Teaching Under a Crescent Moon

By :David Jorgensen

Special to Yemen Times Reporter Murad

Scotland is a cold place at the best of times, but June last year was particularly wet, windy and miserable. One morning I received an email inviting me to teach English at a language school in Aden. As I knew nothing of the Middle East at the time, the offer filled me with both excitement and apprehension and I didn't know whether or not to accept it.

I was in two minds. On the one hand, mental pictures of an Arabian desert with stone houses, camels and coloured shawls had a mesmerising effect on me. On the other hand, I was terrified of moving somewhere that would probably be fundamentally different from everything I had known so far. What if I started to feel isolated or lonely?

I needed some sound advice. So I consulted the UK Foreign Ministry website, where I was advised against travelling to Yemen because of the risk of kidnappings and Al-Qaeda attacks. Luckily, a friend told me not to let an unlikely worst case scenario put me off. I decided to accept the offer. I was going to Aden.

Since my return to the UK, I have come to regard the  UK Foreign Ministry website as an inadequate and misleading source of information. During my six months in Yemen I never met a single pickpocket, let alone kidnapper or terrorist; on the contrary, I was treated like a sultan. My experience as a visitor and teacher in Aden was incredibly rewarding.

At home, I am used to being anonymous. Scotland boasts thousands of pale faces identical to mine. In Aden, however, I stood out like a knobbly, sore, pink thumb. Combine that with the enthusiasm with which Adenis greet foreigners, and soon I began to feel like a local celebrity; people were waving at me, shaking my hand, offering little presents and asking me lots of questions in English, Arabic or Russian (of which I speak only one).

Nowhere was the sensation of fame more felt than at the language school. Just outside the main building lies the small cafeteria that always fills up with giddy students. Here I decided to sit with a cup of tea on day one in Aden. “Play with me, teacher”, a cap-wearing teenager said, handing me a table tennis bat. His friend came over with more tea and biscuits, and in no time I had made two new friends and learned the numbers one to twenty in Arabic.

On that day, I gained a reputation as a shockingly bad table tennis player, but more importantly as an approachable teacher. To my surprise this reputation lasted throughout my stay, and what a blessing it turned out to be: my students were, without a single doubt, the high point of my six-month stay  in Aden.

Every day, I would be approached by students. “Teacher David!” they would shout from the cafeteria as I came out of the school. They wanted to play games, sit and eat snacks, and have a chat in English. In return for just a little bit of my time, the students did so many things for me. Soon they would take me out at night in their car, explain all about the history of Aden, and let me in on their aspirations and dreams for the future.

Fame has its price though. There were of course times when the workload had built up leaving no time for fun and games. On these days, there would be students everywhere wanting this or that, and the sound of “Teacher! Teacher!” would be hard to dodge. With a big student population in a rather small city, there were few places to hide.

Bringing a stack of essays or quizzes to the café at the mall or one of the private beaches could sometimes provide a temporary quiet zone but not always. When a colleague and I went to the beach, both of us wearing shorts, we passed a group of girls and although neither of us knew them, we were met with an enthusiastic “Hello, teachers!”. We quickly went to the other end of the beach.

For better and for worse, Aden was a place where I would never feel alone or isolated. The vast majority of people who I spoke to had wide smiles on their faces and were delighted to offer assistance. The Adenis made me – an outsider – feel like an insider within days of setting foot on Yemeni soil.

Through all the meetings and encounters with students, I came to learn a lot about what people in Aden think and feel. A key theme in our conversations was politics. School policy sensibly dictated that we avoid the topic of politics in class. Although we did try, this was in practice impossible to do, and especially so once the street protests had began. Young Adenis are generally passionate about politics.

Politics and strong emotion go hand in hand. Once I left the classroom for two minutes, only to find upon my return that a shouting match had broken out. Three people had expressed support for an autonomous state in the South, thereby deeply offending those supporting unity. On another occasion, in a class on 'will' and 'going to' as future forms, my student produced the following example sentence: “In 2020, the South is going to be independent again.” He then turned to his neighbour, a Sana'ani boy, put his arm around him and said, “but we will still love our brothers in the North.”

South Yemen has undergone so many regime changes that each family holds a wealth of anecdotes from the different times in the past – as well as convictions about which system best suits Adeni society. These stories and ideas have been handed down to my students, who, as part of the new generation of young adults, will shape the future of Aden and the whole country.

As the street protests continue in Aden, it could well be that the next shift lies just around the corner. During the protests, politics found altogether new ways of making a sneaky  appearance in the classroom. I did my best to limit our discussions, but I must admit that I was always thrilled to hear my students' views and thoughts.

I came to Aden to teach. Ironically, Aden ended up teaching me. Most days spent in Aden's diverse neighbourhoods were like a real-life tutorial in topics spanning local food to colonial and modern history. And my students would fill in most of the gaps when I approached them with my many burning questions about the city. These students of mine really did complete the experience for me. In addition to being a smiling, fun-loving, and highly motivated bunch, they gave me full insight into the mindset, the pulse and the delightful and dynamic culture that prevails in the port city of Aden.