Josh's Secret Life

The second day I got us on the road early, hoping to fit in two villages since we had to abandon one the previous day. We headed out of Ta'iz to a district called al-qubayta. The first village we visited was called farisat al-jabal and was one of my favorite places I've seen yet in Yemen. It was relatively accessible, though we had to stroll through the wadi to get to it, but it wasn't far or strenuous. It was nestled between two ridges in a little wadi with houses and terraces climbing up the mountain on either side. It was sunny and peaceful with lots of trees and other wild greenery and birds chirping. Walking through the sandy rocky soil along the bottom of the wadi in the bright sunlight made me feel like we were on a trip to the river to enjoy a day of relaxation and it immediately put me in a peaceful mood. The interviews at the village went well. It seems from the few houses I was able to see well, that this community was a little better-off than many others we had seen. We conducted the interviews in a house that had latching glass windows and doors and nice western style couches instead of just blankets strewn along the walls.

After the interview we walked around to look at some of the issues they had mentioned during the discussion. Apparently the most pressing problem is that the road construction on the mountain ridges above them is causing serious damage to their ecosystem. The sandy soil and rocks dug loose as the road is carved out of the mountainside are running down the mountains in huge sand and rock flows that are covering terraces and filling the wadi bottom with sediment. Apparently the wadi bottom has risen 7 meters in the past 4 years and the trees growing out of it, while they used to have trunks, are now just branches sticking out of the gravel. They have lost many terraces either to direct damage from the landslides or from the increased force of the floods from the road construction and rising height of the wadi. One farmer even paid to have a stone and concrete wall built in the wadi to protect his terraces. They have to hire a tractor every year to try and clear some of the sediment out of the wadi but it's not making much different.
Here's the wall they constructed to protect the terraces.

Here you can see the landslides coming down off of the road towards the terraces.

This is one of their only currently functional wells and it's in danger of being covered with sediment as the wadi rises.

Another landslide shot.

Here's one of the villagers standing in a canal they constructed to try and divert the flood water running down off the new road past the terraces and in to the wadi to avoid damage.

This terrace had been completely covered in sand. They had cleared it partially in order to plant it. They said that when sand gets into the soil the soil loses a lot of fertility.

As a side note, this is apparently a Cotton tree. Sultan gave me some seeds from the Cotton ball he's holding for a souvenir.


The wadi.

After finishing at the first village we decided to make a push for the second, even though we were told it would take us possibly up to two hours to get there. It wasn't particularly far, but the road quality was really bad so we were just bumping and rattling along for two hours. It was very hard on the body.

We made it to the second village without incident and had the interview. We got through it faster than we had any previous time because we knew we had a long way back to Ta'iz, plus the rain was approaching; there was crazy lightning, thunder and wind which was rising in intensity as we drew the interview to a close. We took off as quickly as possible to make it back to Ta'iz before it got too late.

Here's a photo of more road damage. It's all through this district since road construction is really actively happening here.

On our way back we stopped at a sign I had seen on the way in. It is one of these signs that are posted all over the country announcing projects that my organization, the Social Fund, have implemented. However, in this case the translator seems to have dropped the ball a bit. Note that in Arabic G and J correspond to the same letter, hence this particular miss-understanding.

After another night in Ta'iz we made an early start to head back to Sana'a in order to avoid the military escorts. Our ploy worked and we didn't have any trouble on the trip back. Here are some picture and a video from the trip back.




After getting back to Sana'a some of the residents at the hostel went out to dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. It was really good food and then in the end we got to have coffee made right in front of us, all the way from roasting the beans (first picture) to pouring out (last picture). The whole process took about 45 minutes and involved eating popcorn which is apparently traditional for this process, and burning incense and sugar on the coals. It was really really really good coffee too.

This is Sofia, a professor of Anthropology from Cal State Longbeach studying religion among older women here in Sana'a. She has been interviewing a lot of women so she keeps being invited to weddings (it's currently wedding season, everyone trying to fit it in before Ramadan). She has been to a lot of weddings at this point.

Here's Katherina, whom I've mention a before, and Daniel, may fellow Berkeley grad student who is also working at the Social Fund. He's purposefully trying to look stoic here. He said that's what Yemeni men do.


Lastly, I pass this picture every time I go to the fruit and veggie market. It's an advertisement on the door of a tailor's shop. I think it looks strangely like Josh Hausman. I had to take a picture for Catie.