Leaving Yemen

Social Impact; Yemen at a crossroads? The news as I leave Yemen is that UNESCO has threatened to take Zabid off the World Heritage List unless the government comes up with an acceptable plan for its renovation and upkeep. I have always thought Zabid one of the most interesting cities in the country with a unique patrimony that is in danger of disappearing for ever. Yemen has a wealth of monuments but many of them are already in such an advanced state of dilapidation that it is probably impossible to restore what is left; the Turkish architecture of al-Luhayya, Beit al-Faqih, Hodeidah, Mokha - almost all gone. Perhaps the threat will jump-start a rescue plan for Zabid before it is to late.
The face of an old woman of Mokha in front of a quietly decaying Turkish building.

The other news is that the government is planning to close the gun villages - I tried to visit one of them al-Jahana, not far from Sana'a but could not. I could not get past the security check points, and even had I succeeded my presence would not have been welcome. In addition to this radical measure, the government is trying to come up with a plan to persuade farmers to grow crops other than qat by offering a subsidy to offset initial revenue loss. This will be very difficult to implement for social reasons, but it surely must be inevitable. With 50% of the population under the age of 16 and a still unacceptably high rate of illiteracy, especially among women, which negates their ability to get work, Yemen cannot afford to maintain huge tracts of its agricultural land for the growing of qat which contributes nothing towards the GDP, and where the supply of qat per person per day costs in the region of 1000-1500 Yemeni rials per day - about $5-7.50. Some qat chewers spend upwards of $50-75 per week on qat - this in a country where $300 per month is not a bad salary.

A new wireless internet cafe called Coffee Traders has recently opened in Sana'a, it saved my life, or at least my website, as I could not get my laptop connected to the internet in Yemen for some reason. They happen to serve excellent coffee - it is perhaps odd but in the land which practically invented the stuff, it is quite difficult to get any good coffee because they export all of it. The people of Coffee Traders roast their own beans and thus I could be found quite frequently in their charming courtyard in front of a large double-shot latte bashing away to my heart's content, it is the little things that count....
Dressed to kill - I did not wear this to the cafe.....

Yemen is a land of contrasts; it is without a doubt one of the most spectacularly beautiful countries in the world but the countryside near qat markets is disfigured by millions of discarded pink plastic qat bags, while trash middens are piled up outside towns and villages across the country. It has an undeservedly dodgy reputation - the US State Dept. still has a Travel Warning in place for it - yet its people are among the most hospitable and friendliest you could hope to meet. They are colorful too, both literally and figuratively - everyone who visits falls under the spell of Yemen and its people.....
    Typical African-style village on the Tihama on the Red Sea coast.

Part of the old city walls of Taizz