Shifting Gears

Yemeni Cricket has gone home. We're back in the Great White North and have already experienced frostbite - now that's Canadian. We'd love to bring you with us so check out our new blog, Cricket on the Hearth.

We fly out in a matter of hours. See you all at home:)

Parting Gift

Well last night we attended a lovely farewell dinner in our honour at a nice little outdoor restaurant in town. We sat under the trees with our friends, drinking tea and eating lots of very good food. And then they gave us this card... it's a copy of a piece of artwork done by a friend of a friend. When I first saw it I thought it was a photograph in sepia, but it's not. It's a pencil drawing. Pencil. That's all she used.
And we love it.

Twilight

This is Silas

He's a baby desert tortoise who we adopted two weeks ago. He's a pretty fun little guy, if you can catch him when he's awake, and he's had quite an adventurous life for such a little reptile.

The last time we were in Sana'a one of our travelling companions found him inside the wall of our guest house. She decided he would make a great pet for a little boy we know here in Mukalla. So she put him in her pocket and hopped on the plane. This is probably the only Yemeni tortoise to have reached 30,000 feet, and he took it quite well.

Unfortunately hyperactive little boys and mild-mannered little tortoises do not mix. If you know of a little boy who desperately wants a tortoise, get him a dog instead. After a few days this boy's father, concerned for the health of monsieur Silas, asked if we would come steal him in the night (the tortoise, not the boy), and we did.

Now I know what you're all thinking - we're leaving in one week and he's too little to open the fridge. No worries kids - the girls downstairs (the other half of our teaching staff) have asked to adopt him once we're gone.

He also waxes philosophic now and again. Here he is contemplating mortality and extended families when confronted with that sea turtle skull we found at Sharma.
And that's it. He is in possession of a remarkably voracious appetite and eats a mountain of lettuce three times his size everyday, in between sunbathing on the balcony and sleeping in the shade. Quite a life.

From a Distance

It appears that we've shown you pictures of every city we've been to in Yemen except the one we live in. This is Mukalla, our beautiful coastal town. It's quite small and very compact. Arranged in a row along the top of the ridge you can see four white gaurd houses - testament to a violent past. That's a Somaliam fishing boat moored on the right.

As the mountains and the sea leave very little room for expansion, overcrowding is really the best and only option available - 'downtown' is a labyrinth of tiny streets and alleyways, crammed full of shops and street vendors. In the mornings and evenings it's insanely busy and cacaphonous, but between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. you could swear it's a ghost town, recently abandoned by every single living thing. Like most towns in Yemen, the place just shuts down for the afternoon; 1 o'clock rolls around and you can hear shop doors slam shut all over the city, all at once (they slam shop doors with startling conviction around here, just so you really know). Immediately Mukalla goes from the busyness and chaos of a three-ring circus to the busyness and chaos of a crypt. Like magic, everyone disappears and the town sleeps with a grave-like silence that says "We're not going to work and there's nothing you can do about it." (Hint: do not try to do business in Yemen in the middle of the afternoon.)

...Peaceful spot, really.

Anyway, here's another angle - what you can't see in the picture above is that the far right portion - and oldest part - of the city is actually a small peninsula, and from the east it looks like this:



This is a dhow - the traditional Arabian boat. There are quite a few of them in the harbour, and they're just beautiful (especially when they happen to glide past you at sunset). Tragically, most of them are moored next to the naval base, where I'm not allowed to take pictures:(


Mukalla Harbour at sundown. With the exception of the second one, these pictures were taken from a small fishing boat on which we spent the evening last Thursday - good times.

And that's it folks - this is where we've been holed up for the last year. We've enjoyed it a great deal and we'll miss it when we're gone, but we're also very excited to see you all at home!

Alternative Transportation

Last weekend five of our closest foreigner friends accompanied us on our fourth overnighter at the turtle colony. And here we are.

This turtle had just finished digging her nest and laying close to a hundred eggs (covering herself with sand in the process) when she took a moment to rest and hang out with my lovely wife.

Strangely, we found no babies at all this time. But I do have a story to tell you:)

Around 11:00 p.m. I was following a new mother turtle back to the sea. Then I followed her into the sea. When there was enough depth to give lift to her 500-pound body, I climbed onto her back and took a ride. I was having the time of my life, but I’m not sure she even noticed. When I got on she didn’t sink an inch - just kept on swimming.

She stuck close to the surface for the first little bit, which allowed me to catch a few breaths in between being slapped in the face by rather large waves. When the water got a little deeper, down she went with me in tow. I was holding on to the front of her shell just behind her neck, and when we got near the sandy, weedless bottom she levelled out and really took off. The warm waters of the Arabian Sea were rushing past and around me as this gargantuan creature, so awkward and heavy on land, shot away over the ocean’s floor with alarming speed and grace. She would tilt left and right as though to avoid unseen obstacles, or as though she were barreling down some giant waterslide – never losing speed or momentum, just soaring over the sand.

All of this was over in less than a minute, of course, as I soon found myself out of breath and needing to surface. I may have taken the shortest joyride in history, but I will never forget it. Ever.

No animals were harmed in the making of this adventure.