Donkey business
August 7th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
A friend of mine here in Yemen, a member of, shall we say, ‘the donor community’, told me about a private little project of two colleagues of his who are quite obviously in the completely wrong country for what they are trying to accomplish.
Being animal-lovers, they fight for the rights and humane treatment of animals, a normally worthy cause to spend ones time on, but a hopeless case in Yemen. For some mysterious reason, they have chosen to focus on Yemen’s donkeys. Being hard-working donkeys, they all wear out rather quickly and I guess Sana’a is full of donkeys in need of care and a retirement home.
The two, who I do not know personally I should add, decided to find a solution to this problem and to search for a way to help these poor donkey live out their retired lives in peace. They therefore set up a meeting with Sana’a Zoo.
Now, Sana’a Zoo already has a few problems of their own. They used to have a few lions in the zoo, but due to the lack of knowledge of contraception, the lions multiplied and multiplied. And multiplied some more. The zoo now boasts 48 lions packed together in five cages. This is the zoo’s main attraction, obviously, apart from a couple of hyenas (i presume they’re all the same sex since there aren’t more) and a lone German shepherd.
Our good samaritans thus went to the zoo to see what could be done for the poor donkeys. However, due to the appetite of the lions, the zoo people were more keen to feed the old donkeys to the predators than to set them up in their own apartment. It goes without saying that the meeting did not end in a good note…
Speaking of donkeys: Sana’a actually has its own donkey day, namely donkey Tuesday. On this day of the week, the city is full of donkeys. I don’t know what they all do on Tuesdays, but I presume there’s a lot of buying and selling of donkey’s on this particular day of the week.
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On a completely different note: Those of you who have travelled in the Middle East or are interested in the region might enjoy the website/blog of a woman I know here who is retracing the footsteps of Ibn Batuta and working as a tour guide at the same time. You’ll find her writing on http://www.girlsoloinarabia.com
Until next time.
Gharib Ajib
July 18th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Yemen is a wonderfully crazy country. Yesterday, while Kåre, my Norwegian friend, and I were standing by the street outside waiting for a bus, a car stopps and the guy on the passanger side leans out and gives us each a piece of fried fish. Initial attempts at saying no thanks is met with a smile and shaking the head and we are left by the road holding our fish… A few hours later we’re walking through the street and a police officer and his friend walking next to us are carrying a cup of tea each and automatically offer us a sip.
These are everyday occurences in Yemen. Each time you sit down in a restaurant, the people at the next table will offer you to partake in the joys of their fried beans. Sometimes, especially when I have been travelling on my own in the countryside, people are so forceful and telling me it’s ‘ayb (shame) not to accept, forcing me to sit down on the floor and sharing their meager meals.
At breakfast today, Kåre and me, eating foul (beans, beans and more beans) were sitting next to some rough-looking tribal guys at the next table. A friend of theirs comes by to talk to them and he is just as rough looking as them and furthermore carrying a Kalashnikov AK47 on over his shoulder. Seeing us he immediately breaks into a smile and asks us where we are from. ‘I love you,’ he says before he leaves to do whatever it is these people do.
Or like the day before, when we were taking a taxi and Kåre was telling the taxi driver in Arabi to keep going to “the bridge under the road.” The driver thought this was so hilarious, repeating it the whole ride, that he gave us the ride for free and just waved away my money while still laughing. Kåre didn’t get why we got the ride for free…
Other great news is that Kåre and I are going on a trip this Saturday for six days or so. We’re going to a place called Yafe’ in the southern mountains of Yemen. I have only come across information about this place in a book from the late 1990s and it sounded like a pretty crazy place. Kåre, wanting to write about tribes in his thesis, which he’s going to do research for over Christmas, looked into the place and heard that the tribes there are really strong and he also heard from a Harvard-professor setting up a study programme here that if he went there he would want to do his research there instead of in the typical tribal north.
It used to be on the frontier between the British colony of Aden and the Ottoman Turks in the north, and then later between North Yemen and communist South Yemen. The region has supplied soldiers and mercenaries for centuries to all kinds of political and religious causes, from the communist uprising against the British in the 1960s to the Mujaheddin fighting the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Yet, the reputation of the men of Yafe’ in Yemen is one of being honourable men and warriors. We anticipate to cause a stir and receive a warm welcome 
So we went to the tourist police yesterday to get our mandatory ‘tasrih’, a permit required for all foreigners travelling anywhere outside of Sana’a. It’s getting really difficult now after the attack on the Spanish tourists and also following unrest in the south due to the forceful retirement of army officers following the civil war of 1994. We did our best Arabic impression and got really friendly with the officers there and they were quite positive. But they had to call the boss who had left to chew his qat and he said no. Kåre tried to talk to him on the phone, but he was not co-operating. We tried everything, but all we got was ‘It’s forbidden!’ They were still friendly and sorry they couldn’t help us though, but less so when we tried to suggest a new route next to Yafe’. ‘Hey, that’s almost Yafe’!! I told you it’s forbidden.’
We asked if it’s always forbidden and they said it changes all the time so we suggested we come back the next day to talk to the boss and they said that, God willing, it would be ok.
So we came back this morning wearing our ma’wazes (skirts) and sweettalked the boss telling him how experienced we are and how good our Arabic is and that we’ve travelled everywhere else in Yemen, and suddenly, before we had even played our last card (Kåres later plans to do research) he concedes. Back and forth a bit, but in the end we get our permit and the blessing of the main officer who we spoke to the previous day. Coming from an area nearby, he even gave us his private mobile number and the name of his brother who lives there. The lesser officers who had to do the paperwork were really surprised when they saw where we were going, but got shouted at when they asked if we were really allowed to go there. We felt like running once we got it in case they changed their minds.
They even told us that they have never given tourists permission to go there before. Not that anyone has ever asked though…
Now we just have to negotiate the check-points with soldiers who are not used to whities travelling those roads. We’ll give the ’sleeping Arab-trick’ and wear our skirts and shawls over our heads whenever we reach one and hope they let us pass. If not, we anticipate questions and calls to Sana’a to check our papers.
Saturday we’re off and back Friday the 27th at the latest.
Stay tuned.
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EDIT:
Found a clip on YouTube from the region, so you can get a clue about where we’re inshallah headed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jAGVgwh9mQ&mode=related&search=
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Video: The flooding of Sana’a
July 10th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
Yesterday, torrential rains hit Sana’a creating flooding all over the city. My house and my room faces the Sailah, a ‘river’ that is used as a road all year long as it only rains during the summer months, and then usually not enough to create problems for traffic.
Yet, once in a while it floods properly and there are always a few drivers who think they can push on a little further before driving up on dry land to brave the jams that always form when this important road is impassable. Unfortunately for them, the Sailah receives a lot of the rain falling on the city, creating flash floods that can catch up with a car in moments. Yesterday the water level in the Sailah was the highest our neighbours can remember for years.
Use this link to see the video i put together from yesterday’s action outside my house:
The Officer’s Club
July 8th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
The title of this post gives a feel of times long gone when a colonial administrator could lounge under a parasol, a gin tonic in his hand, and know that the Empire was safe and sound, as the sun would never set. Nothing could be further from the truth at Sana’a’s Officers’ Club.
The Club is indeed a walled compound for a select group of people, but for a handful of riyals, anyone can gain access, including us infidel foreigners. The Club was set up as a fringe benefit for the armed forces’ officers and their families where they could socialise among their own kind and have a meal and a water pipe and chew their qat in peace and away from the dirty crowds of self-employed.
Yet, hard times probably fell on the officers, or maybe they got tired of just seeing the same faces. In any case, admission is now open to anyone who can pay for it. Us foreigners, the males that is, usually go there for two reasons: the gym and the pool.
The gym, although not the only one in Sana’a from what I hear, has not received any new equipment since about 1990. But it is still a decent gym considering we’re in Yemen and with a little imagination one can do a decent workout, although forget the stretching as there are no mats. Then again, stretching is for wimps and not for big men wanting to build muscle (at least if one wants to become like the men in the pictures on the walls – I bet you all know the type).
The best part of being in the gym is to watch the very few Yemenis that actually use it. My first hypothesis, from experience elsewhere in the Middle East, is that a lot of those using it are gay. This is because in the traditional culture that is still very predominant, being fit and caring about how the body looks, is very alien. Simply, a rich man should have a belly as he can afford to be fat. Being skinny is the look of a poor man who can only eat meat once a year for Eid. However, to be fair, there are also those who have lived abroad or are adopting amore Western lifestyle and who genuinely care about staying in shape, including the overweight ones who have been told by their doctor to loose weight or die.
For whatever the reason, coming there does not mean that they know how to work all the machines, and especially not when they cycle. As many have no idea how to work the controls, they spin like crazy with no resistance whatsoever and get bored rather quickly. If they do understand the controls, a life of sitting on their arses chewing qat every afternoon means that a usual cardio-workout lasts about five minutes.
Now, the greatest exhibit is the swimming pool. It is actually a great pool; Olympic size and with five diving boards up to ten metres high. However, again, as Sana’s is more than 200 kilometres from the nearest coast and at an altitude of 2000 metres, one would never expect a local to know how to swim, and most of them can’t either. As in the gym, there are exceptions, but most of them have the look of coastal Yemenis and not of the tribal mountain sort.
Not knowing how to swim doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, though, which is why the pool is like a big circus, especially in the weekends. It is full of young and not-so-young people pushing each other into the bushes, into the pool, sitting on each others’ heads and holding their friends under until they almost drown, to the great amusement of everybody. Quite a few of them are genuinely afraid of water and are hysterically panicking when their friends grab them and throw them into the pool. Punching, biting and scratching are only a few of the weapons being used to avoid the deep-end.
There are always those wearing those life-vests that will keep you afloat even when one of your friends throw themselves on top of you. Once, when I was visiting two years ago, there was a guy of about 20, with a big beard indicating religious studies wearing one of those life-vests and clinging to the side of the pool while his teeth were clattering from the cold caused by lack of movement. In a moment of bravado, he let go of the side, and with eyes closed, splashed around like a cat drowning, all while shouting ‘God is great, God is great, God is great.’ On re-attaching himself to the edge he thanked the almighty from saving him from certain death.
I do admire the courage of some of the locals in the pool, though, who, despite their lack of swimming skills, make impressive attempts at swimming. Although a few of them end up swimming in circles with their eyes closed and always look surprised when they haven’t moved a metre from where they started, the others get by with their own techniques. The best part for everybody there is the 10-metre diving board. Wanting to be brave and goaded on by their friends, climb to the top only to realise how ridiculously high up they actually are, and climb shame-faced down to the 3-metre board. This happens to most people. But then there are a few who place their life in God’s hands or place absolutely no value in their own life, or those swimming the pool below for that matter. To the cheer of everyone present, they lunge from the top and into the depths below with hands and feet spinning. One guy, apparently scared to death, but not able to face the taunting of his friends should he climb back down, seemed to faint as he stood on the tip looking down to the surface below, and just tipped over the edge and hit the pool, stomach first, in a huge splash. He was helped out and seemed to survive on the adrenaline rush of actually going through with it.
The life-guard on the side of the pool wears a training suit and has probably never been in the pool, and I bet he can’t even swim as he got his job because his cousin works in the reception. But that is of no importance as he has one of those floating rings that he can toss into the pool should anybody be in trouble.
This weekend when my flatmate Josh and I were on our way out, we both for some reason salaamed a guy our age coming in the opposite direction. He looked really holy with a long black beard with the upper lip shaved in the imamic fashion. He answered the salaam and asked us with a British accent where we were from. It turned out that this guy London, of undecided descent, but not Yemeni according to himself, was studying Arabic in Sa’da. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with this town, it is in the middle of the area that has been plagued by civil war between a runaway Zaydi (shi’a sect) group and the government on and off since 2004. This war has been especially ferocious since January of this year.
On asking him about this, he said that he had been studying in a centre in the middle of the city called Dammaj for several years and that the war was outside the city limits and therefore of no consequence for him and the other students. The only problem was that the sound of explosions would sometimes disturb one’s concentration. A nice enough chap, yet our conversation was only in passing.
I came across the name Dammaj a few days later while reading up on news from Yemen and it turns out that this is a Sunni enclave in the predominantly Zaydi/Shi’a town with thousands of students. It is especially popular with foreign converts and Muslims who have grown up in the West. This was confirmed by an English language online forum I also came across that discussed places to study Arabic and Islam abroad (Afghanistan and Pakistan being favourites) that said that Tarim in eastern Yemen, the seat of the Shafi’i school within Sunni Islam, was run by a bunch of traditional old men and Dammaj was thus the only place for good studies in Yemen.
In Sa’da, there is animosity and the occasional violent clashes between the Dammaj community and the local tribes and residents, requiring the enclave to pay for its own local militia as protection. The fact that it is supposedly funded by the Wahhabi religious establishment does not make it any more popular, especially not with the intelligence community, which accuses it of teaching extremist Salafi Islamic doctrine.
One meets all kinds at the Officers’ Club.
The politics of foreigners in Yemen
July 4th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
For the first time since 1998 foreigners have been killed on purpose in Yemen. Whereas kidnapping of foreigners was everyday business throughout most of the 1990s when more than 100 were kidnapped, this was mostly in order to pressure the government to free jailed tribesmen or implement social projects in peripheral areas. This meant that very few foreigners were killed except when being caught in the crossfire in shoot-outs between the kidnappers and government forces. This was almost a matter of pride to Yemenis, who would tell the stories of foreigners being treated like guests by their kidnappers, being allowed to move freely in the villages where they were being held, and eventually showered with gifts when they were released after the government gave them what they wanted.
One example was the german Mark who studied at the same centre where I have studies several times and who was kidnapped in 2000. He was picked up by some fellows in fake police uniforms in the main square in Sana’a and brought to a village in the desert a few hours east of the city. According to my teacher who used to teach him, he was never afraid, only bored, and got to practice his Arabic and was released with both gifts and memorable photographs of himself on a camel carrying a Kalashnikov machine gun. What they forget to mention is that these cases usually aren’t as joyful as described, especially not for their families at home.
After the suicide attack on a column of tourist cars in Ma’rib two days ago, though, Yemenis are appalled about what has happened. The following day people seemd more subdued than usual and there were none of the usual friendly comments one normally gets when walking the streets. Not only are people ashamed that something like this can happen in their own country, but the future of Yemen as a tourist destination is also in peril. Almost every single group coming to Yemen would pass through this particular area in their roundtrip around the most interesting sites in the country and trips are being cancelled from all over Europe.
For Yemeni politics, what is worse, is that the government was quick to blame ‘foreigners’ for the attack. Just as in Iraq, all the suicide bombers are “foreign arabs/infiltrators”. As is the case in all parts of the world, be it crime in Norway or extremism in Yemen, it is much easier to blame outsiders as that means we do not have to look for mistakes made at home. I therefore hope that they will conclude that the suicide bomber was Yemeni as that will force them to look to their own society for answers to why it happened.
Not that Yemen is free of extremism. Far from it. It was a gathering place for all kinds of weirdos until the beginning of the decade when they got on the American side of the War on Terror and were supplied with advanced weapons and military advisors. Yemen is full of Americans hunting for “Al-Qaeda” and I bet they can use whatever means they want as they are outside the boundaries of the US constitution.
Some of you might remember my story from late 2002 when a car was blown up in Ma’rib province where the latest attack took place. It was one of the first (publicly admitted) attacks by an unmanned drone and they killed four or five Yemenis who were supposedly terrorists. As this was in the early days of their self-proclaimed war, this attack was actually a desperate attempt to get those people as they had wanted them alive. According to a source of mine, it was actually supposed to be the first operation of the American trained Yemeni anti-terror forces and they had just surrounded the village where these men were hiding. However, a Yemeni pilot, having heard that an operation was going on in the area over the radio took his jet low over the village “to see what was going on” warning the men of the impending attack. In the ensuing chaos they all got in a car and escaped, and not wanting to let them get away, the American sent in their drone to remove the problem.
I bet they pumped some more money into the organisation of the Yemeni forces after that.
On another note, I am all settled in my house now blissfully sleeping throughout the night with my earplugs in. This means that I have trouble hearing my alarm though, so I will just have to get up later so that will not be a problem. Today is the 4th of July and my American flatmate is looking forward to a cup of coffee at the 5-start hotel nearby after the embassy cancelled the celebrations following the attack on the tourists. Not that it would be difficult getting drunk as the access to alcohol in Yemen is easier than ever for foreigners. More and more of them are turning into alcoholics as the lack of things to do means that they turn to drinking instead.
Patience, patience
June 30th, 2007 by Torstein Schiøtz Worren
It’s funny being back in Yemen. Nothing much seems to have changed other than the number of foreigners. They’re everywhere these days, especially at the language institutes. It’s quite a change from my first time here in 2002 when we were about six students at CALES – my school. Even though most of the passenger on the flight got off in Riyadh, about half of those remaining were non-Yemenis of some sort. It made me feel less different than earlier visits.
The Yemeni authorities have streamlined the bureaucracy since my last visit two years ago. I now got my visa in two minutes from a little window at the airport and they didn’t ask any questions when stamping me through. Even the guy who picked me up, Mohammad, was the same – and so was his car. I thought it was pretty slow five years ago, but this time around it was hardly moving at all.
At the moment I’m crashing at a friend’s, but I’m moving into an old house in the old city. The landlord has apparently refurbished the bathroom and kitchen, but a week ago the bathroom was only a hole in the floor and nothing else, so Yasmin, one of the people I’m moving in with, has been a bit dubious to the whole project. The house has been pre-paid for three months, though, so hopefully it will work out. We’re supposed t0 move in tomorrow as the house is ’95 percent complete’… As long as we have running water…
As always, my first night here was quite tiring as I arrived on a Wednesday, the evening before the weekend and weekends mean weddings. And as weddings are a communal affair taking place outside in the streets, the noise is unbearable. When you’re in the middle of it, it’s worse than being at a concert, especially since the sound systems favour the squeakiest tones in the spectrum. Some kinds of Yemeni music are ok, but that does definitively not go for wedding music. Of course, you think how much noise can men (who do not drink alcohol) make considering that weddings are segregated. Instead, they have invented a system whereby men and women sing together by means of microphones and speakers. The men sing on the streets and the women, packed up inside in their beautiful dresses (from what I hear from the girls who have partaken) answer by singing into microphones broadcasting into the street outside – at a much louder volume I should say. In any case, this went on all of my first night, but thankfully they have gotten rid of the noisy packs of dogs they used to have here. Now there are only cats and although they can be noisy too, they usually finish up quickly.
From what I hear, our new house is pretty noisy too, but this time I am prepared and have brought earplugs. There will be more writing and less studying this time, so I can organise my days pretty much as I want and can keep my earplugs in and not worry about hearing the alarm clock if I chose to work during the silent hours. Maybe I should mention, for those of you who haven’t heard, that one of my main plans down here is to write a book, a travel account (in Norwegian), about my visits to Yemen based on my earlier e-mails. I’m doing some Arabic classes with my old teacher to keep from forgetting everything, but I will need to write quite a lot each day to finish in October. Now that I have told absolutely anyone who will ever read this, I have enough pressure on me to actually go through with it, inshallah.
Yemeni politics are as entertaining as ever and very little ever escapes the country. Although Yemen is fairly democratic and has a reasonably free press, very little information ever comes out of Yemen and few people have heard of the civil war that has been raging in the northern part of the country for the last six months, which is a continuation of a conflict that has lasted for the past five years. Some crazy tribes in the north are trying, according to existing information at least, to recreate the Imamate, the religious state ruled by the Imam, which was the state of affairs in Northern Yemen until the Republican revolution of 1962. As always when the government is battling tribes, many more soldiers are killed than tribesmen, but due to the ferociousness and how protracted it has been, it has brought a lot of suffering to the civilians in the area. I met a guy yesterday who is a conscript in the army and was sent up there to fight. He was wounded and is on leave at the moment, but from what I understood, all his closest friends in his unit have been killed during the last couple of months. At the moment there’s supposed to be a Qatari mediated cease-fire, but it’s unknown whether it is in effect and some say there is still fighting. What all this means for me is that the whole north is closed off and no foreigners are allowed in, which is pretty useless as this was one of the places I haven’t been and wanted to go. Furthermore, I now need permits from the government wherever I want to travel. Hopefully it won’t be too strict or need too much planning beforehand as my plans tend to be flexible and dependent on the people I meet on the way.
Tonight, a friend of mine, Kåre, is arriving. He’s been in Yemen a lot more than me and he speaks much better Arabic as well. He’s only here for a month so we plan to do some trips off the beaten track while he’s here. He’ll be staying in our (inshallah) new house so should be fun.
Until next time…