When I think about it, I believe most of our friends and family don't understand why The Man went to Yemen. For as long as I have known him, The Man has wanted to work abroad. He kept applying to jobs at the UN. His parents were working in Uganda when The Man was born. His brother worked in Saudi Arabia for a year. At retirement, his father tried to go to Oman, but it didn't pan out.
When a friend of The Man's got into the UN in 1990, The Man looked for opportunities there too. Wait a sec, I said at the time, I'm about to give birth. Why do you want to leave? He didn't want to leave, but he couldn't help putting in an application all the same. He's put in a few more in the last few years.
But this year, the opportunity came up. He had just finished his MBA. He had been talking with two UN agencies. Yemen panned out first.
But The Man had concerns too: He's not a young buck any more, how could he leave his family, and what will he come back to? In the end, I wanted him to go, knowing I would miss him like crazy. Because if he didn't go now when the opportunity was here, when would he go? He has a vision of us living abroad, travelling to different cultures and learning to speak different languages. My vision is that we would do that, and we would also be doing work that brings greater meaning and satisfaction. If things work out, his going to Yemen brings us one step closer to realizing these visions. And if Yemen doesn't work out, he would come back that much more enriched, and just imagine the stories he has to tell, as his mother would say. And besides, I needed time to sort out my own issues.
So The Man turned down two job offers and put other contacts on hold to go to Yemen.
Already, he's picking up Arabic. Right this minute, I think he's attending the 9th European Film Festival at the Yemen Culture Centre. Free admission, says the poster.
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