Qat, restaurants, and everyday traffic

Every city has its quirks, the things that people who grew up there will never notice but outsiders pay attention to for a small period of time before also acclimating to the culture. In some cases it is accurate to say that every country has its quirks, but I think that it makes more sense to look at cities or regions since countries can vary so vastly across their landscapes.

One of the most common sites in Sanaa and around Yemen, especially in the afternoon and evening, is the site of men with bulging cheeks. They chew qat like fiends, every single man. Women do too, but in the privacy of their homes and not in public usually. Qat is a green leafy plant that is grown around the country. When you pick it, you chew the soft leaves, which are usually the smaller ones near the top of the branch. You just keep adding qat to the wad held in the side of your mouth between your teeth and your cheek. If you pick the leaf off and stick it in your mouth, you can do this without making too much of a mess. A lot of guys just pull the leaves off with their teeth and this results in not only a huge bulge in their cheek but green bits stuck in their teeth. Lovely, right? Like so many things, it's amazing what you can get used to. I noticed today that I have become used to the strange combination scent of sweat and qat. You'll have to come to Yemen to get the effect. :)

Restaurants around Sanaa don't have menus, with the exception of some of the nicer, more expensive restaurants and probably the KFC-Pizza Hut combo on the other side of town. The food selection isn't particularly extensive though, so once you go to a restaurant once you learn what they do or don't have or are willing to make. Every restaurant serves chips (french fries) - one of the world's universal foods, to be sure. Here in Sanaa, it is a very popular thing to serve chips with hot sauce, which is delicious. A few places even mix up vinegar and salt and hot sauce and occasionally another spice or two and add it to the chips. I would recommend that you try this, it's good. Fuul is another popular dish, made out of some sort of bean mixture I think, sometimes with bits of potatoes and onions. I guess the best summary would be to say that you eat a lot of "dip" type foods with bread. You get a big dish or a couple of them, put them in the middle of the table, and all eat out of it together. Silverware can be had at any restaurant upon request, at least all the restaurants I've been to in Sanaa. (Not guaranteed to be washed but they do at least rinse them!) Another funny thing I've noticed is that restaurants almost never have their own beverages. Sometimes they might have tap water (which we avoid), or if they're a juice store (this is common) they will have juice. Most restaurants will also brew you a cup of tea upon request, usually "Yementon" tea (Lipton turned Yemenian) with loads of sugar and mint. But otherwise, if you want a bottle of water or a coke or something similar, you ask the owner for it. He will then send another worker or more often a young child down the street to one of the many little shops that sell beverages. They come back with the drink and so far as I've experienced just charge you exactly what they paid for the beverage, no markup. I think this is because most Yemenis don't order drinks with their dinner. I'm not sure that this is the case everywhere, it just seems to be a trend in the places I've frequented - the cheap but delicious places.

At first when we arrived, I was surprised that a country with former British influence would have traffic that drove on the "right" side of the road - literally, the right side. But while the steering wheels of the cars are on the left side similar to the States, it is a bit of a misnomer to say that traffic drives on the right side of the road. Traffic just drives. Sometimes, especially in heavy-traffic areas of Sanaa, the cars more or less stay on the right side. But generally speaking you just drive wherever there is space to drive. Careening through the mountains on the roads that run a couple of feet from the sides of the cliffs, cars pay no attention whatsoever to where they are on the road. You just use the road. Traffic lights are of course unusual - roundabouts are much more common. On the few occasions where I've seen traffic lights, no one follows them. There aren't really any traffic laws here either. Well, I think that technically there are a couple, but the easiest way to sum them up would probably be to say that 1) if you're a foreigner, it's your fault; 2) if you're a local, who knows. Go pay to fix your car. The only time there are traffic laws is when a security or police officer is present. At that time, some measure of traffic "norms" seem to come into existence, at least until the officer leaves.

If you were to come to Yemen, another thing you might notice is that almost all the cars are white. Passing car dealerships (I've only seen a few of these and the highest number of cars held by any of them would not top 20), the only option is white. Most of the cars also have a thick yellow or blue stripe running horizontally down the middle of the car. I'm not sure where in the process between buying and driving the vehicle these stripes get added, but they're quite common. In Sanaa, it would not be a complete shock to see a colored car - there are a number of very old Toyota models that are blue or red, and then the wealthier parts of the city boast nice new cars, sometimes SUVs, in various muted colors. But brightly colored cars? Haven't seen one yet. And a colored car outside the city is quite unusual. However, the cabs here have a funny pattern. They are white, but then random parts of their bumpers or possibly their hood will be painted yellow. It's an odd combo, but they're all like that.