Yemen-Day 2 & 3
Oct 11/12
I'm staying in a 'Tower House' in old Sanaa, a section of the city that is listed as an UNESCO world heritage site. If you could see it, you would understand why. I've never seen anything even closely resembling this. It has all the narrow windy streets of many old cities I've been in. But it's the look – the style of the buildings – that is completely unique to Yemen. The Tower Hoses are tall rectangle boxes, rising as high as 7+ stories (my hotel seems to be one of the tallest). They appear to be made of brick, but are decorated with white frosting-like details around the windows and doors. Many include colorful stained-glass windows. All the houses are the same color with the frosting décor, but each one is different. I've seen many with the Star of David as a decorative pained window, but don't know the history of the Jews here.
Inside the hotel is a tiny lobby/registration area and then the stone circular staircase that takes you up to your room. The steps are extremely tall making it more of a workout for my short legs. My room has an old carved wooden door that is short enough that even I have to duck to go in. My $35/night room includes a small sitting area, bathroom, and is a corner bedroom with many small windows with a fantastic view. There is a rooftop terrace overlooking that city and a ground level terrace overlooking a communal garden. A huge breakfast is included. I'm in love. The only downside is the electricity went out all over town so I wasn't able to shower.
Friday, the first day of Eid, was my first full day in Sanaa. It's a blessing and a curse to be here during Eid. This was like the Muslim version of Thanksgiving, I think. Families all get together to eat and give gifts, dressed in their finest. For the men, that meant the donning of their white robe that is about high ankle length, a dress jacket, and a beige shawl. At the waist they wear the traditional curved knife attached to an elaborately decorated wide belt. The knife (called a Jambia) is placed right in the middle of their waist. This is apparently important. Virtually every Yemeni male (and that includes children) wore this on Friday. The little girls dressed in colorful princess dresses. The women…black robe, black scarf, black face covering. How unfair.
The downside to Eid is that everything is closed. The old town in the afternoon felt like a ghost town. Only one street had a few shops open selling the Jambia. I chatted with the boys in one of the shops as they chewed their Qat, feeling fine. Qat is a leaf from a tree that produces a similar feeling to marijuana if chewed for an hour or so. They offered me some, so I thought I'd see what it tasted like. You are supposed to chew and only swallow the juice. The men start chewing around one in the afternoon. Often their cheeks bulge out like a deformity, accompanied by glassy red eyes. The scary part is when your taxi driver is chewing, the money-changer is chewing, the guys shooting of their guns, the soldiers…I'm wondering if the pilot on my local flight will be chewing. They are quite good-natured, but I don't think they should be operating heavy machinery while doing this, or holding a gun (that's another story). Anyway, the stuff tasted nasty and I lasted about 5 minutes before spitting it out. The children and men seem to have no problem with my photography. Everyone is extremely friendly. Even if they can't speak English, they seem to know how to say 'Where are you from,' 'What is your name,' and 'Have you tried Qat?'
Also on Friday, I made a trip to the Tourist Police with two French men who came with their families on holiday. The standard tourist procedure here is to hire a tour company to organize the permits, a car, and a driver/guide. As I am just one with no one to share the cost, I didn't want to do it. I also enjoy traveling the local way for a while as it is the best way to have personal contact with the locals. A female foreigner traveling alone, I was told by numerous people, was very unusual and not recommended and taking local transport was a real problem, etc, etc, etc. All wrong, in my opinion. The Tourist Police who did our permits was lovely and even let me give him 2 possible plans and call him to say which one I was taking. Easy, easy, easy. Took about 1 1/2 hours including the drive there.
October 13
Today was a great day. I set out on my first day of breaking all the established rules: a single female foreigner, traveling solo, via local transport. This day proved how you can have such rich experiences when you do it the local way.
I set out in a private taxi to find a copy machine to make 20 copies of my tourist police permit to hand out at checkponts. This proved to be difficult with everything closed for Eid, but finally found a place, then went to the starting point for the local shared taxis (called a Bijou). I planned to go to a town about an hour away called Shiban (there are two, so I'll call this one Shiban 1). The bijous are decrepid station wagons that carry as many passengers as they can squeeze in. As a female and foreigner, I'm expected to buy the 2 front seats so I can sit alone. I wore my abaya and a head scarf, hopn gto attract less attention. It worked at the first checkpoint where the police didn't notice I was a foreigner until the taxi driver pointed me out. I handed over a copy of my permit. They asked me my nationality and my job and waved us on. Easy. A guy behind me asked a few questions about what I did and where I worked and interpretted for the rest. When we got to the second checkpoint, before the police could even ask, half the passengers in the taxi started telling the police all about me. I heard 'American' and 'Saudi Arabia.' Very sweet, like they were my friends now.
Shiba is a dusty, dirty old town with little charm, but it where you can begin a short 2.5 k hike up the mountain to an old village called Kawkaban. The main street of Shibam was crammed with vendors and men – all men. Where are the women in these towns??? It was a little intimidating walking through the crowd of men. Several were friendly and pointed the way to the path which was stone paved switchbacks with streetlights. It's clearly well-traveled. I brought what I would need for an overnight in my day pack, making it quite heavy, along with my 50 kilo camera bag (you think I jest?). About half-way up, the road croses the path and this is where I met 'the family,' a group of about 8 women, 5 men, and 10+ little children, all heading up the trail carrying food, pots, water, and other misc. items.
One of the women handed me a yellow contianer, or rather, shoved it into my hands. She didn't seem to have an extra hand to carry it, so I thought, why not help. The women all seemed to take this as a sign of comraderie and proceeded to chat with me in Arabic. These Yeminia women clearly needed a lesson on how to sign language. They spoke loudly and fast, all the while waving their hands. When I gave them my baffled look and my sign language for 'I have no idea what on earth you are saying,' they waved more and spoke faster. Eventually I remembered my handy-dandy Arabic phrase book that I bought 2 years ago and never opened. This helped a bit.
At a point a short way up the trail, the women & kids veered off (and veered me off) to the right where there was a long overhanging shaded area of rock and a great view. They insisted I hang with them and I thought they were just taking a short break. One of the men, Mohammed, spoke a little English and said they were fixing food and tea and it would only be 10 minutes (it was 30) and would I please stay and eat. Why not. I had nothing better to do. I took pictures of the kids which cause a near riot and tried to converse with the women, which was hopeless. When the food was laid out on a blanket on the ground, it turned out to be a delicious feast. I finally discovered that they were from Sanaa and simply came out for a family picnic. This resting spot was as far as they were going. I eventually pulled myself away and continuted hiking to Kawkaban.
Kawkaban is an old village with a collection of ruins and lived-in brick houses on a flat plateau above the valley. I found a 'hotel' – I will try to describe this. It was more like a family house with a few rooms set aside for guests. My room was in the traditional style with floor mattress seating around the edges of the room with carpets on them. These mattresses are also where you sleep. They provide blanket and pillow, but basically, you're laying on the same carpet that everyone else has slept on for God knows how long. I loved it. The bathroom was a long trek through the house or over the roof terrace. The owner, Yahir, could not have been more helpful and nice. The price of YR 2000 ($10) included dinner and breakfast. The dinner was astonishing. They seemed to never stop bringing food in. Far more than we could eat. Oh, 'we' included a lovely British couple who work in Dubai. We ate together.
Kawkaban itself isn't exactly beautiful, but sits in such a stunning location, that it is breathtaking from certain viewpoints. I was there at sunset with my camera and couldn't get enough of it. My favorite bit of the afternoon: the 4 teenage/child boys selling souvenirs out of wheelbarrows on the cliff edge. Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed, and Salim became my buddies by the time we said goodbye. Salim even walked me around town showing me interesting bits such as the Star of David on some buildings and an abandoned Imam house built into the cliff.
I love Yemen. I have a distinct feeling all the time that I'm in a special place.
I'm staying in a 'Tower House' in old Sanaa, a section of the city that is listed as an UNESCO world heritage site. If you could see it, you would understand why. I've never seen anything even closely resembling this. It has all the narrow windy streets of many old cities I've been in. But it's the look – the style of the buildings – that is completely unique to Yemen. The Tower Hoses are tall rectangle boxes, rising as high as 7+ stories (my hotel seems to be one of the tallest). They appear to be made of brick, but are decorated with white frosting-like details around the windows and doors. Many include colorful stained-glass windows. All the houses are the same color with the frosting décor, but each one is different. I've seen many with the Star of David as a decorative pained window, but don't know the history of the Jews here.
Inside the hotel is a tiny lobby/registration area and then the stone circular staircase that takes you up to your room. The steps are extremely tall making it more of a workout for my short legs. My room has an old carved wooden door that is short enough that even I have to duck to go in. My $35/night room includes a small sitting area, bathroom, and is a corner bedroom with many small windows with a fantastic view. There is a rooftop terrace overlooking that city and a ground level terrace overlooking a communal garden. A huge breakfast is included. I'm in love. The only downside is the electricity went out all over town so I wasn't able to shower.
Friday, the first day of Eid, was my first full day in Sanaa. It's a blessing and a curse to be here during Eid. This was like the Muslim version of Thanksgiving, I think. Families all get together to eat and give gifts, dressed in their finest. For the men, that meant the donning of their white robe that is about high ankle length, a dress jacket, and a beige shawl. At the waist they wear the traditional curved knife attached to an elaborately decorated wide belt. The knife (called a Jambia) is placed right in the middle of their waist. This is apparently important. Virtually every Yemeni male (and that includes children) wore this on Friday. The little girls dressed in colorful princess dresses. The women…black robe, black scarf, black face covering. How unfair.
The downside to Eid is that everything is closed. The old town in the afternoon felt like a ghost town. Only one street had a few shops open selling the Jambia. I chatted with the boys in one of the shops as they chewed their Qat, feeling fine. Qat is a leaf from a tree that produces a similar feeling to marijuana if chewed for an hour or so. They offered me some, so I thought I'd see what it tasted like. You are supposed to chew and only swallow the juice. The men start chewing around one in the afternoon. Often their cheeks bulge out like a deformity, accompanied by glassy red eyes. The scary part is when your taxi driver is chewing, the money-changer is chewing, the guys shooting of their guns, the soldiers…I'm wondering if the pilot on my local flight will be chewing. They are quite good-natured, but I don't think they should be operating heavy machinery while doing this, or holding a gun (that's another story). Anyway, the stuff tasted nasty and I lasted about 5 minutes before spitting it out. The children and men seem to have no problem with my photography. Everyone is extremely friendly. Even if they can't speak English, they seem to know how to say 'Where are you from,' 'What is your name,' and 'Have you tried Qat?'
Also on Friday, I made a trip to the Tourist Police with two French men who came with their families on holiday. The standard tourist procedure here is to hire a tour company to organize the permits, a car, and a driver/guide. As I am just one with no one to share the cost, I didn't want to do it. I also enjoy traveling the local way for a while as it is the best way to have personal contact with the locals. A female foreigner traveling alone, I was told by numerous people, was very unusual and not recommended and taking local transport was a real problem, etc, etc, etc. All wrong, in my opinion. The Tourist Police who did our permits was lovely and even let me give him 2 possible plans and call him to say which one I was taking. Easy, easy, easy. Took about 1 1/2 hours including the drive there.
October 13
Today was a great day. I set out on my first day of breaking all the established rules: a single female foreigner, traveling solo, via local transport. This day proved how you can have such rich experiences when you do it the local way.
I set out in a private taxi to find a copy machine to make 20 copies of my tourist police permit to hand out at checkponts. This proved to be difficult with everything closed for Eid, but finally found a place, then went to the starting point for the local shared taxis (called a Bijou). I planned to go to a town about an hour away called Shiban (there are two, so I'll call this one Shiban 1). The bijous are decrepid station wagons that carry as many passengers as they can squeeze in. As a female and foreigner, I'm expected to buy the 2 front seats so I can sit alone. I wore my abaya and a head scarf, hopn gto attract less attention. It worked at the first checkpoint where the police didn't notice I was a foreigner until the taxi driver pointed me out. I handed over a copy of my permit. They asked me my nationality and my job and waved us on. Easy. A guy behind me asked a few questions about what I did and where I worked and interpretted for the rest. When we got to the second checkpoint, before the police could even ask, half the passengers in the taxi started telling the police all about me. I heard 'American' and 'Saudi Arabia.' Very sweet, like they were my friends now.
Shiba is a dusty, dirty old town with little charm, but it where you can begin a short 2.5 k hike up the mountain to an old village called Kawkaban. The main street of Shibam was crammed with vendors and men – all men. Where are the women in these towns??? It was a little intimidating walking through the crowd of men. Several were friendly and pointed the way to the path which was stone paved switchbacks with streetlights. It's clearly well-traveled. I brought what I would need for an overnight in my day pack, making it quite heavy, along with my 50 kilo camera bag (you think I jest?). About half-way up, the road croses the path and this is where I met 'the family,' a group of about 8 women, 5 men, and 10+ little children, all heading up the trail carrying food, pots, water, and other misc. items.
One of the women handed me a yellow contianer, or rather, shoved it into my hands. She didn't seem to have an extra hand to carry it, so I thought, why not help. The women all seemed to take this as a sign of comraderie and proceeded to chat with me in Arabic. These Yeminia women clearly needed a lesson on how to sign language. They spoke loudly and fast, all the while waving their hands. When I gave them my baffled look and my sign language for 'I have no idea what on earth you are saying,' they waved more and spoke faster. Eventually I remembered my handy-dandy Arabic phrase book that I bought 2 years ago and never opened. This helped a bit.
At a point a short way up the trail, the women & kids veered off (and veered me off) to the right where there was a long overhanging shaded area of rock and a great view. They insisted I hang with them and I thought they were just taking a short break. One of the men, Mohammed, spoke a little English and said they were fixing food and tea and it would only be 10 minutes (it was 30) and would I please stay and eat. Why not. I had nothing better to do. I took pictures of the kids which cause a near riot and tried to converse with the women, which was hopeless. When the food was laid out on a blanket on the ground, it turned out to be a delicious feast. I finally discovered that they were from Sanaa and simply came out for a family picnic. This resting spot was as far as they were going. I eventually pulled myself away and continuted hiking to Kawkaban.
Kawkaban is an old village with a collection of ruins and lived-in brick houses on a flat plateau above the valley. I found a 'hotel' – I will try to describe this. It was more like a family house with a few rooms set aside for guests. My room was in the traditional style with floor mattress seating around the edges of the room with carpets on them. These mattresses are also where you sleep. They provide blanket and pillow, but basically, you're laying on the same carpet that everyone else has slept on for God knows how long. I loved it. The bathroom was a long trek through the house or over the roof terrace. The owner, Yahir, could not have been more helpful and nice. The price of YR 2000 ($10) included dinner and breakfast. The dinner was astonishing. They seemed to never stop bringing food in. Far more than we could eat. Oh, 'we' included a lovely British couple who work in Dubai. We ate together.
Kawkaban itself isn't exactly beautiful, but sits in such a stunning location, that it is breathtaking from certain viewpoints. I was there at sunset with my camera and couldn't get enough of it. My favorite bit of the afternoon: the 4 teenage/child boys selling souvenirs out of wheelbarrows on the cliff edge. Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed, and Salim became my buddies by the time we said goodbye. Salim even walked me around town showing me interesting bits such as the Star of David on some buildings and an abandoned Imam house built into the cliff.
I love Yemen. I have a distinct feeling all the time that I'm in a special place.
posted by LuAnne at
9:37 PM
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