A day to forget

At the start of the day, I was in a good mood. I had just got my car back from Toyota, who had taken about 2 weeks to fix it's electrical problems, mostly because they didn't have the alternator parts it needed and had to wait for them to arrive from Sana'a.

Toyota dealer in Aden

Fighting terrorism with Red Tape

I left the house in order to obtain a new travel permission letter from the security police. All foreigners in Yemen need travel permission letters to go to another province so that the police can protect them from potential threats. Our work is just across the border to the next door province, so this is a frequent and time consuming activity for us since we always have to wait at least half an hour for them to fill in the forms and get the boss to stamp and sign them. Sometimes we are denied travel permission if there is a perceived terrorist threat in the area.




Yemen's first ever speed camera

Just a few hundred metres from our house is the causeway which links the mainland and the peninsula which is home to the older part of Aden and the port. It is a road which has had a history of accidents because of 2 problems; 1) people driving too fast and 2) broken down vehicles which are stranded in the middle of this 6 km stretch of road with no way of getting their car off the road to a safe place. The combination of these two things used to cause many accidents but the first problem has improved since the police began using Yemen's first ever speed camera on the road, but there are still broken down vehicles which are a great irritation when they cause traffic jams or bring you to a stop because there's no gaps in the fast lane.


Stranded in the middle of the causeway

Today I became one of those people who I'm always annoyed at for having the inconsideration to break down in such an inconvenient place, as my car conked out right in the middle of that road. The engine cut out and I came to a stop just after a bend in the road, which meant that oncoming drivers had little warning of a stationary vehicle. There was no response from anything as I tried to restart it and I began praying that no one would crash into the car as I put my hazard lights on and opened my bonnet to see if I could diagnose the problem. Fortunately, it was before 10 am, so there was not a huge amount of traffic yet. In Yemen the rush hour happens between about 11am and midday since many people don't start work until after this, and then they stop for at least a 2 hour lunch break in the afternoon!

We live in Al Mansura at the top of the picture and I broke down just after the big bend before you go past the airport

The PAC (Police Automobile Club)

Nothing I could think of was of any help in restarting the car and there is no AA or RAC in Yemen, but some kind Yemenis stopped to offer their assistance and took me to place where tow trucks waited for business. After they negotiated a good price for me, I bade them farewell and took the Tow Truck to my car. As we headed back across the causeway, I saw my car going the other way on the back of a police tow truck! It took about an hour of the driver going round and asking people and making phone calls to track down the place where they had taken it.

Closed for lunch

The police truck agreed to take me to Toyota, rather than transfer the car from one Tow Truck to another and it took about another half an hour to get there. By the time we got to Toyota, everyone had gone for lunch and the workshop was completely locked up. The only people there were a couple of security guards and the manager of the new-car showroom who was in the middle of his prayers. I waited about 15 minutes for him to finish his prayers so that I could tell him the whole story and leave him my car key so that the mechanics could fix my car when they came back from lunch. 2 hours later. Then I went home for my lunch, in not such a good mood as I had started the day.

Update: After another week of waiting for another part, the car is now fully fixed and working fine. I now have the phone number for the Tow Truck driver stored in my phone.

A normal day at the office

We set off for Zingibar at 8:30am and arrived at the Aden checkpoint 15 mins later. Initially they told us we would not be allowed to travel because of a clash between some people and the army in Ja'ar the previous day.



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.

Kira's 2nd birthday

Kira still has not grasped the concept of what a birthday is but she has learnt the word present and says it whenever she sees something wrapped up. She opened all her presents and now has more books than the library. We could not wrap her main present because it was too big....

Flying girl

"Wow! It's actually quite sturdy!", remarked Peter, who had come down with Phillippa and Isaac to have a look at Kira's new slide. Toys in Yemen are usually very poor quality and fall apart very quickly. China sends all the stuff here that fails safety standards in other countries. We managed to find a good slide, which Kira is enjoying a lot. She was a bit scared by the slide initially when Paul had put it on the steeper setup and she took off on the bump in the middle, so he then moved it down a notch.

Bird poo

In the afternoon, we took Kira to Fun City where there a big playground and she spends about 10 seconds on each activity before running on to the next one. There's a big padded play area, trampolines, swings, seesaws, etc. She boldly ran up the huge inflatable slide and Paul had to run up after her to make sure she didn't get squashed by the masses of Yemeni kids all over it. It's not very slidey, probably because they keep having to clean off the bird poo.

As fresh as it gets

Then we went for Kira's favourite meal- fish. We went to the fish market first, where you can by fish straight from the fishermen by the fishing boat dock. Then we took our fish -2 varieties, called Gahsh and Deirak- to a restaurant which will cook them for you and make a nice sauce and delicious Yemeni bread. The whole thing only cost about £15 between 6 of us!

Half an ice cream each

After fish we went to Lulu's, a place which Kira always notices if we drive by and cries if we don't go in, shouting, "Looloo!, looloo!" Kira's most favourite food of all is there- ice cream. Everyone had half an ice cream because Kira demanded the other half and it was her birthday, after all.

A Night in the Life .... Giving Birth in Yemen!

Our American friend, Ann, who lives in the capital working as a midwife had telephoned a few days earlier to say that she'd be happy to fly down to Aden for a few days to help in delivering our baby. The only trouble is trying to guess when the baby might arrive and trying to make this coincide with a visit. Ann had previously delivered babies of 2 other foreigners and both times they had taken castor oil tablets to try to kick start labour. So Ann phoned when she was getting on the flight at 7pm and I took some castor oil tablets.

Ann- the midwife

I'm not getting enough pain!

By the time Ann arrived at 9pm nothing was happening, so we waited! Then around 10pm I started having regular contractions every 5 mins but these weren't painful. Paul told me not to complain as the contractions would get painful enough eventually! How right he was!

Midnight came and indeed the contractions began to be a bit painful so I paced up and down the lounge whilst Paul and Ann tried to get a bit of sleep. I had a bit of a shock seeing a large clot of blood but Ann reassured me that this was just from the cervix stretching and by 2:30am she said it was 4cm dilated.

Health & Safety precautions

Our friend had kindly lent me a TENS machine to help with pain relief so I started using that, reminding myself that I must turn the machine off before taking the electrical pads off – as I'd managed to give Paul an electric shock when I was in labour with Kira!

By the time we heard the early morning call to prayer at 5am, the contractions were rather painful and coming every few minutes. Ann had checked me and said that the cervix was 7cm dilated so I thought I had a few hours more of labour to go, however the baby had other ideas.

15 minutes hard labour

At 5:30am I suddenly felt that I needed to push so there was a bit of a scramble as Paul got a plastic sheet to cover our bed and towels ready, whilst Ann got her sterlised equipment. My waters broke and Ann said that the baby's head was right there so I gave a few big pushes and Isaiah Paul John Miles was born at 5:45am on 11^th December!

Ann had forgotten to bring her weighing scales with her, so Paul stood on our bathroom scales and estimated that Isaiah's weight was somewhere between 3 and 4kgs (depending on the angle that he stood on the scales). We had Isaiah properly weighed at the hospital later and his birth weight was 7lbs 10oz.

Isaiah was wide awake for the first few hours of his life and so he saw when his big sister came bouncing into the bedroom saying “nunu” (Arabic for “baby”) and pointing at him. Kira is very fond of her little brother and likes giving him kisses and pointing out his toes, ears and mouth!

Doctoring in Zingubar

The sun was already strong as we set off at 8:30am on the road to Zingubar. It was only 15 minutes to the first army check point at the border between the 2 governorates (Aden and Abyan) and as always the armed guard motioned for us to pull over and wait. Thankfully the Minister of Health in Abyan had written an official letter of travel permission for me to travel between Aden and Zingubar and Peter also had a special card with permission, so after a few minutes and discussions about where we were going and how long we'd be, we were allowed to continue on our journey. The second police checkpoint just before Zingubar was a similar scenario and we were allowed to pass without a police escort, which they sometimes insist we have.

Dr Sayeed in Clinic

Doctor Happy

I spent my morning in clinic with Dr Sayeed - Dr Happy by name and nature! He had a good manner with the patients and was truly interested in helping them as well as explaining about medicines that he was prescribing and general health promotion. However, as with many doctors here, he very rarely examined the patients and preferred to send them for lab tests. This may partly be due to pressure from the manager, as the clinic receives money for each test that a patient has done.

Outside the clinic

Rugby Scrum

The clinic operates from 9am – 12pm, with 2 doctors consulting patients on a first come first served basis. Although that is only in theory, as the scene can be more of a rugby scrum, as patients push their way into the consulting rooms and often there will be 2 or 3 patients all trying to talk to the doctor at once! There are a number of nurses who try to organise the patients and prevent them from doing this but it can be a losing battle. The idea of queuing is very foreign in this culture!

Koronkah!

It sounds like something you don't want to catch – koronkah – which is Arabic for mumps. We saw a girl of 8 years with the tale telling signs of mumps. I asked about the MMR vaccine but it is not routinely given here and so doctors see a number of cases of Measles, Mumps or Rubella. I spent quite a lot of the morning learning Arabic words for medical terms which was really helpful. We saw other cases of patients with diarrhoeal diseases, diabetes, pneumonia and high blood pressure.

Kate in clinic

The rain came down and the floods came up

Parts of Yemen have been severely affected by heavy rain causing sudden flooding over the past week. In Zingubar the main bus station was flooded as were parts of the main street. The houses and roads have not been designed with good drainage for rain water and so quickly become affected, with mud houses being washed away. The Eastern areas of the Hadramut have been most affected with over 20,000 left homeless. There has been some rain fall but no flooding where we live.

A night in the life of -Returning to Yemen

Having finished our visit to England, we set off for the overnight flight back to Yemen, hoping that there would be no problems on the journey with Yemenia -aka Yimkinia (Yimkin is Arabic for maybe). We left only an hour late, which is good going for Yemenia

We’re off to see the Kaaba

The passengers on either side of us were very friendly and were telling us that they were on their way to Mecca for a pilgrimage to the Kaaba at the end of Ramadan. Arab passengers are usually much more friendly on planes than Westerners, who usually just sit next to each other in silence. When we were not talking to them, they were reading their Qur’ans

Pilgrims marching around the Kaaba in Mecca

Dodgy plane

Paul usually cannot sleep on planes unless he’s trying to watch an interesting film. They were showing Prince Caspian but all the headphone sockets on the plane were broken. The back of the plane was very smelly because the toilet was blocked. One of the toilets at the front was also blocked but they had managed to stop it being used before it got smelly. Thankfully the plane was only half full, so we managed with two loos between everyone

Breakfast at 4am

After giving us dinner, the air hostesses showed no inclination to switch the lights off- probably due to Ramadan when Yemeni people tend to sleep in the day and are awake all night. Kate asked them to turn the lights off so that Kira could sleep, which they did so but then turned them on again half an hour later for breakfast at 4am- before the start of Ramadan fasting. Kira managed about 4 hours sleep on the 7 hour flight with some, but not too much screaming in between

Not too hot

We landed in Aden and successfully got through immigration & customs and were pleased to find that the weather was not as hot as expected. Apparently, September has been a bit cooler than normal – high-thirties instead of mid-forties. When we got to our house Kira went straight to sleep. We were glad that we had moved all our stuff in and put up curtains just before going to England

Our house in Aden

Competition

Well done to Stuart for winning last month's competition. For this month's competition, you need to find Aden on Google maps, switch to satellite mode and find Aden Airport. Set the scale to 1km (bottom left of map) and then find the name of the area to the north-west of the airport. This is the area where we live. First correct answer emailed to us will win an offroad driving experience in Yemen -flight not included

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.