Spinning

It’s Thursday morning (we work a half day on Thursday and have Friday off, working over the Western weekend), I’ve had meetings practically all morning, and my head is positively spinning with the sheer volume of stuff I have to get done in the few days I have left. When really, all I want to be thinking about is “ooh! I’ll be home in a week!” Ah well – the things that come with trying to actually “be responsible” and “do my job” and all of that silliness… But I will *definitely* need to start sleeping better if I’m going to keep this up.

Apparently, we are not being moved back to the first hotel today as I’d thought – we’re moving to suites within the same place, as an apology for all the inconvenience. It’s funny to watch them with TL, because he’ll say something that I think could be a bit offsides, and then he’ll laugh, smile, and shake their hand or hug them or something. Because that, clearly, makes it all okay…

So, I am now ensconced in my suite, which isn’t actually that much bigger than the old room, but it’s divided more clearly into rooms, so I suppose that’s the difference. My favorite part is the light switch that will turn one light off, while simultaneously turning another one on. The sunrise is pretty tough to miss from here, and makes for a nice view (if you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see more details...). We went out on the balcony surrounding the hotel (not the super-scary one that looks right over the edge, but pretty close), and it’s also quite the impressive view. That’s the thing about being just about anywhere in Taiz – there’s always some kind of view. Whether it’s the mountains or the valley, there’s always something interesting to look at.

We had a new woman arrive yesterday, a Dutch housing specialist. She’s very nice, and only here for two weeks total. It would be nice if she were staying longer, because we seem to get along and I could use the company when I get back. Tomorrow night, we’re going to the home of a German guy who works on the project – he and his wife have been living here with their kids for 2 ½ years, are having us over for drinks. It will be nice to get to know more people around here – because I have a feeling that it’s going to be a lot of working at the office, working at the hotel room, and then just…sitting in the hotel room. That can make for a long two months. (This is where reading will also come in handy.)

To switch gears a little, I want to talk about culture and gender here – but this isn’t going to be what you might think it will be about. True, the fact that the degree to which a woman covers up, or is even allowed to go out in public, is sometimes determined by her family is something that is strange to me – that she could be made to never leave the house because her male relatives deem it so. But the fact of the matter is that there’s a lot more to it than that, and since I’m not Yemeni, I’m really not in a position to comment on it in more than a superficial and uninformed way.

So here are a few interesting things. For a society that is so dominated by men and masculine culture, there are things you see here that don’t fit with my culturally defined view of “masculine behavior”. It’s not at all unusual for people of the same gender to be very physically affectionate with each other in public; it’s being physically affectionate with a peer of the opposite sex (spouse included) that’s verboten. So you can see male friends walking down the street holding hands with each other, or with their arms around each other, hugging or kissing on the cheek in greeting. But at the same time, while it’s impossible to forget that you’re a woman here, it’s very easy to forget that you might possess any feminine attributes. As a foreigner, to see some women rapidly lifting and lowering the veil that lies over their face with each forkful of food in a restaurant so they can eat, showing only fleeting glimpses of a complete countenance, and to see virtually all women floating down the street shrouded in shapeless, black robes, without a real form, makes you forget what women actually look like. Even though I’m not dressed like local women, I’m still covered from neck to ankle every day, in loose, shapeless clothing. Your body almost becomes a foreign element, something that you stop paying much attention to, because not only does no one else see it, but you barely see it yourself anymore.

It’s not as depressing as it may sound, really – it’s kind of an interesting cultural experiment for the time being. Besides, when I was covered neck-to-ankle in loose, shapeless clothing in college, it was just low self-esteem disguised as my feeble attempt at “the grunge look”, so this is much healthier.