Meat, cheese, beer, and then more meat please

I had the most shocking realization today- I’m practically a vegetarian. No, not even that, I’ve essentially, and quite inadvertently become a vegan! My favorite foods are: Meat, cheese, fried meat and cheese, beer. This was not a pleasant realization. There’s a paucity of meat here; I expected to be feasting on lamb and kabobs galore here, but they don’t really have much lamb going on. I met and surmounted that little disappointment. “Meat” in Yemen means mystery, greasy goat. Actually it’s completely delicious but unbelievably expensive. I only had it once because it’s outrageously overpriced and also because goats eat GARBAGE, ALL MANNER OF ROTTEN MATTER, AND EVEN FECES. Goats are nasty. There aren’t any grazing lands around here so the goats just roam free around town and “graze” on trash and bottles and newspaper, the invariable giant mounds of litter, and whatever happens to be lying on the ground next to them. Gross. Initially I ate a lot of chicken (and longed for a rare steak) but now I cook at home most of the time and just make whatever I can from the ingredients I can get at the local shop near work. There is NO cheese here except kraft-wannabe-singles and unrefrigerated cream-cheese squares, I don’t drink milk (because my mother shamed me once when I tried to drink some as a child..) and the eggs are sold in crates out on the sidewalk. In the sun. In the well over 100 degree, miday, Yemeni sun. Can’t that kill you?!?! Why don’t they refrigerate their dairy products?!

Yemeni Staple Foods: tomatoes, onion, chili peppers. I’d say 90% of Yemeni cuisine largely consists of these main ingredients and of course, carbs. Other main food items include cucumbers, parsley, potatoes, bread, rice, ships (French fries), and beans. Lottttts of bread, rice, and beans. For every meal. Bet you didn’t know that beans cooked with onion, tomatoes, curry powder and chili is breakfast food! I recently had the joyous moment of discovering a vegetable clearly in the zucchini family, super exciting!
I have my favorite fruit/vegetable seller. He has a little stall across from the school, and I am fiercely loyal to him. Yesterday when I came by he was sitting up on the roof of a big van sifting through some big cardboard boxes. Upon seeing me he reached into a box and grabbed an unfamiliar and oddly proportioned piece of fruit. It kind of looked like a porcupine (like needles! Is needles still alive?!) with blunt spikes. He tossed it down to me and I eyed it dubiously. When opened it was filled with a mushy, white substance and looked extremely rotten. He motioned for me to eat some of it and I was all listen… I’ve been sick a lot lately.. I’m good on the rotten fruit, thanks though. He was insistent, and I acquiesced (damn you peer-pressure!) it had a sweet almost milky flavor but had these huge, hidden seeds in it and I almost lost a tooth. I broke it up into a few pieces and shared it with some of the kids crowded around me. We really had a moment there.
I saw some of them for sale at the big market in crater today and they had the most absurd English translation for them, something like “creamy, white, filled apple” I was just cracking up by myself in the produce section.

And speaking of cracked teeth, this is practically the longest I’ve ever gone without cracking or chipping a tooth because I don’t have Dave “LDB” Bender CRUSHING grounders at me from and extremely close range when a) my back is turned b) I don’t have my glove on or c) I’m just not bothering to pay attention to practice

So I’m getting pretty adept and creative cooking with vegetables. I’ve got some great recipes to use if I ever, clearly because of situation not by choice, have to practically become a vegan again.

SHROUD

I wear abaya (enveloping black cloak. Minus the hijab and burka) when I go out around my house and when I go to boxing. All my girls from boxing certainly appreciated it and its nice not to put a million covering articles of clothing back on after I’ve been sweating so profusely. The other day I went out with just a sports bra and a pair of boxers on under my abaya. It was a bold move. It was particularly bold given my propensity to trip on the dragging hems of my abaya and tear open all the buttons, most frequently upon entering or exiting a bus. As I was walking down the stairs last night (and in fact, numerous other nights) I slipped on the end of it and plummeted down many stairs until finally settling, crumpled and chagrined upon the lower landing- simultaneously wounding both my pride and my posterior in the process.

The other day my girl Sherin was perched up on the edge of the diwan in the squatting position. She is tall and extremely skinny. When she started gesticulating wildly her resemblance to a great winged bat was truly astounding. It’s super creepy at twilight as all the women roam about on their way home, like ethereal specters, faceless and floating in the night sky.

My, what a little flight of fancy that was!

Such dorks

That's right. Both of our eyes are closed. Thus once again successfully commemorating another glorious moment in our friendship.

A lost art

I recently procured a map of Aden. What?? A MAP!? Of ADEN!?! As in Aden, YEMEN?! This is an extremely rare kind of a thing, let me tell you. Maps of Aden simply do not exist, hence this little gem. There is a big, outdated, arial map that a few shops have on their walls but that’s about it. Even google earth hasn’t bothered to come to this neck of the words. In the ten-minute break during class (which I sometimes stretch to 15, hah! Take that!) an intern called me out of the office to meet with a student. It was my former and beloved student Rawa. Her husband, an architect/engineer is mapping Aden and she wanted me to have a copy of the first addition. I gasped out loud, and stamped my foot in excitement- at first everyone thought I was upset about something but when I fist-pumped in jubilation everyone’s concerns were assuaged.
Side note:
I think people love me here because I’ve inherited my mother’s delightful propensity to wildly overreact when I’m excited or alarmed. Example: on a camping trip with my mother, father, and friend Sara. We are slowly driving through a campground in companionable silence-
Mom: (gives out an incredibly loud gasp) “OH MY GOD!”
Sara: (voice raised in alarm) “WHAT’S WRONG?! ARE YOU OKAY!?!”
Taryn: (appropriately concerned) “What is it? A BEAR?!!!?”
Mom: Look at that great pile of firewood! We can make a campfire with that later!”

That was all. Inciting the whole family into frenzied panic. Because of firewood.

But I digress…
So this map lays out Aden; Khormaksar (where I work), Muallah (where I live), Crater (where my family is), Sheikh Ulthman (where I box) and Tawahid. I raced into the office and showed as many people as I could- people were remarkable unfazed. In class I spread the map on the floor and made all my students hover around and find their houses and various landmarks.
This is spectacular. This is cartography in action! Cartography is a lost art! I took personality/career tests online so I could find some semblance of direction in my life and all of them said “journalist” or “explorer” well… just about everything has been discovered already, I was born far too late in human history to be an intrepid explorer voyaging out toward terra incognita, but this! Cartography! This I can do. And because of archaeology I know how to survey. It’s a first addition map so it’s riddled with errors but I want to offer my services as “English Linguistic Editor” to the project. CARTOGRAPHY. How cool is that?

"The Green Province" and surrounding countryside

A couple of weekends ago we went to Ibb and it was heavenly. It was just stunningly beautiful and it refreshed me and soothed my soul. Now THAT’s what I thought I was moving to. Beautiful, and unique, and green. Rapturous!
Ben, Jared (A Tacoma, Washington fella currently on a three-month internship for Amideast in Sana’a. Small world, right?) and I got a tasria (necessary police statement of travel permission. Necessary for Americans at least) and then hopped on a bus toward Ibb. Ibb is located north of Aden approximately four hours. Immediately upon exiting the greater Aden area, the scenery started to change. First stunning dune covered deserts, then breathtaking expanses of nothing, broken only infrequently by a small smattering of shacks and beautifully up kept mosques. As we got further and further North the color changed to beautiful, healthy, vibrant green. I’m an Irish AND Pacific Northwestern gal, I NEED green in my life. I missed a lot of the breathtaking scenery initially because I spent much of the trip grading papers. I was under strict time constraints to get all my final exams, writings, and session-wide grades done- a feat that has never taken less than 10 hours to complete- and needed to utilize the bus time.
The elevation steadily increased as we progressed and soon we were making hairpin turns on mountain switchback roads with abrupt cliff faces rising on one side of the road and sheer drop-offs on the other.
Ibb was a fantastic little city. When I initially imagined moving to Yemen, Ibb is exactly the sort of place I thought I would be going; beautiful, unique, lots of culture and history, zero tourists, and good food.

Shortly after we arrived we decided to go up the mountain to a hotel with a café and unparalleled views of the stunning vistas arrayed before us. Right as we were reaching the hotel, and with literally no forewarning, the heavens opened up and we found ourselves in the midst of a torrential downpour. It was POURING rain, the likes of which I’ve only ever seen during the rainy season in central America. Then it started HAILING and lightning and thunder! The ten foot scurry from taxi to café left us beyond drenched, and there we sat, sopping wet and grinning like idiots to be in the presence of rain again. The smell of it, oh how I miss the fresh, earthy smell of rain! We spent a relaxing night and then headed back to Aden in the morning- a whirlwind trip but well, well worth it.

Parts of Ibb reminded me of Pennsylvania because of all the corn fields inappropriately growing in between office buildings and parking lots.

why my last post was such a downer

My last post was rather negative because I was just pissed at Yemen for a hot minute there. It’s because earlier this morning I was thrown into a wholly unaccountable rage over a trifling manner. On the bus this morning on the way to work (very early) the driver had the gall to stop and fill up the tank with gas. Now I strictly estimate and regiment my time in the morning, every minute is accounted for, wasted time equals time I could have been sleeping. Clearly this guy was not in a rush, he nonchalantly pulled the bus up to the tank, then he effed around pulling it forward and back and wending his way around the various pumps, ostensibly sleuthing out the best one. Fill your damn bus up on your own time buddy, seriously get it together. I seriously contemplated bailing on the bus and trying to flag down another as it roared past. I sighed loudly, puffed out my checks and pursed my lips in annoyance, jiggled my leg, made little impatient noises and made a big show out of checking my watch a few times. There were a couple of large dump-like trucks waiting ahead of us and only one attendant in sight. He was very clearly preoccupied in other matters, he was in fact, engaged in a SHOUTING match with one of the other drivers. It culminated excitingly by the attendant ripping the STILL FLOWING gas nozzle out of the truck port and ramming into the gas tank of our bus- the gas tank that was mere inches from my protruding leg (jiggling in annoyance) out the door of the bus. I was trying to keep my cool both metaphorically (temper) and physically (endeavoring to catch a breeze from out of the sweltering tin box of a bus. When possible I try not to show up for work uncommonly doused in a flood of perspiration and frizzy hair). A small wad of crumpled bills was exchanged and then after literally thirty seconds we pulled away. Thirty seconds worth of gas? Yeah, that was worthwhile. Asshole.
We had almost arrived and were progressing at a frantic speed WHEN THE DOOR OF THE BUS FELL OFF. This is not a joke, this is not a drill. And everyone was super unperturbed by it. We dragged it along in a disharmonious cacophony of scraping metal on pavement until eventually the bus pulled over, two men got out, hauled the door up, slammed it back in place, and that was that.
No biggie. When I got to school someone had neglected to make my copies for my first class, and then I couldn’t get the damnable printer to work. I was proceeding up to my classroom just seething in quiet rage and discontent (over-reacting, granted) when I saw someone lightly trip up the stairwell. Hah! That was all it took, everything was well in the world once more.

5 months in Aden = 4.5 months too long in Aden

Yesterday was my five-month anniversary in good ‘ol yems, making it practically the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place. I’m getting antsy. I’m in a new stage- One which is not nearly as exciting- it has become very real that I’m here for a long time. I figured about a month in or so I’d have a break down, some nice culture shock, some deep homesickness. But its been five and I haven’t broken down so much as become weary. Weary of the weather, the location, the job- there’s really just not a lot going on here. And by “not a lot” I actually mean nothing at all. There are no sports, no bars, no coffee shops, no cinemas, no parks, no social hang outs, no stadiums, no amusement parks, no clubs, no gyms, no libraries, no place for young people, its socially stifling. Shisha and qat are the main activities. How healthy, nicotine and narcotics. Once again, well done Yemen. The problem for me is location. Aden is a total waste of a town. The economic capital of Yemen, and the center of action in the South, Aden’s unique history gives it quite a singular spot in Yemen. Formerly a communist holding, and then occupied for years and years by the British, Aden is now a past-its-prime port town meshing the worst of the Middle east with the worst of middle America. It’s a poor, volatile, dissenting city with a truly terrible climate. Also, there is no native culture or architecture or tradition, the towns are overrun with an influx of cheap, Chinese goods, and western imitation products. Sanitation and garbage disposal is sorely lacking, there is an extreme refugee problem, and recycling and resource conservation is an utterly foreign concept. Which is not surprising I guess in a place that uses more than 70% of its yearly water resources on the cultivation of qat.
Now that all sounds rather harsh- it’s not Yemen that’s the problem (though certainly riddled with imperfections) it’s this town that I have issue with. I distinctly remember towards the end of my first week here realizing with a sinking feeling that I had, in three days, just done and seen every single activity that Aden had to offer.
I find the people here to be completely fantastic- I love my colleagues ( I prefer to call them colleagues as opposed to coworkers, I just think it sounds so much more professional!) my boss, my students, my friends. Everyone is warm and welcoming and encouraging and the sense of hospitality and generosity found here is unparalleled. But this isn’t enough to make up for the complete and total lack of an outlet for my pent up energy and suppressed personality.
In order to mesh with social norms I dress, talk, and act in a different manner than my personality reflects- which is an exhausting charade to uphold. I find myself spending more and more time in my apartment enjoying my solitude and air conditioning and getting exactly nothing out of being here in Yemen. I could maintain the exact same routine in any town back home. I’m very much hoping for a transfer soon- in the next month or two- I’ve bummed around other parts of Yemen, stunningly beautiful which is a necessary component to my overall quality of life and feelings of well being.