Back to Hajjah

 Saturday 11 November 1972

With the end of Ramadan and the Id the journey back here, on Wednesday-Thursday was uneventful.  I was travelling with Peter Dahlen and Ewan, the Australian dentist (highly incompetent but inanely cheerful at the wheel of a Land Rover).  School has restarted.

When I arrived I discovered to my intense irritation that someone has been drinking my whisky - and, worse, topping up the bottle with dirty water.  I think I know who did it, but difficult for me to do anything about it, though.  Needless to say, the missionaries were highly amused by my adulterated whisky and glad that I was being led away from the evil of alcohol.  I can't say I am entirely sympathetic to their point of view.

My father sent me a valve to inflate footballs which I could use with my trusty bicycle pump.  I was able to inflate a football and a whole lot of us played football this afternoon.

A car fell off the road in one of the villages around Hajjah today - two people were killed.

Sunday 12 November

Sunday is a luxury I shall be glad to rediscover when I get back to England.  Friday cannot really match up to Sunday without bacon and eggs and Sunday papers.

A nice thing happened today - I bought some biscuits in a little shop and the woman behind what passed for a counter, who was feeding her baby at the time, charged me one riyal.  This afternoon, as I was going to the palace, she stopped me and said she had overcharged me and owed me 10 buqshas.  It was rather wonderful to see such honesty.

I made a tasty egg and vegetable curry for dinner.

Monday 13

There is a shortage of meat in Hajjah at the moment because all but two of the butchers are in prison for giving short weight.

Lunchtime - galloping diarrhoea.  Probably the liquorice allsorts I bought in Hodeidah on the way here. I'm dosing myself with Sulfamagna..

Evening -  strong enough to buy a tin of tinned mackerel and peas for dinner.

Tuesday 14 November

Bought some meat and onions and made a delicious Irish stew.  Rain in the evening

Wednesday 15th

Ahmed the palace guard has been very sick the past few days.  Today I overheard him saying to a friend that it was because of whisky.  So it was him.

Thursday 16th

Between lessons at the school I went to the market and bought some beef (1/2 a rutl, or about 3/4lb) for 1 riyal (8p, more or less).  I cooked the meat for a bit back at my room in the palace.  After school, and a lunch of egg and beans followed by tinned pears, I cooked the meat some more.  Also I had bought a metal bucket to replace the plastic one that I had used to rig up a water filter, but which had cracked, and took it along to a blacksmith to put a hole in the bottom to screw the filter candle into.  Working well.

Also in the afternoon I gave an English lesson to one shopkeeper, and another asked me to give his two incurably stupid sons English tuition for 20YR a month.  Later I pumped up a third football and a group of teachers and pupils played volleyball for a while.

One of the teachers has got bilharzia.  I'm wondering what I should do if I get it - it seems to be endemic here.

For dinner I cooked the meats some more, but it was still gristly and hard.  More cooking required for the leftovers, which will make a curry.

During the morning the truck which had fallen off the road about a month ago was recovered and brought back into town - rather bent and covered in blood, but it will probably be patched up again.  Did I mention earlier that I had taken a picture from one of the palace windows of men threshing millet below?

The Red Sea Mission nurses, Vera and Anitra, tell me that it might be possible to send things out to me via Dr Gurney who is based in London.  I will send details.

Friday 17th

In the morning I walked downhill to a small village - almost part of the town - called al-Qala'ah, just below Dhahrain.  On my way back up the hill a pupil, whose name I don't recall, took me to his house for coffee.  The house was very clean and beautiful, and not smelly although they have a goat living in the hallway.

In the afternoon I decided to go for a longish walk with some of the school pupils to a village called Bayt Zuhair, about a mile and a half from the town.  I was taken to the house of one of my students, Hussein Hamid al-Shubati, and was given qishr coffe (made with the husks of the coffee beans, and had a puff on his father's hubbly bubbly (called a madaa'ah here).    I was given a gift of six eggs too! 

They told me that this was the last republican village on the line between the republicans, who held Hajjah, and the royalists.  Next Friday I shall set of earlier and see if I can get to the next village, Himlan, which was royalist.

One thing I noticed today was the use of hand gestures to supplement - or even replace - speech.  The index finger of the right hand, pointing upwards  at elbow height and rotated in a small circle means "where are you going?"