Yemen Heaven or Hell

I arrived in Yemen after a relatively short flight of only 7 hours, i was shocked as i watched the plane come in to land by the underbelly camera and saw that Sanaa the capitol was a green valley in the dry mountains and also very big. The airport was small and immigration was probably the worse i have ever had to suffer as the 100 people on the plane took about 1 hour to get all the passports stamped. it was a farce they were waving their hands about and shouting at each other and really the business of taking information for the security of the country was only a minor consideration.

The sheraton Hotel in Sanaa the capitol of Yemen



The oil company had got a couple of drivers for the 4 poeple going to our hotel and the 30 minute drive to the premier hotel in Sanaa was a tour of probably the poorest place i may have ever been. It was a desperate place of poor haphazard concrete block building with garbage everywhere and the feeling of Mogadishou kept srpinging to mind, i felt miserable and despair that i had travelled all the way around the world to see this craphole. I knew there and then that i didnt want to work here and never ever come back. The hotel was nice and clean but i was feeling like crap and the jetlag was worse , i got to the hotel and went to the swimming pool at the back and sat around in the shade as it was very hot in the sun but if a cloud came across the air temp was particularly cool, the altitude was a about 6000 feet and this makes the nights cool and the winters cold and they doo get rain here as i found out 20 million people live here and you cant live without water and crops, that was a surprise. Anyway the pool area was full of locals bringing theri kids to scream and shout in the swimming pool and for the guys to ogle the white women who were in costumes. the average Yemeni wears a long white shirt a jacket that is many sizes to big for him, a large belt and a dagger right at the front, i felt this was to try and hide the usually large gut that was behind it



well i had the barbecue that was served at the poolside and it was OK apart from the meat being raw and the sausage made of lamb that made me fart like i was a methane plant for the next 24 hours. i went to my room about 1pm as i was crashing from the letlag and fell immediately into a deep deep sleep until 7pm, i was goosed and felt like crap i did manage to get some more sleep but awoke at 3am, i watched some crappy TV and then showered for my interview at 8.30am. It was a strange affair done like the civil service interviews, i was asked some strange questions like i had never worked on plant before and i realised that these people were clowns and didnt really know what the hell they were talking about, i was grilled about safety and team leading, and basically nothing about my engineering abilities. I asked how many brits were being interviewed and told 10 total. This was the killer for me, can you imagine going to work in Yemen and finding only peasants and strange folks from all the corners of the world to work with and rely on not to kill everyone inside the plant becasue they dont know anything. I felt misery at knowing i had travelled all this way for nothing and i had to keep smiling. The trip was turning into a nightmare as i knew i had a shitty route back with a night spent in the airport in Dubai. I took the afternoon around the pool sunbathing and managed to burn the skin off my lips badly, in only 1 hour. i went back to my room and managed to keep my eyes open until 7.30pm and then slept only until midnight. I did manage to get about another 2 hours sleep later but i was totally done with the jetlag, my brain was hurting with the hours sleep i had lost. I left yemen with a sigh of relief and a knowledge that Yemen is not fit for human kind, it is full of dangerous looking individuals and lots of sand and heat, i knew that Singapore was for me and my wife even if the money is much less, i need some creature comforts for the next few years to care for my aging body and to get some sleep with jetlag.