Day in the life -Trip to Zingibar

Last week, we had a visit from our friends Phil & Sarah so, on Thursday, we took them on a day trip to Zinjibar, where we will be working after we come back from England in September. Phil and Sarah are water engineers who are friends of ours from Cambridge. Zinjibar is about 45 minutes up the coast from Aden, where we will be living from September.

Bored policemen

There are two police checkpoints on the route and on previous trips we have been made to wait for a long time before being allowed to proceed on our journey, but this time it was only a couple of minutes. The checkpoints are a bit more relaxed these days since there have not been any incidents for the last few months except for the ongoing conflicts in the north. At the second checkpoint, the policemen looked very bored and they decided to escort us on our journey, probably just for something to do.

Beans for breakfast

We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast –fasoulia (mainly made of beans) and rashesh (delicious soft flat bread with many layers in the middle). Beats corn flakes any day! Also a bargain since it cost £1.75 for 5 of us.

Leaky waterworks

We went from there to show Phil & Sarah the clinic building which we have been given to use as our headquarters and also to visit the water works offices where Phil & Sarah found out lots of facts about the water situation in Abyan. Amazingly, about three quarters of the water which is piped around the province is completely unnacounted for through a combination of leaks and theft from the system. Of the rest, they have not got around to setting up water meters for most people so they probably only get paid for about 10% of their water output. The water supply in the province is plenty to supply everyone’s needs if the problems are sorted out.

Aden Old City

Drilling holes for curtain poles

After we returned to Aden, Paul spent a few hours drilling holes and affixing the curtain poles for our new house in Aden. Kate made some adjustments to the curtains we had brought from Taiz and we put curtains up in three of the rooms. On our last trip to Aden we installed the air-conditioning –a big help for sleeping well at night.

Aden coastal view

£40 a bottle

We went to a hotel restaurant in the evening and Paul was very happy to find, for the first time in Yemen, a chef who can cook rare steak –a very foreign concept here since it is forbidden for Muslims to eat meat with any blood in it. Another forbidden item was on offer –wine at £40 a bottle! We decided to give that a miss.

Homework

We thought it'd be good to encourage you to get to know a little bit more about the country so a little bit of "homework" for you to find out....
"What's the average temperature in Aden in the winter and summer?"

Competition

Find Aden and Zinjibar on Google maps (or another online map), estimate the distance using the scale and calculate the cost of the return journey if fuel here costs 60 rials per litre (400 rials = £1) and our car’s fuel consumption is 6 km/litre. Compare this with the cost of the same length journey in Britain and calculate the percentage difference. First correct answer to reach us will win a free night in our Aden guest apartment -flight not included.