The First Few Days

When we got to Dulles we had the nasty surprise of finding that one of our bags was a full 37 pounds over the maximum weight (107 instead of 70lbs!). This didn’t concern us much until the airline clerk told us that if we were to redistribute it into a box and pay for an extra bag, it would cost $150 or we could have sent the bag by airfreight even though it was overweight and it would have cost $450!!! So, with Jen’s brother and Michael’s parents looking on, we opened up our bag and redistributed it among our bags, the big one finally weighing in at 69.5 lbs — 1/2 pound under the max! However, this also required that David and Ellen and Bernie had to take home our dirty laundry and extra papers that we didn’t really need. Guess we’ll get them in September. Luckily the airline clerk was in a great mood and she laughed along with us the whole time. (Little did we know that while the suitcase lock was in Jen’s pocket, the combination was somehow reset. More on this in a moment.)

Our flight was uneventful but long. We did know one other person on the flight, a lovely Indian woman who we had met at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) a few days earlier. We had a few hours to kill in Frankfurt and then on to Yemen, via Cairo on Lufthansa. We’re picking up major frequent flyer miles! Maybe we’ll be able to start upgrading to business class soon with those miles.

We arrived at midnight Yemen time and were met by our sponsor, Mark (he and his wife have been great at sending us info about Yemen and life here; turns out, he also bought us groceries and set up our house for us, like sponsors are supposed to, but don’t always do); also at the airport was one of our language teachers from FSI, Mohammed Rahawi, who is Yemeni and is in town to see friends and family. It was so nice to see a familiar face after 18 hours of transit. Mohammed arrived a week before us and will be here a week after we leave for our US vacation in September, which is kind of funny to us since he’s on vacation and we’re supposed to be here to stay for 2 years.

At the airport, Mark handed me (Michael) a memo from my boss indicating that I should come on a tour of possible rental properties at 8am the next morning. (That would be less than 6 hours away, and we hadn’t even gotten our bags off the carousel yet.) The letter said that she would call at 7:30am to make sure I was up. It turned out to be the perfect precursor to my "orientation" at the Embassy.

Mark drove us to our house, which gave us a chance to see that driving here is a bit of an adventure. It’s fairly chaotic, but it’s not as bad as you’d think. No one stays in their lane, there are no rules, except that the guy in front has the right of way, so everybody always wants to be in front, there are always people, animals, fruit-stands, stepping out into the street without warning (or looking, it seems) but since everyone drives pretty slowly, when accidents occur, they are little scrapes, not big highway disasters like in the States. While we’re more than a bit intimidated about driving here, we can see that we’ll be able to get the hang of it. All the Americans we’ve spoken to really like driving here since it’s a lot of fun. It looks more like freeform dance than driving.

All of the houses in Yemen, in the Arab style, are separated from the street by a wall for privacy. You could drive down most streets and think they were deserted, not to mention having little idea of the opulence of the houses inside. We have a 24 hour guard provided by the Embassy. The house itself is HUGE and gorgeous–we could never afford such a place in the US. Like most of the houses in this neighborhood (called Hadda), they were built as rental properties. The layout, however, is still typically Yemeni, with the front of the house, the public space, consisting of two large sitting rooms and a bathroom. The rest of the house, bedrooms (3), bathroom, and kitchen, as well as enormous basement, can be easily closed off from the more-public space. Off of the dining room, we have a small elevated patio–where we are sitting while we write this. It has a view of the front gate and neighboring houses, as well as the mountains that surround the city of Sana’a.

Most of the rooms have beautiful carved wood doors over which are gamaria, decorative colored-glass and plaster windows. The ceilings have plaster filigree work, painted in a range of pleasing pastel tones. The overall effect is colorful, interesting, and quite opulent. The gamaria, the filigree, and the patio are our favorite things about the house. We also have a flat roof where we can sit or hold parties. So far, however, it has rained every day–hard and frequently. Are we in the Arab world in August? In between the rain, Sana’a’s climate is phenomenal: cool in the morning and the evenings–even chilly–and no humidity even right after the rains. During the days it gets into the eighties. Of course, we regretted having packed our rain coats while we were in Arlington. We really miss them now.

We finally were ready to go to sleep around 2am, when we discovered that we couldn’t open our largest suitcase because of the changed combination on the lock. Unfortunately, all of my (Michael) dress shirts were in there. Everything else–including my suites–I could get to, but I had no button-down shirts. Not exactly an ideal way to go to my first day of work. (Fortunately, in the light of day and with some patience, I was eventually able to "pick" the lock by trying combinations that were close to the one it should have been.)

When my boss called at 7:30am, I sounded pathetic enough that she held the housing tour without me. But I still had to go in to work at 1pm. Jen came with, because we were told it would be "in processing." We had expected a full day to sleep, recover from the flight, and begin to explore Yemen. Instead, we were at the Embassy until 5pm. I was immediately put to work–"Sign these." "Call this guy." "Get the Ambassador’s TV fixed." There was virtually nothing that could be called orientation. (I didn’t even get a tour of the Embassy grounds or even the floor that my office is on.) People were welcoming–they kept coming up to tell me how overjoyed they were to finally have a GSO again. On Day Two, I went in at normal time and worked two hours of overtime trying to get the Ambassador’s TV fixed. Day three was much of the same. I still am not sure that I am in Yemen–pretty much all I have seen is our house and the inside of the Embassy. I really feel like people are treating me as if I were a "TDYer" (someone here on temporary duty), here to use my vast previous experience to get a particular job done or fill in during the transfer season. Unfortunately, I am a first-tour Junior Officer who has no clue how an embassy functions, or how to do my job, and who could really use some handholding on the job and in transitioning to life abroad. This has made the first few days really hard, as well as stressful and exhausting. All this on top of the low oxygen due to altitude, the jet lag, and Montezuma’s Revenge (which we only really got after eating at the swanky Taj Sheba, the fanciest hotel/restaurant in town).

From what we have seen of Sana’a so far, it is not a pretty city but it has pretty elements. While there are a lot of rundown buildings and poor people in the streets begging, most buildings are decorated with beautiful architectural details. Even a poor school or house has beautiful colored windows, gingerbread detailing on each floor, and carved wood or colored iron doors. There is not as much litter as we expected, apparently a recent development. There is construction EVERYWHERE and lots of bumpy, pitted, or dirt roads as a result. But with the sheer amount of building, there must be some kind of boom, although we have no idea why–tourism is wrecked, there are too many houses on the market so rents are low, and Yemen’s economy is generally pretty pitiful. Nevertheless, the clink of chisel on stone is constant, particularly around the Hadda neighborhood.

We live a block off of a main road (Hadda Road) on a street that, like most streets, has no name. (Actually it probably has a name, but noone knows it, or any other street name for that matter. Any road goes by several names, and in order to get anywhere, everyone draws each other little maps or gives landmarks.) Our block is pretty quiet and doesn’t get much traffic except for the security guards from the Embassy that constantly patrol. But in addition, there’s always a lot of cars honking (the main way to assert your dominance on the roads), dogs barking, kids playing, and the occasional gunfire for weddings and special occasions (although last year a law was passed making it illegal to carry guns in Sana’a, except for police, etc, which has significantly reduced the number of guns you see.). And then of course, five times a day there’s the call to prayer which is pretty loud and long but our house is so soundproof (cement block construction) that we can’t hear it inside.

Yesterday, while Michael slaved away at the Embassy, Jen went along on an official visit to the suq (old marketplace) in the Old City of Sana’a along with the wife of the Commander in Chief of Central Command (CINCCENT, Norman Schwartzkopf’s old job), another foreign service spouse, and the General’s entourage. It’s not exactly how we usually visit the suq–surrounded by bodyguards and ushered into shops that have been cleared of all customers, then taken directly to the "back room," where they keep the good stuff–but at least she got to see one of the tourist attractions here. Maybe someday soon we’ll go back on our own in shlumpy clothes and without guards.

Today (Thursday) was the first day of our weekend (Thursday Friday here is like Saturday Sunday for the rest of you). Instead of taking the opportunity to sleep, go to the supermarket (there are three within one mile as well as dozens of small greengrocers), or unpack, we got up to join the Embassy’s long-delayed July 4^th service project, painting a school for the handicapped. It was exhausting, but we got a chance to meet people in the embassy community, as well as doing some community service. We think the Yemenis were truly amazed to see the Americans actually doing manual labor. They were particularly impressed by Ambassador Bodine up to her elbows in paint. TV and newspaper reporters came to take photos and interview the Ambassador and the director of the school. After the painting, we served hamburgers and hot-dogs to the whole school community and then distributed Toys-for-Tots that the Marines had collected.

Speaking of the Marines, they’re a pretty cool bunch. Most of them are 19 or 20 and they’re soooo polite. They keep calling us sir and ma’am and Mr. and Mrs. Kolodner. We keep telling them to stop, but no luck so far. They frequently have parties at the Marine House which we’ll make sure to attend, and we’ll have them over here too. Everyone tries to take care of them because they’re young boys (really) out in the middle of nowhere and they aren’t allowed to date anyone and because they are there to protect us (ok, really they’re there to protect classified info, but we come a close second) and take it very seriously. Honestly, I’ve never had more respect for military folks than now.

Jen: I’ve never felt so much like a "wife" as now and it gets a bit old. But I (Jen) will be starting work soon so that’ll change. People are pretty surprised that I’ve already got a job lined up and it’s not at the Embassy, but I think it’ll be good. I’ll meet non-Embassy people, thus broadening our social horizons and expanding our opportunities to meet real Yemenis. Turns out that this year there will be 40 Fulbright scholars processed by AMIDEAST, many more than there have been from Yemen going to the States in recent years. I’ll be helping to process their applications as well as running the computer center.

In fact, we met one new Fulbright scholar tonight who’s heading to Univ. of Oregon in Eugene next month. He’s a friend of our language teacher Mohammed and we went out to dinner with the two of them and one other friend. They are so friendly- we laughed a lot and ate some fabulous Yemeni food: grilled fish (yes, heads still on), the biggest piece of traditional bread I’ve ever seen (like Indian naan, but buttery and flaky), some mixed veggie dishes, a hummous-like spread of tomatoes and cheese, and then milky sugary tea that was so good. The best things we’ve eaten so far and that includes the pricey Taj Sheba hotel restaurant with the Phillipino band and dancers.