jackass

Yemen has two types of tea- both served boiling lava hot and sugary-sweet in tiny little cups. The local favorite is called "shay haleeb" which is tea with milk. It's quite nice, but milk is one of two foods that I purposefully avoid (the other being canned tuna. The smell makes me nausey) so I prefer to order the other kind. The other type, "shay ahmar," or red tea, is served with fresh cardammon and mint and is completely delicious. Shay haleeb is the Adenee favorite so if you want red tea you must specify.
Now here's where it gets mildly tricky. In formal Arabic, the word "red" is "ahmar" but in the local Adenee dialect it is "himar" another word that is extremely similar, hard to remember, and(apparently) impossible for a non-native speaker to differentiate is the word "hamar".
So the other day I ordered a tasty glass of red tea, only instead of saying "shay ahmar" I accidently said "shay hamar" more commonly known as a tall glass of DONKEY tea. Woopsie!

AWKWARD

In other news- I just sent a text message to a friend saying “Ramadan Kareem!” which essentially means happy Ramadan. But my T9 automatic-word feature in my phone turned it into “Ramadan Lardo!” that was a bit of an awkward one to explain..

And 15 minutes later I finally understand

I have a new friend! His name is Muhammad Ali ( The other Muhammad’s introduced us, surprise) and he speaks not a one word of English. He is a funny (when I have a translator) and exuberant young man and also an Imam(Muslim religious leader).
He just recently bought a new car that he is immensely proud of. Upon leaving my family’s house the other day I found him nonchalantly leaning against his car right outside their doorway. He mysteriously beckoned me forth into the upper levels of a shopping center where we met another friend, Waseem. Waseem proposed that now that Muhammad Ali had a new car he could pick me up everyday and bring me to my family’s house so I would no longer have to navigate the perils of public transportation (which I’m a dang expert at!). I was effusive in my thanks but tried to politely decline- I enjoy being among the masses and seeing real Yemeni life. They were pretty adamant and, not wishing to appear rude or ungrateful, I politely acquiesced. At first I was a bit put-off with this excessive, rather forceful display of hospitality but now I just embrace it. As with two extreme language beginners our communicative style usually goes something like this-

First he will say a flurry of Arabic

I will smile with a quizzical look in my eye, shake my head and fling up my hands.

He will repeat it, then repeat it faster, then repeat it much, much louder.

I will start guessing any and all Arabic words I know (often making up new ones) in the hopes that I will hit on something close to what he is saying.

He will roll his eyes heavenward, pull the car over and laboriously WRITE it in Arabic. OH! That’s what you meant? I didn’t understand the first 15 times you said it bit in your messy, foreign Arabic scrawl, NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE.

Finally we will figure it out/flag down a passerby to help/ give up (often).

Then I will treat him to a barrage of English and the process is repeated except I do the eye-rolling this time.

We usually communicate in gestures and pointing or by figuring it out in a puzzlingly roundabout manner- He will point to himself, “man”, and then to me, “woman”. Then he will point to his ring finger.. oh! Married. Okay from there we get to “little man” or “little woman” okay…ahh Children! Okay children… children… what they hell are you trying to say about children? Oh! You were merely pointing out that cute baby that we passed by FIFTEEN minutes ago! “Yes, yes, cute baby” I say in my awesome accent.

Often times he will say something and then just drive off- I am forced to go who knows where often for extended periods of time until I can finally get him back on track and get me home! We are both practicing each other’s language and slowly but steadily learning. Every day we will use one or two new words and laugh and highfive when we use it correctly. I’m enjoying it immensely.

Death comes a knockin'

The other day my family and I were laughing and laughing recounting the numerous ridiculous things they force me to eat(okay that’s a lie, I readily eat them, and with great aplomb too!) Generally they all seem to be in the flora genre. Thus far- several tasty specimens of bitter and acidic green leaf of varying sizes and consistencies(sometimes sprinkled with sugar) a couple varieties of tree bark(straight from a dirty bag, or mixed with coconut and served on…a bitter and acidic green leaf) also an assortment of root vegetables and tubers I have never seen the likes of before(usually served boiling-lava-hot from a giant street side cauldron) some interesting, flesh-colored seed pods(that I have seen the birds spit up) and of course small slivers of salty cheese served on a dirty blanket by a disheveled man on the street corner of an alley. As they were joyously proffering another Yemeni “delicacy” to me the other night I turned quite boastful, I CAN EAT ANYTHING! I NEVER GET SICK! I LOVE ALL FOOD! BRING IT ON YEMEN!! And Yemen? Let me tell you, Yemen brought it on.
The reason for my paucity of posts in recent days is because I WAS PRACTICALLY ON MY DEATH BED!! This is clearly a complete and total exaggeration but I gotta tell you, it was rough. I had a high fever, the shakes, the chills, super dizzy, extreme nausea, and sweating up a storm. Straight miserable. And it struck hard in the middle of the night.
It has recently come to my attention that I might just be extremely incompetent. That or I’ve never actually been sick on my own- without a beloved family member or roommate to coddle me (bring me toast!! Okay that one is just for Claire when I’m hungover..). Upon busting awake and bolting to the bathroom to throw up in the middle of the night, hazy, incoherent panic started to set in. First order of business? Water. I knew that I needed to replenish all the liquids I was rapidly expelling from my body. I tried to remember all the things I had to drink that day…coffee, some tea.. a soda.. OH MY GOD I’M EXTREMELY DEHYDRATED!(Spurred on by extreme dizziness, nausea and a raging, mind-numbing headache, being dehydrated seemed tantamount to a death sentence in my mind) I stumbled into the kitchen “WHERE IS THE WATER!! WHERE ON EARTH IS ALL THE WATER!?!” Incapable of finding the myriad bottles, jugs and pitchers of water strewn throughout our apartment(and knowing, inexplicably, that tap water would only exacerbate my condition) I opted for the only thing I could find; strawberry nectar. Yes, that’s exactly what you want to drink when you’ve been heaving up your insides, saccharine sweet, syrupy, strawberry nectar. Another wise choice. Thirst temporarily assuaged I moved on to the next task at hand, cooling my sweat-doused, fever-addled body. Clearly I was functioning at a very low level. A lack of contacts only heightened my fog. Fumbling around the coffin-sized bathroom, blind as a bat, I turned on the shower and flung myself in- not even hesitating to take off my clothing. It’s for times like this that I wish, oh how I wish I could go back and review my thought process. Cleary, at the time, throwing myself into the shower fully clothed AND THEN ripping them all off to storm around the apartment sans clothing seemed like the correct choice at the time. But in hindsight, I’m really just not sure that it was…
Sopping wet I flopped back onto my bed in a feverish haze waking periodically to vomit and lie down again. This was the scene that my roommate Catherine happened upon when she woke up the next morning- I’m sure I looked extremely attractive.(luckily at some point I had donned clothing again, Alhamdulillah)

So that lasted for a couple days but I have now recovered!

Last week of classes we studied injuries and ailments and giving recommendations with should/shouldn’t. It proved useful because both my classes were able to solicitously inquire about my illness, ask what remedies I tried, and offer some generic advice. While I was down for the count I got a million calls, emails, and text messages from my family, friends, and several of my students to make sure I was okay, see if I needed anything, and to ask Allah for a speedy recovery for me. It was all really sweet. Across the board whenever a Yemeni heard my symptoms, instead of thinking virus or food poisoning they immediately, matter-of-factly replied, “ohhhhh yep, its because of the weather change.” What? The weather change of stiflingly hot to a mite bit hotter? I guess I was unaware that a slight heat increase from 100 to 105 degrees was capable of inducing a three-day vomit fest. WELL PLAYED YEMEN, WELL PLAYED.

so dang American

Today as we were bumbling around the streets of Yemen, trying to act nonchalant but creating a ruckus wherever we went, we wondered- what’s the Arabic word for “gringo?”