Popagandhi

Yemen is all over the news these days for all the wrong reasons. Those of you interested in that sort of thing would do well to read Waq al-Waq as a necessary companion blog to Western reporting on Yemen, which does tend to come across as uninformed and inaccurate most of the time.

I still miss that country greatly and think constantly about what a wonderful experience it was, to have had the chance to see it. Here are some of the beautiful people I met.

BarCamp Singapore 4 is on tomorrow at Suntec Tower 3, 14th Floor, at IDA Singapore, from 9am to 6pm. Looks like there will be lots of interesting presentations.

I’m on at 1.30pm, with “How to hack your own travel channel life”. I’ll be sharing about travel, writing, photography, the internet, and well, stuff. Sorry I can’t be more specific (I’m still preparing the presentation). If you haven’t already registered, it looks like they’re over-subscribed. See you tomorrow if you are coming, and come say hi!

P.S. there’s an afterparty at Hackerspace, sponsored by Yahoo Southeast Asia. I hope we’ll have something like Hackerspace in Malaysia soon — I would love to have a co-working space there!

More on Yemen. (I am now in Damascus, Syria! — I have to say where I am on my blog because my family is perennially lost about where I am! Hi mum! *waves*)

Singapore’s small Arab community came hundreds of years ago as traders and they almost always came from Yemen. Not just Yemen, but from Hadramaut (the area with “that bomb”, some weeks ago).

I’m not sure how but I’m convinced the local Malay cooking that I adore has seen a fair amount of influence from Yemeni food. For the first time in the Middle East, the food felt like something I really knew, with familiar spices like turmeric, and a heavy emphasis on intense flavours, as opposed to the fresher (but blander, to me) cuisines from the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, primary providers of Middle Eastern cuisine, even in, say, Dubai) and Iran. I like them all, but I’m particularly partial to the heavily spiced, full-on flavours of South, Southeast Asia and Yemen.

Travelling there alone was beyond anything I had ever done. With zero expectations, not having anything to count on or build up ideas about, other than “don’t go there!” — I fell into my favourite way of travelling: not expecting anything, but walking away with a wealth of riches. The experience I had in Yemen was incomparable.

I had the rare opportunity to live with a family in an Old City house, and the woman who hosted me was a phenomenal cook. My welcome feast, I did not know yet, would be lunch every day in the country: salta.

And I am such a fan.

Salta is a chicken stew dish topped with a froth-like fenugreek paste. Served piping hot in a madr, a heat-resistant stone pot, it is made by stewing chicken with spices and potatoes for hours, then transferring the potatoes into the madr. The by-now amazingly intense chicken soup is poured over the potatoes, which are crushed. Meantime, the ‘hulba’ (I think it’s fenugreek paste) is whipped repeatedly until a meringue-like consistency is obtained (minus the stiffness). Chillis, tomatoes and some local spices and blended together to form a salsa-like dip. Fresh bread, the hallmark of every Yemeni meal, is folded into a scoop and used as a spoon to scoop up the chilli-tomato mix, and the whole thing dipped into the piping hot salta.

Never one to turn down a well-cooked chicken, or any chicken by-product (I would have a soulful chicken soup, preferably the clear Chinese herbal sorts, or the Yemeni salta, as my last meal, thank you), I tucked into it with remarkable enthusiasm, and chased the salta from Hiyat’s Old Sana’a kitchen to Aden and Tihama, eating it at every restaurant and dusty highway rest-stop I unwittingly found myself in.

And of course, I made a video about it.

The things we eat — food and life in Yemen, part I in a series. The next one is about qat, the narcotic leaf chewed after lunch every single day :) Yes, still pimping the online travel show that I run with M. (Currently working hard on travelling, both of us, shooting videos, and also doing some behind-the-scenes revamps to the site — we’re announcing a tie-up with one of our favourite travel companies online, soon.)

Like we say in Hokkien. Mai keh kee! Kwa wa eh hee!

I don’t know why my peekture is so skewed in the video frame. For more details on salta and other Yemeni adventures, please see full post over at fortylove.tv

If you have any questions about Yemen, my friend and trusted travel agent in Sana’a, Ziad, is one of the country’s best, and will be pleased to take any questions or queries (even if you’re not about to book a tour with him).

Meantime, quick trip update: Lebanon really is all that. Roman ruins, interviewing men who literally built castles with their own bare hands (he dreamed, as a poor boy, of living in a castle and was taunted and beaten up for dreaming. Ever thought living your dream was hard? Moussa’s story makes me gasp), hanging out with Beiruti handbag designers (the fashionistas amongst you may know her: Sarah Beydoun of Sarah’s Bags! I hate fashion-y stuff but was so bowled over by her work), spending afternoons chilling with winemakers in the Bekaa Valley, or otherwise eavesdropping on the tortured artists at the Torino Express, an old-style crazy atmospheric cafe in Gemmayze, Beirut’s new so-holey-it’s-hip district. I’m now in Damascus, Syria. You know what this means? Sana’a, Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch, Istanbul… the idea of setting foot on a great deal of human history makes me so happy. In case any of you ever go to Syria: yes, if you hold a Singapore passport you WILL get a visa at the border for US$33. It’s for 15 days, but you can extend it for up to a month. (They won’t issue it to you at the border if your country has an embassy/consulate.) And when you get there — eat the ice cream at Bakdash! I’m off to Palmyra to see more ruins (going to be completely ruined-out after this), then on to Aleppo, Lattakia, before bussing or train-ing it into Turkey. One day I will write a blog entry about how to do all that for S$350 a week.

Three weeks ago, in Yemen, somewhere between Aden and Zabid and near Taiz — it could have been shortly after Lahj —

A small, fly-infested town. We were in a shared taxi driving near the Red Sea coast, and towards (I did not know yet) one of the hottest places in the world, Zabid. Hot and sweaty, just as you’d imagine any place called Tihama to be.

Toilet break. ‘Highway’ stop. Dusty town with no name. No one had ever seen an Oriental person before. Cue running amok and endless staring. It’s okay, I’m used to it.

Used too, I thought, to the things I did not want to see. Begging. Poverty. I see it everywhere; you learn to close your eyes to it, you learn to say no.

But here was a homeless family sitting by the sidewalk of a restaurant. Eating bread people threw out to them. The children were in various states of ill health, and so were the parents. They were all immaculately dressed, though, in that they were homeless and poor but still maintained their pride in the way they were clothed. Everyone wore hand-me-downs. Everyone had mismatched items on themselves. The younger daughter was dressed in a large mismatched frock that made her look vaguely clown-like. They were so happy that someone even looked at them, said hi, and took a picture. I told them their baby was beautiful. I did mean it, though it’s hard to see how. They were so happy. Then someone came to kick them away. They packed up their belongings, and went to sit in a corner. When I was leaving in the car they came ambling out to wave goodbye. I think my heart broke a little.

Just a quick update:

1. I have left Yemen, my limbs are intact.
2. I had a wonderful time in that country and I will go back again.
3. Is it courting danger? No — I firmly believe the violence is sporadic and unplanned and could happen to any city/country at any time; and if you boycott an entire country because of this, then the terrorists win.
4. My time in Yemen was made possible by the lovely Ziad, who was also responsible for making sure I’m alive. He did a fine job, and I highly recommend this man who knows and loves his country at the back of his hand.
5. I had the rare opportunity to live in a Yemeni home and to share their lives, food, and bathrooms with them. It was such an honour to come close to unveiled woman, an erstwhile unseen sight out in the streets, and to have been able to enjoy their home cooking and hospitality. That included the impromptu “dress Adri up” session which saw some hysterical local women (who speak only Arabic) putting flowers in my hair, henna on my body, lipstick, and dressing me up in… dresses. Yes, dresses. Scarves, jewellery, and such.
6. Every single Yemeni person I have met has been unbelievably hospitable. There are friendly people, and then there are the Yemenis. There is no reason to fear this country. In fact, they are as pissed off as you are about the terrorists.
7. I’ve since left the country, am now in Dubai, and some hours from now shall be in London, which I’ve missed. I’m leaving Dubai, where I have lived in for the past couple of months, for good and will cease to reside in the United Arab Emirates.
8. For the thousands of new readers, newly arrived from the Malaysian blogfather: hello, and please continue leaving comments, writing me those nice emails, and also please check out my other site, a site featuring videos from my travels. When I get a bit more time to breathe I will respond to your emails.
9. Existing Fortylove.tv fans (all 3 of you): sorry for slight hiatus in programming, the recent Yemeni sojourn has thrown off our schedule by just a bit. We’ll catch up with the posting as soon as we can. Upcoming episodes: a Sudanese spoken word poet, a primer to south Indian cinema (on the set with a Kannada movie dance sequence), a day at the camel races, a naked flashmob in London, and more. We’re launching some contests shortly, so join our Facebook group, follow us on Twitter, check out our site, subscribe to our show on iTunes and other newsreaders.
10. That’s it — bye Dubai, hello London! (One day I will find a good explanation for my family on why coming home necessitates going the long way around, via London)