Connections

Last night Ruth and I went into town. We found what we were looking for in the markets and then picked up some street food to eat while resting on the breakwater. Then a man who looked like a westerner disguised as a Yemeni walked by and said "hi" and kept on walking. Now it's a rare thing to see another foriegner here, especially one wearing local clothes, so this minor occurance led to some speculation around the Carroll table. As we were leaving some time later we found him sitting down outside a restaurant on the far end of the breakwater and he invited us to join him. Turns out he's a recent law graduate from Washington DC and he's been here before - a few years ago he taught in Sana'a and he's fluent in Arabic. This time he's been here for four months, always on the go, writing a book for Bradt Travel Guides based in Britain. This we found interesting, because the last book about this place was put out by Lonely Planet, but they stopped publishing on Yemen in '99; their only comment on this cessation was something akin to "on second thought, you probably shouldn't go there," which interestingly enough was also the only advice we were able to obtain from Foreign Affairs Canada before we came.

At any rate, this guy had some awesome stories to tell and we had a fascinating conversation with him for about an hour. He's leaving for home in a few days so by now he's seen just about everything in the entire country, except for one; he missed the sea turtle experience because he was passing by in the daytime. After hearing Ruth's enthusiastic description of our visits there, he asked us to write them up for publication in the guide, which comes out in February. So keep an eye out for Bradt's Yemen edition of 2007 - Yemeni Cricket just became a byline;)