whose outlet is suppressed to an amazing degree. I can’t help but think that a lot of the social problems I see from both sexes can be traced back to this.

This is also why I’m insanely jealous of the western women that come over here. They are allowed to talk to both sexes while I can really only talk to the men. All of my female friends say that they have markedly different conversations with the women. Most of those conversations seem to be around regular life instead of Zionist conspiracies. One of my friends told me that her husband has a similar complaint about taking to men, one which she hasn’t been exposed to. I have no doubt that the difference in the lives between the sexes could lead to a difference in culture, at least in conversations. I do wish I could get into that world…

I’ll have more to say about relations between the sexes and religion later on…

I have gotten a few panicy emails asking if I’m OK. Yes, I’m fine, I’ve just been busy with work. I have made the decision to come home in June and not come back here. It’s not so much that I’m worried about my safety, but those attacks were just one more thing that got on my nerves. In the end, this place just isn’t worth the hassle. Every day, everything, and i mean almost everything, is a total, complete, pain in the ass. Going shopping, eating lunch, walking down the street, doing the laundry, everything is much more difficult than it should be.

And it isn’t the really big things that wear you down, it’s ALL of the little things. After a while, you get used to the poverty, the racism, the sexism (it helps that I’m a white guy of course…), the corruption, etc. It’s the fact that the Yemenis are total assholes on the road, the plumbing is laid out in such a way that the things I rinse off of my dishes end up all over my bathroom floor, the paint in many houses is water based so it rubs off on your clothes, the milk is sold in bags making it extraordinarily likely that you will get it everywhere, you can’t get water to drink after 11:00 PM without a major undertaking, and a zillion other things that come up repeatedly every day. I still think that Yemen is a great place to visit, but it’s a total pain in the ass to live here.

What about the Arabic? Well, I came to several conclusions a while back. First, my initial feelings of not being a very good language student have born out, the language itself just doesn’t interest me. That hasn’t stopped me from accumulating a fair amount of it mind you. I can have conversations and with the help of a dictionary I can read the newspaper. So didn’t the things you could read and talk about make me want to learn more of the language? Well, that brings up the next point, I have been totally underwhelmed with the culture, the religion, and frankly, most of the people I’ve met here. Maybe it would be different if I could talk to the women here, maybe it would be different if I found some followers of sufism or really any other sect here in Yemen, but I doubt it. My students have been the best Yemenis I have met. Of course, they are the only ones that seemed to be interested in learning anything and had at least some concept of the rest of the world. Whenever I talk to the locals (always men of course), they strike me as a mass of racism, sexism, and general ignorance. I can forgive ignorance, but it’s the self-satisfied feeling that they don’t need to know anything else and that knowing more might actually be dangerous that drives me crazy. Call me an elitist asshole if you must (it might be true), but I’m done dealing with “the man on the street” here in Yemen.

Don’t get me wrong, I have met some really decent people here, but they inevitably speak English. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my Arabic, it seems that I could get a job with it but I’m not too sure that I would want one. It seems like all of the jobs that need Arabic involve either giving them stuff (via the numerous NGOs) or fighting them (via the various departments of the federal government). Neither of those options appeal to me. Not that I’d necessarily turn down a good paycheck mind you, I’ve been poor for too long:-) My hope of finding some business that needs an English/Arabic speaker is almost dead. All of the businesses that I’ve heard of in this area that deal with the rest of the world speak English…

That brings me to the big thing that I’ve learned during this trip. I’ve really enjoyed teaching English. The students are hungry for knowledge, and most of them are very hard workers. I’ll leave the comments about it being the only place I can meet and talk to local women off to the side… This experience makes me wonder if I would enjoy making it an actual career. Of course if I did pursue that, I would do it in a slightly better place, maybe Tunis, maybe Damascus, hell, maybe Yokohama. As disappointed as I am with the Yemeni culture overall, I am very glad that I have experienced it. I do think that it would be nice to plop down into some other culture for a while, but I need to be recharged back home first:-) I’m also always happy to expand my knowledge, so learning Arabic was definitely a plus.

I’ll blog more about these general sentiments later on, right now I have to go proctor some exams…

I was thinking about the extra stress that had come onto me since the attacks started, and it feels vaguely familiar. It had been bothering me until last night when I realized when I had had this feeling before. I last felt this way during the sniper scare in the DC area. Someone had been shot within a couple of miles of where I was living and it really affected me. I distinctly remember having to gas up and being really nervous, especially when I saw some of those ubiquitous white vans around. Curiously, no one suggested evacuation or leaving even though those snipers were far more deadly than these wackos over here. I’m still considering where I go to eat based on possible likelihood of being attacked, and I don’t like that. But so far, the people doing the attacks here look pretty incompetent, thank God. Anyway, I’m glad I remembered where I had felt that before, and I’m glad to remember that I lived through that with no problems, now of the locals could just catch these nuts I’ll be able to relax completely…

About the attacks that is. Me and some friends have been talking about them and we think we see a pattern. We have seen the “claims of responsibility” that have been posted. These attacks are supposedly by a wing of Al-Queda here in Yemen. Well, if they are, they are certainly Yemenis doing it. These things do not look like an actual Queda event, they are really amateurish. So far, they have managed to wound 13 schoolgirls, kill one Yemeni, and break some people’s windows. Last night, someone threw a grenade at one of the oil companies’ buildings here in Sana’a. Of course that was done a little after midnight and they didn’t actually hit the building. The result? No injuries, no damage to the building.

These have all the hallmarks of some yokels with an agenda, not of some organized, trained organization. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still dangerous, but I’m not convinced that they could pull off a real damaging attack that required actual financial backing and training. Right now, they are relying on mortar rounds and grenades (in the middle of the night near an empty building), not car bombs… There’s even the possibility that it’s the same handful of guys doing these things, so if the authorities ever catch them, it should be the end of the problems.

Still, these events have me thinking. I am going to the states in June. I had planned on coming back, but now I’m not so sure. I will see how things are when I leave and then I will make my decision as to whether or not I should come back here.

I shrugged off the attempted attack of the embassy here as a sad fringe making some noise. Now a similar attack has occurred against a housing compound that specializes in housing foreigners. That’s got me thinking… I mean, the first thing seemed like a political thing, this just reeks of “We don’t like you and you should leave.” I still believe that the vast majority of Yemenis like foreigners and are proud to have visitors to their country, but it only takes one nutjub with a mortar to really screw things up.

I still don’t feel like I’m in any particular danger. The two targets that have been attacked violate the first (and obvious) aspect of avoiding terrorist attacks, don’t congregate together! If they don’t like foreigners, their favorite target is going to be a bunch of them all in one location. The embassy is an obvious and unavoidable grouping of Americans. But living all together in a walled compound just screams out “BOMB ME! YOU HATE ME DON’T YOU? I OBVIOUSLY DON”T TRUST YOU. SEE MY SECURITY GUARDS AND HIGH WALL?” I spend my day surrounded by Yemenis, I live in the old city, I ride the public transportation, and I teach them. If they want to target me, they’re going to take out a bunch of locals as well. Keep in mind that this latest attack was just as incompetent as the first one, no one was injured.

Like I said before, I don’t really feel like I’m in any danger, but I don’t like the feel of this latest attack…

Once again, there are riots in southern Yemen. Guess what they’re rioting about? They want government jobs. SIGH… Instead of spending all that energy on rioting, why don’t they figure out something else they can do, something productive perhaps… Seriously, they are rioting to get jobs that will drain even more resources from this weak economy, why don’t they riot about all of the obstacles that the government puts in their way of getting actual jobs?