You know you're in Sanaa/Yemen when...
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2007
1
23
72
Trip End
Jul 03, 2007
Sanaa,
Yemen
Saturday, February 17, 2007
...when it's perfectly normal to bring your neighbors some banana bread and ask them how to slaughter and prepare a sheep.
...when even in full hijab, everyone recognizes you as a foreigner.
...when power outages randomly strike the city. The power grids are overloaded, and it is for this reason that Yemen seeks nuclear power.
...when vendors sell shirts that have English captions resembling the following: "Love are and cuoq"
...when your nose is perpetually lined with bloody crust, due to altitude and dryness.
...when foreign students regularly call off class due to "the usual" (diarrhea).
...when children are still allowed to run barefoot through the streets.
...when there is as much qat spewed on the ground as there is in people's mouths. (Qat--the national drug of Yemen, which folks habitually spend half of their income on).
...when the streets are lined with military police with fully loaded AK-47s.
...when the driving situation is comparable to that of the Carrefour's experience I described earlier (see 17 Jan 2007)--the omnipresent police apparently have more important things to do than tell people how to drive (such as: preventing rebellion). It's common for drivers to drive up the wrong side of the highway, not stay in lanes, etc. And everyone's always honking. This isn't like in other places, when honking means, Get out of the way! In Yemen, it seems to be just a way of letting everyone know you're coming, especially since masses of pedestrians wander around in the streets. It's when they flash their lights at you that you know they won't stop for you. It seems chaotic, but in all, I'd have to say Yemenis are more careful drivers than many Americans, Europeans, and Dubaians.
...when buses are minivans with one door left open. They drive along a route, but it is subject to modification, and is relatively cheap. There are specific rules I had to learn regarding male and female passengers. Girls always sit together, usually facing forward, at the back of the bus. It's acceptable for a guy to sit next to them, but make sure you are separated by a bag or purse of some type. That's manners!
...when, in the above traffic, everyone's dashboard and front seats are covered with long, messy fake fur. (Why, though?)
Yeah. That's how you know you're in Sanaa. Yemen is still (thankfully) quite conservative and old-fashioned, so Kim and her roomate posed as a married couple--and certainly bickered as such. As I think I implied above, Yemen is trying to "modernise"--I, for one, will put a gun to my head if it ever reaches the levels of "modernity" that we see in Dubai. There's so much unique about this wonderful country--there are high mountains, and lush subtropical foliage; honey; the men wear an unusual style of kilt which is found nowhere else; and the people tend to have more Ethiopic features than you stereotypically expect the peninsular Arabs to have. Lawrence of Arabia had it right (in the film) when he exclaimed, "God I love this country!" --(although, sadly, he wasn't talking about Yemen).
Best $200 plane ticket I ever bought!
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I'll share my photos here:
Below are some general pictures of scenery, architecture, and monuments. You can see the minivan buses in the second shot.
Sana'a scenery
On the streets of Sana'a
More scenery
Old City architecture
Monument to Equality!
Mosque construction (No Escape!)
This is a cute kitty cat (they do not send them ALL to Abu Dhabi!)
Cute Kitty Kat
This is a football (soccer) match we watched, between the Yemeni team, and an underdog team put together by expat British students. I guess Yemen is the only place where you'd be allowed to play in a dusty lot in the middle of the city.
Soccer field
Lastly, here are examples of the windows in Kim's appartment. I told you it was posh!
Stained Glass
Stained Glass 2
