Return to Balhaf for Rotation #2

The most profound impression from my three-week Christmas vacation was its brevity. I’m reminded of the old-timey Hollywood depiction of the passing of time where the calendar pages curl and drop to the ground like falling leaves.

I learned something about myself during the time off: although I didn’t really have many demands on my time, I still managed to fall back into that familiar lifestyle of being rushed. I am perpetually rushing whether in Austin or in Yemen: here rushed, there rushed, everywhere rushed rushed. I’m the old MacDonald of poor time management.

I got back to Balhaf in the early hours of New Year’s Day and stopped by my cabin to unpack suitcases and take a shower before heading into the office. The transition from vacation mode to work came while in the shower, when I noticed that the soap did not rinse very well and I made a mental note to check the CaCO3 metering pumps at the RO plant.

The project remains a fascination for me. There are new and different things every day. The human interest stories are enough to keep me engaged. This afternoon, at management’s insistence, I accompanied security in an investigation of an illicit still that was in operation at the Hawk (a heavy equipment contractor) bakery. They made a wine by fermenting fruit and sugar with bread yeast, then they distilled the resultant ferment using a crude but ingenious still, involving double boilers and ice. The word I got was that the moonshine was respectable, but, unfortunately, they had dumped it by the time I got there. The human interest was the fall guy. Hodji or something, from Bangalore. He was shaking in his boots. It was pretty clear he had been set up as the sacrificial lamb. He told the security guy – Keitel, a stern Lebanese ex-military police - that nobody else knew about the operation, and that he drank all of the product himself. Keitel wanted to implicate management for duplicity, but I kindof cooled him down. It is tough for me to see someone punished for something I would have done, if I has thought of it. I kept Keitel from dragging down the kitchen management, even though it was clear they were partners in crime. But I couldn't do anything for Hodj, who was on the next flight to Bangalore. The problem was that by late afternoon, all 3 thousand mostly Yemenis at Hawk knew that Yemgas knew about the still. The Shariat has a problem with alcohol, and consequently under the circumstances, Yemgas/Hawk had to sacrifice someone in order to avert another uprising.