Author archive
7 January 2008
After breakfast, we took a taxi to St George Cathedral. Its namesake is the protector of Ethiopia, the second Christian country in the world. He slayed the dragon too. Admission was by ticket which included admission to the adjacent Cathedral museum (guide inclusive and compulsory). After a mildly informative but rushed tour of both places, […]
6 January 2008
Today Marie and I started our adventure in Africa. Ethiopia specifically. The Ethiopian Airlines 737 took us from Sana’a departing at 1645 and arriving at Addis Ababa at 1945 (if it had been on time). There was a stop en route at Djibouti that was meant to be for an hour, but it took a […]
5 January 2008
Today I detected a schedule change in our Ethiopian Airlines flights. We’re due to fly out to Addis Ababa tomorrow. But the change affected our final flight from Addis back to Sana’a. We would now be returning to Sana’a two days earlier on 25 Jan rather than 27 Jan. I had been worried about being […]
25 December 2007
Merry Christmas! And Alhamdulillah, the street are finally clean … the street cleaners seem to have had 7 days off for Eid. But the bakery is still closed 🙁 Being Christmas, I decided to cook rendang for dinner and inviting some friends. Rendang is of course the dry beef curry popular in Malaysia-Indonesia. Mmmmm. Out of necessity […]
23 December 2007
Many shops are still closed. We can’t get a good choice of fruits or vegetables, we have to go further for water, drinks or yoghurt. And our next-door bakery is closed; fresh Yemeni bread is good enough to get out of bed for. Many restaurants, eateries and internet places are closed too. To make matters […]
19 December 2007
Today, being Eid, we got invited to our teacher’s (Adnan) house. We were treated to a Yemeni lunch … Marie even ate her friend the goat! Life is still very traditional in Yemen … his wife did not join us for lunch because of my presence as a non-related male … if it had been […]
18 December 2007
It is the day before Eid … the streets are busy. And the rubbish truck didn’t appear to make it last night. We put our bags of rubbish (in shopping bags, not the large sacks) on the street corner for clearance last night … yes including a bag of used toilet paper (as I call it […]
17 December 2007
Marie went to our teacher’s house today. “Excuse moi” she cried “… there’s a goat in the bathroom”. The answer as we found out is because tomorrow is Eid (al Udha) … or Hari Raya Haji in Malaysia-Singapore. It commemorates Abraham’s (pbuh) willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael for God. Muslims sacrifice a goat, sheep etc […]
14 December 2007
We took breakfast around 0730 and drove to Al Hajjarah. It was my second time at this stunning village set on top of a rock. From here, we walked to the next village and back. That took around 0900-1230. Fortunately there wasn’t much of a downhill hike which seemed to upset my left knee. Assam didn’t […]
13 December 2007
Even though I only landed yesterday, I was happy to agree to a weekend away today. It was a foursome, with Marie and I, plus another student (Jewish American studying at Harvard) and the driver Assam. It was a leisurely departure at 0930 meeting at my regular quarter-chicken place for the 2+ hour ride through […]