A khutba in pidgin, a wudu in heels

I’ve not been keeping up with this. I think that’s a sign of contentment in that there’s not been enough to whinge about. I’ve also observed that my happiness seemed to be inversely proportional to the amount of time I spend in any one place.

This was probably the oddest Ramadan I’ve completed with some serious challenges and some easy rides. In terms of ease I had someone cooking me dinner every night. I never underestimate the value of not having to cook dinner for myself when I’m tired, cranky and incredibly impatient with innocent things like tomatoes. It was a quiet couple of weeks and we were nearing the end of the distribution. By now we were all doing this with our eyes closed and 2000 radios a day was the norm. I fulfilled my role of big man and dispatched the team to the distributions while I busied myself less easily defined program management tasks. The fact that I can’t remember what I was doing for the month shouldn’t suggest that they were unimportant…ok, maybe they were…but there was always enough of engaging stuff to do to ensure that the hours of the day to melted quickly away.

And the melting was the biggest challenge: 30+ degrees in the shade with no air conditioning meant I sweat persistently. There aren’t that may Muslims in the South and I’m the only one in my team, so like London, it was again quite a lonely experience. Especially the morning meals before sunrise. I’d bought a paraffin stove so was able to cook breakfast for myself, but it was still raining in September so I either had to cook inside (despite manufacturers claims those little Chinese stoves are not smokeless, fumeless and odourless), or outside in the rain. No electricity meant doing it by candlelight. I’m still not sure what the crunchy things in the eggs were. I stepped on a wasp. I knocked over a candle and burnt a hole in my bed. While it was nice to be able to make as much noise as I liked, the lack of conveniences such as light and running water to wash plates and myself just took a lot of time and effort. In some ways it was nice to be so far away from the developed world: my thoughts were oriented in the direction they should have been – upwards.

But the lack of good food began to take its toll. My diarrhoea was persistent and the cook’s evening meals not particularly balanced. Come the end of the month I’d lost about 8 kilos, and had sores on my tongue that had taken on a deep red colour: symptoms of vit B deficiency.

I found another mosque on the UN camp. On most occasions all visitors to the UN compound are searched, ID’d and questioned. Tell the guards you’re a Muslim going to the mosque, tough, and you’re waved straight through – an oddly backwards experience. In the mosque (a corrugated iron-roofed, mosquito net-walled shack that is leagues above and beyond the construction site that passes for a mosque in the town), I found a bizarre mix of worshippers every shade of human: black, dark brown, beige and white, from all the nations represented in UNMIS. The Imam was Nigerian and the Khutba given in pidgin:
“you have to ask for forgiveness, O! Behind the forgiveness is giving, O! Ramadan is about what? Forgiveness and Giving!.” No one really seemed to be following the very circular argmet and the small Banglaeshis to my right seemed delighted to have a new member of the community joining them.

My Somali friend Hassan, was a good source of company and evening meals throughout the month. One night he suggested a change from the Somali shack/restaurant and invited me to the house of a friend. I expected to meet the host and eat his wife’s food. The host wasn’t in his one-roomed house when we arrived, but Hassan welcomed me in and sat me next to a small, but impressive, set of wigs. Our host was a woman. She cooked for us a delicious meal from the outdoor kitchen and kept herself secluded from the strange men she was hosting. . I shouted my greetings and thanks across the rain smacked and muddy courtyard. She shouted back an invitation to use some sandals she had outside the door to go and wash for prayers. I jumped down into a small pair of women’s kittly-slipers. It felt very odd performing a wudu in heels, and the rakahs in front of a makeup stand, but I hope my prayers were nonetheless accepted.

I was looking forward to the end of Ramadan mostly because it marked the start of my next vacation. I got to Sanaa two days before Eid. Yemen was stunningly beautiful in every respect: the scenery, the architecture and the warmth of the people. I’m not sure how tourists are able to be kidnapped here: as well as being generous, respectful and friendly, most people were no taller than 5’7” and perpetually strung out on Qat. Now that is an impressive national habit. Every afternoon most men start chewing the leaf. By early evening they’re all acting like space cadets and not face passes without the huge bulge of the Qat in the cheek.

The beds, the hot running water, the beauty of the city and the warmth of the people that made it a nice break. What made it particularly good was that I was understood when I spoke. My efforts to learn Arabic in Amman some years ago appeared to be really quite fruitless as any conversation I tried to start in Arabic would only yield strange looks. Unable to speak, I’ve always felt a little fake. I tended to crumble under simple questioning by Syrian border guards as they try to understand why the individual in front of them looks like the one in the Jordanian passport they’re holding, but doesn’t seem to be ale to do more than stumble over a few words. There, I am an illiterate Arab.

In Yemen, though, I was a Briton who spoke some Arabic. Their hospitality meant that they tried to understand what I was saying, or at least they pretended to. It was an easy and relaxing week, despite very little English being spoken. That would have been a hard trip in the past. And I think that’s why I enjoyed this trip so much. As well as beautiful scenery, this was the first objective measure for me that I’m better off after my time in Sudan. My Arabic hasn’t gotten any better, I’m just a bit more confident. And it’s all relative: after the self-flagellation of a month of Ramadan in Rumbek, any break would have felt good. Why keep beating myself? Because it feels so good when I stop.