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| The sunset near my new home |
I was very excited about 12.12.12. I’m not
sure if it’s because it’s the last date of its kind that we’ll experience in
our lifetimes, or if I wanted an excuse to celebrate in my new home, but I
really wanted to plan something special.
There was one other person I knew would
back me up on my shenanigans. The only other foreign staff on the compound who
is the big UN man in charge, from Rwanda, who spent his first few months here
alone. He’s been happy to have someone around to talk to and comment on our new
environment and culture that we’re surrounded by. So I went to his office and
told him about 12.12.12.
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| The kids made this for my 25th |
Over the next week it sort of became bigger
than it needed to be, just in my own head. I was so excited to do something. It
reminded me of when I was in Motta and everyone I was working with seemed to be
in the doldrums – they were tired of the monotonous of the small town and
nothing to do. I’m not the brightest party planner (everything half thought and
last minuteJ) but I kept trying to find ways to have fun. I celebrated my
birthday with a bonfire and s’mores, cake, bread dipped in balsalmic vinegar
and red wine. Invited kids and friends and made toasts – that was fun. Invited
my friends for a movie night after renting an American film poorly dubbed in
Amharic. That was a semi-disaster but still fun to try (no one understood
eating popcorn with a movie – they refused to eat it until I made the coffee,
which I hadn’t even planned on making). And the girls spa day at my house –
also a semi-disaster because my neighbors hated me for having too many people
over but still fun. The neighbors refused to let anyone use the latrine and I
added too much honey to the face masks so they wouldn’t come off. But the girls
had fun anyway.
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| The girls at my house for spa day in Motta, Ethiopia |
But what could I do in this compound in the
desert in Yemen with a small group of people who refuse to interact with the
opposite sex? I thought about playing the dumb ferengi card and inviting males
and females alike to my little shindig. But the women would know and not show
up anyway, or be very uncomfortable. And as much as spending yet another
evening inside our hot little kitchen/dining area/living room room watching
Turkish soaps sounded like an alright way to celebrate, I figured the guys
would want to do something out of the ordinary and they are my team. I only
work with 2 of the women I live with, the rest of my team are men.
I told E (Rwandan guy) about my dilemma and
he said I was thinking too much about it and I should just come have a good
time at ‘the white house’ (his place) and invite a few of my male staff. I
decided in the end (literally the last moment) that I would bake a cake, and
have fruit and chocolate and soda at the white house, invite the guys for some
music and maybe t.v. and talk about 12 accomplishments or 12 somethings. By 7pm
I was just finishing work and still had no flour for the cake. MJ went to grab
flour from a shop in the camp while I brought all my supplies to cook in the
white house. If I cooked in the female kitchen, I was afraid they would talk me
into staying there with them.
So E and I are standing in his kitchen
preparing the cake. We turned on his oven, operated by propane. My back was to
the oven as I stirred in the eggs, and all of the sudden I heard the loudest
BAM!!! I’ve ever heard at such close range. It rattled my body and left me
shocked and shaking. I didn’t know what happened for a moment. E looked at me.
“Did that come from in here or outside?”
(it is Yemen after all)
I quickly realized that the oven had
exploded, leaving the oven door wide open.
The evening ended pleasantly. I baked the
cake in the women’s kitchen, sat with the guys for some half-burned/half-mushed
cake and fruit and then ended by eating a late dinner with the girls before
going to sleep at 11.
With the guys, I asked them to think of 4
things they never want to do again, 4 things they want to do this year and 4
things they want in the future. We only got through 1 thing they never want to
do again for each person before it was time to go. They had such great stories
and the morals of them are as follows:
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| This has nothing to do with the story, but happened last week - adorable! |
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Make sure you’re standing in
good balance in a wet shower before moving around
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Don’t travel in Yemen without
your ID and then run from security police when they catch you (he got shot at
and then put in jail with a sick goat)
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Don’t try swimming in the sea
when you don’t know how and no one else around you does either
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Don’t travel in Yemen without
your ID, even if you’re Yemeni because your physical features might appear to
be Chinese, causing the police to stop you for questioning
And for the women, I asked what they want
to accomplish in 2013. They told me to start first so I said, “I would like to
visit Socotra Island” I was amazed at their response! The women who will never
even eat their lunch outside of their kitchen were rattling off how they’ve
always wanted to go. They asked me to tell them so they could come with me.
Wow. I didn’t expect that but sounds good to me! Now I have the couple of
foreign men I know in the country to go with or these women…. Hmmmmmm… maybe
both?
(As you can see I did not get any photos
from these 12.12.12 events – I never remember to)
