Back to Civilisation

Three continents in one week, phew.

Leaving Yemen, I had way too much stuff. In the end I had accumulated about 30kg. As I weigh 57kg you should be very impressed that I can carry that amount up and down stairs and for the 100 metres between where the taxi had to stop and where the airport trolleys started. Not only was it too much in weight, it was dispersed amongst various packs and bags, totally inappropriate for airline travel.

A little old Yemeni man in the airport saw me attempting to stuff various random articles into the flap of my backpack designed to hide the straps and after polite conversation asked me if I wanted him to carry anything to London.

Excellent, I got a mule to transport my excess baggage. And it worked out for him too, as he could buy 4 cartons of smokes from the on-board duty free. I carried two cartons for him through customs. He was travelling on a British passport, I think they must give UK citizenship away in cornflakes packets now, because I was one of the few people on the flight with a English speaker's accent... and the only one who had to queue through the foreigners immigration section. My poor mule had to wait an hour for me to get throughto the other side.

Ah London. I didn't really consider it to be pretty before. Tristam lives in Islington on the edge of Camden (the cool suburb with the alternative/punk/goth/rock shops). It's so green and the moment warm and sunny too.

The thing that takes away the pleasure of London for me is the underground. It's not a bad experience, but it just seems to drain time and life out of the city. It also robs me of my understanding of the size, scale and layout. So I made an effort to stay above ground as much as possible and also avoid changing stations with multiple junctions. This meant I spent a lot of time wandering in and out of shops in the sunlight and not that much time scurring around tunnels.

Tristam's flat is really high tec. he doesn't have a telly, or CD player, or radio, or satelite. But, he has internet: fast, smooth, unblocked internet on clean, efficient apple computers. He can do stuff like change music playing through the house speakers using his (i)phone.

I got the most important thing done: I got my new passport. I didn't manage to fill up all my pages in my last passport despite asking the Yemenese officials specifically to stamp the two remaining blank pages. Now I have another ten years, and another 48 pages to fill.

I had loads of grand intentions, I was going to write a resume, and re-learn how to use a Mac, learn the new design programs that have been released over the past decade, I was going to apply for an Iranian visa, sort out my photos and post stuff back to NZ. I didn't.

Instead I have spent the past two weeks doing nothing, and (despite feeling a bit guilty for not being more motivated) enjoyed the absolute pleasure of being surrounded by a city that really works. Where health care is taken for granted and respect for human life and others' property is innate. Where things are clean and beautiful and they work. Where if something is not right we complain because we expect better. Where there are rubbish bins, and people are hired with taxpayers money to collect that rubbish and deal with it. Where people do their jobs, and do them well. Where people pay taxes because we understand, support and have a choice in where our money is going. Where there are solutions, and ways to deal with problems. Where you know if you have a problem there will be someone there to help you, and if you see someone else with a problem, you can help them, because there are ways to get stuff done.

It works. and it feels good to be part of it.

London was brilliant. I'm now up in Cheltenham with Missy, I'm re-integrating from being a scruffy backpacker to a glamorous burlesque performer... I'm blonde, and clean and smell a lot better. All I need now is motivation to get stuff done. I think that will come when I reach the bottom of my limited finances. Nothing inspires me to work more than having to.

Yemen: Yeah Man!

The city of Sana'a has to be one of the most beautiful places i have ever visited... Up there with Edinburgh and Venice. Pity I have no photographic record of its beauty. My photos from when I was here in September where stolen with a pile of other Cd's (including all my photos from Egypt). And now my camera itself is stolen. I know I mentioned it in my last post... but I'm still feeling it and what's a blog if not a place to share ones pain.

It rains frequently here. I got caught in a drenching the other day. I couldn't help but notice that within an hour all the water in the city had conveniently drained away to the main roads that are about a metre below the rest of the city for this exact reason. It just works. there are no puddles, no mud, no festerng mosquito breeding grounds. I love it when humans get together and think about stuff before they do it. Even though there are no festering puddles, I am covered in mosquito bites.

The food is great. Darius and I have been overloading on chicken. It's not like you can't get chicken in Ethiopia, you can in nice restaurants in the form of spicy chicken and onion curry. It's flavored with burbery which I think is the only spice used in Ethiopia, so it kinda tastes like every other dish. Here we have had chicken grilled, fried, boiled, curried, minced and in some indistinguishable form on the flight over. Yum.

On the flight over I was surprised to note that none of our airline hostesses had their heads covered. In fact they where wearing very tight high waisted slacks and very light weight blouses, too much makeup and VPLs. This is all in stark contrast to the black triangles seen on the streets after exiting the plane. In one of the markets I was surrounded by hundreds of them, They are very menacing looking in large numbers. They just don't look human. Darius and I were counting how many pairs of Yemeni women's lips we could spot. In our first couple of days we got about 4 pairs. What Sana'a lacks in women's lips it makes up in boys eyes. Stunning greens and blues on olive skin. Simply beautiful.

Darius has left for Aden, a former British colony or protectorate or something by the beach.

I decided to go and get a waxing. It turned out to be a bad waxing. So in case you are not familiar with the hidden arts of the beauty salon: a good waxing is when a lady smears luke warm goop over your flesh then fiercely rips it off taking with it all your hair by the roots. What makes it a good thing is that the lady is wearing white and she smells pretty and she does things with fresh white towels that protect your modesty there is tranquil music playing softly in the background of the small neutral toned private room. So even though you are lying half naked and in a fair amount of pain as you have half your thatch ripped from your body you kind of feel special and like it is some sort of luxurious treat.

A bad waxing is much the same except you don't feel like it's a special treat worth all that money you have paid for, and you leave with a lot of prickly hair still jotting out of your red-raw flesh. In Yemen there appears to be two levels of female modesty. there is the extreme cover-up outdoors, then there is the oh-we-are-all-female-there's-nothing-to-hide attitude of the beauty salon that has one room. I got my arms, legs, pits (called "underarm" in respectable beauty salons) waxed in front of continuous traffic of women and all their herds of children. Some of the kids were looking a bit too over 8 and male to be watching.

When it came to getting my bikini line done I looked apprehensively and the onlookers and the lady (not wearing white, not smelling pretty and whose left eyebrow was over plucked and right eyebrow in desperate need of tweezers) who didn't speak a word of English smiled and and took me behind a curtain to lie in the concrete floor amongst some manky towels and old pots. She started off enthusiastically to the point of furiously. As I'm not circumcised I felt she was getting too close to territory that she probably has no experience of. So I stopped her, paid her and left the salon with patchy prickly hair and red skin from shoulder to toe. I'll going to have to fix this up with a razor at some point.

Bad waxing, but fantastic cultural experience. I'm off to London tomorrow. I have more luggage that I have ever had before. it's ridiculous

Comments

Wow!

Because I haven't been able to access this site due to Ethiopia's really sucky paraniod government, I have not read any of your comments for the past 9 months. So what a treat it is to be able to read them now.

Thank you Cat, Carrie and Cairo Gal. Thanks also to Rosa, Raelene and Randoms. And Thanks again to Flic and Brad, I need to catch up on your adventures too.

Miss you all, and I'm delighted to be back in touch... right, I'm off to update my myspace... My bro even has a page now.

Out of Africa.

I'm an Aunty! My brother is a pa, my parents are grandparetns and we have all moved up a rung on the generational ladder. My brother and his gal have a beautiful wee daughter called Madeline. I'm tickled pink.

So I have finally left Ethiopia. I'm now in Yemen. Yemen rocks! Maybe it is just the comparrison for living in a stinky underdeveloped place for so long. But everything here is just do godamm beautiful.

The yearbook never got printed. I got the files to the printers two days before the deadline, they took over a week to print off a one page proof and then said that they could produce all the books on just two days. (x500 64pp full colour, saddle stiched... aye right) I signed the approval only on the condition that they would be done within the time frame... they were saying 'no problem' right up until the night before, then turned off their phones on the day. Suck.

And another sucky thing is that my camera is stolen. We (Sarah, Darius and I) had a goodbye party at our house, loads of food, chat, drink and all our staff. Had my camera out... as I do at parties and it dissappeared during the night. It was obivious it was gone the next day... but it wasn't until yesterday weh I was doing my final packing that I realised my camera battery charger was missing from the kitchen. Stink.

The thing that pisses me off most, is not the fact that we knew and trusted everyone in our house that night. it is the reaction of anyone who hears that the camera was stolen: "where was it" "it was on the table" "Oh, you should have never left it there." It's the exact attitude that the theif would have had. It's never the mistake of the criminal... it's always seen as the fault of the victim. That's why there is locks on the refridigerators here.

Darius also had a gold neacklace stiolen from the house. Obiviously by the maids, we told the school's owners that we were suspicious so they went thought the girls room, taking everything appaer... aquward, they eventually found a bag with some of Darius' stuff from the same place that he had the neaklace, but no neaklace. They are going to be fired.

It left a real bitter taste on what otherwise would have been a sad and sweet departure.

The school managers were wonderful rigt up till the very end, they gave us our promised 500 dollars US no problems and drove us to the airport. It was sad to say goodbye to them, they really are good people.

I'm here in Sana'a again with Darius. By concidence we got the same flight over. He is heading back to Ethiopia then to Canada in a week. I'm going to London in a few days.