Interesting Day

Today started out like most Fridays do – laundry drip-drying in the bathroom, me stumbling downstairs for some breakfast. TL said that we were going to Mokha this afternoon for a change of scene, which is a small port city about 100 km west of here. To be honest, I wasn’t in the mood for it, because all I can think about right now is how much work I have to get done. So, after working on some chapters this morning, we went down for lunch around 1:30, and took off around 2 pm.

Shortly after we set off, we were stopped at a military checkpoint. Upon telling them that I’m American, we were told to pull over. And we sat there. And sat there. L got out of the car to talk to the soldiers who stopped us, and we were told that the only way we’d be allowed to proceed would be if we had an armed guard riding with us, or an armed escort in a separate car. If we chose this option, however, we would have had to wait for them to find a suitable vehicle. TL wasn’t a big fan of either option, so L went back to talk to them and after about another 15 minutes, we were allowed to go, sans escort. On the drive over, I became extremely tired, and nodded off a little. I woke up as we were driving through this incredibly beautiful canyon - the road was carved into a valley floor with huge, steep rock walls on either side. The rocky hills subsided into a desert with rolling hills, light brown and dusty with little clusters of green – palm trees, bushes, scrub, where plants had obviously found a higher water table.

We came over a crest and there it was – the Red Sea sparkling through the trees. Mokha is a small town. The major port city in the western part of Yemen is Aden, famous for being the port where the U.S.S. Cole was refueling when it was attacked. Mokha is much smaller – barely a blip on the map compared to Aden. It didn’t take long to get to the docks. TL has a special letter from the governor – I think it’s an all-purpose letter that basically tells anyone anywhere that they should cooperate with us. This is useful when we need information from local government offices and the like. You may be wondering why something like that is necessary in the context of a day trip out to the sea – well, it helped us to get to the docks, because they weren’t going to let us until TL whipped out this magic piece of paper. We pulled up to the docks, and I had never seen water that blue in my life. It’s that azure color that you hear about when people describe the Mediterrenean, but only having really seen the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, I’d never seen it with my own eyes. I’m not sure if the pictures really do it justice, but I’ve included a few. It was so clear that, even though it was a harbor, the water was clear enough to see the fish swimming around and nibbling things off the sides of the ships.

By this time, in fact before we even left Taiz, I was realizing that I shouldn’t have had that large bottle of water at lunch. The problem, then, was finding a suitable bathroom for me. Not because I’m a priss, but because I’m a woman and I can’t just walk into any establishment. They found a hotel in town where I was allowed to use the facilities, and it didn’t take too long to find, so that was a very good thing. Afterward, I was standing outside waiting for TL, and I saw some goats, which are all over the rural areas because they’re highly adaptable animals that can give meat and milk and all kinds of useful things. These goats were hungry, as goats often seem to be. The funny thing is, goats are notorious for eating anything and everything. I think they can even manage to glean nutritional value from a tin can. But this particular goat was a little more finicky. He wanted nothing to do with the food on the ground, and instead was reaching for the leaves from the trees, dancing around on his tiptoes, trying desperately to read the lowest branches.

We found a nice beach, and I decided to get my feet wet. The water was warm, and there were tons of pieces of coral and shells – some really beautiful shells, but many of them were inhabited. Clearly, I didn’t take those ones. But I have a lovely collection that I’ll be bringing back home. As I was rinsing the shells out in the tide, I looked over and saw, with a sinking feeling, L attempting to turn the car around, with a spray of sand and mud shooting out from the back wheels. He was stuck. Really stuck. Since sitting around and looking cute would do absolutely nothing useful, TL and I went over and tried to help him dig out the car. So there I was, down on my hands and knees, scooping sand and mud out from behind the back wheels with my bare hands. L then put the car into reverse and tried to roll out as TL and I pushed.

This did absolutely no good. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

This was also about the same time that I wished that the beach we had gone to wasn’t quite so secluded. (The benefits of seclusion? I rolled up my pants a little – scandal! Bare ankles ahoy!!)

TL and L went out to the road, only about 20 meters from where the car was stuck, and tried to flag down a passing car. Fortunately, someone eventually stopped, and the two guys in the truck, and a guy walking down the road, all came to help. Since there were strange men around, I figured it would no longer be appropriate for me to be getting my hands dirty, to so speak, so I stayed back and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. After some yelling, wild gesticulating, and a worrying amount of grunting, the car began to move. It rolled back a couple of meters, but we still weren’t in the clear, so after some more pushing and grunting and general Herculean-type efforts, the car rolled safely back onto more solid ground and L drove back up to the road. I thanked the guys who had helped us, but that garnered the same reaction as my initial greeting – a somewhat puzzled look that indicated something to the effect of “why are you talking to me?” mixed with discomfort. I should probably have had my hair covered since Mokha is a small town, and I only saw a handful of women who were out in public in the first place. Ah well – I was otherwise respectably attired.

We decided that almost being stuck in the middle of nowhere, no matter how beautiful it was, was enough fun for one day, so we headed back to Taiz. Coming back the scenery was just as beautiful, but the setting sun reflected off the rocks cast a pinkish-gold light over everything, making it look warm and rich – not feelings that the desert often connotes. But that’s the thing, this part of Yemen isn’t really a desert in the way the Sahara or the Rub Al-Khali, the desert that takes up most of Saudi Arabia and part of Yemen, are deserts. There’s tons of life – plant life and animals, it just all looks thirsty this time of year. The rainy season should start soon, and while that gives me great fear for our ability to navigate the road up to our hotel, I think it will make a really beautiful difference in the natural environment.

I’m the kind of tired that results from a day spent in a warm car going to and from the shore – there’s something about that kind of day that brings on its own unique feeling of heavy sleepiness. I washed the pants I was wearing which were covered in sand and dried mud, and spent a good 15 minutes scrubbing all of the mud off my feet and hands, with some good success in the end. Now “Shaft” is on TCM in the background, and I’m going to try to write some text comparing our population projections for this phase to the preliminary ones we did in the previous phase.

Who’s working in development, helping out the local government?

Mandy.

You’re damn right.

Okay – that needs a lot of work. Sucka.