Well, thursday was my last day in a teaching capacity. It was results day, they came back the day after the final exam to see how they did on the exam and how they did in the class. There was some bad news of course, but there were only a few that didn't make it. It feels good to be done with work. The work itself wasn't so bad but the commute was really wearing on me. It was also where I had access to the best internet I have seen here. So from here on out, I'll be going to worse performing internet places. I doubt I'll have enough bandwidth to work with to make Skype worth it...

I went over to Ryan's place yesterday for brunch. He had a bunch of people over and it turned out really well. Lots of pancakes and he cooks a mean omelet. It also gave me the chance to say so long to some people. Meg and Ryan (a different one) were coworkers of mine at the school. He has a new gig in Doha, they'll be there in a couple of days. It was also the last time that I'll see Pei. She's going to Iran today and won't be back before I leave. She's the classic Aussie, totally laid back and gets along with almost everyone. She's the one that always gets invited to everyone's wedding and house for different occasions. I'm glad I met you Pei, good luck with the rest of your travels!


Only 16 days until I'm out of here!!!

With the price of various grains going up, there has been a general cry for more supply. Some people have taken to claiming that we are doomed, there are now too many people to support on the Earth. That's nonsense of course, there is an enormous amount of potential for more food production. A lot of the developing world could supply much more food. Many of those countries' economies are based around agriculture, but they are incredibly inefficient at it. Most of those farms are literally based on the "40 acres and a mule" concept. That needs to change, not only in order to feed everyone, but in order to get those economies on track.

Agribusiness is the answer. In 1900, 40% of the American work force worked in agriculture. Now, it is around 2% even though we produce much, much more food than before. With the use of automation and machinery, it takes far fewer people to raise food. Of course, as we lost all of those farm jobs, the standard of living and the economy dropped through the floor, right? Umm, no, it went up and up. If people are not required to toil in fields, they can do something else. If given a chance, people will think of something to do. We have seen a similar thing happening in the manufacturing sector. It takes far fewer people to make many more things. That's good. A human doing what could be done with a machine is the definition of a wasted resource.

Africa could be feeding most of the world if efficient farming methods were used. Zimbabwe used to be a model of efficient farming, then Mugabe took land from the productive farmers and distributed it many more less efficient farmers. It was a political/racial decision, but the men that received the land did not know how to use it efficiently. Zimbabwe now has to import most of its food. They went from being the "breadbasket of Africa" to being one of the poorest nations in the world in 10 short years by going away from the agribusiness model. The distribution of land into smaller farms was a disaster for the economy as a whole and it made those farmers much worse off.

So why do so many organizations try to promote small farms? The world bank, numerous NGOs and charities make this a primary goal. Why not try to foster good property rights so that land owners can sell or rent their land to much more productive farmers? Everyone would be much better off. Freeing resources to be used for the most productive uses is one of the keys to a well performing economy.

I just read an article about how Yemen's wheat production has increased by over 30% this year. Keep in mind that Yemen imports over 90% of its wheat, it's relatively easy to get a big percentage jump if you start from a low level. What caught my eye was the fact that the article said that the increase was due to the implementation of the new "food security" program instituted by the government. As usual, there were no details as to what that might mean, but I have some guesses, and as usual, I have a feeling that the program misguided.

Yemen imports 90% of its wheat. Bread is a staple here, the Yemenis eat an amazing amount of it every day. My last teacher told me that he eats about 14 to 15 pieces of "Cadam" (a type of bread) every day. I would say that's about a loaf and a half of bread back home every day. Wheat prices have gone up all over the world and that has caused the price of bread to go up as well. The people here are poor, and they put up with all sorts of shenanigans by the government, but if you raise the price of bread too much, there will be riots. There have been before, and I'm sure there will be in the not so distant future. I assume that this is what the "food security" program is all about, keeping the price of wheat low to keep civil unrest under control.

But how are you going to keep the price of wheat low? There are several ways a government can do this, and there are problems with all of them. The government could try to force the farmers to sell wheat at below the market price. There are some obvious problems with that. If you aren't allowed to get the market price, you either don't grow it to begin with or you sell on the black market. That program isn't going to work, and I think even this government knows that. The government can pay subsidies directly to the farmers to grow wheat. Subsidies are headaches. Once you give subsidies, it's very difficult to get rid of them. Just look at the US' farm subsidy bloat for proof. Subsidies are hidden taxes, in other words they raise the price which is the opposite of what you're trying to do. The much more popular approach is to raise the price of imported wheat (through a tariff) in order to make the local stuff seem like a bargain. It wouldn't surprise me if the government already imposes an import tax on wheat, they tend to grasp at any money they see. Raising prices on food in a really poor country is pretty evil, but I'm sure that's what's going on here.

The big problem is that Yemen will never grow as much wheat as their booming population wants. I'm sure the idea is that with an import tax, the locals would be protected from foreign competition until Yemen can become a player in world wheat production. There are several problems with this. First, Yemen just doesn't have the geography for large scale wheat production. There are few places here that have the flat, open fields that are best suited for growing and automatic harvesting of wheat. Even if they used every available acre, they would never produce enough to have any impact on worldwide wheat prices. The wheat fields in central Canada are several times the size of all of Yemen...

The big problem is water. Yemen is running out of water, they are running out of it at an alarming pace. It is estimated that Sana'a will be out of water in 10 years. Other parts may run out sooner. The papers here always talk about the booming population as the culprit but agriculture uses 90% of the water supply. A lot of that is due to qat and inefficient irrigation techniques. The government has gone to great lengths to stimulate the agriculture sector here. Since water is "free," it seems like the ideal way to put people to work. Of course it also means that everyone will keep using it until it's gone. As it turns out, the Saudi peninsula is not well suited for large scale agriculture production, who knew?

If Yemen gave up on agriculture, there would be more than enough water for the people here. "But what would they eat?" You can import all types of food relatively easily, water not so much. I'm pretty sure that the "food security" program more or less equals a water scarcity program. Yemen's food security "program" should be similar to The UAE's, Qatar's, Taiwan's , and Hong Kong's, i.e. make enough money that you can import whatever you want. If the economy is working well, you can buy food from places that are better suited for it. Instead of doing that, the Yemeni government is giving people incentives to stay on the farm. This not only stunts the economy, it will ultimately lead to a full blown water crisis. Trade is good, why don't they use it?

My students have their writing final exam tomorrow so I thought we'd do a practice run. The idea is that they can try and then we'd look at the mistakes that were made. In theory, that will prevent them from making the same mistakes tomorrow. I told them to write a 6 sentence paragraph, two sentences had to be in the present continuous tense, and they had to use one adverb of frequency (usually, occasionally, etc.). I told them that the topic was "school." They could write anything they wanted about school.

Bilquis, a rather chatty student of mine said, "But teacher, what should we write about?"
"Anything about school Bilquis."
"But what?"
"Anything. You can write about any school you've been to."
"But what do I write?"
"You don't have any opinions about any of the schools you've been to?"
"Ummm?"
"Just write something, whatever comes into your head."
"No, tell me teacher, what do I write about?"
"Anything!"
"No, let me write about something else."
"No, just write!"
"But what...?"
"THINK FOR YOURSELF!"

Honestly, it was only 6 sentences, and she did eventually have six sentences of opinions to turn in, but she didn't think she could do it. She was paralyzed when I didn't give her something definite to do. It's common enough here, they are petrified about the thought of coming up with their own material. The students have been pestering me for a week, "Please teacher, tell us what the topic is!" Of course that would negate the whole test aspect of it. If they can prepare and memorize something with the help of dictionaries and textbooks, it wouldn't tell me how well they know the material. I always assign something general and easy like, "Why are you studying English?" but they are worried that it will be "hard." I have told several of them that I will expect a history of the formation of the government of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (aka the PDRY aka south Yemen. North and South Yemen were reunified back in 1990.), but only 6 sentences worth... That made them freeze with fear, but I made it clear that it was a joke.

And it's not as though we're doing high power writing right now. I would be ecstatic if a student turned in the following:

I am studying English because I want to get a good job. I go to the school every day. English is hard but I study a lot. My brother takes classes too. I am writing this paragraph so I can get a good grade. I love English!


A lot of the things I get have the same, basic sentiment, but with a lot more grammatical errors... Anyway, not all of my students have a problem, but some of them have zero imagination. I'm hoping that with a little pushing I can make them do more than they think they can.

Nothing symbolizes Yemen like the Jambiya. It's a curved knife that the men wear, front and center, with their more traditional clothes. When someone thinks of a souvenir from here, the Jambiya is at the top of the list. There's a wide range of prices, they start with the el-cheapo ones made in India for tourists and kids and go up to the ultra expensive Rhino horn ones. All of the value is in the handle, the blade is a total afterthought. They are for show only, not for being used. You can put an edge on them, but the blade isn't up to my mother's cutlery, and the handle is fastened to a really thin extension of the blade by two rivet things. Even the best ones feel like they could be broken in half with a little effort. Any $20 knife back home is more useful, and feels better than these things. What's the best knife you can buy here? People sell the bayonets from their Kalishnakovs pretty cheap, and they make excellent knives...

The Jambiyas I thought about getting are from Tihama. They have silver handles and usually have quite a bit of work done to them. I have finally found some in the $90 range that I liked. The good ones are in the $200-$600 range and that's out of my price range. I should have something from here, but the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want a Jambiya. I just can't bring myself to spend $90 on a useless knife. True, they have cultural significance, but I really don't like the culture they represent. They are the epitome of the "You can tell what kind of man I am by who my father/uncle/grandfather is. Just look at this Jambiya!" The Jambiya shows what class you belong to, the nicer the one you have, the more respect you are given. The most esteemed are the ones with handles made from the horn of black rhino. Yeah, that rhino, the one that is almost extinct, it's still in demand here. It's much more important to have an ostentatious display of wealth and class than to preserve the animal... In a nutshell, it sums up what I don't like about Yemen. The knife may look interesting, but it's useless...

I have decided instead to buy something that reminds me of the culture here that is silent to me. I am getting a wedding dress. It's about 80 or 90 years old, it's from Sada'a, and it's in amazing condition. There are many traditional wedding dresses available here, but this one is noticeably different. It's a deep, cobalt blue and it has silver embroidery around the neck area and some more a little lower on the dress. The weddings usually go for 3 or 4 days, so the bride would have worn this on one of those days around the other women. The dress is actually pretty plain, it is customary to bury the bride in tons of jewelry, the dress isn't really seen very much.

Anyway, I think that this is a much nicer souvenir than a useless knife. It also is a part of the culture that is fading away, the brides like newer dresses these days. The Jambiya has been around forever, and there's tons being made now. These dresses won't be around too much longer...

Do you remember the story in the Bible when they were trying to trick Jesus by asking him about paying the tax from the Romans? It was illegal to shirk the Roman tax of course, but the Romans were pagans and so it could be considered blasphemy for a Jewish man to support them. It looked like Jesus was trapped, no matter how he answered, He would be in trouble with someone. Well, after asking someone who's portrait was on the coin (it was Caesar's), He came up with an amazing answer, the famous, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's."

That utterance has had far reaching consequences. It showed that there is the realm of man and the realm of God. Most people take it to mean that money and government are man's doing and his affair, not God's. If they weren't separate, they were at least different. Islam has a very different history. Starting with the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and running all through the various Caliphs, the belief that the temporal and spiritual leader should be the same has been a constant in Sunni circles. Of course, that belief was held in Europe for a long time, but that died out along with the concept of the divine rights of kings. Even though the Caliphate has been gone for a long time, the belief is still a very strong one here. The government is expected to be the ruler here on earth, but it should also uphold all of the laws set down by God. I have yet to meet anyone here in Yemen that questions that world view. Turkey is an exception in the Sunni dominated countries, and maybe Indonesia and Malaysia are as well, but I'm not very familiar with them.

Why is this important? There are many consequences to this world view. Chief among them is the typical limits on freedom that these countries posses. It's one thing to outlaw murder, rape, burglary, etc. and it's quite another to outlaw conversion, proselytizing, and limits on the press. The first group of laws is all about maintaining civil order and respecting property rights. The second set of laws are about maintaining a certain world view and keeping a grip on power. In addition, investing a government with that kind of power over freedoms will always have a negative effect on the economy. As governments are wont to do, the power to regulate can quickly degenerate into bullying and intimidation in order to maintain power. They can always claim that they are doing it for God... If you think this is silly, come to Yemen. There are official limits on the press, supposedly these are to prevent any blasphemy from making it into the papers. In reality, the publishers wouldn't do that anyway, but the limits are now being used to quash dissenting opinions. It has now progressed to the jailing of journalists and other, more thug-like actions against journalists from certain quarters. Coincidentally, these journalists are being harassed by someone after they criticize the government... Did you know it is illegal to directly criticize the president in the paper? What would The US' papers look like with a law like that on the books?

For me, this cultural issue of the world of God vs. the world of man explains a lot about the political economy in countries in this part of the world. In most Sunni Islam circles, it is believed that there isn't any difference, the world of man is the world of God. That has a certain appeal in some ways, but there are some really awful consequences to holding that belief.

There have been moments that my students have come up with things that I never would have guessed that they would know. One day, we were talking about vitamins and I asked, "What is vitamin C?" A voice came from the back, "I think that is Ascorbic Acid..." Another time, we were outside practicing "This is," and learning some new vocabulary. It was a fairly low level class, so were were learning words like brick, flower, grass, pipe, etc. I pointed to a column and asked them if they knew what it was. One of my students said, "I think that is the pediment." I was pointing at the base if the column, so I shouldn't have been surprised...

Today, someone asked me who Martin Luther was. I'm pretty sure he had only heard of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. but I figured the other one was important enough to talk about as well. But how to explain? I told them that at the time, there was only one Christian Church. Martin Luther thought that there were some things wrong with the church, and so he came up with ideas to reform the church. New churches sprang up based on his recommendations, and we now call those churches Protestant churches. The church that they broke away from we now know as the Catholic church. They seemed to understand well enough, but then Saif, a student in the class raised his hand. "Actually, there were two Christian churches before the reformation, the Catholic and the Orthodox churches..." I was totally blown away. He is the first Yemeni I have ever met that even knew there was a difference between the Catholic and the Orthodox churches, let alone know when they were formed. I had to agree that, yes, there were two churches by the time of the reformation, but that was more detail than the class needed to understand who Martin Luther was. You never know what people are going to know....

I take a cab to work every day. We go along the Sailia down to 70 meter rd. (sabaeen to the locals) and then to Medina Hadda where I work. The saila is roughly 4 and a half lanes wide for most of it outside of old Sana'a. Not that there's any lanes, even if there were lines painted on the road, they would be ignored...

Anyway, on the way to work, we came up on a slightly slower moving car. My driver honked, as is the custom, as he passed on the left. I noticed that the driver of the other car wasn't paying attention and was slowly drifting to the left, into us. Sure enough, he smacked into the rear passenger side of the taxi I was in. We had been going about 45 MPH, so we fishtailed a bit. It wasn't that bad, although we were coming up on one of the many overpasses and the thought of us running into the supports flashed through my mind. Anyway, the impact messed up my cab's fender, but it totally ripped off the cowling and all of the plastic bits on the front of the other car. My driver got out and started yelling at the other guy. He came back long enough to tell me to get another cab...

My next guy was funny. He told me over and over again that he wasn't crazy like everyone else because he didn't chew qat and smoke. He seemed to take pride in his safe driving. It was quite a relief. This was the 4th accident that i have been involved in since I got here and it had the most potential for being dangerous. I have driven in the US for about 22 years and have been involved in 4 accidents despite there being many more cars and much faster traffic in the US. Traffic here is nuts, I've never been so worried being in a car before...

I was out in the courtyard of the school where I work before I started teaching. I was using the internet and just killing time. All of the windows in the school are open and I could hear the teachers trying to teach and sometimes corral their students. One woman was having difficulty with her class. She kept trying to quiet them down, and then they started doing the wrong thing because they weren't paying attention. I heard her lose her patience. "No no no! I said that is homework, close your book! Ahmed! Close your book! No! I said that's homework, we're doing something different now! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!"

LOL, I haven't actually said that yet, but I've thought it plenty of times....

One of the other teachers works for an oil company here. She teaches English and trains their employees in a variety of things. Today, she was telling us about the reason that the manager has to have an armed bodyguard. Because God has a sense of humor, all of Yemen's scant oil fields are in the most tribal, backwards areas. The government has auctions to distribute drilling rights in various parts of the country, but it is then up to the company to work things out with the locals where they want to drill.

Usually, the way it works is that the tribe demands not only money, but they also demand that a certain number of their tribesmen be hired as well. And they don't want to be drivers or security guards either, they want decent jobs. Fair enough, but these people have very little (if any) education, so the oil company has to give them a lot of training just to get them up to functional, let alone useful. I'm not exactly sure what the company does with these people, but they need to do something in order to avoid unfortunate things happening to their pipeline/drilling operations. The government has little actual control of these area, so the company is on its own...

One of the first things that employees need to do is learn English well enough. The company is English or Canadian. I bet all of the instructions for the equipment, safety and company procedures, etc. are all in English too. On the one hand, it seems a little silly to not make that stuff in Arabic but on the other hand, the new recruits wouldn't be able to read that either.... One particular new guy was going through the English program but he didn't do too well. He's from Marib, a particularly lawless (by the government's standards), mostly bedouin area. Needless to say, he had almost zero education. He showed up about a quarter of the time, chewed Qat (which is not allowed while working), and didn't learn a bit of English. He scored a 2 out 106 on the English test. So the manager looked at this employee's work ethic and the result and did what any sane manager would do, he fired him.

Big mistake.

It turns out that this guy is the nephew of one of the Sheiks in the area. He did what any of us would do if we were fired for not working, he threatened to kill the manager... The manager was a little upset about this, so he went directly to the sheik and asked him to intervene. This is common procedure when dealing with tribal problems. The sheik can put a stop to damn near anything in his own tribe. After explaining why the nephew was let go, the sheik told the manager that he shouldn't have fired his nephew. When the manager objected, the sheik pointed out that the manager did not fire anyone from the other tribe in the same area so he shouldn't have fired his nephew... A lot of tribal politics boils down to "I have more than you do." If one tribe is seen benefiting more than another, you can be sure that the tribe that is "behind" will not only do something to catch up, but they will try to get more so they can be "in the lead." Plus, members of the sheik's family are not used to being turned down for anything, the sheik really can't allow the precedent to be set that it's OK to shame one of his family members...

The manager is in a tough place. He has the nephew of a sheik threatening his life and the sheik isn't going to intervene. The manager could just let the guy back into the company, but how could that ever work out? He could also fire someone from the other tribe (one that apparently doesn't deserve to be fired), but then he would face reprisals from that tribe...

According to my friend (the teacher), the tribes don't understand how close the companies are to just pulling out of Yemen altogether. The oil fields in Yemen aren't that good and the death threats and tribal shenanigans are getting to the point where it isn't worth it. It's the classic example of a group trying to "protect" their workers but they end up killing the golden goose instead. The tribes keep upping their demands, and when they don't get them, they blow out part of a pipeline or something. The real problem is if you sat down with the sheiks and tribesmen in Marib and explained how they are making doing business in Yemen almost impossible and making Yemen look like a land of animals, they wouldn't care. All they see is what is in front of them and don't care about the consequences of their actions.

The manager now has a full-time, armed bodyguard. Marib makes Sana'a look like a cosmopolitan, urbane, educated city, and that's saying something!

I've calmed down some. As usual, it is the sheer amount of ignorance that has gotten to me. Poverty begets ignorance, and ignorance begets more ignorance. I can usually keep all of that in perspective, but sometimes it wells up and crashes down on me. I'm hoping that I can be Mr. cool for the next 35 days or so, but it wouldn't surprise me if I have several more Yemen moments before I leave...

I don't think that western women that visit here really understand the level of frustration I have achieved with dealing with the men here. Western women can talk to both the men and the women, but I can assure you that they have very different conversations with the men than I do. While women can talk about their brothers, husbands, and fathers, the men are totally silent about their female relatives. I don't get to meet them, and if I go to their house, I don't even get to see them. The implicit assumption that they are totally off limits to all other males makes my skin crawl. Somehow their honor would be compromised if I even saw them. What does that say about what they think of me? BTW, this isn't necessarily an Islam thing, it's a Yemeni thing.

Anyway, this stuff has been building in me for a long time, and I'm tired of being all PC about it, I hate it. I hate how they treat "their" women like possessions and I hate the fact that I can't even be trusted to see or talk to them. Whatever, I'm done with this place...

We were about to listen to a conversation in class about asking about someone's family. I felt that it was necessary to explain to the class that it is very common to talk about our families to our friends and acquaintances. As a man, I would even talk about my mother, my sister, or my wife and even mention her name. Here in Yemen, you do not tell men about your mother, wife, or sister. You certainly never tell another man her name. There's a perfectly good reason for that of course. You see, as soon as he told me her name, I would rape her in front of him and his entire family... Just for you non-native speakers reading this, that last sentence is dripping with sarcasm, go look up what that means. Who do they think they are? Keeping "their" women wrapped in secrecy, like they were some sort of valuable commodity that might be stolen offends me deeply. Women are, indeed, sentient and are perfectly capable of maintaining their morals on their own, there's no need for them to be sequestered away to the point where people can't even know their name...

Seriously, it's incredibly stupid, degrading, and insulting to women. Asking a guy what his wife's name is here would at the very least result in a black eye. With some hot-heads, it might result in a gunshot wound. I do not, and to be honest, will not, understand the secrecy about women relatives here. But what can you do? It's a deep part of their culture and it's not going away. It's best to simply accept it as a given. So I explained how our cultures are different in this regard and told them not to be surprised when people just tell you the names of their mother and sister and actually introduce their wife. I also told them that they shouldn't be surprised if they want to know the names of their mother, wife, and sisters.

One of my students interrupted me and said, "That's because you eat pork." I understood immediately. For those of you that are not intimately familiar with this culture, or for those of you that think in a logical fashion, let me explain what that comment meant. It is a widely held belief here that if you eat pork, you will not care if your wife has sex with another man, and you will in fact start cheating on your wife. You also lose any interest in your sister maintaining her "honor." Yes, many people think that eating pork makes people promiscuous and we lose our capacity to be jealous or even care about the sexual exploits of our sister/wife.

I have heard this many times. Usually, I just laugh it off and tell them that they have obviously never met an Italian or a Puerto Rican. Those men are famous for both their pork intake and their insane jealousies. This time it was different. I was already seething beneath the surface about the whole, "I can't tell you I have a mother" routine, but his comment sent me over the edge. He was saying that not only was it a bad thing for us to blithely tell people our sister's or mother's name, but that somehow what we eat was to "blame" for that terrible sin.

I'm surprised my lip didn't start to bleed I was biting down so hard. I will tell you what went through my mind. A word of warning, if swearing bothers you, skip to the last paragraph... Right, eating pork is what makes us so loose with "our" women. I guess eating salta (a uniquely Yemeni dish) is what makes you so fucking stupid. In your eyes, we may be "immoral" in the west, but we don't treat women like possessions, we ended slavery back in the 1880's. I assume that your God forsaken, pathetic excuse for a culture is only maintaining the moral high ground, protecting "your" women from God knows what, by assiduously avoiding eating the flesh of swine. Usually we say you are what you eat, but you're a big enough idiot to become what you don't eat. Fuck you, fuck you and your whole smug, pathetic, insular, ignorant, abomination of a culture.

OK, so I wasn't that coherent at the moment. Mostly, it was just "Fuck you, fuck you and fuck you." I was seething and I briefly fantasized about walking over and making him lose a couple of teeth. When someone starts at a level that I despise and then uses a moronic excuse to tell me how bad my culture is, violence does indeed spring into my head. Maybe I could beat some sense into him... If he had said that Americans didn't know God, or didn't have the correct religion, I'd think he was crazy, but at least he wouldn't sound like a total moron. Blaming our "shortcomings" (how dare we include female relatives in our conversations?) on eating bacon is the height of idiocy. What drives me nuts is that so many people here are stupid enough not to question the causation of sexual promiscuity on eating pork. I'm not even going to go into the absurd jump from telling people the names of female relatives to them whoring around. Usually, this culture assumes that men are total animals and cannot control their sexual urges but apparently women are totally helpless if you know their name. If a man knows a woman's name he can apparently see her at will and we all know that the only thing that men and women can do together is have sex. God, this culture is so screwed up...

Anyway, after all that bile went through my head, I told him that that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. I was about to go on, but I decided that I probably wouldn't stop. So I went back to the present continuous tense and object pronouns. I need to get out of here, their idiocy might turn me into a sociopath...

I mentioned in an earlier post how reading doesn't seem to very popular here. I recently gave one of my classes a writing assignment where they had to describe their favorite story or book. Predictably, 4 out of the 14 said the Qur'an. That's fine, if you're in a religion based around a book, that book should be important to you. Another three wrote about how they don't like to read. I then asked my other class to tell me what their favorite story is. 4 out of the 12 could not give me a single title, in English or Arabic. They were all women incidentally... We're talking about people that have graduated from high school and are at least 20 years old. One of my friends pointed out that I would be saddened by a similar poll in the US. I don't doubt that, but I'm positive that if we asked Americans what their favorite story is, we would have a far greater percentage of people responding with an answer. I am now trying to emphasize how important reading is to my students. I figure that even if the ones that don't read now don't start, at least the ones that do will make sure their kids do...

There are endless complaints about the government here. There's a good reason for that, the government is rife with cronyism and corruption. The general sentiment seems to be that if only they had a good person in power, everything would be just fine. I am going to ignore, for right now, the idea that the government should not only be in charge of fixing things, but of running everything. No one seems to understand that this government is exactly what you can expect when you wish for what everyone here wishes for. Almost to a person, the Yemenis see a powerful, centralized government being controlled by a strong man as the ideal. The government should be in charge of the economy, be in charge of handing out jobs, and of course be in charge of upholding sharia law. It should be headed by a strong man that has the power to make different factions bend to his will. Many people actively dream of having a king...

In theory, if you got the right guy, a benevolent, enlightened, wise man to run a government like that, it wouldn't be so bad. I still don't think it would be ideal, but it wouldn't be as bad as it is now. Of course, there is never anyone like that running a government. Why not? Surely there are people that fit that description in the world, how come they are never elected to be benevolent dictator? The reason of course is that people that crave power are drawn to positions that offer power. The people that crave power have the stomach to do what they need to in order to get that power. A good person would never have a chance in competition with people like that. When you invest a leader with almost total control, you can expect the person that eventually occupies that post is more power hungry than benevolent. You can also expect that person to take full advantage of his position once he attains it.

The are countless examples of this anywhere where the myth of the powerful leader heading the perfect government exists. The Arabic nations are an easy list of examples, but South America and Central America are just as guilty. You'll notice what all of those places seem to have in common, underperforming economies and human rights abuses. The founders of the US knew what they were doing when they put the different branches of government into opposition. By limiting the power of the executive, legislative, and judicial, we have been able to benefit from the power struggle between them over all these years.

One thing I have learned from being in Yemen is that we need to watch out for politicians promising to "fix" whatever problems we have. You can be assured that whatever they say is only being said in order to be elected. It is their quest for office that motivates them. Thankfully, a president has limited impact on sweeping changes in the US (with the exception of foreign policy), so most of his promises amount to little more than pandering. What we need is a candidate that will tell us to solve our own problems, stop looking to the government to fix everything. That candidate will never get very far because people want to believe in the Philosopher King in government instead of facing up to the real motivations behind the quest for power.

Since I'll be leaving in June, I need to get rid of the stuff in my apartment. I had heard that there was a newish student here that planned on being here on a long term basis. He expressed some interest in buying some of my stuff, so he came over. I thought he'd be interested in the apartment, but it turns out he has big plans. He is going to rent a 4 bedroom place and furnish it. He then plans to sublet the place over the next 7-8 years. I think he's nuts. He's been here all of one month, doesn't really know Arabic, and he's planning on staying here for 7-8 years. Not only that, he's planning on sinking money into an apartment with the idea of making money on it, in Yemen mind you...

Never mind the lunacy of wanting to be here that long, how about the idea that he's going to make money on real estate here. There's every indication that this place will melt down over the next 8 years, but we'll ignore that. If it was a pretty straightforward business of renting the house out at a profit, why isn't the landlord doing it? My guess is that once this American gets the place spiffed up, the rent will magically go up...

Another thing to keep in mind is that once you are renting, the landlords usually assume that any problems you have (water, plumbing, electricity, etc.) are your problem. They do not help or try to fix things. It is very common for the landlord to ask for money to make the place ready to move into. I have had many friends look at places and tell the landlord that they would live there IF the bathroom were fixed, the kitchen repaired, etc. The landlord says, great! Give me $400 and I'll do it... It's a very strange arrangement.

Anyway, this guy I was talking to tonight was all of 22 or 23 and he figured that he had his whole 8 year stay here all planned out. I think his best case scenario is that he does what he wants and everything works out until the revolution comes. Then he's SOL...

It has been raining off and on for the past three days. It's nice to have humidity in the air again, I don't feel like a mummy every morning. The old city was built around a natural riverbed, called the saila, so when it rains the water naturally runs down to it. It was paved just recently, I think about 10 years ago or so, paid for by the American taxpayer... When it's not raining, the saila is one of the main roads in the old city. It connects several big streets and so it's pretty useful to get around on. Of course when it rains, it is impassable. All of the rain that hits the old city flows into it. I have seen the water rise up to 8 feet in the saila.

With all of that water flowing downhill, the rain acts as a natural street cleaner. This entire area is always covered by various amounts of dust. If we get a small amount of rain, everything is covered in a slick film of silt. When it rains really hard, or it keeps up for several days, a lot of that dust gets swept away. It is the only time you will ever see the streets clean. As you get towards the saila, there is a bit of an accumulation of mud. The saila itself is as muddy as the York river. Children play in it despite God only knows what is in there and the sometimes swift current. I guess it's the only time they really get to play in the water. Still, not only does the rain wash away the dust, it washes away everything else that is on the streets as well. Take my word for it, the streets here are pretty nasty. A day or two after the rain stops and most of the water has evaporated leaving the sailia a muddy mess, it is disgusting. The sailia smells like a sewer. People here still just walk through it in their sandals. I'm just waiting for the next Yemeni to lecture me about how western toilets are so unsanitary...

The newer parts of the city do not have any natural riverbed. It doesn't rain here very often, but it does rain and that water does have to go somewhere. It looks as though no one ever gave that any thought when they built the roads. They aren't crowned, the slopes are all over the place, and there certainly isn't any storm sewer system, the water just falls and then it flows downhill until it stops. So certain areas can have as much as 4 to 5 inches of standing water. It wouldn't be so bad, except that a lot of these places are at major intersections and on major roads. The water does evaporate pretty quickly, but it still takes a day or two for those places to be dry again. With the Yemenis' penchant for littering and dumping all sorts of stuff, it gets pretty nasty. The fish souk is particularly fragrant these days... This does give a possible explanation as to why almost all of the speed bumps have a gap in them. The speed bumps act as a dam for the water, so they put a gap in it to allow the water to flow. That makes a lot more sense than giving the motorcycles a way to avoid the speed bumps...

The other thing that I have noticed since the rains have started are the mosquitos. Being from a rather swampy part of Gloucester county, I'm well acquainted with mosquitos. The ones here are particularly potent, I itch like crazy from their bites. I am also getting eaten alive at night. None of my windows have functional screens, I have yet to see any windows in Yemen that can keep bugs out. Since all of the sheets here seem to be made of synthetics (mine are at least), I broil under them. If I throw them off, I get bitten. I've had to resort to going to bed fully dressed in a long sleeved t-shirt and sweat pants and no covers. My hands and feet are still getting bitten, but it's better.

When I go back home, I'll be walking into the teeth of a Virginia summer. The weather itself will be much worse back home. It gets hotter and it is more humid in VA. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to avoid those things by going inside. There are fewer weather problems here, but you can't get away from the ones that are here...

Can you imagine a Hitler themed bar? It would be decorated in swastikas and various symbols of the third reich. Wouldn't that be charming? Wouldn't that be stylish? Wouldn't that be so kitsch? No, it wouldn't of course. It would be the height of bad taste and insensitivity. What kind of creep would go to a place like that? Well, it turns out that there is something just as bad in New York City, it's a Mao themed bar. I can't find the link to it, but here's one talking about a Mao restaurant.

Just in case you've forgotten, Mao killed far more people than Hitler. I'm not saying that Hitler was a great guy, just that Mao was, at the very least, another mass murderer. In point of fact, Mao dwarfs Hitler in the body count department. And yet, in certain circles, Mao and his iconography is seen as hip, kitsch style. I've also seen Soviet iconography creeping into "style." I'm thinking that it's some sort of retro, 80's flashback look. Seeing as I lived through the last part of the Soviet empire, I can't really see that stuff in anything but a bad light.

You see, as soon as I was able to understand what was going on in the news, I feared and was angry at the Soviets. I learned what the word dissident meant when I was 8 years old. When I think of the Soviet Union, I think of the KGB (and their sister force, the Stassi) endless lines for goods, and people literally dying to leave the worker's paradise. One of my strongest memories is the image of bodies strung up in barbed wire. They had been shot as they tried to escape. I have no idea where I saw those pictures, I can't imagine that they would have shown that on the news back then, and I'm not sure where I would have had access to that sort of thing. Maybe it was in an article in National Geographic or some other magazine. It may have also been from East Germany, but it's all the same to me. I remember reading the caption and being horrified. I was probably all of 12 or 13 years old.

I was also always impressed by the stories of people defecting to the US. I knew that many people didn't make it over to the West, and I was amazed that people risked their lives just in order to come to where I lived. So when I see a shirt with a hammer and sickle on it being worn by an American, it makes my stomach churn. The Soviet Union was a brutal, repressive state. North Korea is really the only remnant left thank God. We have gotten spoiled in the last little while. Without the Soviets around, we forget what a truly repressive regime is like. They were brutal, how many millions of people were killed, jailed, or just disappeared? Granted, Stalin was responsible for a big chunk of that, but the message was sent by him and the status quo was kept by his replacements. How can any "hipster" sport symbols of that most awful of times?

At least there's the possibility that the person wearing Soviet iconography is actually supporting some sort of ideological point of view. I am convinced that that ideology is morally bankrupt, but at least that person might have a political excuse for that. Mao shirts have no redeeming value. When you put a person on your shirt, we have to think of that person. A government is big enough that we might, possibly have different opinions on it. The people wearing Mao t-shirts would have been the first on the list to be killed during the cultural revolution. To me, it is not hip, it is not kitsch, it is just putting the killer of millions of people on you. I can't imagine any good things that I could think about that. I also wonder why people don't put John Wayne Gacy or the BTK killer on their shirts if they want to be "edgy." Oh, that's right, they didn't kill enough people. If you're going to put a killer on your shirt, make it a big one...

So the real question is, "Why do the Soviets and Mao get a free pass from so many people?" Seriously, Hitler is universally reviled (as he should be), but the bigger killers like Mao and Stalin aren't really thought about much. Why isn't being called a "Soviet" as big an insult as being called a Nazi? Why isn't being called a Maoist enough to send people into a rage? With the history the US has, I can understand people being sensitive to racism, and Hitler was the poster boy of racism gone amuck. But why don't we Americans hate Mao and the Soviets (Stalin in particular) with the same vigor as Hitler? I'm afraid to think that the answer might be that people are more willing to accept "political" violence than racist violence. Somehow, Hitler was just evil while the other guys were trying to "achieve" something, so it's not as bad...

Call me weird if you must, but I consider all of them, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, and the systems that lead to their power to be monsters. You'll note that communism was behind three of the four. Another authoritarian system was behind the other. Maybe it's just ignorance that is allowing the others to get a free pass culturally from Americans. If that's the case, I'm going to do my damnedest to educate people....