Crap! I Have a Blog!

Found a journal entry from a bus ride some months back. Better than nothing I guess.

15 June, 2007

.

8:11am

I’m on my second bus of the morning, headed for

Phnom Penh

after stagnating in Siem Reap for two weeks too long.

This isn’t such a bad bus. It reeks of communist mimicry of Western comforts – like a time machine fashioned out of an 8-track player and it’s eating the tape of the space-time continuum. It’s got the big bulging hexagonal shape of 1970s Soviet-era vehicles – the inspired designs of central planning. The design gives it a cavernous feel but all the extra space is in the ceiling. I’ve still got as much elbow room in a mosh pit. The color scheme is dull dirty beige like it was upholstered with a hundred rolls of masking tape. Seats are the shiny grey of Dirty Harry’s sport coat. Curtains are cherry red. Blood red. It’s got the ambiance of a welfare office on wheels. A DVD player is mounted in the dash and connected to a 17-inch commercial NEC TV over the driver’s head so the front three rows of the bus has been watching a half hour of opening credits of a Cambodian movie. A digital alarm clock mounted next to the TV tells how much of your sentence you’ve served. But it’s not such a bad bus.

Like every bus in every developing country the driver has mounted on the passenger side sun visor a print of his favorite deity or spiritual guru. This time it’s one I don’t recognize but it appears to be some sort of Buddhist superhero – a lean, good-looking guy with red skin and red robes, a walking staff and wearing some sort of white feathered skullcap drawing down to a point between his eyes. He’s some sort of bird-man, I think. His superpower is to barf out half-digested worms at bad guys. A more useful bus-God would be Geckoman as the bus is full of enough mosquitoes to have scrapped the

Panama Canal

.

The squat young Cambodian woman sitting next to me and who helped me jam my small water bottle into the too-small pocket in front of me has curled herself into a ball with her ass taking up a quarter of my seat and went to sleep. She’s readjusted now and has her head buried in my armpit like a puppy.

Two seats up and across the aisle is an intriguing young goth-lite woman. Her entire getup – from her hair to her clothes to her leather bag – is brown instead of black. She’s got full sleeve tattoos on both arms. They’re nice work too – with life-like Asian faces tangled up in a soft tribal pattern. [My seatmate has readjusted again and now her ass cheeks are biting my thigh again.] She’s got full bangs and a ponytail. Hot. Like every other girl with this particular style, (which I don’t know how to identify because I’m too old and too lame), she’s got big brown eyes and a biggish sharpish nose and thin bird-like face. It’s a look I find beyond beautiful – I find it fascinating. But the women with this look never find me fascinating. She’s probably unusually intelligent, creative, and charmingly cynical and would be bored with me before I finished my first sentence. I did, however, muster the balls to touch her arm and say “I like your ink” when I went outside for a cigarette. We’re both surrounded by locals who don’t apparently speak English and have nobody to talk to. So close and yet… God I’m lame.

This “movie” turns out to be some sort of Cambodian “Hee Haw”. It’s a live audience variety show with people talking, telling jokes and singing awful songs. Right now there’s an older woman lecturing a young man and woman on a small set of bleachers next to a wagon wheel prop. She’s very stern and sometimes angry with the man but the audience is laughing. I assume she’s telling him he sucks at dealing with the woman. That’s always and everywhere a crowd pleaser. Now they’re doing a skit in front of a backdrop of wood plank houses and the actors are carrying their microphones and acting a scene in Hawaiian shirts – the same thing as country western plaid in

Asia

– and there’s a beautiful young woman in a formal party dress scolding the men and flirting with them at the same time. Now she’s broke out into song. The two women across from me are loving this. Oh shit! The middle aged woman is back on the stage and she’s rapping in Khmer. The horror! Now the men are angry and depressed because of something to do with the young beautiful women. Universal truths. I’m waiting for the fence to swing up and smack one of the men in the ass for making a bad joke.

These hard seats are making my ass sore and it’s only

9:41

according to the digital alarm clock.

We just had to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid the two fattest oxen I’ve ever seen. I want to lean forward and take some pressure off my ass but I’m afraid I’ll put it back down on my neighbor’s head. They passed out barf bags at the start of the trip. I haven’t seen that since

Yemen

. In

Yemen

though, somebody would have used theirs by now. I think we’re stopping for food. Praise Jesus!

No food for me. I bought a miniature Red Bull and lit up a cigarette and notice Inky wandering in my direction. Not sure, I moved to heard her off. Sure enough she came up to bum a cigarette off me. She seemed a bit younger and more innocent than my previous assumptions. She got the ink done in

Seattle

. She moved around a lot and when she goes home in a month she’ll be living in

San Francisco

. She’s been working as a dive master in

Thailand

the last three months and is just making a quick trip through

Cambodia

before going back home. She’s homesick, I determined and told her when she seemed reluctant to find a way to make a living and stay overseas. But maybe the truth is she’s as lazy as I am, if it’s possible. She said she’s “not ready” for the commitment of studying to be a diving instructor.

The breakfast stop turned out to be more of a bathroom break. We finished our cigarettes and noticed the other passengers herding back on the bus in a hurry. All I could do is look back at the concrete pen of the roadside restaurant – exactly like those in every other country I’ve seen – and get back on the bus in mid-conversation. Inky and I gave each other “Hey. Whattayagonnado?” looks and took our seats two rows and and aisles apart. I’m left staring at the solemn Asian face staring at me from her tricep. She’s stuck next to a young Cambodian guy who nervously stares at alternating parts of her, (much as I’m doing), but doesn’t have the English to actually talk to her. I’ve still got the restless napper who’s now going through the fourth course of the meal she just bought. The fruit she just offered me a piece of was horrendous. It’s had its skin removed but the fruit inside tastes just like orange peel.

What I thought were long-running opening credits for a movie was actually a really boring music video with subtitles for karaoke sing-alongs. For the first time this bus ride scares me – imagining a five hour mobile karaoke sing-along!

We just came about a foot from killing a guy on the other side of the highway. All the way on the other side.

These bigger towns we pass through alongside the highway could be in

Yemen

, in

Egypt

,

Jordan

or any other country I’ve been through. With their packed markets full of fruit and cheap electronics, three-story colonial storefronts and hotels, perpetual stagnant puddles, huge packs of bored motorcycle taxis drivers, all operating on a thick carpet of trash. These anonymous towns are at once intimidating and intriguing to me like an old west town. I’ve always wanted to explore one, but I just know I’d find only trouble.

She’s sleeping off her meals in my armpit now. I’m glad I collected her barf bag for her.

Passing another market town a 12 year-old Cambodian kid in a Spiderman t-shirt had someone put blond highlights in his hair. Globalization at work.

If we make it to

Phnom Penh

without killing somebody I’ll punch myself in the face for how much I hate this driver. Maybe it’s not his fault. Maybe nobody told him the bus has breaks. Maybe he has to fantasize that he’s Mad Max in order to keep the karaoke music dripping sweet like cheap honey from the TV above his head from putting him in a diabetic coma. But with his camouflage cap, gold-rimmed black aviators and the way his horn unmistakably translates as “move or die” I’m assuming he’s just an ex-military asshat with less regard for human life than he has desire to get to Phnom Penh early enough to hate-fuck his favorite bus station hooker before the return trip.

I’ll use “PS” to represent a picturesque scene seen out the window.

PS – A downed palm tree curving into and out a small green pond in front of a driftwood hut.

PS – White ox grazing in a pond full of lily pad.

PS – Someone fenced their property with stacks of used tires and two teenage boys sitting shirtless on the stilted porch talking.

PS – Just the backs, noses and horns of 8 black oxen on the surface of a duck pond.

PS – Boys up to their armpits in a lily pad pond. Why? Are they in there for work or for play? Are they bathing? Does the warm life-giving water of the pond feel like escaping to another world free of the dangers and pain of their own? I shall never know. I am on a bus. So why ask? What do you mean? Why ask such dumb questions if you’re just a guy on a bus? I’m just journaling my thoughts. No you weren’t. You were trying to sound clever and deep by pondering the thoughts of some kids in a pond like some rich hippy douche bag making pretentious art films about the beauty of a plastic bag dancing with you high on peyote and wine coolers. Fuck off. It’s my journal. I was writing my thoughts to myself. Bull-shit! You already decided an hour ago that this bus ride diary is just so awesomely clever that you want to put it on your blog and show everyone who reads it (no one!) how awesomely clever you are. So what’s wrong with that? Nothing, until you veered into the art-douche voiceover shit. You’re lucky I didn’t just shank your ass. Yeah. Uh… thanks.

Who the hell are you anyway? Huh? I’m writing in my journal and all of a sudden you’re here giving me shit. Who are you? I don’t know what you mean. You don’t know… I’m writing in my journal. You’re writing in my journal WITH THE SAME FUCKING HAND! How does that work? Oh. I see your point. I don’t know. Maybe I’m a voice in your head? I don’t have voices in my head. Oh, you don’t? So who picked out those underwear you put on this morning? Is she hot? OK! Ixnay on the antiespay!

So what’s with the dialogue without punctuation or paragraphing? What? You showed up in my journal – blog – whatever. You showed up as dialogue but you don’t use quote marks or separate your speech from mine with paragraphs. What’s your point? It’s a cool style. If you’re Cormac McCarthy it is. Are you Cormac McCarthy? If I was, I wouldn’t be hanging around in YOUR head now would I? It’s a clean well-lighted place and all. Good acoustics. But it ain’t exactly the New York Public Library, if you know what I mean. Good one. But you’ve never even read Cormac McCarthy. Who says? You’re in my head. You only saw that that was his style when I was checking out his Wikipedia page the other day. You ripped off his style and you’ve never even read any of his books. What’s your point? Art-douche. Watch your ass, Holmes. What are you going to do, Huggy Bear? Shiv me? … Oh. It’s cool. Write your journal.

It’s

11:24

and my neighbor’s face and my armpit are starting to sweat on each other. She doesn’t seem to mind.

OK, she does. She put her face back in the curtains and her ass cheeks around my thigh. I still feel there’s a bond of trust growing between us though. Something about how comfortable she is with some tourist who she can’t speak a word to makes me think she’s going to make someone an excellent wife.

Flying by the window is a green blur of countless species of palm trees, grasses and sex pools for swinging mosquitoes, navy blue and white school uniforms on bicycles, other bicycles being used to haul farm products to market, huts and shacks raised on stilts to heights according to the optimism of their owners, ducks and geese, oxen and cows, goats and communist party headquarter buildings about every 500 meters – all of them fortunate not to have been creamed by my piece of shit driver.

We’ve stopped to let people out and there’s a woman offering bags of that awful orange peel fruit along side one offering cooked crickets or grasshoppers from a big metal tub. I can’t decide which one I’d start with.

Every so often I see the driver twitching in his mirror.

Another stop. Another cig with Inky. This time she abruptly ditched me and got back on the bus.

Kids are hard-selling to us the things we might buy – pineapple and mango. Women ignored us who were offering tubs of huge fat crickets and tarantulas deep fried in oil and the orange peel fruit of course. I think they only pick them to help sell the fried arthropods. I had some fun with the little girls and their bucket of live tarantulas next to the platter of fried ones.

I bought a jar of Jacker – a Pringles knock-off I used to buy in

Yemen

. It took the vendor a couple minutes to come up with the price – so I knew I was about to be jacked. I threw out “one dollar”, the going rate in the cities, just to keep him from asking for four. Just as he said “two” an eight year-old kid came up behind him and demanded three. I tried to use this to seem offended and ask for one again but the man forgot his English numbers at that moment and just stared at me. I gave him two. Of course he’s had that can on the counter there since Angkor Wat was under construction and they’re horrible.

These curtains are Communist Red. And Sleepy closed them now and I can’t look out the window any more except the barest sliver.

The kid pushing the pineapple on me the whole last stop was wearing a Ray Mysterio t-shirt. He would put this awful pout on his face when he said “two thousand” (50 cents) and held the bag of skinned pineapple up at us. I bought one from a little girl already but he kept trying to sell us another one. We’d refuse and he’d stand there smiling and waiting to get in on our conversation. Then he’d pout all pitiful and say “two thousand” again. I asked him who’s on his t-shirt and he smiled big and said proudly: “Ray Mysterio!” I asked who’s that, (I had no idea but I could see from the shirt he was a pro wrestler). “He’s a wrestler!” he said proudly in good English. A pause. Then he switched to the pout again, held up the pineapple and whined “two thousaaaaand”. I laughed at him for his obvious shtick and he laughed back. A pause. He put the pout back on and repeated his line. I pouted back and said the price making him laugh again. After that I’d just mock him and make him laugh each time he’d do his thing. Even so, every time I saw that forced pout it tugged at some string inside me. Not necessarily my heart or I would have bought another pineapple, but some string. It’s more economical to be jaded here but I’m not sure it’s justified. A very skinny old woman approached me pleading and pointing at her three teeth. I refused her twice while she held onto my bicep and pointed. I knew I was going to give her two thousand right away, and I did eventually, but you can’t give to everyone and you get an instinctive resistance. You have to. Sometimes there’s someone who destroys all doubt immediately and you just say “Oh yes, of course. Here you go.”

I wonder if the driver’s Bird-God flies over his enemies and craps on their windshields. I wonder if that’s why he drives like he does – he knows his Bird-God is angry with him and he’s trying to outrun him? Twitchy just twitched again. I’m pretty sure he’s on speed. I wish I hadn’t read that Wikipedia page listing the worst auto accidents in the world. I think about 1 in 10 was a bus accident in

SE Asia

that killed 20 or 30. Then there was the article in the Bangkok Post about the prevalence of methamphetamine among bus drivers. I miss qat.

Sleepy is swapping sweat again with my armpit.

We just passed a row of brick factories so I know there’s a low child unemployment rate in this region.

Inky’s got a hell of a tan to go with her pants. It looks good on her. I wish I was the guy next to her so I could stare at more of her parts. She’s got a thick two-inch scar on her forearm that looks good on her too.

“Thanks for the cigarette,” Inky said as she ditched me. I’m not sure if I bored her, creeped her out or a little bit of both. Is it possible to do both at the same time? Well if anyone can, I can goddammit! If we stop again I should try to work a third type of repulsion into my repertoire. Let’s see… what else have I got in my personality arsenal? Anger? No. I don’t think I inspire that so much.

Jesus! Someone just had a real nice boat in their front yard! Somebody pulled off an American business-class luxury item like that in this neighborhood?

1:13

– I can’t confirm any kills but I’m going to assume there were two or three school kids I didn’t see.

I don’t know how I’m going to read this little exercise seeing as I’m writing on a moving target and I can’t read my own writing when I’m stationary.

Despite the bus’s air conditioning I’m starting to sweat all over – especially my right thigh. And I just got really sleepy.

Crossing over the

Mekong

River

(I think) now. I should have taken the boat here. I could have taken pictures instead of scribbling my nonsense all over these perfectly good pages of my overpriced notepad. If I’d have met another tattooed love girl I could have actually sat next to her for 11 hours and possibly driven her overboard. That photo would be my all-time favorite.

The ferry arrived at Koh Kong on time and I was the last one off. A moto taxi driver had come inside the boat to get a jump on my fare and he actually didn’t seem too annoying so I entertained his offer. “You go to Thailand?” he asked. Ignoring his question I asked him how far the border was and he told me 15 kilometers. I asked how much and he said $3. I figured he was probably lying about the distance and I just paid $2 for a 10km trip the day before so I held to $2 and he agreed. I would have tried for lower but I knew the border closes at 5:00 and my mobile said it was 4:18 already. There was also, of course, a mob of other drivers outside when we sealed the deal.

I got onboard his scooter and we wound out of the dirt lot for a dock and onto a bridge over the channel the ferry had parked in. At one end of the bridge was a sign that said the border post was 8km away; exactly what I figured. At the other end of the bridge a row of toll booths were waiting for us. Just before we reached a booth he asks: “You pay the toll?” I suppose if he had just declared, “You pay the toll”, like that’s the way it’s done I would have just paid it. But obviously that wasn’t the way it was done, and he was just trying to squeeze that bit more out of me. So I said no. He looked back at me with an angry cow-eye as he stopped the moto with me lined up in front of the attendant and him just past him. He told me to pay again and I said no and looked at the scenery. He trashed me to the attendant in Khmer so I gave the guy a “fuck it” smile and he stuck his head back in so only I could see him return the same smile. The driver threatened to take me back to the dock and I said “let’s go”. I was bluffing. I didn’t have the time. But also I finally looked at the sign and saw the toll was only 1,200 riel. Alright, now I’m just being cheap, I thought and was about to reach back for my wallet when the driver handed over the money and took off. I figured I’d pay him $2.50 for the tolls. What’s it to me. But then he turns his head back and says “You pay three now.” “I pay two”, I said. He said something about tolls and petrol and 15km and I busted in. I told him I saw the sign. I asked him why he didn’t tell me about the tolls when we agreed to the price. He shut up for the rest of the ride and only grumbled to himself about me and cow-eyed me a couple times.

Once there I paid him 2 and he demanded 3 and I walked away with him in tow trying to make a scene. Finally I spun around on him and asked him angrily in front of his moto friends again why he didn’t tell me about the toll. When he didn’t think of anything for a couple of beats I blurted out “That’s right! We’re done!” and walked on. I heard him yell “Fuck…!” at me and I figured he forgot what the second word of that epithet was. So when I approached the departures window I was grinning at that but I also was thinking the tactics that just worked with this guy may come in handy with the generals inside.

And sure enough inside the window was a room full of generals and one little fat guy with a too tight undershirt apparently working as a gopher. “Here we go!” I thought to myself, already psyched up for round 2. The general just inside the window was writing in a big book and looking half asleep for effect - to let me know how important he was while he ignored me. Without looking at me he finally took my passport, opened it right to the page with the departure card and gave it back saying, “Fill it out.” Then he went back to his book. I figured this guy knows his job well and I’m going to have no shot at weaseling out of any of the scams he’s got up his sleeve. I gave it back and he ignored me for another minute before taking it and going through a graceful bunch of motions with my passport and stamps and ledgers and then closes my passport and hands it back to me. No fines? He didn’t ask me for the penalty, I thought to myself. Is that possible? But before I could stop myself I smiled and said “that’s it?” He got this confused look on his face and gestured for the passport back. I slowly handed it back trying to think of a way not to while not betraying that I know something’s wrong. He thumbs back and fort through the passport then reads it cover to cover – forwards and backwards - like he just discovered porno. Finally he looks at me and says “you overstayed”, but unsure of himself, like he’s asking me, not telling me. This is high-stakes poker now and I’m playing dumb. “I don’t think so,” I said, leaning towards the passport like I can will it into my hand like a Jedi’s light saber. He looked down at it again and this time said with certainty, “you overstayed” and waved me into the building. ‘“That’s it?”’!?!? Goddammitt! Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut! I almost got out of there without paying a red cent!

Inside the big shoe box of an office, without looking at me he sits me down next to himself at his desk. He’s looking at the passport, then the calendar on the wall, then at a chart of penalties below it, then at the two different dates on the two different pages of my passport. I can see he’s figuring out what the problem is, which is good, but he’s also figuring out how much money is at stake, which is not good. I’m waiting for him to take a posture with me so I can tell whether to fight or to give up the dough. He points to the date on my visa and says “this is when you came into the country?” Good. I can fight because he’s actually going to acknowledge the evidence rather than see that he can take money from me without an argument if he wants. I lean in over the page and say “Yes” with confidence. He’s stuck for a second because he sees the visa is perfectly clear – it’s an official visa sticker that takes up a full page of my passport with elaborate national  symbols and decorations, the price of the visa, ($20), my details and two clearly defined dates: “date of issue: 14 May, 2007” and “date of expiration: 14 August, 2007”. It contains no other information specifying time allowed in the country, when it must be used by, or specifying the length of time I’m allowed in the country other than the issue to expiration dates. I know he’s going to argue that somehow all of those conditions apply and that I should have known this… somehow. Surprisingly he’s actually seeing my case in the document, but accepting it would mean he doesn’t get a cut of my money he would get if he forces me to pay. Suddenly he flops two pages back to the stamp that was put on there at the same time as the visa, with a departure slip stapled over it and folded over once to fit inside. The stamp says “Republic of Cambodia” and the dates, 14 May, 2007 and 14 June, 2007, and some crap in Khmer. He points and says I had to leave by that date. Encouraged, I flipped the passport back to the visa page, pointed, looked him in the eye, making like I’m surprised at what he’s saying, and launched into the script I’d been practicing for days: “This is a visa, right? I got it at the border and it says ‘issued on May 14’ and ‘expires on August 14’ and in every country in the world that’s a three-month visa. Now what you’re saying is that a stamp that was put two pages away and under a piece of paper and only says the word “Cambodia” and two dates on it should tell me that this visa does not mean what it says and I only have one month in the country. How is it possible that I can know that this is what that means? …and would you know that this is what that means if you were me and this was your passport?”

I had him dead to rights and for a second he understood this. But it didn’t produce the effect I had hoped for. He started to boil. He slid the passport behind him along the desk and looked at me with white hot rage in his eyes. I wished I had learned more from the self-deprecating manipulation of the peasant heroes of Chinese literature instead of the smart-ass comedian heroes of 1980s cinema. “You came into my country,” he spat at me, “and you overstay your time and now you must pay!” I lost. I knew that. But as I saw it I still had this golden opportunity to speak truth to power; to let him know that he’s winning the argument because he’s wearing the uniform of a corrupt military and not because he’s right. This idea always works out well, doesn’t it? “Your country gave me a three month visa. You are not calling it a one month visa and asking me for money,” I asserted. I pointed at my passport. “You saw where I’ve been. Those countries never did this to me,” I lied.

I stood quiet and waited while small vapors of smoke rose from under his collar and off the top of his bald head. His eyes turned yellow and the pupils turned into narrow vertical ellipses. The other generals looked on in confusion, fear and anticipation. The little guy in the undershirt stood in a back doorway smirking, impressed with my pending martyrdom. Although he never spoke I’m sure he was the only other Khmer in the room who spoke any English. My opponent, however, had now forgotten his English. He yelled a series of sentences that I didn’t understand at all. I asked, “What? I can’t understand you now.” He repeated it louder and less intelligibly. I looked at Undershirt, who turned to look busy. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said, vaguely thinking he had said something like “pay plenty” with something like “go back”. Now he was shouting something entirely different, of which I only understood “cancel your passport,” “Phnom Penh,” and “Ministry of something-or-other.” That first bit conjured up in my head the words “Property of the United States of America” and I groped around in there for a way to threaten my embassy’s involvement. Fortunately my past experiences were milling around in there chain smoking like expected fathers and they looked up at me and said “You’re fucking kidding, right?” I decided to try lying again. It seemed to me it worked once before. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Department of Immigration, and the American embassy all told me the government made a mistake…” I was going to say: “and that you would fix it for me” but that would have been seen as crazy talk by both of us. His whole head was red and he was shaking. So was I. “Pay plenty or go back Phnom Penh!” he screamed into my face. I didn’t know if he was bluffing or not. He might have actually been afraid of me raising a stink and I had heard that border post had been in trouble for imposing illegal fines in the past. But I knew I had been bluffing all along. I knew I would almost definitely be paying about $200 in overstay penalties regardless, and had been warned that this border has been hitting up overstays with a made-up $35 charge on top of the legit penalty. That scam hadn’t even come up so I decided to fold up shop and pay. “How much?” I asked. He spun around, tossing my passport in front of the general behind him, barked something in Khmer, stomped over to a corner desk and began writing in a ledger.

The second general looked at me with the pity of an executioner and began stamping and writing in my passport. He wasn’t looking at the calendar or the penalty chart and when I saw him grab and use the “CANCEL” stamp I knew I was fucked. “Hey!” I yelled at nobody in particular. “What are you doing? I said ‘how much?’ I said I’d pay!” He looked at me like a dog that had just been shown a card trick. To general #1 I pleaded, “I said I’d pay!” He didn’t look - only throbbed the veins on his forehead at me. Knowing I had no hope in Phnom Penh and would only pay another $6 a day until I did manage to escape, I ordered loud and slow: “I said I’d pay!” I should have checked earlier if the generals wore sidearms. I checked now. They didn’t. He looked at me like he wished they did. I felt general #2 take me gently by the inside of my elbow and lead me back to his desk. He finished a couple more stamps and waved my passport in the direction of Phnom Penh before handing it back to me and pointing at the exit. Undershirt was holding the doorknob and pleading with his eyes for me to escape with him. “Come with me if you want to live,” he was saying. I knew I should leave if only to cool the situation.

Just as I was walking through the door, Undershirt pointed towards the Thai border instead of the Capital. “Run Forrest! Ruuun!” he seemed to be saying now. I was sure I had a cancelled visa and shouldn’t be allowed though the checkpoint, but it was worth a shot, I thought and walked towards the box next to the hole in the roadblock where people were walking through.

Two soldiers were lying on big boulders spacing out on the tree above them. Another guard sat in a plastic chair inside the box with his elbows on his knees, fingers locked together and his eyes watching the shoes of the Thais and Khmers passing through the gate in both directions. Mine he noticed coming from Immigration and he looked up with half-open eyes as I approached. I faked sharing a bored smile with him, pointed through the exit without stopping and said “Thailand, yes?” He smiled back and nodded but didn’t reach out for my passport. An orchestra and two choirs in my heart belted out the “Ode to Joy”. “I’m free!” my brain shrieked like a gay guy in a locker room. He sighed and reached out his hand for my passport. The tuba player was the last to notice and shut up.

Back inside the office I crossed the room to the bald general asking, calmer now: “Why did you cancel my visa when I said I’d pay?” He stared at me still angry but tired while I asked the question twice more. He asked, “You want to pay now?” “Yes,” I said, begging myself not to be a smartass anymore. He slowly got up and took my passport. He walked it over and dropped it in front of #2, gave him a quiet instruction, walked back past me without looking at me and went back to work.

Like the stunned survivor surveying the wreckage of his home after the storm has passed I watched #2 working the stamps and pens and ledgers over my passport. He looked up at the calendar on the wall then at the chart of fines below it. He turned to me and said “fi’ dollah”, held up his index finger and finished, “day.” “OK,” I replied, looking disappointed. “Dumbasses!” I finished the reply to myself.

Everyone else I told about this visa situation told me the fines go up to $6 a day after 30 days. Here are the guys who actually get to spend the money on expensive champagne and cheap hookers and they don’t even know the system. As the guy is miscalculating my punishment it’s dawning on me that my biggest mistake was letting on that I was the smartest guy in the room, with the possible exception of Undershirt. Don’t get me wrong. I knew I was only smarter because I didn’t have a uniform on. If they’d have just issued me one I’d have cut them all a share of my bank accounts and gone right out and picked up a couple of hookers to celebrate my good fortune with me. These guys actually pay to get the jobs at the borders because they get to keep the money they take in. That’s the way these countries are run – you have a uniform – you get to take money from anyone without one. You win every argument, and nobody tells you the truth. They tell you what you want to hear. Over time you’re the dumbest guy in any room. Power corrupts but it also lobotomizes.

Undershirt knew this and at that moment I realized he had been trying to tell it to me with his eyes for the last hour. He knew I had a shot at passing by the empty uniform at the roadblock if I’d have only ignored my ego long enough to recognize what I was dealing with – men who would gladly trade in all their stolen wealth to keep their stolen senses of self-worth. I was only the second smartest guy in the room and second place cost me a pretty penny.

I quickly paid the $170 and collected my passport without saying a word to anyone until I said “thank you” to Undershirt outside the door.

I said nothing as the gate-keeper opened my passport for half a second, (probably to the wrong page), and waved me through.

Expecting and receiving the same bumbling abuse at Thai Immigration, I kept my mouth shut and played the humble peasant, deferentially poking the situation to my favor. This time the frog-faced bureaucrat in his official yellow polo shirt insisted I was only entitled to 48 hours in the country because he knew that July was only five months past January because you have to count from the zero month before it. (You’re only allowed 90 days in Thailand in a six month period. I cleared this by three weeks.) I resisted explaining counting and time and instead interjected “seven months” into the gaps in his calculations until he compromised between the two wrong answers to six months, with the help of two other officials, and gave me my 30-day stamp. All it cost me this time was a half hour of humility and I struggled to pay even that.

Now came the real challenge of getting a fair price from a shared taxi driver for a ride to my destination, the town of Trat. All the other travelers having moved on already I had to entertain the offer of the only driver left in town. He said the ride would cost $3 so I went to his van with him ready to relax and space out for the two hour ride. When we got there the van was empty save for one Thai person in the front passenger seat. I asked if we were waiting for the van to fill up before leaving and he said, “No. We go now,” and gestured hurriedly towards the side door. I asked who pays for the empty seats, having fallen for the old empty shared taxi gag once back in Yemen. “You pay 900 Baht ($27) for 9 seats. Come. We leave now,” he said, pulling on my arm but careful not to betray the absurdity of my part in the deal. “Nice try,” I told him as I pulled away and walked towards the empty main street of this tiny border town. I glanced back and saw him lean on his van and light a cigarette knowing that with no more tourists coming through the closed border and no hotels in the town his was literally the only deal in town. Once again I was fucked and I knew it. And the few old women and kids I asked about hotels and other modes of transportation out of the place knew it too.

My saviors came in the form of handsome Russian family pulling out of the town parking lot - where the taxi driver was still waiting and watching – in a new silver minivan. I managed to knock on the window as they passed me and ask if they knew anything about getting out of this place. Only the wife spoke a little bit of English and rather than sort out how to explain my lack of options she just said, “We take you. Get in.” I didn’t get a look back at the taxi driver. A quiet two hours of middle class family life I had completely forgotten existed later and they reluctantly dropped me off outside of Trat with the reassurance that I could easily get a moto taxi anywhere in the country. I was wrong. I walked the 5 kilometers to the guest houses with the help of some friendly locals and a vicious dog blocking the wrong way I wanted to take. By 9:00 PM I was safely back in my guest house life, free to live life as I please for the next 30 days.

I can’t pretend anymore that I’m not. But although I’ll have 10 years sober in about 4 days, I’m totally addicted to politics. It impacts all other aspects of my life, especially updating this blog with details of my life, and from keeping in contact with the people I care about. I’ve lamented this fact for a while now, but I’ve decided to at least get out of denial. (Which is almost as important as getting out of the Nile, which is disgusting!)

So I’ll start with a confession: instead of keeping my friends and family abreast of my experiences in the Middle East, what I’ve spent the time (the time I would have otherwise spent writing dispatches on) doing is arguing politics - mostly Iraq - on an internet messageboard. It’s not because I don’t care about my friends and family, it’s because I’m a giant tool.

So there it is.

The upside, (ha!), to this is that I think I’ve gotten kind of good at writing these enormous rants. Some of them might even be bearable to read. Maybe, anyway. But what I’ve decided to do is just put some of this bullshit on the blog here so it looks like I’m at least typing something to someone. Call it sharing. Call it crap. Whatever. At least, maybe, it will let people know I’m alive. Whatever.

So today will be my first installment of my two-bit opinions on Crap! I Have a Blog! Please sit back, close your eyes, and imagine that I wrote this especially for you and not for a group of anonymous strangers on the internet who really just want to make fart jokes and try to sleep with each other despite being hundreds or thousands of miles away from one another.

[It starts out as a response to a specific question which I started to answer before I went batshit insane.]

---

BYOBKenobi wrote:
yerdaddy, do you
think there is a solution where Iraq ends up as 3 separate countries or
are they too blended together to draw lines? I know the Kurds are
pretty much on their own up north, but what about the other two?

---

It’s
been proposed by some really smart people. Senator Joe Biden is
probably more knowledgible about Iraq than anyone else in Congress and,
along with the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, (a
well-respected think thank), he proposed this a few months back.
See the article for the rationale. Basically, what’s happening is that
so much has gone wrong in Iraq that ideas about what to do become more
and more diverse, but with less and less chance of success. This is
what happened in Vietnam. People still argue about what we should have
done to "win", but the truth is at some point the problems have gotten
too many and too severe to solve. It’s what happens when wars are being
lost.

Immediately after Biden proposed the "partitioning" of
Iraq, Anthony Cordesman, probably the civilian most knowledgible about
the situation in Iraq, responded with why this is a bad idea.

Read both of these pieces and they both make sense. That’s because there are no easy answers anymore.

Personally I think it’s a bad idea for us to try to work
towards. Just because we draw up boundaries doesn’t mean they’ll be
respected by the people who live there, (see: the entire history of
colonialism, especially almost every conflict in the developing world
in the last hundred years). Even if we draw borders around the warring
ethnic groups instead of through them, like was usually done in the
past - including Iraq - the parties will still be fighting over what
they want - power and money. (We don’t have enough military in Iraq -
US and Iraqi - to secure the borders now. This would be removing US
forces but doubling or tripling the borders that need securing.) In
Iraq the oil is mainly located in Shiia and Kurdish areas. So the
Sunnis - those who have been attempting violent solutions the longest -
will be cut out and will still see a violent chaos as their best chance
for an outcome that is most favorable to them. The Shiia will fight
back, just as they are now.

Possibly the worst outcome will be
that Turkey will invade the Kurdish area and Iran and all the other
Sunni neighbors - Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, ect. - will intervene on
the side of the Sunnis. The risk is complete regional conflict that we
cannot afford to abandon, and thus it will be simply Iraq X 10 for us. [I just noticed the Washington Post has a piece on this aspect in today's paper.]

Which
is still a risk for us anyway. Honestly, the public debate is refusing
to even look past tomorrow in discussing the stakes in Iraq. It’s
extremely childish and unbecomming the most powerful nation in the
world. The reality is that losing in Iraq, which is what we are doing,
could lead to a World War III type war. But we’re too busy pointing
fingers at each other to even notice this. But that’s a whole other
rant.

The articles I linked to earlier mark a new shift in the
public debate about what to do. Republicans don’t have a plan, but, for
the sake of electoral politics, they’ve been screaming that the
democrats don’t have a plan. So, in the tradition of muddled stupidity
that is the democratic party, they came up with a plan. That plan is
partially a reflection of the situation in Iraq and partially a
political strategy for the 2008 presidential election. It takes into
consideration some of the most basic facts in Iraq - we have become
increasingly unpopular occupiers; the war is increasingly costly to us
in terms of blood and treasure; there is now a government in Iraq that
must make hard decisions about how to help itself, but is dependent on
US troops for its survival. Then it takes into consideration the
domestic political realities at home: the war is really unpopular among
the American people; the American people really don’t understand the
war in any sort of complex way - the public will, as translated into
"the will of the people", more or less comes down to fight/quit. So,
the unpopularity of the war translates one thing to BOTH parties: less
American troops in Iraq = more gooder. That’s the bottom line of what
we can be described as wanting.[If you really hate personal human interaction as much as I do you can read these additional arguments  for and against troop reductions.]

"But
what if that’s not the best strategy for winning in Iraq" you say?
Doesn’t matter. The American public simply are not taking the time to
follow the complex reality that is Iraq and so we are incapable of
rewarding or punishing complex solutions to this complex problem. We do
care about our soldiers, so when things go bad, we want them out of
harm’s way. We don’t think about the possibility of their withdrawall
meaning that even more of them will have to go back in to a worse
situation in the future.

Thus, the democratic plan is to
withdraw SOME forces, "redeploy" the rest to bases in key areas and
give them more military duties like force protection and going after
insurgent groups. This, the theory goes, will give the Iraqi government
no choice but to solve the more complex problems of providing security
for the people, (all the people, and not just their own sect),
providing security for reconstruction, cleaning out the Iraqi forces of
"death squads" and sectarian militias, and all the other
responsibilities of a functioning government. The theory is that this
step is necessary as leveraging the government to act. It’s a valid
theory. But I doubt it will work. It’s just that it’s the most
realistic option from within the framework of satisfying the public’s
desire of less troops.

Bear in mind, the public desire for
less troops in harm’s way is also the reason the Bush administration
has NEVER had enough troops in Iraq to fulfill the military goals of
why we’re there. They’re just as guilty - if not moreso - of pandering
to political expediency as the democrats. Their irresponsibility, it
should be remembered, is what got us this situation on the ground in
the first place.

So, in the articles linked above, you’ve got the
ex-generals who were critical of Bush now being critical of the
democratic "solution". (First of all, this should absolve them from the
partisanship accusations the right made against them when they were
criticizing the administration, and it should make us more willing to
trust them as honest as well as expert authorities on the subject.)
They say the Iraqi government is still too weak to take on its
responsibilities if we do "leverage" them. The two that were quoted,
(as well as the conservative analyst from the Heritage Foundation, who
was quoted), say we need MORE troops. Which is what McCain is saying
again - to great political risk, as his article rightly points out.
They basically are saying that the necessary steps in Iraq are
fulfilling the complex tasks that the public is not paying attention
to: reconstruction and job-creation in order to lure the public away
from supporting violent conflict, and supporting the government while
still providing them the US military to conduct basic government
responsibilities. They’re saying we need to buck the political will of
the American people.

Now before anyone defines this as "staying
the course", this is not the course to this point. The course, as
implimented by the Bush administration so far, has been largely to
neglect these basic functions of military support for "nation-building"
in Iraq. About two years ago, David Kay resigned early as chief US
weapons inspector, specifically because the administration had been
withdrawing military and financial assets from the tasks of completing
the inspections process as well as from supporting the reconstruction
goals. Virtually all of the former CPA officials who have spoken
publicly about the reconstruction effort there said it was full of
political loyalists with no experience and, thus, was never a serious
effort on the mission of nation-building. In a very fundamental way,
the generals and McCain are not saying that this has to continue, but
that this has to finally be taken seriously. It’s alot to ask - for
politicians to buck politics. It’s also alot to expect - that the
people who haven’t taken this advice to this point will suddenly start
taking this advice. I doubt it will happen either.

The hope is this: that the Iraq Study Group
will come up with a strong, rational, non-partisan report on what the
situation is and what to do about it, and that it will gain enough
support from key public figures to keep it in the center of public
debate long enough to give the public and the politicians the public a
chance to broaden their views of the situation and what to do about it.
This is what happened with the 9-11 Commission Report. Such
government-appointed independent commissions almost never make the kind
of impact on the public and political world-views that that commission
did. It didn’t transform policy, but it had a major impact, and that’s
alot to ask. That’s what I’m hoping from this group’s report: that it
will force/enable the media to bring the complex issues at play in Iraq
and Washington into the public eye, and detract some attention away
from some of the crazy partisan bickering that has dominated public
discussion about the war from the beginning. In effect, I hope it
served to educate the public and political leaders about what is
important to discuss and what is not. That may serve to bring about
some change in the political will of Americans and give key leaders,
like McCain, the political cover they need to push the administration
into doing what needs to be done in Iraq to "win" regardless of what
domestic political strategists say to do.

Outside ideas are
absolutely critical to a better situation in Iraq because the reality
is that, Rumsfeld aside, the people who are going to be conducting
policy in Iraq for the next two years are the same people who have
fucked it up. They have shunned all outside opinions, even from their
own party. They have remained idealists in the face of reality all
along, and the only chance for anything positive is that they finally
start listening to some realists. I finally see some hope that this can
happen now that Bush is a "lame duck". In a way, it’s the opposite.
Right now I finally have some hope that he is capable of making
realistic decisions, and that what is left of the "foreign policy
community" still functions enough to give him good advice. It’s still a
long-shot, and it may be too late, but it’s the first time I’ve had any
hope at all about the war in a long time.

I heard something yesterday that kind of changed my stay here in Dahab. Some New Zealand friends I met who have been travelling around the world, snorkelling and diving told me that the Red Sea coast, where I’m at, because it is the world’s second saltiest water behind the Dead Sea, has some of the best coral reefs and thus some of the best snorkelling in the world. And I sat around for a week without even bothering to get in the water. What a jackass! So now I figure, if I ever snorkel again it’ll probably never be as good as it is now, and if i never do it again, at least i saw about the best shit i could. So now I’m going in every day. And today was the best day yet.

I got in the water late - about 11am - and the water was unbelievably clear. You could see the bottom about 50 feet down, and out for about another 40 feet. The coral reef I was on - which I pretty much had to myself because it’s in front of the hotels and people, I guess, assume that there’s nothing there, when it’s actually about as good a reef as the places you have to pay to get to around here. It was so clear and there were so many fish that I had to tear myself out of the water to go buy a disposable underwater camera. I burned most of the roll of 27 in about a half an hour, then saved a few just in case i saw something really unusual. Burned those last few off within the hour. If these photos come out I’ll fucking batch. The fish love man batter. That first roll might be just for figuring out what kinds of underwater photos come out. I got great shots of this gigantic diverse reef, full of tons of crazy-ass fish, from above, from below… getting a little turned on again. Sorry.

After I ran out of film I learned a little trick. There’s a type of black fish with colored stripes about the size of a dinner plate and that swim around the reef in big schools. Today I started following them around. They’d swim away scared, but not very far, so I just kept following them slowly so as not to scare them. (Listen up boys, this is also how I pick up the foxes. Oh… yeah!) Eventually, they stopped freaking out and let me swim with them. That was cool as shit so for about an hour i just swam along this long reef with my new posse. What’s more, when we passed by all the other fish - the ones who would fuck off when i tried to come near them, they’d just keep on keepin on, and i could get close to all the other fish this way. So that’s how you do it! Sweet. I’ve got reef cred now. Cuz I’m hangin with the brothers. Thas’ what i’m talkin bout! Boyeeeeee! I’m retarded.

So tomorrow, if any of these pics I took today came out, I’ll be taking the sweet-ass fish photos with my new homies. Word.

This is the first story completely researched and written by me to be published by the UN news agency. Again with the edits though! "…suffered the more than anyone else.."??? My editor actually inserted that little dandy. Eh well. The rest of the flaws are mine, more or less. Anyhoo, this one’s all me, Baby! And, what’s more, the money’s all mine! Mine! Mine!  Mine!  Getting that phat UN bling!

It’s actually only good money if you live in the Third World. But, hey, I do.

My favorite part of writing this story was when the Vice-Minister of Fish Wealth, (tee hee), began the interview with a veiled threat because I haven’t registered as a journalist with the Ministry of Information, (so they can more easily spy on me, intimidate me, tie me up with red tape [hot!] and require me to take "minders" - spies/official pains-in-the-asses - in an effort to keep me from practicing journalism, basically. Screw that. I’m getting escorted to the airport before I put up with that shit.) Then he proceeded to lie his ass off to me. The only reason he even confirmed the basis of the story was to blame the other ministry, (probably because it has a normal sounding name). It was just like petty authoritarian lackeys in the movies. Probably just bitter about being the Vice-Minister of Fish Wealth! I love this job!

YEMEN: No assistance for tsunami victims

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

SANA, 29 Jun 2005 (IRIN) - I never actually thought these stories could happen to an average guy like me, but the other day these three lesbian nuns and their spider monkey knocked on my door asking to borrow some cucumbers and a turkey-baster… Wait a minute! Sorry. Wrong story.

No relief has been provided in Yemen for victims of the December 2004 tsunami, neither has there been any attempt to assess or repair damage to the country’s marine environments according to government officials.

Independent fishermen in Al-Mahrah and Socotra suffered the more than anyone else from the tsunami, yet most of them "are still waiting for the government to do something," said Abdulkhaliq Al-Ghaberi, Director General of the Environmental Emergency Unit (EEU) in the Ministry of Water and Environment.

He said insufficient funds, poor coordination among agencies and a lack of human and technical capacity have prevented Yemen from recovering from the devastating tsunami.

The tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake killed between 200,000 and 310,000 people. Over US $3 billion in relief aid was pledged by the international community.

Yemen suffered far less damage than the worst affected countries such Indonesia or Sri Lanka with just two confirmed deaths and damage estimated to be in the region of $1 to $2 million.

However, for Yemen, the greatest impact has been on the loss of livelihood suffered by local fishermen, according to a preliminary assessment conducted by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the EEU. In the words of their report, aid to the fishermen in Socotra and Al-Mahrah is "critical for them to recover and resume a normal life."

Al-Ghaberi said that local authorities are doing their best to aid the fishing communities but that they had not received any funds from central government or foreign donors.

Deputy Minister of Fish Wealth, Mahmood Ibrahim Al-Saghiry, confirmed that no aid had yet been provided to fishermen who were victims of the tsunami. He said that the ministry, along with the Food and Agricultural Organization, were planning a mission to assess the damage to fish stocks that would include an appraisal of the state of the effected fishermen.

The UNEP/EEU assessment reported over 50 fishing boats and 69 outboard engines totally destroyed in Socotra and Al-Mahrah with over 108 boats and 106 engines partially destroyed. Nearly 1,000 fishing traps, 674 fishing nets and large amounts of other equipment were lost in the disaster.

There was damage onshore too, where a mosque, fuel station, five cars and motorcycles were destroyed. At least 10 wells, some groundwater reservoirs and farmland were overrun by seawater that surged up to 400 metres inland, rendering these resources unusable by local communities.

The preliminary assessment was conducted in response to a request from the water and environment ministry and carried out between 5 and 11 February 2005. The report describes the time the inspectors were able to spend conducting the assessments as quite short and strongly recommends more comprehensive follow-up assessments of the damage to both humans living in the affected area and to the natural environment.

It states that one such mission was planned for March 2005. However, the EEU and NGO officials confirmed that no follow-up assistance or assessment missions had been conducted to date.

[ENDS]

My, (our), first story was just published on the web today. I have a buddy here, Jon, who actually wrote the piece and I did most of the research. We’re going to do some stories like this, retarded Woodstein style, and some on our own, but this is the first story either of us had written yet for IRIN.

So here’s the deal: I wrote a story, (the one posted earlier), for the crappy Yemeni English newspaper here. Then I met a girl who was writing stories for IRIN, the United Nations news service, and she was leaving for India. She had read my story and told me to look into taking over for her when she left and I did. My buddy at the Observer paper was interested too, so we’re both doing it.

For the story I met with the communications director and the doctor in charge of the polio program at UNICEF here, then with the director of the vaccination program with the Ministry of Health. They were all great to me and very generous with their time. They explained the whole program, faults and all, and I was working on a long piece that included the stuff in this article along with a story about how the original polio vaccination campaign was delayed by a global vaccination shortage and which probably allowed the virus to spread to Yemen in the first place. Big story there! But my editor called us two nights ago and wanted the story the next day. So we had to give her this one right away - really only half finished - and the other story I’ll have to work on over the next few weeks.

I have to say, though, that the editting that was done on the story after we sent it in made the story worse rather than better. I understand some of the edits - they pared it down 200 words because it was way over the 500 word minimum, then stuck some important bits back in. But they put them in strange places - like inside quotes. Inside quotes!? That was odd, and it made the story less coherent, in my opinion. But I suppose I’ll learn how to write the stories to make them happy and still tell the story as I see it and retain my own language.

Overall I’m finding the job much easier and more interesting than I thought it would be. Most of the people I’ve met with have been really easy to get ahold of and talk with and they’ve given me much more of their time than I expected. I did meet with the Ministry of Health director of the HIV-AIDS program and she was extremely guarded, giving me the party line that everything’s okey-dokey when I know it isn’t. But that, in itself, is interesting and will make it kind of fun to dig that story out from under the government here. So it’s win-win so far.

I think this is the first job that I’ve had that’s really demanding, (I’ve been working it pretty much every waking hour for the last week), but doesn’t exhaust me. So far I’m really enjoying it and it’s really rewarding. And, for Yemen, the pay’s good. Can’t beat that with a stick!

I should be doing about two stories a week soon.

Done patting myself on the back. Now I’ll give you all a chance. By "you all" I mean "you both", of course.

BYLINE: Bonestein

Oh yeah, here’s the story: YEMEN: Polio vaccination “highly successful,” say the health ministry

Then there’s the editing gig at the Yemen Observer. It pays sweet fuck all, but I’m still doing it for one reason: comedy! Virtually every story we recieve from the journalists has something of rich comedic value in it. Really, these things are goldmines. Usually it’s just the repetitive use of hackneyed useless phrases like "It is worth mentioning…" or "…on the other hand…" and other coloquial or just plain meaningless phrases that don’t belong in a newspaper. Jon and I can make the night fly by just with parroting those phrases everytime we see them. Jon has the unique and valueless ability to build a whole article using nothing but the stuff we delete from stories every day.

But every so often I come across something that just knocks me off my chair. Recently I started saving them in a Word file I call "doozies." I should have started this earlier because I’ve left out some real winners.

Of course, in order to not sound too harsh on the writers, it should be understand that these are all Yemenis writing in their non-native language. We make fun because it would be a pretty gruelling process if we didn’t. Also, the paper has such poor management that the journalists are not expected to improve in any way, and so we do get frustrated correcting the same shit every day. We give them feedback, but much of the time it’s wasted. Another reason we get some of the nuttier stuff is because many of our journalists, because modern education is only a generation or two old in Yemen, are very self-conscious and proud of their job using the English language. But the idea of improving their language skills, for many of them, consitist simply of collecting snippets of English jargon and obscure, often defunct words and phrases. They love nothing better than to spend hours pouring through these big expensive dictionary CD-Roms, foraging for these nuggets of coloquialism and then sprinkle them about their articles - when what they really need to sound intelligent would be to learn some basic English grammar! But they’re not dumb guys; it’s really just a mistaken sense of what’s important to writing in our language. Also, no Yemeni has ever held back when I’ve accidentally said, "I’d like to eat some shoe herpes," by mistake.

So, now I’d like to share these doozies with you all. [::crickets::] Without further ado, I give to you the comedy stylings of the Yemen Observer staff with: "Doozies!"

[Quote references at the end are abbreviations of the authors' names. Just ignore them.]

————————————————————————————

The real achievement now is not that a lot of women write and purplish their work in novel or poetry, but it is in issuing their own newspaper and magazines and on their ability to participate in forming cultural perspective of the society. –El

———————————————————————————————

The only thing we knew about them what Rames Field, Secretary of Defense said that they are a threat to the security of the USA. – Z

———————————————————————————————

When we talked to the soldiers about the rights of prisoners, they say they have no rights." What we saw in our meeting with these prisoners is that they are true humantrains.” -Z

[This one needs a little explaining to know just how bad it is. The journalist, (one of our best English speakers), was trying to refer to two American lawyers who are representing Yemenis held in Guantanamo, and who came to Yemen and gave an interview to our journalist. Not only did he call the two lawyers "humantrains" instead of humanitarians, but he referred to them as prisoners by mistake as well. Yeeesh!]

———————————————————————————————

Dr. Thakur reviewed what distinguishes Shakespeare’s life from others. Then, in the second part, he shifted the focus to what distinguishes this great playwright and poet from others. –Kh

———————————————————————————————

The president said "Islam is the religion of peace, pride, courage, dignity, strength and killing and extremism has and will never be part of the Islamic teachings." –Kh

———————————————————————————————

The institute will focus on six main areas of the industry:

1.     Tour Operation

2.     Tourist gaudiness.

———————————————————————————————

The association was founded in 1976. These tanning courses are one of the events of save motherhood project that take time of 2002 – 2007. -El

———————————————————————————————

Has he had the same childish face of Linardo De Cabrio or he is fat, blade head but with childish heart. –El

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She asserted that men are frightened of cleaver woman, whenever they meet girl, they try to destroy her. -El

———————————————————————————————

Nauif said that when he was trying to calm down a security man and prevent him from firing his college mates, the bullet hurt his finger.

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Here’s a larger sample of the type of stuff that comes across our desks on a daily basis. This is by one of our "jargon collectors", and he’s a really sweet guy. The language of this article is not the worst we get. But in this example, he, innocently enough, manages to suggest a form of ethnic cleansing - forced relocation of populations - as a means of solving some of the country’s social and development problems. We had a chat with him about the problems with advocating major violations of international human rights laws in the paper and he suggested he would "make some changes" and resubmit it. We never convinced him that there was anything wrong with what he wrote - not because he means to hurt anyone, but only because he is so worried of losing face that he will never admit a mistake in language or judgement. He really is a nice guy, but, yes, he is a big pain in the ass.

Demographic redistribution required for overall reform

By

Yemen Observer

Redistribution of population can provide better solution for social, economic, and political problems in Yemen. Population in Yemen is concentrated in certain parts of the country such as the Highlands spanning big cities like Sana’a, Taiz, and Ibb, as well as coastal cities that overlook important commercial ports like Aden and Hodeidah.  Some parts of the country particularly semi-desert and coastal areas are less inhabited than other parts of the country. Though natural resources such as water and maritime resources are available in large amounts, Yemeni people inhabited mountainous areas for different reasons.

Abyssinians, Portuguese, and the British. Coastal areas are too hot and so they are repellent to inhabitants who prefer to live in the highlands where the weather is moderate. People where attracted by the greenery of the mountainous areas.

[::shudder::]

Tribal, sectarian, and racist groupings will disintegrate after being redistributed and the possibility of forming armed wings.  For example, the Buhra in Yemen are concentrated in the districts of  Haraz and Jibla and the Houthi followers are concentrating in Sa’ada. So, redistributing such groups and integrating them to the society can guarantee their inability to rebel for it will be less possible to gather for fighting against the legitimate government.

To sum up, redistribution of population can be a potential means for social, economic, and political reforms.

People can get lot of experience from each other as they come from different regions and backgrounds. A person from mountains will get experience in the life of fishermen who live near the sea in Hodeidah, Aden, or any coastal city or town.

Discrimination based on regionalism will deteriorate with the passage of time. People of different parts of the country can keep in touch while living in the same place for example people from the south, north, those from this governorate or that.

Isolated communities provide havens for destructive thought mongers and terrorists. People in such communities are easily to can be easily brainwashed. For instance,  Al-Houthi has been a monger of sectarian beliefs in Sa’ada  where he could make use of the fresh minds of young people who were living in the isolated mountains in this province.

Concerning social reform, redistribution of population will intensify the national unity by integrating the various classes of the society into consistent social fabric. Redistribution of people will break the isolation of self-contained classes like Akdam and will make such classes incorporate gradually into the society. Therefore, the national identity will get more consolidated.

In areas with large population such as the cities of  Sana.a, Taiz, Aden, and Hodeidah, water is extremely consumed, construction expands over the agricultural lands and, thus, leads to reduction of agricultural production. Flow of people from villages to cities where services like electricity, water, and easily accessible means of communication resulted in fever of competition for lands that lead to reduction of the areas fit for agriculture and water shortage.  Coastal areas such the empty parts of Hodiedah, Hajjah, Taiz, Lahj, Aden,  Abyan, Hadramout, and Al-Mahrah,  were left by people the history of Yemen due to many factors. People in the past used to prefer mountainous areas as the coastal areas were often subject to attacks by invaders like

I had my first article published in the Yemeni newspaper I’m working for here [www.yobserver.com ]. It’s up on the website here and it’s in the print version. It’s not actually journalism though; I didn’t do any interviews for it. All I did was write what was happening on the internet outside of Yemen. It’s more of a summary of what other people had written with additional background on human rights and Yemen, that I thought was important for Yemenis to understand - since this story is being viewed here, somewhat, as an example of outsiders, (do-gooders), interfering in Yemen’s internal affairs. But my editor, while uncomfortable in some ways about the story, apparently liked it overall and wanted it in - with minor edits.

So here’s how the article came about: My job is to edit the paper - articles are submitted to me from the Yemeni journalists, and I edit them for language and structure before they’re printed. On, I think, the 30th of last month we got a story about this case. We, the other editor, Jon and I, read it and thought it was an important story - hopefully for reasons obvious in the story I wrote - and it should go on the front page. So we asked the lady journalist who submitted it to us, why it’s in the Culture section. She said she didn’t know and asked why we thought it shouldn’t be. We made our points and she went off to ask the managing editor if it could go on the front page. She came back 47 seconds later and said words to the effect of "no dice." Jon and I struggled with this point - do we fight for the story? Would we be willing to walk away from the paper if we lost? Yes - we get paid a bowl of beans and hummus a month for our work. So we sat around talking about going to the editor for the next couple hours without actually doing it. Later, we heard it was going on the front page. We were heroes. But the story, and our interest in it, were becoming a source of office talk and journalists were coming to us wanting to know what the big deal was. We made our point - that this is going to be a major international human rights case centered in Yemen; that Yemen stands to suffer a serious setback in its reputation as a human rights reformer; it was going to set back Yemen’s progress in the rule of law; and THE GIRL WAS JUST A CHILD, FOR ALLAH’S SAKE! AND SHE’S BEEN GETTING SHAT ON FOR HER ENTIRE LIFE! It was really disturbing to us that those last points just didn’t seem to be registering with the crowd of journalists. One even pulled a quote off the top of his head of some justice ministry person stating that the girl was 18 all along and don’t worry about it. Trust us - in effect. I have no idea if the quote was real or not. We also said that the execution was supposed to happen in a month - it was actually three days away.

So the paper comes out a couple days later. It’s buried. It’s in there, at least, but it’s buried.

I decide to spend my free time researching the story - googling it. First night I turn up nothing except an alert put out by an Italian human rights group that I think was translated from Italian to English by babblefish.com or some other program. Oddly enough it was pretty much word-for-word the same story that was originally submitted to us as a story. Not uncommon here, I’m finding. Next day I find more - the Amnesty reports and the Reuters piece, and eventually the rest of my sources for the article.

I’m not a journalist for the paper, but, when I was hired, I was more or less encouraged to write stuff, on my own time, and submit it for the paper - sort of in lieu of pay, we’ll publish your crap. Fair enough. It’s the main reason I took the job; that most of us take the job. So now I’m toying with the idea of writing something on the story, but without any real journalism - talking to people here - because I don’t know what kind of things are going to get me in trouble here. So I gather what other people are doing and do some background research - googling - and write this piece.

Before this week’s edition comes out, (and I have to rewrite the piece because I had written it assuming the execution would not be stayed), I submit the piece to my managing editor. And we talk about it. I think he views me as imposing western values on Yemeni society without understanding the culture, the religion, or the problems that the government has to deal with that are bigger than just one girl. He expresses some opinions that fly in the face of what we, westerners, think of as "international human rights," some of which disturbed me quite a bit. But at the same time, he was pleased to print it, and with only minor changes - basically I made two assertions that he wanted me to attribute to another source, (the story of the 13 year-old in 1993, and that Amina had been impregnated by a guard at the women’s prison - a pretty safe assertion, I thought, but OK). He made his point about attributing everything we say with a story about the previous day’s visit we received from the "political security" police regarding some other western journalists that recently left the paper, (and one of them, the country). That’s a long story, but nevertheless was an effective example of the paper needing to cover its ass - even when the publisher is a personal friend of the president’s.

So I made the changes and the story ran yesterday, (it’s not online yet, but I expect it will eventually).

There’s a lot of "cultural" and other resistance, I think, to Yemenis supporting this girl. It’s a positive thing that the president made the right decision. But I’m learning that this place is a morass of raw political power, old-school traditions and values that I have yet to be able to even wrap my mind around. I’m getting an idea of how the two - power and traditions/religion - interact with each other, and I plan on sitting down with my editor to discuss them before I do any more writing or doing interviews. I think he would prefer to do that as well. I’m being really cautious, and trying not to let this distract me from my primary purpose for coming here - learning Arabic - but, at the same time, this is fucking interesting. It’s a little exciting, (bear in mind that I don’t fear anything happening to me physically, but I do fear getting Yemenis in trouble, which I’m being careful about), and I’m learning alot about how these countries work, I think. I expect that I will do follow-up on this story - complete with interviewing the lawyer and government people - and that my editor will support me and guide me along the process, even though I think he’d personally rather I dropped it altogether.

More to come, maybe…

Also, If anyone’s interested, I’ve put up about 75 new photos – new and old - on my blog recently. The link should appear at the bottom of this email.

Amina and Yemen get a second chance

By your’s truly

For the Yemen Observer

The Yemen Ministry of Justice nearly violated international laws and the Yemen Penal Code when it attempted to carry out the execution of a woman who was reportedly 14 years-old at the time the crime she was convicted of was committed. The execution of Amina Ali Abduladif was temporarily stayed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh after international appeals by Amnesty International, its members from around the world and European officials. Her story had been carried by press in the United Kingdom and New Zealand and by Reuters, and Amnesty International’s urgent response network during the week leading up to the scheduled execution. They have also raised serious questions about the legal proceedings that convicted and sentenced Amina, and assert the possibility that Amina was innocent.

According to an Amnesty International news release published on April 28, Amina was possibly as young as 14 and pregnant with her second child when her husband was murdered in January 1998 in her home town of Mahweet. Yemen law requires that a girl be at least 15 to marry but the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report claims that the law is not enforced by authorities. Amina was likely 12 or 13 years-old when she was married and pregnant with her first child.

Amina was convicted of the murder of her husband, Hizam Hassan Miqa’el. According to an April 30 story by Daniel McGrory of Britain’s TimesOnline, "witnesses say her husband was killed by his cousin in a land dispute… but their evidence was not presented to the court during Mrs Abduladif’s trial in May 1999." He also reports that no forensic or other evidence was submitted by the prosecution at the trial. According to Amnesty’s alerts as well as McGrory’s reporting, Amina’s conviction was based solely on a confession that she was reportedly tortured into giving, and that she had since maintained her innocence. She was sentenced to death on May 24, 1999.

Amnesty has reported that Amina had been denied access to her two daughters, the youngest of which was recently killed in a car accident.

In July 2001 the court of appeals upheld the death sentence for Amina without considering her age, according to Amnesty. The sentence was then upheld by the Supreme Court in July of 2002 and ratified soon after by President Saleh.

In 1994 Yemen amended its Penal Code to exclude the death penalty for people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18. This change followed a case in which 13 year-old Nasser Munir Nasser al-Kirbi was publicly hanged in Sana’a along with three adult men on July 21, 1993, after being convicted of murder and highway robbery, according to an Amnesti International Juvenile Death Penalty project. Al-Kirbi is the youngest person known to be executed in the world since 1990.

But al-Kirbi is Yemen’s only known juvenile execution since 1990. Since 1990 there were 38 juvenile executions recorded by Amnesty, (half of them in the United States). In multiple reports on child executions since 1994 Yemen was noted more prominently for its apparent change of heart, (its 1994 Penal Code reform), than for its record youngest execution. Had Amina been executed as planned Yemen could have expected to be known for its revival of the practice despite its technical ban. If Yemen eventually executes her and she proves to have been a juvenile, the country would be re-joining the short list of five countries that are known to have executed child offenders since 2000: China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Pakistan, and the United States.

Along with violating its own laws, Yemen would also be violating several international treaties that is has bound itself to uphold:

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been signed and ratified by more than 152 countries, including Yemen, specifically prohibits the use of the death sentence "for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age."

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed and ratified by every country except the United States and Somalia, states: "Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age."

The Geneva Conventions of 1949, and two additional protocols of 1977, specifically outlaw the practice of executing child offenders. In 1984 the UN General Assembly adopted, by voice vote, the Safeguards Guaranteeing the Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, which specifically prohibits the practice.

Like most countries of the world today, Amnesty International takes an abolitionist stance against the death penalty in all cases. But the prohibition of its use for child offenders is especially condemned around the world for reasons perhaps best expressed by Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:

"The overwhelming international consensus that the death penalty should not apply to juvenile offenders stems from the recognition that young persons, because of their immaturity, may not fully comprehend the consequences of their actions and should therefore benefit from less severe sanctions than adults. More importantly, it reflects the firm belief that young persons are more susceptible to change, and thus have a greater potential for rehabilitation than adults."

This of course is in addition to the reasons most countries no longer apply the death penalty at all, especially the fact that judicial proceedings are necessarily conducted by human beings and thus are capable of being severely flawed.

Amina was previously scheduled to be executed in 2002. Just before the sentence was carried out it was discovered that she had become. She alleged that she had been raped pregnant by one of the guards at al-Mahweet prison but refused to identify her attacker for fear of retribution. No investigation or punishment of individuals at the prison appears to have taken place. Amina was given a stay of execution through the period of breastfeeding the child, which ended this year. According to her lawyer, Shada Nasir, Amina’s family refuses to care for her new son due to their shame that she brought on by being raped.

On May 3, one day after the scheduled execution, Amnesty reported that it had been stayed by the president and that a "special committee" had been appointed by the Attorney General to investigate the details of the case, including evidence of Amina’s age at the time of the murder. The president will then decide whether to commute or approve the death sentence based on the Attorney General’s recommendations.

They also reported that the situation of another man convicted of the murder and sentenced to death, Ali Said Qaba’il, is unknown at this time.

President Saleh is reported to have been "moved" by Amina’s story and has inquired as to how Yemen’s court system could have sentenced a juvenile to death in contravention to Yemeni law.

In a follow-up story in the TimesOnline, McGrory quoted Amina’s attorney, "She is very grateful for those abroad who protested about her case. We believe it was this international intervention that saved her, as here she had been forgotten."

Today Rwandans are commemorating the 11th anniversary of the start of the genocide here. I can’t presume to understand what people who lived through it or returned to rebuild in its aftermath are thinking or feeling today. I’m having a difficult time understanding my own feelings. All I can say is today is different from yesterday – looks different; feels different. Businesses are closed. People are quieter. There’s a general stillness in the air that magnifies what normal life is still going on – cars and motorcycles going by, conversations, footsteps on muddy roads, children playing. It feels like the heavy burden of remembering, that everyone seems to carrying around with them every day, today has flooded these valleys of the “Land of a Thousand Hills.”

My good friend, Mary, and I started off today by going to the memorial in Gisoze, just outside downtown Kigale. We knew there would be a memorial there but we wee uneasy about attending. This is a city of survivors in a country of survivors and we didn’t know if there was room at a small ceremony today for outside onlookers. We decided to take a taxi to the memorial and decided how we felt when we got there. The place was just starting to fill up when we arrived. We parked and our driver, who we had come to know a little bit on previous trips around town, got out and inquired about the ceremony to get us an idea of whether we should stay. His opinion was that we could, that there would be other westerners attending, but we still felt like we were intruding on something intensely private. We decided to leave and attend a larger ceremony at the city’s stadium tonight. There’s nothing in our experiences here or in what we saw to make us think we would be unwelcome, but we wanted to avoid the chance that we would be a distraction or an intrusion on other people’s grieving.

The ceremony was in part a funeral. On our way back up the hill into town we stopped on the side of the road out of respect for a procession of cars and marchers going to the Gisoze memorial. Among them were trucks carrying caskets to be buried at the site along with the other 250,000 victims of the genocide who were killed in the capital. When we were there last week we were told that as the various court systems, that are still trying accused perpetrators of the genocide, progressed, information was coming out that was revealing the locations of undiscovered bodies. The bodies were then being brought to the memorial site to be interred in the mass graves there. The staff at the site was struggling with the decision to begin construction of an additional tomb for the undeterminable number of bodies that would be discovered in the future. The people being brought to the site this morning, escorted by the survivors, were probably only recently discovered – almost 11 years after their deaths. I can’t know how many families are just now finding closure for their lost loved ones, or how many of these victims were members of families of which there were no survivors. It’s remarkable how few of the 250,000 buried at the memorial have even been identified. Those that have are named on a wall above one of the tombs but there aren’t more than a thousand names on the wall. Similar memorials and mass graves dot this tiny country, and are the final resting places of over 800,000 people.

While I’m fighting the temptation to give a history of the genocide, there are some points that I feel compelled to express today. Most importantly is that this tragedy was preventable. It was neither “spontaneous” nor the result of “age old animosities” as it has been described by some western commentators. It was a premeditated act that was discovered in the planning stages by members of the international bodies designed to detect and prevent these types of horrors. The warnings and calls for preventive action were mishandled by weak and disorganized institutions, and ignored by political leaders who decided that their interests lay in not acting. For its part the publics with the ability to force a response did not muster the political pressure to force their leaders into action.

This particular case of genocide did take place in the context of a series of conflicts, (that should have served as a warning of the potential for large-scale violence). To the degree that these conflicts were based on ethnic identities those identities were largely the result of flawed scientific theories of ethnicity created and manipulated by western colonial powers seeking to create political systems in African countries, and elsewhere, that would make them more manageable for colonial rule. While the distinctions of “Hutu” and “Tutsi” did exist as socio-economic and ethnic distinctions before colonial rule in East Africa, they were not nearly as rigid and divisive before they became the basis for a strict ethnicity-based political hierarchy by the colonial administration.

My point is not to lay blame on the west but to point out that ethnic violence and animosity is not more inherent or inevitable in African cultures than it is in any other. Present day African conflicts result from complex mixes of historical, economic, political, social and other factors. Africa’s apparent isolation is an illusion. Being probably the slowest region in the world to modernize should not indicate that Africa has had immunity from historic forces of globalization. The centuries-old trade in natural resources and human labor has impacted Africans perhaps more than most of the world’s peoples. From my current vantage point on this particular hill in Kigale, Rwanda I can see that Africans have both benefited and suffered from the forces of globalization. My limited understanding of African history of an equally mixed picture, but the effect is undeniable. One has only to look at our own African-descendent populations and the impact that they have had on our dominant cultures – from music and literature to political and spiritual values – to sense the contribution Africa has made to who we are. Check your almanacs for statistics on the amounts of natural resources obtained from the continent to see the impact Africa has on our economies. What is clear is that we non-Africans are unalterably tied to African peoples in our histories, our cultures, our economies, our religions, and our moral consciousness. They are more like us that we collectively know, and we are more like them. Indeed the idea of a distinct “we” and “them” is a convenient fallacy.

This fallacy is what cries out to me the most today. Eleven years ago the world outside Africa hid behind the myth of “us” and “them.” It was happening to “them.” It was being carried out by “them.” We looked on with horror at what was happening, but we were both paralyzed and comforted by the concept of “us.” A history of “us” and “them” provided an acceptance of the idea that we can’t understand “them” and that an inherent difference made it more difficult if not impossible to either understand what was happening or to intervene to stop it. Both of these errors were our failures and our crimes of omission. The events and actions that led to the genocide in were not exclusive to Africa or Rwanda. They were political, economic and social phenomena that have and do occur in all parts of the world. There were also people, African and non-African, who understood what was happening and who tried to warn the world and compel it to action. The forces of ignorance and the great divide of “us” and “them” were too powerful and entrenched to overcome. The non-African world withdrew into “us.”

Many opportunities to prevent, contain, or minimize the genocide were missed as the world’s decision makers decided to repeatedly retreat. In hindsight these decisions look to me like moral failures but also rational political calculations. The fact that political leaders could have acted but didn’t because it would have been more costly for them personally to do so is what distresses me most. It points to the fact that we, the human race, still have a level of tolerance for the crime of genocide under certain circumstances. While we have crated some international systems to deal with the kinds of crises that can lead to genocide, and we have prevented or stemmed potential ones since the Holocaust drew the world’s attention to the greatest crime in humanity, we still don’t have institutions strong enough to act in the necessary time and strength required for prevention, and we still don’t have the moral will to insist that our leaders live up to “never again” when they are acting in our name.

Other than expressing my feelings on this particular day in this particular place, my purpose for writing this dispatch is to ask my friends and family this rhetorical question: How can we help to create a world that truly means it when it says the words “Never again”?

لو سمحت, هل تعرف أين سفارة سفارة جيبوتية؟

"Please, do you know where the Djibouti embassy is?" This was my first real sentence in Arabic used to get me something - to the Djibouti embassy. I had to use it about a dozen times and it took me about an hour and a half to get there - an hour after it closed - but I got there. And I didn’t get that confused puppy look from the locals, which I usually get when I’m trying to use my Arabic around town. It was a good feeling. I put the sentence together on the bus, double-checking the words out in in the little notebook full of useful, (mostly), words in Arabic I keep in my back pocket at all times. but I was at least familiar with all the words and the grammar of the sentence so I felt confident throwing it around at anyone in the vicinity of where I thought the embassy was and who looked least likely to point me in the wrong direction just for fun. It worked too well, in fact, as most people I asked it of started right off yammering away in Arabic like I was just a lost Yemeni from Aden in town for a Friar’s convention. So I was giving them the confused puppy look since I know about as many Arabic words as a puppy knows English. But I watched the hand signals and caught a few words and got closer to the embassy each time I asked my question.

The Yemenis were great. First I had to get to the Ethiopian embassy. I got out of the minibus, (most buses here are tiny, beat up little vans that hold six people at a time and cost 15YR [Yemeni Ryals], or about $0.09 - and I can guarantee you you get every penny’s worth in safety and comfort), and used my question on the nearest shop owner. He starts jabbering in Arabic but soon notices the deer in headlights look I’m giving him, so he calmly walks me outside so he can at least point for me. We played a couple games of charades on the street, but he seemed more than happy to do it. I think he could figure out that I was struggling with his language and treated me like the proud father of a kid who just accidentally bunted his first base hit with his eyes closed. See, when a westerner in Yemen knows Arabic really well, like many of my friends here, Yemenis are nice but a little suspicious, I think. It seems like they think you just might be a spy, or an embassy staffer, or an oil worker, and they treat you fairly indifferently. Not like you’re a threat or something - they just seem to assume you’re only here because you’re on the clock. Now, if you know zilch for Arabic they pretty much assume you’re a tourist. Toursts don’t get any respect. Oh, they get help if they ask, and often when they don’t. But a tourist, to the locals, is like a nice couple doing a walk-through at a an open house, but that the locals are only renting. They’re nice and everything, but their hearts just aren’t in it. But I think the point that I’m getting to right now - learning the language but just making a mess of it - is just where the Yemenis will like me the most. They know I’m making an effort, wrestling with their language, in their country, talking like a toddler and trusting them not to fuck with me just for chuckles. They seem to like that. I’m in the high chair, covered in pudding, bowl on my head, big dumb grin on my face, but I got some of it in my tummy so I’m a good boy! That’s how I get treated most of the time.

So anyhoo, the shopkeeper points me down a street, (the wrong street, since nobody really knows where their African embassies are - do you?) and I found an embassy there. I ask a cop there, in Arabic, if it’s the Ethiopian embassy and he says no, then a bunch of other stuff that I could only assume was Arabic. Once he sees my pie-eyes he just takes me by the hand, (did I mention that men hold hands here?) and takes me to the guard shack where he asks his buddies where the right embassy is. They didn’t know, but they all gave their best guesses, all of them different, I’m guessing. Finally someone must have actually know because we headed out for some unknown destination, this time not holding hands, which was nice. I love a man in uniform as much as the next guy, but the Klashinikov was a bit of a turn-off. He walked me about a half mile away, just me and this cop in his blue camoflage uniform and his machine gun. Usually people like to ask me the same questions - where are you from? what’s your name? have you eaten salta yet? - just to show off their English. But I imagine when your job requires camoflage and a machine gun, talking baby-talk on the street with some big, bald goofy-looking white guy is just not cool. So we walked quietly. But he did walk me all the way to the embassy I wanted without giving it a second thought, told the guard there to help me out, I imagine, gave me a cool-guy wave and headed off. People treated me like that all day.

Getting to the Djibouti embassy, a worker at some government agency rode in  the taxi with me just to make sure the driver got me to the right place and didn’t rip me off. When I offered him a little something for the trouble he looked at my money like it was a rubber chicken and sort of laughed at the idea that I would even offer it. Then, when I left the embassy a staffer in a nice suit from the embassy next door walked me the four blocks, in the rain, to Baghdad Street where I could catch a bus. He even laughed at the joke I made about an American going to Baghdad Street. It was an uncomfortable laugh, but still…

So that’s a little slice of what it’s like to be an American living in Yemen. And I don’t want to hear any shit about the holding hands part - the guy had a gun! And surprisingly soft hands.

I’m one of those guys now! Fortunately, nobody will ever read this thing, so I’ve got that going for me. Let’s get started!

I hate blogs. I think I’ve read all of three blogs my whole life. People are just not as interesting as they seem to think they are. But I am. So, in the neverending quest to satisfy the public’s thirst for detailed, misspelled accounts of the minutae of my life I present: The Worst… Blog… Ever!

Why read this blog, you ask? Good question.

Pictures! Because it’s got pictures! Lots of groovy pictures, and small words. Some of the words are bad, too. That’s always a plus. I’m in a strange place. Everyone’s interested in strange places. Sana’a, Yemen. When do you think you’ll get around to visiting Sana’a Yemen? When Anna Nichole Smith passes the BAR exam? Right. Well now you can cross it off your "To Do" list. I’m going to go to other strange places too, ike Djibouti, Uganda, and Rwanda. I don’t expect I’ll run into any of you there. Syria. Have you been there? Done that? OK. Some of you have. But the rest of you must have some interest in where exactly I’m killed and that’s what this blog is for! (Wagering on the internet is wrong because it takes money from Native Americans, the mafia, and hideously balding former contruction magnates with reality shows. Set up your own pools at home.)

But really, the only reason I’m creating this blog is so I don’t have to keep remailing my old emails to new friends to ignore. So I’ll probably post my email dispatches and photos, old ones and new ones, so that everyone will have two ways to ignore my life experiences. If you’re still reading this, I know you’re making the international symbol for masturbation, so I’ll cut it short. Welcome to Crap! I Have a Blog!