![\"The](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/the-Sana-skyline.jpg\")
<\/a>The Sana’ skyline<\/p><\/div>\n
In my last year of university, I took a History course on Yemen. Well-read for a youth of those years and that age, I thought I knew in theory, if not by experience, about how diverse the world could be. But Yemen… the country is the moon, an impoverished third-world nation, Arab, Biblical, ruled by tribes, purported home to the Queen of Sheba, and Muslim and Communist at the same time. I just couldn\u2019t imagine the existence of such a place, much less being part of it!<\/p>\n
<\/a>Standing in front of the gates bab al yemn in Sana’a<\/p><\/div>\n
Yet a decade later, I was living there, teaching English for a major oil company. In this role, I had the opportunity to travel the country, rotating almost weekly between the company\u2019s desert oil sites and headquarters in the capital city, Sana\u2019a, named after the son of Noah, Shem, and considered the world\u2019s oldest continually inhabited city. Some of the sites I\u2019ll never forget visiting are:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The walled gates of Sana\u2019a, World Heritage site<\/li>\n
- The still-functioning Marib Dam, built by the Queen of Sheba (Bilqis) in 940 B.C. (and also ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden)<\/li>\n
- Shibam, a village known as the \u201cManhattan of the Desert,\u201d because of its mud brick, 11-story skyscrapers constructed in the 16th<\/sup> century (the original \u201cStargate\u201d movie was filmed there)<\/li>\n
- The Hadramaht, translated as the \u201cValley of Death,\u201d and its isolated oasis villages<\/li>\n
- The \u201cRub\u2019 al Khali,\u201d or Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert in the world and playground for Lawrence of Arabia<\/li>\n
- The pristine beaches on the Indian Ocean\n
![\"footprints](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/footprints-left-on-a-beach-on-the-Indian-Ocea-96x300.jpg\")
Footprints left on a beach on the Indian Ocean<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n
- The Amazing gingerbread house architecture of the cities<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Stereotyped as lawless and dangerous, Yemen is certainly that as fighting and violence are a daily possibility for the 24 million people who live there. Civil war, kidnapping and tribal warfare has been a constant in modern times. It has the world\u2019s highest per capital gun ownership; boys routinely receive a Kalashnikov rifle to denote manhood at age 14, and most men regularly walk around with both a machine gun slung over their backs and ceremonial jambiyah<\/a><\/em> dagger on their waists. I once asked a student what he had done on his day off; his blas\u00e9 answer was, “Teach my sister how the use the RPG [rocket-propelled grenade].” Not quite the norm of how students in Western countries would spend their Saturdays, is it?<\/p>\n
![\"sanaa](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/sanaa-skyline-150x150.jpg\")
The gingerbread house architecture of the cities<\/p><\/div>\n
However, there is much more to Yemen than the violence and the warfare. It\u2019s a clich\u00e9, but what I remember most is the warmth and kindness of the people. I remember fondly the numerous times complete strangers offered me a handful of qat<\/a> <\/em>to chew, the mild narcotic that is as common a sight in the cheeks of Yemeni men as cups of coffee are in the West.<\/p>\n
Here are a couple of my favorite memories that depicts the kindness of the Yemen:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"\/\/www.oxfordseminars.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Rock-Palace-dar-alhajar-in-wadi-dhar-150x150.jpg\")
<\/a>Rock Palace Dar Alhajar in Wadi Dhar<\/p><\/div>\n
Upon coming back to class after lunch in the company canteen, a student asked me if enjoyed it. Absently, I told him I wished they\u2019d had some fruit. He asked me if I liked oranges to which I told him I did. That night, that young man borrowed a company truck, drove a couple hundred kilometers home to his village where they had a family orchard. He arrived back in time for morning class where he offered me a 20-kilogram sack of lovely fruit, along with the comment, “Teacher, I brought you an orange.”<\/p>\n
One day I was teaching a class, when I heard a Land Cruiser noisily skid to a halt in front of the Training Centre. I heard running footsteps, then a very polite request by the driver to speak to one of my students. After a very passionate, animated conversation in Arabic between the two, the student asked me for permission to leave. When I asked why, he answered, “I must go. My village is killing each other.” There was a tribal dispute that resulted in a pitched battle, and they were expected to go<\/p>\n