Back Again

I just got back to the office in Taiz a short while ago, and am busy sorting through the deluge of e-mails that are here for my reading pleasure. It’s fine, though, and I admit that I was slacking over my time at home – the result of feeling pretty much wiped out, to tell you the truth. Not that I’m fully alive and kicking just yet, but I should be able to re-adjust. Once TL gets back, I have a feeling that it’s going to be very hard-core nose-to-the-grindstone type stuff, so I actually need to start the hard-core, nose-to-the-grindstone stuff now, so that the memory of my slacking can become a faint one. Two weeks at home (give or take a few days) just didn’t feel like it was nearly long enough, it really does feel like I never really left. However, that 12+ hour flight from New York to Dubai sure helps to remind me that I did, in fact, leave. A 2-day return trip will do that.

The two weeks at home were really great, though. Basically jam-packed with as many family and friends as I could see. Post-Thanksgiving was a lot of fun, as it always is, it was great to go to my favorite restaurants in DC, to find a new favorite place with Stef, see my favorite people, spend time sleeping in my own absurdly comfortable bed, it was great to be back at church for a few weeks, including Christmas Eve, and just generally be a part of the things that I do when I’m not off in Absurdistan. (A generalized term for some of the places I’ve been sent or could be sent.) We might bid on another project here in Yemen (in Taiz, as a matter of fact), but it would be a US government project, meaning that if I end up being associated with it (not that I’m jumping at the – the only chance I’m jumping at is the chance to spend some time at home. Which is a long way off, so it’s best if I don’t think about that now.), my circumstances are likely to be far better than they are at present. Danger pay, for example, would be nice, and is something that the US government feels we should get for being here. Not so much with the folks financing this current project, despite the whole “kidnapping” thing. But enough about that. Suffice it to say that I’m not exactly opposed to it, I must say.

If you have the chance to fly Emirates Airlines, I very much recommend it. It’s just so very nice, and the level of service just beats the pants off of Yemenia. Plus, the ticket was a lot less expensive, so much as I’d be all about supporting the state airline, it doesn’t make financial sense for the project anyway. I left Dulles on Monday to head up to New York, where I was going to meet some friends for dinner as a result of an intentionally long layover. The guy checking me in at the United counter in Dulles was unspeakably rude, and generally made me want to strangle him, but since all of my things arrived here unmolested, I’ll let it go. After a lovely dinner and some good hanging out time, my friends brought me back to JFK, where I stopped by the Emirates counter to get my boarding pass. Much to my delight, I have bulkhead seats reserved for each leg of my trip. As someone who is quite tall, leg room is essential, so the bulkhead seat is just heaven. Not that the leg room is terribly lacking on Emirates anyway, even in economy, they’re pretty good about that.

I was sitting next to a nice woman, who was about my age, on the flight from New York to Dubai. Fortunately, she was just the appropriate level of chatty – and most of that wasn’t even until the end of the flight anyway. Now, I can talk to a brick wall, and I’m as talkative as the next person, if not more so. However, on a really long flight, I just want to watch movies, read books, and sleep. Not so much with the Chatty Cathy routine. She was headed to Pakistan because her husband’s wife was sick. I’m pretty sure that’s what she said, and it certainly had me thinking “whadafa??”. But I decided to just gloss over that part – she and her husband live in southern Vermont, and I suppose wife #1 lives in Islamabad. It’s not unusual for men in Pakistan to have more than one wife, but it’s not exactly uber-commonplace, either. I knew a woman in Pakistan who was a few years younger than me, whose husband was probably about my dad’s age – needless to say, she wasn’t wife #1. Wife #1 lived in Lahore or somewhere like that. But I digress.

We had a nice little chat, and then she had to dash for her connecting flight. I, however, had to go find my way to the hotel room that Emirates had booked me for the night, since I arrived at 9 pm, and my connecting flight didn’t leave for 10 hours. After finding the correct desk, I was told that I didn’t have a reservation. Fortunately, I had a little piece of paper with me that said, yes, I did have a reservation, confirmed by the airline. After some hemming and hawing, and messaging to New York, they gave me my voucher and 24-hour visa, and I made my way through immigration. I’ll see what I can do to make sure this doesn’t happen on the way back, because I could have slept for an extra hour instead of trying to figure out all of that silliness. However, I still got my room, got a chance to sleep for a few hours in an actual bed, and most importantly, a chance to have a nice hot shower before getting back on another airplane. It’s the little things that you treasure, no?

I was seated next to a nice British man who works for Halliburton in Sana’a, we chatted on and off through our 2 ½ hour flight from Dubai into Yemen. I was glad to have a flight that arrived in the daytime, as you cross some strikingly beautiful country. The main thing between Dubai and Sana’a is the Ar-Rub Al-Khali desert. Leaving Dubai, you see these massive furrows of sand, pitted by the wind, with smooth expanses in between, all interlocking to form an enormous honeycomb pattern. As you move closer to Sana’a, it’s like looking at the ocean in freeze-frame, waves of sand pushed along by the desert winds. Occasionally, you’ll see the odd and very lonely road, but it’s mostly uninhabited, and uninhabitable. Since the sand reflects the sunlight, as you look off toward the horizon, the desert looks like it stretches out forever with no end in sight. The sand becomes silvery white and blends into the horizon, giving the oddest impression of the land becoming the sky, or vice versa. Yemen is very mountainous, so as you approach it, you can see black rock pushing through the sand, forming small hills and peaks. All of a sudden, the mountains erupt out of the desert, and you can tell you’re in Yemen. Even from 31,000 feet, you can see the terraced agriculture, and some cities attempting to establish themselves in the middle of massive, rocky peaks.

We landed, and immigration and customs were a breeze as before, although they still only approved my visa for one month, despite me saying I’ll need to be here for two. I suppose we’ll figure that out later, but I’ll ask TL to help when he gets back here. I don’t really feel like giving someone my passport to drive it to Sana’a and back for a month extension. Mostly, I just don’t like giving my passport to people for any reason.

My driver was waiting for me at the airport, and he had brought his wife with him. She seems quite nice and apparently wanted to meet me, but speaks virtually no English, so I used the drive to mostly read and sleep. I wasn’t feeling all that chatty, and the fatigue was really setting in. After checking in, I came to the office, where I’m writing this now. The office was strangely bereft of staff when I arrived – I have a feeling that will change now that everyone knows I’m back. Not that I’m so terribly important, but they probably don’t want any of it to get back to TL – fair enough, I wouldn’t want to cross him, either.

So that’s the scoop. I’m back, it hasn’t really sunk in that I’m here for a couple of months, but I think it will be easier to handle after a while, once I’ve had time to adjust. It’s not that it’s particularly hard to handle, at least not on a micro level, if that makes any sense. It’s just…well, as I’ve said many, many times recently, it’s just a combination of things – not wanting to be away from home, not particularly wanting to be here (although now that I’m here, it’s a little easier to work on my attitude and think about appreciating the unique opportunity I have. At home, I was just surrounded by things I didn’t want to leave), and just generally feeling burned out. But I’m taking a week off when I get back from here, so that will be really nice.

For the time being, however, I’m here in Yemen. My mobile is now +967-7111-81433, in case anyone wants to spend a small fortune to say howdy. (Depending on your long distance plan, I suppose.) This is a change from the previous number, they added that extra "1". More later, I’m off for the day – I think making it to 5 pm is quite the accomplishment, if I do say so.