Oh by the way I neglected to mention my trip was to Taiz (يعز) which is beautiful, mountaneous city south of Sana'a (صنعة). The trip took 5 hours on windy roads with a few terrifying moments due to our driver's and other driver's daring overtaking techniques on blind corners on thin moutain roads. This prompted me to learn
لا أريدُ لطَصد
which means I don't want to crash!! I chatted to an interesting German man on the bus who's in his late 50s, an engineer too but he worked in road construction, and he has come to Yemen to learn Arabic. Once in Taiz we settled into a fairly shabby but sufficient hotel and then headed out for dinner. Dinner was an expensive 800 riyals per person - which was inflated by having to pay for our driver and tour guide - and the servings were quite small and I was left unsatisfied. I excused myself from the rest of the group and had some snack food from a supermarket. That pretty much wrapped up my night, the others in the group were my Italian friends and the German engineer - about 12 of us in total. The following day we headed to Zabiid (زبيد) which is famous for having a very old mosque and school built by a friend of the prophet محمد. To be honest the historical significance was mostly lost on me and the town was very poor and dirty and it was extremely hot. The main highlight were the cute kids who followed us around. After that we headed back to Taiz and up one of the mountains - Jabel Sibr I think (جبل صبر) and stopped at a hotel owned by people from UAE. The view was fantastic and we had some ice cream and some Yemeni Sharmas. Following that we returned to the same restaurant as the night before for a more satisfying feed.
My life in Yemen is composed of a series of seemingly simple tasks that turn in long missions. Things like finding lemons for example is not easy. I've seen some very small ones in some restaurants but have not yet seen any in a fruit shop and no one has been able to tell me where to find them. So during our trip to Taiz I shared my game of "I [want to] spy Lemons" with an Italian girl in the bus and she insists she saw some but they might have just been some yellowish Oranges. During the last couple of weeks I've been looking for a Backgammon board because the one in the mafraj is always missing pieces and dice. You might think finding a board for playing backgammon in a Yemen would be easy because Yemen is a country that shares cultural similarities with Egypt and Egypt is Backgammon crazy but no, it's hard to even explain what Backgammon is. My phrasebook said تولة ازهر but this phrase meant nothing to the shopkeepers I asked in Taiz in the on Thursday afternoon. All people I talked were kind enough to pretend they knew where I could find a backgammon board and each person kept sending me up the street on a giant bum steer. That's a cultural lesson to learn in Arab countries - it seems it is impolite to say you don't know where something is, hence, it's more polite to pretend you know where it is and send people in the wrong direction. After a long walk in Taiz I gave up and headed back to my hotel and guess what? A toy shop was right next to the hotel and I picked up a magnetic backgammon board for 200 riyals. The popular game in Yemen is Karim which is sort of like a cross between air hockey and snooker. It takes quite a bit of skill in flicking a white disk around a flat board to knock other disks into the corner pockets so I haven't really got into it yet. But anyhow, on Thursday night I played Backgammon at last and won a game for a change and then played the Italian version of Uno. Oddly I've never realised Uno the game means one in Italian so you say Uno when you only have one card left... derrrrrr. But yeah they also play by a strange rule where if one person puts down a +2 card, and the next person does as well and the next person does too then the next person along picks up 6 cards.
I've been teaching one of the Italian guys Andre' (?) how to speak Australian and he's really talented at imitating voices. I've heard him repeat the Linguaphone Arabic course and his voice sound authentic to my ears and he does a good job of imitating my accent and my voice. I've taught him 'G'day mate', 'have a good one' and 'don't bust my chops'. Americans really struggle a lot more with imitating an Australian accent and Andre' really leaves them for dead. Conversely I put on an American accent for some Americans and they thought I sounded completely authentic - that's what constant exposure to TV and movies does. Aussie kids imitate American accents from a young age when they play GI Joe or whatever. So anyway I suppose you've noticed that my thoughts are very scattered tonight.
The next day at Taiz we checked out of the hotel and headed to Ib (إب). Ib is really beautiful town, like most of the trip I was disappointed that there is no 'do the right thing and put your rubbish in the bin' ethic and so there was litter all through the streets and hanging from the trees. But to be fair to the townspeople there are no bins in sight and who knows where the nearest tip is. This didn't detract much though from a gorgeous little town with beautiful mosques and minarets and an old Turkish castle which was about 1200 years old, a clean little stream and lovely greeny all around the town. Some kids yelled صورة صورة!! (Soora soora) as I was walking past and I stopped and took their photo. You probably can't imagine the joy it gives the kids to see their picture on a camera and I've never had one of them ask for money after I took their photo. I'll update this post in the next couple of days and add some of the photos.
Following lunch we headed up to Jibla to Jabel Rubee. The view there was well beyond any of my expectations for Yemen. From the building at the top of the mountain we could see a 360 degree view of lush farm land as far as the eye could see. Jibla and Ib have been my visual highlights here.
Upon returning to Sana'a on Friday night I was feeling really relaxed and content. It was reassuring to know there are great things to see in Yemen and it's not purely a qat addicted place without much to do that happens one of the best places for learning Arabic.
Some of my Italian friends took photos of two Sabean inscriptions in Hadhramout because they knew I was keen to see if I could translate any of them. First the short one
Check out one of my previous posts to see the Southern Arabian Alphabet I used it to type the inscriptions in regular Arabic script into MS Word with Proofing Tools (which has an Arabic spell checker, translator and thesaurus). One thing to note is that words in the inscription are separated by vertical lines rather than spaces as in English and Arabic.
ا م ر. ه م و/و ر.ا س ه م
أمرهم ordered (by a group)
و and
-----
و and
رأسهم heads (by a group)
So basically I think this short inscription is related to who ordered the construction of the temple/pillar or whatever.
The second inscription comes in two photos and the top line has chips out of the stone so it's hard to indentify some of the letters. From the first picture I've worked out
ح ي/ث. ق/ع.ثت .بن صبحم ذاريطن هقني المقه بارن نبطم ؟؟؟م ط؟ر
اعدي بو ن؟دعبتذ ؟؟؟؟؟؟؟ ميمحتذ بع mirrored
عب ذتحميم ؟؟؟؟؟ ذتبعد؟ن وب يدعا
Allow ---------------------- burden
and in the second
ن؟ليلم عد بيننه وبني صلين وقرون وم؟؟شرن
??century pray build advice
ع هقملا بو رتثعب نراب ينبم لكو نتبرعمو entire line is written mirrored
ومع ربتن وكل مبني بارن بعثتر وب المقه
And with step father and all erected a well
Interestingly in the second inscription the second line is written in reverse along the vertical axis and I noticed that the spell check in Word wasn't recognising a single one of the words. So then I rewrote the text with the letters in reverse and some of the words from the first line were repeated (ie. confirmed) and the spell check picked up fewer 'errors'. The second line had no ambiguous letters and many of the words translated straight back to Arabic. One exception was the word for well (as in the thing you draw water from) which was an old Arabic word that one of the teachers here was able to tell me the meaning of. A word with the same root is still used in Arabic to mean a clay water jug.
No doubt there are many errors with my translation and it's a long way from complete but it's still exciting to have touched on what the ancient meaning was. I might keep working on it to see which combinations of the ambiguous letters result in real words and maybe I'll find more meaning. This feels so Stargate
Remember how I mentioned how simple tasks turn into missions here? I wanted to post somethings and first time I went to the post office it was closed, the second time the doors were opened but the staff weren't working and I've since found out the hours of work are 8-12pm and 4-8pm. No, in case you're wondering the opening times are not written on a sign out the front of the post office. So tonight was the third time lucky. I was heading out in a group to the Syrian restaurant called Al-Sham (or Asham - I dunno) and decided to pop into the post office on the way. It took a little while so I told my friends to continue onto the restaurant and I'd find it. It was the third time lucky as far as the post office is concerned and my letters and parcel are now in the post. The Yemen stamps are really quite beautiful and I think I will collect a full set before I leave. Unfortunately finding the Syrian restaurant was my 2nd big mission for the day. I was told it was near the Hoda supermarket but I didn't look to hard for the Al-Sham sign until I was at the supermarket and unforunately I had walked past the restaurant with the deceptively tiny front entrance. So I stopped at the money exchanger and asked where this restaurant was -- they had no clue and told me so. I walked a little further and got a Taxi. He too didn't know where it was but I thought it might have been the Shabani restaurant that my friends had went to but they had thought it was called Al-Sham. 5 minutes down the road later and a turn off I soon realised the Shabani was not the one. When I exited the taxi the driver told me to pay me what I had when I asked how much. Shopkeepers are extremely honest here. I gave the driver 100 riyals and he was happy. I've given shopkeepers the wrong money before and started to walk away without waiting for my change and everytime they've corrected me and given me the right money. However when in Beirut I remember a shopkeeper there tried to add an extra zero to the price of a calendar when I questioned him he apologised but his dishonesty was clear.
Anyhow, I kept walking back to where I had come from, scanning all the signs and then headed to the Hoda supermarket and asked there if they knew where the Al-Sham was. Again they had no idea. I was getting annoyed now - either I was told a completely incorrect name or the people in this street have no idea what other businesses are in their street. I went to nearby internet cafe then and googled for the Al-Sham restaurant. I found no hits with an address but my blogging mate Gary B mentioned the Syrian restaurant in two of his entries and he rated the food very highly. So close but no luck so I took one last shot and asked the internet cafe operator and he knew where the Al-Sham was. I wonder why - perhaps other students frequent the cafe and have asked him about this restaurant before. In any case he told me it was just up the road very close to the Arab Bank on Zubayri St. 2 hours after my friends had arrived at the restaurant I arrived and had a delicious mixed grill of shish kebab, kufta and lamb pieces I think. It was 600 riyals which is quite a bit but it tasted soooooo good. Then came desert which was ice cream with strawberry topping. I think my enjoyment of this meal almost matched the enjoyment of the kids in Ib when they saw their photos on my camera. Afterwards we smoked shisha and all up this was one of the most pleasant meals I've had so far. It was interesting to see the Syrians in the restaurant and see how much fairer they are compared to the Yemenis. This partly explains why I'm so fair and yet half Lebanese. This sampling of Syria really was special and I should add that I occasionally think I might be enjoy myself more if I went to Syria to study but the job/study deal I have at YLC is hard to match and I can always spend time in Syria after Yemen. Without looking into all that much I think generally studying in Syria is in classes of 20 or 30 whereas I'm in a private class here of 2 hours a day.
Regarding classes, all of last week my teacher was sick and I had no classes. One whole week without classes essentially means I'm working here almost without pay and after all, the classes are the whole reason I came here so it has been disappointing. But hopefully this will only be a short disruption.
