Life in my new home.

My leave is long over – it was a GREAT time – and I am back in the Middle East.  After a few days in Bahrain to wrap things up, I moved to Sana’a, Yemen to complete the rest of my tour.  I am working at an Embassy, and now work with the Yemeni Coast Guard and Navy.  This was my original set of orders – I knew the day I received the call that I was coming here, though Bahrain put me on Iraq to fill a gap. 

Scenic Old Town Sana’a, Yemen 

Where is Yemen?  Frankly I did not know much about the place until I arrived.  I did know that USS Cole was bombed here in 2000, and that a lot of the folks in Gitmo come from here.  It is on the end of the Arabian peninsula and shares most of its border with Saudi Arabia and a bit with Oman.   It has a long coastline, with both Red Sea and Gulf of Aden coasts.  And, there is a straits here – right across from there is Somalia.  The waters in question are currently a hotbed of piracy – Somalia is best qualified as a failed state, so piracy is a way to make money and there is really no central government to stop people. 

Yemen is rather mountainous, and Sana’a is 7200 feet up, so despite being south of Saudi Arabia, it is actually pleasant here year round.  The altitude has also affected my workouts – much harder to run with the thinner air – but am starting to get used to it.

If you watch right news, you might hear about Yemen in the news.  There is a bit of a war going on north of here – the government is in a fight with rebels.  There is also a secessionist movement in the south part of the country (it used to be an independent nation), and Al Qaeda calls this place home as well.  Very interesting…

Am slowly adapting to life in Yemen.  Like my first few days in Bahrain, am getting used to it.  Yemen is different in a LOT of ways.  It is a much more conservative country – certainly no clubs or bars here – and the dress codes for the population are much more strict.  Also, there is a bit more of a threat here than in Bahrain – Al Qaeda tends to hang out here and there are periodic attacks on the embassy and other Western facilities.  So, all of the normal security briefings take on a much more relevant sense than one for Bahrain, for example.

One of the big changes in working in an embassy.  At a military command, you are pretty much surrounded by military people with a smattering of civilian workers.  In an embassy, however, most of the staff is civilian – a lot of Dept. of State and USAID workers, with a small military group.  Thus, the politics and norms are different from that of a military post.  Not better, not worse – just different and I have to learn the politics.  Slightly more complex than a pure military place,..

One of the more interesting aspects of life here is the ‘highlight’ of the week – the one hour per week when the embassy commissary (store) opens.  It essentially just sells booze -  lots of it.  Though you are limited to how much you can buy, it is still quite a lot.   Given the security situation, folks tend to hole up at night – not

I have not interacted too much with the locals yet, but the seem very interesting.  As a traditional Muslim country, Yemeni women dress from head to toe in a robe – usually black.  There is a small slit for the eyes, and  that is it.  The men tend to dress in a white robe and sandals with a wool sport coat (essentially) over it, sometimes with a head dress.  They also wear a decorated, wide leather belt and in the belt they wear a ‘jambiya’ – a curved dagger in a decorated sheath. 

Yemeni men in traditional clothing

The BIG thing for the Yemenis is QAT – it is a plant (grown here) that they chew and it apparently is some sort of narcotic.  The start chewing in the afternoon and that is pretty much their afternoon.  It has to be bought fresh every day – the key ingredients dissipate shortly after harvesting – so it has to be fresh.  It is sold in cellophane bags, and there are literally billions of discarded bags on the streets – everywhere.