One Step Forward, Ten Steps Back

It was my last full day of work in Yemen today, and I'm puzzled. I'm confused about what I am supposed to take away from Yemen. I came here half-filled with fear, mostly for my own safety, and I am leaving only with the fear of what the future holds for the local Yemenis, for people like Leena.

I learned a few new things about Islam -- so central to Yemen -- today. In Islam, apparently, if you kill someone you have to pay the family of the victim a sum. But -- if the person you kill is a woman, say many conservative religious leaders in Yemen, you only pay the family half the cost of a real, human life.

This interpretation of Islam is what is ruining Yemen, said a well-to-do Yemeni who works for a political think tank here, and has children in San Francisco and a niece who he has encouraged to study engineering in Canada. He insists that the extremists have only burgeoned since the end of the Gulf War when many were repatriated from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, carrying with them these extreme beliefs.

Reasonable people, he said, would never fall for such nonsense. Only extremism doesn't attract reasonable people, it baits uneducated and isolated people. People with an inability to think outside of a dangerous box.

Reasonable people would follow religious leaders like Sheik Yahia, who we also interviewed today. The Sheik pronounced the merits of family planning, which he says is inherit to Islam, a religion which helps its followers to plan for healthy lives. He even said vasectomy and tubal ligation -- permanent contraceptive methods -- are allowed as long they protect the health of the people. Sheik Yahia is working to make the age of marriage 18, and to outlaw female genital mutilation. But Sheik Yahia is reasonable, educated and he is of the minority. The people of Yemen can't rely on Sheik Yahia to be their savior.

More people need to be educated and more money needs to be allocated to social programs that make women's health and education a priority. But I don't see that happening anytime soon for Yemen. Dr. Jamila, a leader from the ministry of health, fights, every day, just to keep reproductive health as a national priority. She drives around Yemen with her face boasting its beauty, and I fear for her. A liberated feminist, dedicated to women's empowerment, Dr. Jamila has to use all her energy and will just to be able to sit at the same table with the conservative leaders who have an incredible sway over most of Yemen. She has to plead with them just to hear her, and not to leave the table.

Once she gets to the table, she then has to ensure that what she wants gets translated to each and every puzzle piece that comprises Yemen. Because in Yemen, each segment, or "governorate," is run by a different personality. Powerful national leaders like Dr. Jamila have little leverage over what is happening in each segmented part. Many parts are immersed in tribal warfare, most are running out of water, and some have become havens for planting seeds of hate, and training the next generation of Al Quaida warriors. There are only small glimmers of hope.

Dr. Zaeen, for instance, is the district ministry of health official, for Lahj. It is because Dr. Zaeen re-allocated the budget to put the health of mothers and babies at the top of his agenda, that the hospital in his district has become so welcoming to its women patients. It is a safe place women can come to deliver their babies, to breastfeed, to learn about kangaroo mother care and to immunize their newborns. Women hear from their neighbors about the friendly midwives who tell them how to space their pregnancies by using a contraceptive method of their choice, and they want to visit Lahj hospital too. That way, they can preserve just a small part of their youth, like their neighbors. They don't have to have newborns every year from the time they turn 16, and exchange dead babies for live ones as if that is a normal way of life. Maybe they can take some time to learn to read, if their husbands let them.

So there are the glimmers of hope in Yemen, and the educated few trying to change things a little a bit. Educated people know that by keeping half of the population down, they are keeping their country down too. They know how important it is to educate their people, so they don't fall prey to hatred. But they don't know exactly -- if they have the power to make a significant change.

Because according to mr. political think tank, things in Yemen aren't getting better, they are getting worse.

So I am unsure how far this glimmer of hope -- improvements in reproductive health and family planning at public health facilities -- will go.

One step forward, ten steps back.

Every educated woman I've met here, I have to add, has been against wearing the face veil. But they all do it at one time or another, when they are sick of being stared at, when a scar on their face became too much for the public to handle, when they feel they are defaming their fathers. So what will it take for these women to come out from under their veils and to see the detriment of hiding Yemen's most powerful commodity? If the educated women can't quite do it, when is the rest of the country going to follow? When are women in Yemen going to count for more than half a person?

And the face veil, of course, is only a start. But, in my very humble opinion, it's a healthy one.