Ja'ar is 20 minutes north of Zingibar and there have been a few incidents recently because of land disputes and tribal grievances. Eventually they allowed us to travel, when we assured them we were only going to Zingibar and then coming back. There have not been any problems in Zingibar or en route to Zingibar so far, so we have felt able to continue our work there. The journey from Aden to Zingibar takes about 45 minutes without taking into account delays at checkpoints, which sometimes double the journey time.
Heavily armed ascort
At the second checkpoint we had to wait while a Police car came from the town to take over from the machine gun truck, so that the machine gun truck at the checkpoint would be able to escort us on our way. There were about 7 soldiers in the truck, one of whom had an RPG and another who manned the huge machine gun which had a plastic cover on it because of the highly unusual rain which was falling. It occasionally rains lightly here but heavy rain only happens about once a year. When it rains heavily there are flash floods and some of the old mud houses fall down. (see funny sign below)
No power -No computer teaching
When we got to the immunisation office the was no power, which is a slight hindrance to my computer work so, after waiting for half an hour, we decided to go over to see how the progress was going on the renovations to the old clinic building which has been given to us to use as offices. We were pleasantly surprised at how much work had been done and it was almost finished. The power came back at about 11.00 so we went back to the immunisation office to do some computer training with the workers there.
No students - No computer teaching
When we got there we found that they had all gone home so I couldn't do any training with them, although I did manage to show the latest version of my database to the office manager, who seemed overjoyed to see his statistics turned into graphs on a computer.
We came back at 12.00, with our machine gun truck still behind us. I think they appreciate having something to do because they usually just sit in the same place by the checkpoint all day getting hot and sweaty and bored.
