Dubai Shock
I must have been settling into Yemen because I was shocked coming back to Dubai by two things. Yemen is a very interesting country because it contains a unique and interesting culture and heritage. Dubai’s heritage and cultural uniqueness are minimal. Dubai is basically Las Vegas at the Beach… minus the casinos, plus more shopping. It is pristine except for the building going on. Yemen is anything but pristine. I can see women’s faces in Dubai and they actually are prevalent, out at night and they work outside the home. In Yemen, women are in full burqas – many with full veils, gloves and socks – and they’re not real common in public. Along with many other differences, I’m not sure you can find two more different cultures and lands especially so close to each other.Yemen is probably the least tidy country I have visited. I have seen some shocking garbage during my travels, but I have not visited such a sty as is much of Yemen. There is more plastic waste strewn, more garbage, food and animals rotting and more sewage leaking in Yemen than any other country I have visited. I was shocked a few times and laughed each time because it takes a lot to shock me nowadays. Although generally speaking Yemen is very poor, the issue of ground pollution is prevalent in all economic stratus. I climbed over piles of garbage in the middle of villages and we even drove over a pile covering a whole street in another village. Not only do the Yemeni create this mess regularly, there seems to be little evidence of programs (i.e. sweepers!) to get rid of it. Ah, but now I am glossing over the natural removal system that is employed… the winds! So, the garbage in Yemen is not just limited to the areas where people live, no they have managed to spread it out throughout the whole country much of which is open mountainside and desert.
I saw more plastic bags in Yemen (they like to use red and green bags so they are particularly easy to see against the dry earth) than I have seen anywhere. They love to wrap everything up in plastic bags and then they love to empty those bags and drop them on the ground. You could tell where the market areas are located by the huge numbers of blowing bags downwind of the market. One of the most common sources for the bags is qat. People also spit out there used wads of qat everywhere (I have a story going about adventures with qat so I’ll just leave it as this for now) so… there are disgusting used wads of qat everywhere. I saw a lot of dead animals in Yemen including a few dead cattle in one place right off the road. I’m not sure why this was so, but it is common enough to have kids throwing rocks at a dead goat in one village I walked through. I also smelled a lot of sewage in Yemen, but I suppose I have been to quite a few places with as big of a problem. Maybe what keeps it in my mind the most is that right up from the dead goat, a major sewage line was spewing “water” and it was quite obvious that it had been flowing through town for a long time. I’m not sure anyone is throwing anything out in Dubai and they have systems in place to clear out whatever garbage is being produced. The city is new and shiny and that would never be the description of anyplace I visited in Yemen.
I am being conservative when I estimate that 97% of the women I saw in Yemen and 99% of the female residents that I saw are wearing full burqas. 99% of the burqas are black. Almost the entire work force on the small farms is the women working their fields dressed in their full burqas. Yemen is a very hot country. Even in the cooler mountains which make up large parts of this nation, the sun is very strong. When I asked (only men – I had basically ZERO contact with any women) about if the women complained about the issue of full, black burqas in the hot sun, they all just chuckled a little. I never meant it as a joke. From conversations and witnessing, I would term the relationship between men and women in Yemen to be deplorable and this was just one shared response in this area. I will never get used to or accept burqas and the relationship as defined by Yemenis, but I must have started to ignore it since I was tossed coming back to Dubai and having immediate interaction with women such as when changing dollars at the exchange booth in the airport. Very few women wear burqas in Dubai, many women are walking around the city and they are working in many different public positions. It’s funny because the burqas I saw in Dubai two weeks ago really got my attention, but now… “that’s nothing, you should see Yemen…”.
There are a lot of other differences so here’s a few quick ones. There is no qat in UAE. I assume it is illegal and I don’t think it would grow here. I don’t see men with bulging cheeks of chew and no one has green rotting teeth. I don’t see daggers hanging from the men’s belts either. As much as I don’t like the clothes that the women wear in Yemen, I like the menswear. They use a lot of different colors and materials for their headwear, robe and accessories. The main accessory is a thick ornamental belt with a curved ornamental dagger (jambiya) hanging at the middle of the man’s torso. Almost all men wear them from around the age of twelve. In Dubai, if you see one of these outfits you know the man is from southern Saudi Arabia, Oman or Yemen. In Dubai, most men are foreigners wearing western clothes (same as most of the women) while the real Emirate men wear white robes, white head wraps and black “donuts” that hold the head wrap in place. The Emirate men are easy to identify because of their dress and that’s what makes it so startling regarding how few of them there are in their own country.
The drivers of Yemen are probably the worst I have seen. Oh that is a big statement. This topic is getting confusing to me. There are too big reasons: 1) every country has differing numbers and densities of vehicles on the road and 2) the condition of the roads also differ greatly. My gut says Yemenis are absolutely deadly with their odd ways of driving, but Ethiopia and Peru still trouble me! The connections between Yemen and Ethiopia are numerous so being stupid behind the wheel is just one! There are a lot of new and excellent roads in Yemen. There is one in Wadi Hadhramaut which is a dual-carriageway with roundabouts regularly along the route. My “safe” Yemeni driver connected to this road from a side route where there is no roundabout and we wanted to go left. You and I would have gone right on the correct side of the road and then gone back in the correct direction at the next roundabout. Not in Yemen!!!! No, you take the left onto the lane with oncoming traffic, hug the shoulder side, but no reason to be on the shoulder because the oncoming traffic will hopefully see the car before the head-on collision. Finally, at the next roundabout go any direction you want in order to get over to the correct side of the carriageway. Insane! This kind of stunt was witnessed at many places on the maybe 2000+ kilometers of roads traveled.
It was a rare morning when a highly amplified call to prayer did not wake me up by 4:30 AM. On Friday, when I was in Wadi Hadhramaut, someone started at 1:30 AM! Every village, town and city in Yemen has more mosques per person than I have seen so far. They are very active and all of them with minarets fill the air with prayer… or whatever all the noise might be called. The best part of this early morning sound is that the Yemeni speaker systems are much better than the crackling noisemakers in Egypt and Morocco. I actually heard some great stuff although it can be hard to appreciate all of it when there is so much of it so early in the morning. The last room I had in Sana’a faced the speaker on the minaret that is right across the street. I thought the muezzin was in my bedroom. Dubai has mosques, but from the area I am in I cannot hear them in the morning. Plus the percentage of Muslims in Dubai is far fewer than in Yemen where it must run well over 99%.
Yemen is full of mountains. They soar very high near the ocean and exist even in the desert area that I visited. Many of the large cities in Yemen are in the highlands. The terraced mountainsides studded with enclaves were the major landscape of the trip. Dubai has an indoor ski area that I suppose qualifies as its single “mountain”. I’m off to Oman where I am kind of expecting a mix of the traditional life I saw in Yemen with the modern life of Dubai although on a very small scale since there are not very many people living in Oman. It is known for its desert, mountain and seaside landscapes and that suits me fine especially if the air is a lot clearer than Yemen so I really get to see them!
Tags: United Arab Emirates, yemen
vagabondrick
Hi Rick – Really interested in reading about Dubai as Anne’s friend had an advertising assignment for Maxwell House coffee and spent several months there. He showed me his photo collection of the city, hotels, desert, camels, etc. – fascinating. Yemen must really have been shocking. I will ask Skip about Yemen (if he went there, too) Also read about Vietnam this mornng. I’m trying to find some pictures, but I must be on the wrong pages. Love, Joan Keep safe.