7th wedding anniversary

There've been no exciting days recently since we have been stuck at home recently, unable to travel to work due to the separatist violence in Abyan. We don't really want that sort of excitement, anyway.

Our 7th wedding anniversary was spent in Taiz. We have come to Taiz for a few days in order to renew our residence visas and obtain exit/re-entry visas before our trip to England.

Crazy Old City

In the morning we went into town to visit the old city- a part of town which is many hundreds of years old. It is supposed to be pedestrianised, but that doesn't stop all the noisy, smokey motorbikes from racing up and down. We were grateful for our double buggy which kept Isaiah safe and stopped Kira from running into the path of one of the motorbikes. Kira did very well not to get overwhelmed by all the noise and craziness there and even got given a nice silver necklace by one of the shop keepers.

Kira's free necklace

"Not our hotel!"

To celebrate our anniversary, we went for lunch at the Al Saeed hotel which used to be the Sofitel Hotel but has recently been disowned by the Sofitel company, much like the ex-Sheraton hotel in Aden. They seem to have given up trying to get Yemenis' to do things to their standards. The new Al Saeed sign has five stars on it, but we think they just decided to award themselves 5 stars. Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves- it was very relaxing to eat lunch in a quiet place with jazz music in the background. Most Yemeni restaurants are so noisy you can hardly talk to each other. Where else in the world could you have a huge lunch for a family of four in a "Five" star hotel for less than £20.

View of Taiz from the hotel

Deep questions

"What's the highlight of the last 7 years?", asked Kate while we were eating.
She has a habit of asking these deep questions which catch me off guard and expects an instant response.
"Err, we've had some very nice holidays.", was the best answer I could come up with at the time.
On reflection, I think that the highlight of the last 7 years has been embarking on this Middle Eastern adventure together with someone as wonderful and amazing as Kate. We keep each other going through the tough times and have a lot of fun meeting people and seeing places. We achieve so much more together than we could do individually.

A Yemeni Wedding

Inbreeding confusion

I was cordially invited to a Yemeni wedding of the brother of the husband of the daughter of the first wife of the husband who's second wife is our immediate neighbour. It can get very complicated working out all the relationships here (especially when 2 sisters often marry 2 brothers who are also their cousins!).

No cameras or birds allowed

The invitation cards are usually simple A5 cards detailing the families of the bride and groom and the date, time and place. Also they state that NO camera phones are allowed (it goes without saying that normal cameras are not allowed either, in this culture) and children are "birds which need to stay in their nests" i.e. please don't bring children with you, although there are usually quite a few children present. I left Kira and Isaiah at home with Paul.

Tattooed ladies

The women love to have an opportunity to dress up and take hours over applying bold and bright make-up and putting up their long hair. Usually the day before the wedding, an "artist" will visit the house and draw intricate designs of "nachsha" or "henna" (dark brown tattoos) on the women's hands, arms and feet. The women then have to sit for a few hours to let the dye absorb into the skin.

OTT make-up

The make-up that is considered beautiful here makes them look like a cross between a clown, a French mime artist and Michael Jackson (Peace Be Upon Him)! I think they probably thought I wasn't wearing any make-up as mine was so minimal.

One of our neighbours tried to demonstrate Yemeni make-up techniques on my face a few months ago, but not quite full-on Yemeni style

Dressed to kill

The women choose their outfit and get dressed up. The older women usually wear a "dera" which is a loose dress made out of thin fabric (often with lots of sequins on). It's a little disconcerting as the fabric is see-through, so you can see their bra and petticoat underneath- a sight Paul is glad not to be allowed to see! The younger women usually wear long dresses fully of sparkling sequins and beads. Both types of dress would cause road accidents if the women wore them outdoors without a Balto on top, the latter due to blinding headlamp reflections.

Women are the same all over the world

I drove to the wedding hall with a car full of our neighbours. We had planned to leave at 7.15pm however one of the girls was still at the hairdressers and didn't return until 8pm so we were all waiting around until she arrived. However it doesn't matter if you are late to the wedding and you can arrive and leave at any stage.

Dancing to the warbling

The wedding hall was "quite small" for about 200 guests and had rows of plastic white chairs with an area at the front for dancing, along with 2 golden thrones for the bride and groom. When we arrived, the party was in full swing, with women dancing a simple stepping dance to the accompaniment of a woman playing the drum and another lady singing/warbling. There was lots of kissing and greeting of lots of family members, and lots of stares at the foreigners (me and Philippa!). We bravely joined in the dancing which was fun and got lots of approval from the women!

Entrance of the bride

About 9.45pm the bride arrived and entered the room to lots of ululating, clapping and singing from the women who crowded around her as she tried to walk down to the thrones! Initially she looked rather nervous but soon began to smile. She was wearing a big white wedding dress with lots of sparkley silver jewelery, henna up her arms, crazy make-up and a big hair style!

Most of the guests were from the groom's family as he was living in Aden, whereas the bride was from the village so only her mother and sisters had accompanied her to the city for the wedding.

Bride but no Groom

The female members of the groom's family then handed around bags, with a can of fizzy drink and a packet of cake, to all the guests. The groom didn't enter the wedding hall but waited downstairs for his bride to appear later. Sometimes the groom chooses not to enter the wedding hall to save the women from all the hassle of covering up and then uncovering again when he leaves with the bride half an hour later.

We said our farewells and left shortly after the bride arrived. We heard that the celebrations finished around 11pm when the bride joined the groom and they traveled to his house in a specially decorated car.

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.