Yemen: When you land in a country for the first time, you have no reference point to fall back on, everything is unfamiliar and your brain requires time to adjust to the new surroundings.

Arriving at Yemen’s Sana’a Airport on my maiden visit, we were bussed to the terminal in a vehicle, which had already seen better days during World War II, let alone in the 21st Century.  Arriving after 9:00 p.m., it was not possible to survey the external landscape, or even assess the terminal building due to the low lighting employed either to save on power or to give a dramatic effect to our arrival.  As we entered the building, it was apparent  we were not the only flight to have recently arrived, as the hall was agog with humanity.  We were urged to collect and fill landing cards from a table and then ushered to form an orderly queue.  Tired and eager to go through quickly, we did as we were told; the assumption being that was the line for immigration, nothing unusual about that.  What was unusual, the officer who did the ushering had somehow managed to insert a full tennis ball inside his mouth, which he did not seem bothered by and carried on with his job unperturbed.

The queue moved slowly but at least it was moving.  As I made progress down the line, I realised we were being medically examined.  Not a thorough medical examination, I might add.  A similarly uniformed officer at the head of the queue had an electronic thermometer with a protruding sensor which he inserted in the ear of the person first in line, took a reading and shooed the passenger towards immigration.  Two things caused me some concern.

Firstly, the examiner was not sterilising the instrument between readings thus ensuring a wide spread infection of some sort amongst us all.  Whatever illness they were trying to prevent from entering the country (chicken flu, ostrich cough or turkey cold, I had no idea), they were enhancing the possibility of its spread by issuing the local village idiot with a dubious test instrument.

Secondly, he too had inserted a tennis ball in his mouth!  I looked towards my companion who had visited Yemen before and he whispered his single-word explanation: Qat!  So, there was this drug addict who was about to insert a highly infected and somewhat sharp metal rod inside my ear; I wondered what procedure they had for letting me return to my country of origin before I had a lethal dose of germs introduced to my system.

For the next 20 minutes or so, everywhere I looked there were airport officials and staff who all had one side of their face disturbingly enlarged with a massive amount of green leaves that they gently sucked on to release more of the cathinone substance which is supposed to induce euphoria in the user.  The impression I had of those men that night was they were experiencing anything but euphoria.  They must have had a lousy batch from some unscrupulous supplier; damned airport qat!

I finally had my temperature taken but not noted by the indifferent medical orderly and reached the passport control counter, handed over my passport and landing card.  By way of making me feel welcome in to Yemen, the officer also with a tennis ball inside his face, looked up and smiled at me, revealing the most disgusting yellowy brown teeth I have ever seen.  I thanked God for not making me a dentist!

For the rest of my fascinating stay in Sana’a I became aware of this totally acceptable social habit in Yemen amongst mostly males in public, starting with boys from as little as ten years of age.  I have no idea how addictive or harmful this stuff is and I have no intention of passing moral judgment on an entire nation but, the thought that stayed with me since then is: Dental Hygiene!