Random photos

The winter weather in south coastal Yemen is just about ideal: cool nights and very pleasant daytime temperatures. Only one problem: occasional windstorms in the "empty quarter" up north stir up the desert dust which diffuses its way to us (not blown to us, it has been windless here in Balhaf). The empty quarter is a huge, empty desert occupying about 1/4 of the Saudi peninsula, where the wind has been blowing the sand around for so long that the particle size is like tobacco smoke. It acts like ink if you touch it. And it doesn't settle very fast once it becomes airborne, which is why it eventually diffuses here even in the absence of wind.) We have been shrouded in a haze of this dust for a couple of days (Feb 3, 08). This photo is taken in the still of the morning on an otherwise cloudless day. Dust is a way of life throughout large parts of the Middle East, and it goes a long way towards explaining the popularity of the scarf thing that people wrap around their heads. At the first hint of dust conditions, the Yemeni men cover their face with them like a surgical mask. They don't even think about it; it is a reflex. Of course, the women are perpetually prepared for a dust storm.

I spent one day doing an environmental baseline assessment of this beach to determine whether it can be safely used as a recreational outlet on Friday afternoons for 10,000 recreation-deprived workers. The beach is in the next cove east of the construction site. Nobody owns it, nobody goes there, it is a hundred miles from nowhere. My job was to evaluate the potential vulnerability of the coral and to determine whether there were any nesting turtles who may object to human encroachment. In the background is a volcanic island, one of hundreds along the coast. It is safe to guess that no human has ever been on it. Pretty inhospitable basalt boulders, why would anyone want to go there. Still you don't normally think that there are desolate places like this outside of the Antarctic.

Wild (ferrel?) camels are common sights while driving around the countryside. Nobody really owns them as far as I can tell. Apparently they are easily rounded up when someone needs a pack animal, then they are let loose again.

Photo of Balhaf Harbor. By the end of 2008 there will be a long pier completed which will allow deep draft ocean vessels to dock and load product.