Happy Yemen

Got this grass

Brandishing the sword... of friendship!

Beans anyone?




This is a series of pics I took earlier today whilst adventuring around the outskirts of Sana'a. I went with Matt and Kate (fellow American teacher I recently met living in Sana'a) Kate is taking a online photography class and starting a blog- Then she started talking about blog themes- I was all "theme? bahh... I just blog about whatever piques my interest at that particular moment." Hence I spend an inordinante amount of time blogging about rooster attacks and dead animal parts because dead animal parts always pique my interest. Duh.
So clearly we started talking about how the West believes Yemen is scary hell-hole and there are land mines and car bombs on every corner, and lurking, scheming suicide bombers and everyone hates Americans and we could all die at any given moment. Which is simply absurd. And it is completely the fault of Western media. I shall not delve much further into this subject because I get all sorts of heated about it and will likely devolve into an empassioned diatribe castigating western media and I shall pepper my discursive harangue with many an illustrative anecdote.

I plan to get years and years of small talk, chit chat, raised eyebrows, awkward encounters, free drinks at pubs, etc out of Yemen. Now it's this otherworldly place, people have a vague notion of its location as “somewhere over there..” gesturing offhandedly. Yemen is known as the place that blew up the USS Cole, and achieved unprecedented infamy from a casual reference from the hit sitcom “friends”
Until the recent media frenzy, the world has not cared about Yemen. America, the UN, other powerful nations throughout the world are too caught up in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting other nation’s proxy wars. Resources cannot be further spread to another small, undistinguished third-world country, but Yemen’s time on the world’s main stage is coming- soon. The attention of the world will focus on Yemen, and finally see how desperate and floundering this country is. Yemen is seen as a veritable breeding ground for governmental corruption, fomenting zealotry and overall lawlessness. Yet all of this is juxtaposed in a place of rugged natural beauty, with good, simple people whose lives are complicated by the daily conflict of social and religious conservatism fighting against modernity. I wanted to be one of the people who knew the real Yemen; who knew what it was like before the civil wars that seem preordained to come(or in fact, continue to happen), before the impending resource crisis, and meddling of foreign interests that will likely rip this nation apart. Before Yemen utterly, completely, irrevocably implodes. But know this- it isn't there yet. I haven't felt scared or threatend for single moment that I've been here. People are invariably warm and welcoming, with such an aura of simple goodness.
I hate it when people castgate an entire nation, race, culture based off a few overzealous acts by extremists, based on fear and misunderstanding....Okay I'll stop... I could go on an on about this...
Anyway, Kate was talking about how the theme of her blog should be "Happy Yemen" endeavoring to showcase the real Yemen- I like that. So here's a few pics of today- interacting with local people going about there everyday lives. That is until three photo-happy Americans busted into their sleepy village!

getting water