Qat

Yum

In the name of research I've been chewing a bit of qat every now and then.  Qat is a hard drug - not because it's class A but in the sense that it's pretty hard to do it right.  You need to store an allotment's worth of chewed up leaves and stalks in your cheek, something a hamster would do with aplomb but that I find rather difficult.  It can also be hard to tell the effect - the plant contains a mild amphetamine and it does deliver a bit of a light-headed buzz but probably no more than can be achieved by sitting with your head between your legs and then standing up quickly.

Apart from delivering spectacular insomnia, qat's main property is that it loosens the tongue.  Arabs are never short of an opinion on politics, but leave three or four Yemenis in a room with a pile of qat and they'll solve the Israel problem, explain how George W Bush got elected, eradicate global inequality and find a use for Nick Clegg.

A friend took me to a chew with a bunch of politicians, sheikhs and so on at the house of a prominent businessman.  In the mafraj (a room that exists solely for chewing) I counted thirteen bags of qat, two shisha pipes, eleven packs of cigarettes, nine white robes, one white fez-like hat, eight moustaches, five ipads and ten smartphones.  The Prime Minister is usually in attendance at this particular chew, but he is out of the country - I was happy to be told that he wouldn't take kindly to me as I was sitting in his usual seat in the corner.  The conversation was varied and much of it passed over my head, but I can inform you that many of Yemen's most prestigious men LOVE facebook.  My role was mostly limited to looking interested and listening, especially when the conversation was in arabic as my speaking is improving but I didn't think any of them would be interested to learn that I live in a nice flat with a kitchen and two bathrooms.

I bored you already about how much of a threat to Yemen's future qat is, but it is amazingly ubiquitous.  I met a guy at a party who told me is the head of a campaign against qat;  I asked him if he was very lonely but he either didn't get it or didn't think it was funny.

Socotra

I did so much work in my first two weeks in Yemen that I absolutely deserved a three day holiday with some friends and colleagues to the island paradise of Socotra.  This is one of the most ridiculous places on the planet - canyons, soaring cliffs, stalactite-sprouting caves and ten-storey sand dunes jostle for position in a landmass that would probably prove to be about the same size as Long Island if I bothered looking it up.

Two hooligans ruining the stunning view of Qalansiya lagoon

Another feature of the island that is a good effort is that a third of its plant life exists nowhere else on earth.  Best are the dragon's blood trees and the desert roses, which I believe were both invented by Salvador Dali.

Desert roses - good for laughing at, bad for hiding behind

A trip on a fishing boat around a headland to a deserted beach was a highlight - turquoise bath-hot water, snorkelling on a reef with parrot fish, watching dolphins doing that cliched dolphin in-and-out-of-the-water thing by our boat, catching plump kingfish for our lunch, laughing at our friend who caught the world's smallest fish in some of the richest fishing waters in the world and playing football on the beach.  Most wondrous of all was how a group of six people could get so sunburnt in so many unusual parts of their bodies.

Some of Socotra's magnificent wildlife

It was fish for every meal, and our guide was even kind enough to take all the bones out after witnessing the chimps' tea party we turned the meal into on the first evening.  You really can't go wrong with fresh fish on the beach, and in fact the worst food we had was two Herculean lobsters we got from a fisherman on day two.

Dragon's blood tree - pretty much the only shade in Socotra

We camped on the beach.  The heat of the sun was such that we were up at about 6 every morning, so we would tend to do a full day's activities, wonder if it was dinner time and discover it was 11.30 am.  We did so much swimming, walking, climbing and vigorous suncream-applying that sleep was never a problem, and the group would drift off on the beach under abundant stars listening to crickets and the sound of one of the group explaining the origin of shooting stars to his neighbour with astonishing inaccuracy.

Off for a swim with a nice sea view.  What a total dump.