Early marriage in America – Part 2

Anis Albasha

During my work in the Public Relations at the U.S. Embassy in Sana'a, I have been in touch with a number of local CSOs and I was able to see the two faces of some of those organizations. In fact, it was cynical and yet provocative to observe the materialistic approaches adopted by entities which are supposed to perform humanitarian and social services for nothing in return. This kind of practices is not confined to local associations, but many individuals who call themselves 'activists' act in the same way. For both, the aim is to avail any opportunity in order to acquire fame or to get financial benefits.

In Yemen, there is something funny about doing business, even if that business is so small and modest. If someone starts any commercial project in Yemen, once it turns out to be successful, everybody then tries to proceed with the same idea! That's why it is a common thing to see small streets in different Yemeni cities full of shops which sell the same items or provide similar services. It was the same case with the emerging of the civil society work at the beginning of the nineties in the last century. When Yemenis found out that this kind of not-for-profit business is actually a successful one from a commercial point of view, thousands of civil society organizations have been registered during the period of 1996-2006! Most of these CSOs have managed to change the humanitarian/social work into a real business. Therefore, CSOs and activists look for themes not in order to serve the community or to advocate the interests of the poor but to make money or to be famous. There were many activists who exploited the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country in order to find a way-out for themselves or to secure financial aids for personal use.

On the other hand, there were few people and organizations that really cared about their community and wanted to alleviate people's suffering. I have seen cases in which lack of financial support was the main obstacle which prevented some serious and honest people from doing something good for the society.  For instance, there were persons who wanted to help in critical areas such as reducing illiteracy or combating Qat and supporting coffee instead, but those people couldn't do much because of the little fund and support they have got comparing to those who were busy with combating early marriage or spreading democracy. One time, a local association for female journalists received a fund from a foreign entity with 25.000 $ in order to print some brochures! We can easily notice how silly that was when we know the fact that the percentage of illiteracy in Yemen is more than 65 %. So, I was just wondering, who was going to read those brochures and what purposes they would serve? With that amount of 25.000 $, it would be possible to dig five wells in areas which suffer from water scarcity.

Another time there was a fund provided by the U.S. Embassy to one of the local CSO in Sana'a in order to cover the expenses of holding an event for youth. I don't remember what the exact theme of that event was, but I do remember being asked to take part in the supervision over the implementation of the financial fund offered for that event. To my surprise, I found out that most of the fund was spent to cover unnecessary expenses or to pay for services that could have been paid less. I set up a meeting for me and my supervisor with the principal of that association in order to discuss this issue.  Though she tried to sugar coat it, the argument provided to explain the mechanism of spending the money was not convincing at all.

Because of the high promotion of the matter of early marriage at both the local and the international levels, I used to think that this issue exists exclusively in Yemen until I accidentally read an article in the Washington Post titled 'Why can 12-year-olds still get married in the United States?' According to the newspaper, Fraidy Reiss, the author of the article is the founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit that helps women and girls escape arranged and forced marriages and works to end child marriage in the United States. In her article, Reiss mentioned that 'in 38 states, more than 167,000 children — almost all of them girls, some as young 12 — were married during the period from 2000 to 2010, mostly to men 18 or older. Twelve states and the District of Columbia were unable to provide information on how many children had married there in that decade. Based on the correlation we identified between state population and child marriage, we estimated that the total number of children wed in America between 2000 and 2010 was nearly 248,000.'

Reiss added that 'While most states set 18 as the minimum marriage age, exceptions in every state allow children younger than 18 to marry, typically with parental consent or judicial approval. How much younger? Laws in 27 states do not specify an age below which a child cannot marry....'. She stated that '...Many of the states that provided data included categories such as “14 and younger,” without specifying exactly how much younger some brides and grooms were.' The article is quite long and full of surprising facts, why surprising? Because that article didn't talk about early marriage in a developing country in Asia or in Africa, but it discusses this issue in a country like the United States of America.

In conclusion, I do understand that in modern developed countries such as Canada, Germany or Sweden, topics like environmental awareness, palliative care or even early marriage are discussed. Yet, in a very poor and developing country such as Yemen, it was ironic to focus on non-vital issues like early marriage in a society suffered from the absence of the most basic needs. Still, I have to admit that early marriage is a problem which has a presence in the Yemeni society. However, let's get our priorities straight. Yemeni people, activists, local NGOs and CSOs along with all the concerned parties should stop dramatizing early marriage and should focus instead on the serious issues that threaten people's lives. I know this might sound cynical given the devastating war the country is going through right now, but as Goethe once said, things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

East and West: how to dine, how to taste!

Rasha Almaqaleh

During my stay here in Western countries, I have noticed significant differences between Arabic and Western dining customs and taste preferences. I strongly believe that taste preference is something we grow up with and our tongues are accustomed to. Maybe that explains why sometimes what is deemed mouth-watering in one country might be considered in another one as puke-inducing, or as Ross said in Friends when he ate Rachel’s trifle “It tastes like feet!” 

While cultural differences are capable of causing a great deal of misunderstanding and awkward situations, they can be sometimes very amusing to observe and interesting to experience. Here are my observations about some of the differences between East and West in eating styles and taste preferences. 

Dining customs 

My brother, on the right, and his friends at dinner at his place

While people in the West are accustomed to eating at dining tables, many people in the Arabian Peninsula eat their meals on the floor. This is something that Westerners would never do unless they go on a picnic. In Yemen for example, every meal is an 'indoor picnic' in which a vinyl or plastic 'tablecloth' is placed on the floor, most probably in the living room. Then, people sit cheerfully in a circle around their meal and enjoyably eat together from one big plate. People in Yemen share food and eating from one plate is considered intimate and polite. If you ask to have your food in a separate plate, that could be rude and offensive; as if you were implying that your fellow diners are not clean or they have a contagious disease. 

Moreover, utensils such as forks and knives are not commonly used in the traditional Arabic dining. Only spoons are used to eat soups and some salads. Other than that, bread is the main utensil and it is used to scoop up the food. In the Western dining style, knives and forks are essential at the table. 'Etiquettely' speaking, a good diner is expected to hold the knife with their right hand while holding the fork with the left one. I personally think that whoever invented this style didn't obviously think of all the existing possibilities! In our culture, people ONLY eat with their right hand and using the left one in eating is literally ' off the table'. 

Spicy food

 Sometimes on the weekend, my husband and I buy Shawarma sandwiches from a Turkish restaurant. We order a spicy one for me and a non-spicy for my husband. Ironically, both sandwiches are not spicy. They almost taste the same to me.  

If you ask Western people whether they like spicy foods or not, the answer most probably is a  'Yes',  with a big smile! The funny thing is what is considered 'spicy' in Western culture is not even recognized as spicy in the East. 

Whipping cream

In Western cuisines, whipping cream is commonly used in soup recipes or with fish. The first time I saw fish with whipping cream was when a lovely friend invited us to a fine fish restaurant. We thought to ourselves that ‘fish is fish and no surprises there’. Well, we were terribly wrong!

 We decided to order whatever our ‘inviter’ was going to order and we didn’t even bother to read the menu carefully. And when our dishes arrived, it was quite a shock! There were three slices of fish topped with whipping cream and more shockingly the fish wasn’t even cooked! Later, after asking the waitress, we found out that the fish was not cooked at all. Instead, it was soaked for a while in a salty solution and then served with cream.

Even though whipping cream is not part of the Arabic cuisine, it is popularly known and widely used in the Arab world.  However, in Yemen for example, we use it ‘on our terms’! That means we add cream only to sweet dishes and desserts. When it comes to using whipping cream in Yemen, there are red lines that no one dare to cross. One of them is whipping cream and fish never meet on the same plate!

Coffee and tea

Coffee and tea are very important hot beverages all over the world. However, the ways these two magical drinks are prepared differ from one place to another. For example, we Yemenis prepare the tea by boiling the water on the stove in a special saucepan called ‘Jazwa’, which is designated to preparing tea or coffee. Then, we add the sugar, the tea, and as desired mint or ground /crushed Cardamom is added as a flavoring. The tea should be served scalding hot and we have the ability to drink it immediately once it is served.

As for coffee, the method of preparation is very similar to preparing tea. We boil the water in the Jazwa and then we add sugar and cardamom and ground coffee - and milk as desired. After that, we leave all the ingredients to boil for a while and then serve the coffee and drink it very hot, too. We enjoy the coffee that is prepared this way and that is probably why the popular Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote a poem, which was later sang by the famous Lebanese singer Marcel Khalife , saying : “I miss my mother’s coffee…” !

On the other hand, preparing coffee and tea in the West has been modernized. Western people don’t use the old saucepan-on-stove method anymore. Instead, they use special cooking appliances such as electrical kettles and coffee makers. While such appliances definitely make life easier, they don’t necessarily make beverages any tastier. Tea bags are very popular here in the West and all you need to do in order to drink a cup of tea is put a tea bag in a cup, boil some water with a water boiler then pour it in the cup. Does this method produce a decent cup of tea? Well, the answer depends completely on geography; people from the Arab world would most probably say ‘NO’ with are-you-kidding tone!

Preparing coffee in the Western world is a whole another story. This is a world where coffee machines control human beings. These powerful appliances come in different sizes, colors and shapes. I remember when we bought our first coffee machine, how we hovered around it trying to figure out how it worked. Thank God we live in the internet age; we found the answer in YouTube. With practice, we became experts at ‘machining’ coffee, and we discovered that this machine has a wonderful feature: whatever type of ground coffee you use or whatever the amount of water you add, you get each time the same awful taste. Such a quality! Moreover, as a person who comes from the East, I find that the cup of coffee produced this way is not hot enough or maybe it gets cold quickly which ruins the fun especially in wintertime. 

Ultimately, culture plays a major role in determining our taste preferences and how we eat our food. Observing these cultural differences at any rate is fascinating. It is a wonderful experience that is rich in details. Even though such details may seem sometimes inappreciable, they are important in drawing a complete picture of cultures and societies.

Early marriage in America - Part 1

Anis Albasha

The Washington Post

Before the ongoing disastrous war in Yemen, it really pissed me off that, in the few times the Western media talked about Yemen, it focused on the issue of early marriage as if it were the main problem of the country. The only time I saw the name of Yemen in Sweden was in a magazine’s article about the ‘phenomenon’ of early marriage in Yemen! Ironically, Western media does not speak much about Yemen now though the devastation caused by the war is far worse than the consequences of early marriage. I am not going to talk about that kind of hypocrisy now but I just want to highlight the reasons behind the focus on the topic of early marriage in Yemen years ago.

A long time ago, it was no secret that Yemen, as one of the least developed countries in the Middle East, has been suffering from different grievous problems such as corruption, mismanagement, poverty and illiteracy. Let alone the other issues which are natural results of some negative inherited traditions such as inequality between men and women, tribalism and stratification. Trying to address just one of those issues would be a herculean task which would require enormous efforts by the whole nation. However, local NGOs and CSOs in Yemen have managed to make the issue of early marriage ‘the number one problem’ that requires global attention and international support.

NGOs ‘Non-Governmental Organizations’ and CSOs ‘Civil Society Organizations’ are terms encompassing organizations that are not affiliated by the government or a private company. As not-for-profit organizations, both NGOs and CSOs are supposed to perform a variety of service and humanitarian functions, promote the interests of the poor, provide basic social services, or undertake community development. There are about 3.7 million NGOs around the world. In Yemen, there are almost 14 thousand civil society organizations; most of them are based in Sana’a, the capital while the others are located in different areas.

Unfortunately, most Yemeni CSOs are actually profit-making entities which exploit their identities in order to get personal gains or to promote certain political /religious agendas ‘most NGOs and CSOs in Yemen were established by different political parties or private entities’. In the light of that and with taking into consideration the fact that most of those organizations in Yemen secretly adopt the objective of ‘how to make extra money or to get more benefits’, we can understand the  deliberate intensive focus on the issue of early marriage.

For those organizations, there is no need to address serious problems of the society when it is possible to use other loose and dubious themes which would be able to attract the international community’s attention and to secure plentiful financial support. On the other hand, adopting serious themes like ‘child malnutrition’, ‘illiteracy’ or ‘drought and water scarcity’ would require real work and extra efforts. Moreover, dealing with such serious problems would force local NGOs and CSOs to spend all the donated money they would receive from different parties.

In order to make the most of the funds they have got, most Yemeni CSOs, which I call fly-by-night organizations, choose to proceed with the easiest way. That is to say, instead of addressing a critical matter such as chewing Qat, CSOs would rather raise and magnify an issue like early marriage. Consequently, it would be easier to sell this case to the Western media which cares about such topics more than anything else. Eventually, petitions from local CSOs for funds would be welcomed by the international community.  The question here is, in the absence of effective controlling mechanisms, who is going to be held responsible for spending amounts of money allocated to support combating an issue like early marriage or to address other flimsy themes such as ‘enhancing professional transparency’ or ‘raising democratic awareness among rural women’? And what are the criteria that might be used to measure out the effectiveness and the success of these projects?

To be realistic, no one would expect local NGOs and CSOs in Yemen to have the magic bullet for all the critical problems of the country. However, there were areas in which those organizations could have played an effective role in making the situation much better or less worse at least. For instance, what would be the result of Yemeni CSOs decided to address an issue like street children? I don’t have exact numbers, but I am sure that the number of children whom people see in the streets everyday is much bigger than the number of the girls who got married at an early age. In a government study performed in 2008 and funded by the Arab Council for Childhood and Development, pointed Fuad al-Salahi, the Head of the Research Team, that “despite the fact the number of street children had been increasing, the number of the civil society institutions that deal with this case did not exceed 3 to 5 institutions among 6,000 working institutions in the Yemeni arena”.

Let’s take another serious topic that has been neglected by most Yemeni CSOs, which is child malnutrition. Did local organizations in Yemen have no idea about the horrifying facts regarding this issue, or they just were fully aware of the consequences of early marriage? According to the UNICEF, over one million Yemeni girls and boys under five suffer from acute malnutrition. This fact was stated in the ‘Situation Analysis of Children in Yemen 2014’, which was issued two years before the war. According to this report, child nutrition indicators in Yemen are among the worst in the world. The report mentioned that “another area that is heavily impacting Yemen’s development is magnitude and multiple faces of its humanitarian challenges. Most Yemenis are affected in some way, and around one in three receive humanitarian aid, across areas faced with poor access to water and sanitation, food security and malnutrition. Surveys in 2012 established that acute malnutrition in children is well above the WHO 15 per cent threshold of critical in some area (more than double that rate in Al-Hodeidah).

These are some examples of the fatal issues in Yemen which get zero interest from the local NGOs and CSOs. In fact, I am not diminishing the issue of early marriage which is unfair and horrible. But I find it so ironic to focus on this inconsequential topic in the presence of other issues of grave concern which require urgent attention and deserve to be in the limelight. If those CSOs wanted to do something good for the society, they would adopt the case of delayed marriage which is no less serious than early marriage and even more important.

In the second part of this article, I will talk about my personal experience with some NGOs in Yemen, how I found out about their manipulating approaches as well as about the reason behind my choice of the title for this article.