Strange Day in Mukulla

I traveled to Mukulla on Thursday to deal with a recalcitrant contractor. The owner, Abdullah, is clueless. The contract that we have with him is to transport mixed waste to his facility, sort it into recyclable and non-recyclable components, and then haul the non-recyclable part to a legit final resting place. (hint: "legit" does not include the nearest hole in the ground in the desert)

Clueless.

Instead of hauling this guk to a landfill, Abdullah has, instead, accumulated 3 months worth of it at his hell-like facility on the east side of Mukulla, and I am in the skittish position of wanting to revoke his contract, but not wanting to do it before he follows through on the sort-and-dispose routine. In fact, I don't want him to get a sniff that that is my intention, otherwise he will abandon many many tonnes of crap in his fenced place in the desert, said crap strobing with identification with a certain largest construction project in Yemen.

So I spent the day visiting landfills with Abdullah, explaining to him that this is the most important part of our contractual relationship, not hiring armed guards to greet me with abundant fanfare whenever I visit his facility.

OK. All that background info was just to set the stage for the strangeness of the place I wandered into during the afternoon.

We drove to the Mukulla municipal landfill, if you can call it that. Otherworldly is my name for it. I'll skip the elaboration: in a word - strange. We extracted the necessary information from the resident (literally) landfill workers (tipping fees, etc) in order for me to map out a solution to the Abdullah issue. Then, as we were leaving the landfill, my assistant pointed out a very crowded market place, which, he explained, we needed to inspect. So we parked and went in.

Turns out, it was a Qat market. On a Thrusday late morning at 11 AM it was a mob scene - hundreds of people milling around in an open air market sprawling with vendor booths selling nothing but Qat.

For the uninitiated (and for the record, I am uninitiated) Qat is a natural narcotic similar to cocaine. It is EXTREMELY popular in northeastern Africa and the Saudi peninsula. It is so pervasively used by Yemenis that the workers at the Balhaf project cannot comprehend the prohibition against using it. Backhoe operators at the Balhaf project, who have been told a million times not to chew it while at work, are dumbfounded when they are ordered to be removed from their jobs by Ex-Pat managers. The president of Yemen chews it while in conference with members of his cabinet.

I think it would be an interesting study to compare Qat with some of the other well-known drugs in terms of effects on motor control, addictiveness, long term health effects, etc. These things I know: it gobbles up a lot of the Balhaf employees income and there is no remorse - on payday, these guys make a beeline to the Qat dealers. I have read reports that its most incidious effect is that much of the arable land in Yemen (hint: there ain't much) has been converted to Qat crops. This, in spite of increasing rioting because of inflating food prices.

Pretty strange. Anyway, here is an insightful article from Yemen Times. The last couple of paragraphs touch on the Qat issue http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=1152&p=view&a=1

Also, here are some photos of the Qat market and landfill.



My assistant, Hussein, squeezing the tomatos, so to speak. My guard, not guarding me. My contractor, Abdullah, in black.







Hundreds of people buying and selling Qat. The market area is huge.






Beggar woman working the parking lot outside the Qat market. I haven't seen any men beggars, but there are many women beggars, mostly at places where discretionary spending is occurring, like a Qat market. This is the first woman that I have seen wearing any color. Every other woman I have seen wears uniformly undistinguished black robes







Mukulla Municipal Landfill