Do you have my care package? Please?

I got a care package the other day and it was truly one of the great moments in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about something.
I had anxiously been awaiting it for some time- there was a kid in one of my classes, Khaled Ali, who showed up one day wearing a NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS SUPERBOWL HAT. I was all, get the hell out of my room right now mister, you’re in the heart of EAGLES TERRITORY! He just had no idea what I was talking about, didn’t know where New England was, and had never heard of a patriot, but I knew. And it was killing me. I decided to have my mother send me my favorite Philly Eagles cap so I could rub it in his face and demonstrate my superior American football and Philadelphia Eagles knowledge ( I have washed Donovan McNabbs sweaty jock strap.) and hopefully publicly shaming him in the process. So I kept anxiously asking Sahar and Gehan and Nuhad and anyone at all who works in the office of Amideast but clearly is far too important to concern themselves with anything so trivial as getting the mail, if my care package had come yet. Nuhad is the accountant but for some reason I have chosen her as my go-to gal for all manner of questions I have. She has proven extremely helpful: ascertaining for me why all the chairs from our apartment went missing one day (they were taken away to get reupholstered), where to get extra whiteboard markers (ask one of the reception interns to open the supplies cupboard and get one for you), what do men do with their qat wad when it’s time for the call to prayer (they spit it out in a cup and then eat it again after prayers) and such.
I explained to them my insufferable situation (Khaled Ali’s hat openly taunting me in class) and what my eagerly anticipated care package would contain. Clearly this was a predicament. They taught me a few crucial phrases in Arabic so I could successfully go to the Post Office in Khormaksar, inquire about my package and ascertain its delivery status. I went every few days and it was chaos. Much like the banks, the government, the police…. It’s clear that nothing is coordinated here, nothing is synchronized and standardized. No wonder the “ how-long-will-this-letter-from-washington-to yemen” trial run took two months to get to me.
They just let me come into the back holding area where I pawed through boxes looking for something that originated in America. There weren’t any records except for a GIANT (seriously, it took up an entire table, the fella needed two hands to turn a page), ratty, hand-written old book that had illegible shorthand notations covering its pages. We took a nice twenty-minute interlude looking through the pages of that hefty tome in case they mysteriously held the key to where my care package was.
Every time I walked past the office Sahar and Nuhad asked me if I got my package yet, I would shake my head dolefully, we would commiserate silently for a moment and then optimistically they’d say, “no problem, insha’allah you will get it tomorrow!”
Finally I came to the Post Office one day and they triumphantly held up a slip of paper and told me to go the Post Office in Crater center. This too was a hand-written paper and it had in Arabic the word “Amika” on it. Bah… do they mean “America?” The piece of paper also had the name of a woman written on it. It was not my name, nor was it a name I had ever heard previously. Clearly this was worth investigating. Along the way I picked up Ben and we went to the Crater Post Office. I handed a man the paper and he went and rummaged in the back for awhile, grumbling and literally scratching his head in consternation. Eventually he came back to the window with two packages! One for the mystery lady and one for me! I had no id on me but I told him my name is Taryn, the label on that package says “Taryn” (he had to take my word on that one because he didn’t speak English) and that also I would like to take that other package as well. Ben had his Oregon driver’s license which he showed the man thus successfully proving that he's an oregon citizen... and the man unquestioningly gave us the packages. I popped my head into the office and held up the battered box for the ladies to see, we jumped up and down in excitement it and clapped our hands for joy. It was completely silly.

Package Contents:
- One French Press Coffee Maker! Alhamduliallah!
- Both Seattle’s Best AND Starbucks coffee
- Some gummy bears- really though? How often do you eat gummy bears? But let me tell you I enjoyed the hell out of those gummy bears
- A gooey completely melted sac of chocolate that really looked like a gooey sac of.. well…it was gross looking.
- MY EAGLES HAT! And other miscellaneous but equally delightful items.
The best thing was a little packet of pictures my mother had enclosed. This was clearly from an old disposable camera that I had left lying around. It had some pics of my parents and I camping along Washington’s astoundingly beautiful rivers, the kittens, my beautiful home and my parents posing with the kittens, and a couple of pics from my trip to DC with the girls right before I moved to Yemen. It was so very nice, it made me a little weepy.

So yeah! Finally got my care package – I got it at 1:15 on the very last day of my classes. Alas my classes, and my acquaintanceship with Khaled Ali, ended at 12:30. Foiled again! Damn you Tom Brady, damn you.

tehehee

D-WORD

HELL AND DAMNATION!
My boss just told me to go ahead and renew my apartment lease- further indicating that I’m not going to transfer anytime soon. Alright, alright.

A blender is the quintessential cooking apparatus here in Yemen. An incredible amount of Yemeni dishes involve the blender( juice, chutney, sauces, vegetable mush, etc) and I have been coveting one for quite some time, the caveat being that they are EXPENSIVE. Even by American standards they are pricey. Plus I’ve been trying to eschew my little tendency of acquiring an astounding array of needless possessions. I have been hesitant to buy a bunch of stuff because I want to remain mobile, I don’t want to get too sedentary and ensconced in Adenee life so that I won’t get transferred. I have one singular pot in my kitchen…But now that I’ll be here for sure for another couple of -months at least, I decided to buck up and get myself a glorious prize. Really it came down to the fact that I was super dehydrated while in a store that sold blenders. Blenders made me think of fresh juices and smoothies and milkshakes, the resulting images in my mind pushing me into a buying frenzy.

But first let me say this- fruit juice stalls here are AMAZING, super unhygienic, patronized by dirty men, but delicious. They make the juice right in front of you- sometimes with additives from a recycled soda bottle filled with murky and mysterious contents- but they use the whole piece of fruit. I’ve seen it over again, they’ll fling an entire orange - rind and all into the blender, add a little sugar, a little water, strain it and voila! Sweet, sweet nectar. Seemingly uncomplicated, right? Well let me tell you, it’s not. I followed that exact procedure and wound up with a chunky, bitter, mush the consistency of oatmeal. It tasted acidic and harsh, I gagged and spit it up. Okay fine, I will continue to buy my orange juice. I dumped it out, the rind pieces clogging my drain. Next I decided to make a strawberry banana smoothie. Nice! I found some frozen strawberries at the market and was super pumped to have them. The smoothie came out frothy and deliciously pink looking- there’s something about pink foods that really make me want to eat them. If you saw a giant pink-frosted cookie and a giant blue frosted cookie, wouldn’t you go for the pink one every time? I took the blender off of the base with a dexterous twisting motion and lifted the pitcher. Great except that I somehow managed to remove only the shell of the pitcher (I don’t even know how I did that!) the base falling away dousing my floor and body in the sticky goodness. Okay blender, strike two. I’m currently on a blender time-out, which really is the only thing keeping me from drop-kicking it across the room.


*ADDENDUM*

I almost forgot the best –or worst- part! In an incredible design flaw that’s perpetuated throughout the whole apartment, the kitchen doesn’t have any electrical outlets. There is one in my bedroom conveniently located behind a big, built-in wooden vanity and one in the living room halfway up the wall. To further complicate matters the cord for my fancy-pants new blender isn’t long enough to reach the floor so the whole time I’m trying to make a delicious beverage I’m standing in the middle of the LIVING room, holding the machine in my arms, just blending some fruit. Absurd.

maybe you had to be there

Today I walked in on a conversation between a Muslim woman and a couple non-Muslims. I’m pretty sure they were talking about meaningful and rewarding deaths- something about suffering in death as a means of wiping away your sins before meeting Allah.. I’m not really sure because I breezed in at what was clearly the middle of the convo and only heard “Yeah drowning would be a great death, it would be so wonderful, and fire? Burning to death? Forget about it!

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.