Blood Tests in Yemen

When you visit Yemen, if as an American citizen you are planning to stay for more than 7 weeks, you are required to take an HIV blood test administered by the Department of Interior Health. (This is contrasted with EU citizens, who only need to take a blood test if they are going to be in the country for 3 months or longer. One of the guys here said it's because Americans can strike up relationships faster than Europeans. An amusing rationalization for the difference...) The follow up is that, if you test positive, your trip to Yemen is done. Which I find mildly amusing that it's only a problem if you stay that long...why not test for it when you enter the country the same way they test for swine flu?...but I digress.

A bunch of us went to the Dept of Health this morning. We went through the routine of handing over our passports and 6,000 Yemeni Riyals (the equivalent of $30 USD, a small fortune compared to the prices of everything else over here), then got to label our own vials for the blood samples. After that the men and women were seperated by a partition so that only a woman would touch the women and vice versa.

I should preface this story by stating what many of you already know. I have the world's weakest stomach when it comes to anything involving blood and medication, and I am somewhat notorious for getting hurt in the most stupid ways possible. However, despite the fact that I have a history of bad reactions to any medical "procedure" involving blood withdrawel, I had to have a bunch of shots and tests before going to West Africa at the end of last year and was fine for all of them, so I thought maybe I had adjusted and medical work wouldn't bother me anymore. And to an extent, I was right. The actual blood withdrawel was no problem at all. No problem until about two minutes later when the whole world starting spinning and I apparently passed out on the hospital floor face first. The left side of my face looks like a little kid who fell off of her bike, with scratches and cuts all over. And when I finally become coherent enough to start listening to the conversations behind the curtain, I heard the nurse tell the little girls something along the lines of "just be stronger than the Americans and you'll be okay." I feel like I should be mildly embarassed about all of this, but to be honest it keeps striking me as funny and it makes me chuckle every time I think of it, even as I sit here on my bed with my laptop in hand and a wicked headache. So to my fellow Americans, I am sorry I gave the impression that we are weak. But look at it this way - the bar is low. You can easily surpass their expectations! :)

In other news, a few of the students here went to a get together at the embassy last night. In the return trips, somehow Ben, one of the guys in the group, got left behind. After wandering the streets . looking for a taxi, some man he had never met before came up and started talking to him. Ben had no idea what he was saying but after about five minutes the man grabbed him by the arm, pulled him over and motioned for him to get in the bed of the truck, then took off. Ben said he was quite certain he was going to end up as the next kidnapped tourist or in jail (taxi drivers here - even though this guy wasn't a taxi driver - are known for just driving their passengers to jail instead of to their requested destination if they had some reason to believe the passenger has broken the law), but amazingly Ben ended up back at his residence. God is good, eh?