I'm pretty famous

Last weekend I was roused from my blissful slumber and forced into helping to supervise a massive beach clean-up endeavor. I had hopes of being able to sleep in past 8am but no such luck! The beach-clean up was one of several yearly activities done by Amideast’s ACCESS students- ACCESS being students that study at Amideast from either U.S. or Yemeni government sponsored scholarships- providing that the students maintain certain academic criteria at both Amideast and at their regular public schools. It’s an extremely worthwhile program and is successful because the students are highly motivated- they know that if they don’t maintain academic standards and English proficiency levels they will lose their scholarship. Apparently this commendable work ethic DOES NOT translate to school-sanctioned manual labor.
The whole experience was a lesson in futility. From the get go it was poorly organized. After more than an hour and a half we finally got all the students shuttled over to the beach. It was the single most disgusting beach I have ever seen. Wandering around Yemen it is clear that they have different sanitation standards and procedures than we do but this was just ridiculous. Trash as far as the eye could see. One of the reasons that Aden enjoys such a high status as a tourist destination(relative to Yemen) is because of the beautiful beaches. Maintaining a modicum of sanitation clearly needs to be a much higher priority(for this particular beach, certainly not all, or even most).
This is the scene I was met with when I arrived at the beach with the last of the straggling students- just utter chaos. There were hundreds of Yemeni teenagers milling about aimlessly without a hint of guidance or direction. First order of business? Get them into groups. Okay not too bad. But then we had to give them garbage bags and gloves and designate work areas- I don’t know who planned this but they did a TERRIBLE job. It worked out to about one small garbage bag per every three students and far too few gloves.
Our cleanup attempt could not possibly have been more ineffectual; it was well over a hundred degrees, no one thought to provide water, there was a paucity of garbage bags and sanitary gloves, and did I mention that these were teenagers? Multiple hours of manual labor during the hottest part of the day by TEENAGERS? It doesn’t matter what country you are in, it’s just not going to happen.
I was given a group of about thirty teenage girls and told to watch them, keep them working, and not to let them take their shoes off FOR ANY REASON. Bah…okay. I defy you to be able to keep track of thirty girls out of hundreds when they are all wearing full abaya..
I was met with a constant barrage of whining “oh Teacher it’s too hot”, “oh I would give my arm for some water”, “oh this is Yemen, we don’t care”, or my favorite “oh why are you picking that garbage up? It’s not worth it, just pick up the really big pieces, or anything metal”. WHAT? There was no motivation or incentive to work at all.
Across the street were some men lounging around in orange jumpsuits in the shade of a massive dump truck, if you came anywhere even close to being productive they would bound up to you and whisk away the garbage bag before it was even half full, pitch it over the side of the truck and then adjourn back to the shade. I must have had half a dozen bags snatched from my grasp in just such a manner before overcome with the futility of it all, I gathered some of the girls around me and made them sing to me in Arabic.
Strewn all along the beach were piles of teenagers collapsed from the heat and the absurdity of the situation. Partially filled garbage bags lay wantonly cast aside. I literally picked up HUNDREDS of plastic, sanitary gloves. Because, we are here to pick up garbage, so once we’re done, why wouldn’t we just throw our gloves on the ground and walk away?
As I taught some of the boys how to make kites out of the remaining garbage bags and some dirty twine we found, I had to keep constant vigilance because the lady who organized the whole thing (abysmally) kept stalking up to me demanding that I make the kids work harder and keep picking up trash. Pick them up with what? And put the garbage where? We ran out of supplies in the first half hour. I just wanted to be like, listen lady, one- I don’t know you, and you are ruining my first weekend in Yemen, two- this is unbelievably futile, three- it is undeniably your fault this is a disaster, and four- get the damn buses back here so we can all go take a nap.
THE DAY WASN’T COMPLETELY WORTHLESS THOUGH!!
It turns out there were a couple of men roaming around taking photographs. I paid them no heed-this was during the first half hour of the clean-up process and I had yet to realize how worthless the whole endeavor was, I was busy toiling away. Awhile later Ben came bounding up, “I GOT MY PICTURE TAKEN WITH THE GOVENOR! THE GOVENOR! I’M GOING TO BE IN THE PAPER!"
“Damn you.” Is all I said as sweat was streaking down my face. Whatever Ben, ever heard of a work ethic?
Early Saturday(essentially Monday) morning I walked into the office to see a big group of people huddled around a newspaper. As I drew closer they all got super excited and animatedly gestured me over- and there it was FRONT AND CENTER of the morning paper, a pic of ‘ol Taryn toiling away on a dirty, Yemeni beach! BOOYAH BEN! WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?!!? Many of my students brought copies of the article to class, and I told anyone and everyone I met unabashedly, that I was now a Yemen celebrity. It was awesome. Ben’s reaction to hearing the news “WHAAAT? Some stupid, American comes and it trumps the GOVENOR making an appearance at a community clean-up project? Damn you”
BAHAHAHAHHA, I’m kind of a big deal. No seriously, I am.


HELL YES.

A little bit closer- I look SOO good.