Merry Christmas

From all of us,
to all of you.

Cafe Third World

Pictured here is one of our favourite restaurants. That collection of cardboard and sheets on the roof is the employee housing programme.






























Chicken is the main fare here, most of which is cooked outside like this. The rest is baked in coal ovens inside, which you'll see later.


You place your order and someone yells it very loudly through one of these little windows at the back, and moments later food comes flying out. I decided to step back into the kitchen and take a look at where all the magic happens.







First up, Man Stirring Pot. I could almost gaurantee that you've never had a better bean soup than the stuff he's got on the boil there.













This is possibly the biggest pot of rice I have ever seen. They serve a lot of rice around here.













In the back corner, some men slaughter goats while others wash dishes. As I was photographing the dish washer a distressed-looking goat was led past me; moments later he was on the grill.






















In the other corner are some personal effects of the employees hung to dry.













And these are the charcoal pits used for baking chicken if you don't fancy barbecue.










The workers are a happy lot and they were excited to have me around for a while. They kept firing up different grills with no food on them and washing dishes that were already clean just to make sure I got pictures of everything they do.

It's a great spot with wonderful food and a fun atmosphere. If you come visit we'll take you there.
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The ants go marching

Hello everyone, we thought that we'd share some miscellaneous happenings with you over the next little bit, while we are consumed with work and unfortunately leading very boring lives. Allison, we blame you for making us admit that our weekdays aren't that exciting;)
A short time ago, hundreds of ants moved into our apartment. They're gone now, but while they were here we sometimes felt compelled to clear large areas of them in a short time. Here's Sean using an ancient Arabian method: hairpsray and a lighter. It worked great for walls and countertops, and seems to have had a discouraging effect because all the ants moved out a few days later.
This is the inestimable advantage of living in a concrete building in the desert: the near non-existence of fire hazards. (Really though, that advantage is only truly inestimable if you have a pyro for a husband).

At It Again

Getting my daily dose of news from the homeland this morning, a curious headline caught my eye. I had to wonder why Pearl Harbour vets would want to bomb Pearl Harbour "one last time" :)

Then I realized that "bomb site" is a noun and not a verb. Ah, ambiguity - making us smile one headline at a time.
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Electricity in Yemen comes and goes. Over the past week it has been going more than coming.

We have a very tight schedule to follow in order to finish the curriculum on time so we’ve had to come up with some creative ways to conduct our afternoon classes without light. Sean decided to move his lesson out into the hallway to take advantage of every last ray of sun and yesterday my students had to finish their exams by the light of their cell phone screens.

This gentleman was the last to go and used our computer as a torch in order to see his paper.

Our walk through Misaken (our neighbourhood) has also become more interesting. All the restaurants, shops and fruit stands are lit by candles and the men take to the streets. They relax, drink tea and chat. As we neared our building the other day, the electricity suddenly came back and with it we heard a collective shout of joy - now they could go back to their regular routine…ummm, relaxing, drinking tea and chatting.

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Running Barefoot Through the Rain

...is something of a unique experience for these kids, as this city has seen rain twice in the last four years. They often get to run through flash floods coming from higher up in the mountains, but today it rained. In Mukalla. This was a pretty big deal. So this was the view from our balcony this morning - two kids, back and forth through one giant puddle, laughing, tireless.














Later on in the day we took a drive with some friends down the volcanic coast, heading west. Got through the armed checkpoints with pleasantly little difficulty - nobody even hinted at wanting a bribe - and stopped at a beach about an hour later. The storm was moving west, too, so we started out in the rain but soon outran it, knowing that it would catch up later, and catch up it did. We were sitting on a promontory of lava (not the molten kind:) enjoying the view, which looked like this:



















And then the clouds rolled in and everything became very dark and wet and windy, like this:



















The surf was pounding in and the rain came sideways, wind-driven through our best defenses. It was a lot of fun, and after a while the clouds broke and out came the sun, and best of all, a magnificent rainbow:)














We chased the rainbow back east for a while, until it was right in front of us, between the car and the hills - it was so broad and clear and close that we could see the view through it, and that made me want to go stand inside it, which of course I knew to be impossible. But that didn't make me stop wanting to.

This country is beautiful.