8 month musings

It’s amazing what you become inured to over time- I think that human beings can adapt to almost any situation, I feel like mankind is hanging on by a thread, and that order and total anarchy are divided by the thinnest of lines. But let’s not delve into that right now.

I’m talking about my own personal adaptation to living in a third world country.
Coffee is a perfect example of my plodding journey through circumstantial adaptation.
Coming to Yemen I was a high-brow coffee snob- Starbucks or bust. Not even Dunkin Donuts was good enough- America runs on Dunkin? Not my America. Only through sheer desperation did I make the switch to Nescafe. Over time Nescafe has become my greatest pleasure. I keep a giant bottle of it at my cubby at work and I carry single-cup packs with me wherever I go- I just discovered the special “3-in-1 Extra Strength” blend. It’s like the sweetest ambrosia. I am currently living in a place without any propane for cooking. Getting propane is easy enough, you just wait for the propane guy to come by your house and flag him down. You can tell the propane guy is in your neighborhood by the yelling- instead of just men going down the street yelling for no reason(as happens myriad times throughout the day), the propane guy goes down the street yelling AND banging a stick on a wheel barrow in a discordant cadence. But… that takes more effort than I’m willing to give at this point. And so without even the slightest hesitation, when I made my Nescafe this morning, I made it with some room temperature bottled water I had lying around. Room temperature Nescafe? Completely delish. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Other things that I’m just used to by now-
-never really feeling clean
-my hair falling out. Oh? I never mentioned that before? Because of my prolonged exposure to water with an extremely high saline content, my hair is falling out. I mean, everyone’s is. At least I don’t live in the East, where the water has so much fluoride that your teeth turn brown.
-moderating certain behavior because I’m a woman. Like not shaking mens hands, or wearing short sleeve shirts.
-having no real privacy. I kinda stand out here.
-I’ve also become MUCH more patient. I mean, you have to be.

Ben and I went to one of our favorite spots for some orange juice the other night, sipping away contentedly, enjoying each others company. After a moment of silence he said, “Seriously, just look where we are right now.” I was like umm.. Yemen? “We are sitting on plastic chairs drinking juice in a dirty parking lot.” And it was quite true. We were sitting in a busy, loud, immense parking area full of litter, feral cats, un-chaperoned children, beggars, and refugees. It was quite a realization that this place, this little, dirty juice place was our world now. The next night at dinner, we looked around, “oh hell, we’re in a dirty parking lot again…”