What Was That About?

For some reason, I had an ABBA song stuck in my head yesterday. Not even one of their well-known ones, it was on the obscure side. My knowledge of obscure ABBA songs is the result of going through an ABBA phase in my early college years. Which was actually the result of my parents’ ABBA phase in the late 70s – when most people had one. I had to dare to be different and wait until the mid-1990s. I can’t actually even remember the name of the song, to be honest.

So, we drove all around the city yesterday (as I had ABBA playing in my head on repeat), with a map so that we could see if the places where we’re suggesting growth will actually be suitable for new development. Well…some were, some weren’t, we tried to take pictures of places, but I also saw some spectacularly bad examples of placement. Like this. Call me crazy (you’re crazy!), but I, personally, wouldn’t build my home directly in the path of a precariously placed boulder. To quote, and modify, Mike Myers: I have a theory that most Yemeni architecture is based on a dare. I had to walk on a rickety wooden plank to cross a wadi, or an open channel that they use to try to route floodwaters through the city. Most of the year, they’re dry channels that people tend to throw trash in, but as someone who doesn’t really care for heights, I wasn’t a fan of walking on said rickety plank, 15 feet above the concrete channel.

We drove way out to the western side of town, and it’s interesting to see how the women look different as you head out. The areas we were driving through were primarily agricultural and very, very poor. But the women were dressed in brilliantly-colored clothes; they were still covered up, but you could see their faces. It was a marked contrast from the black-clad phantoms you see floating through the streets in town – perhaps that’s a sign of status? I’m not sure, although I do know, as I may have said, that the degree to which a woman covers up, and what she wears, is primarily determined by her family – mother, father, brothers, husband. I’m sure that there’s some connection.

In these areas, which look quite green and lush, the poverty is unimaginable. It’s entirely likely that the value of the clothes on my body, and I don’t have an extravagant wardrobe, exceeded the annual income of most people in those areas. To think about it that way – that what I spent on my jacket, shoes, t-shirt, pants, bra, and underwear could double someone’s annual income, is really humbling. I know that I live in a very different country, where I earn a lot more and things cost a lot more, but I’ve also been given so many advantages in the world, not the least of which is my education and my secure upbringing – and then there are the advantages I’m sure I’ve been given, regardless of wanting or deserving them, based on my skin color. It would be hard, and selfish, not to feel lucky.

Yesterday was supposed to be a half-day, but we were at the office until 4 pm, and managed to get back to the hotel at 5. I did some laundry and sewed up a sweater of mine that had developed a hole. As I sat there, doing an appalling job of sewing up the hole, I was reminded of the girl that I met in Pakistan who told me, in a very concerned voice, that I was “not a very good domestic woman”. Well, sewing – not my strong suit. Apparently slicing mango, the particular task which prompted her to voice her concerns, isn’t either, but I think that doing my own laundry by hand in a bathtub every week for a few months has to earn me a few points. (Assuming that I want them…? Haven’t decided yet.)