Apparently the Qat video was pretty popular. It made it’s way onto the a local Yemeni news website, and people in the restaurants have been congratulating the “stars” for trying Qat. Due to the success, I decided to post a few more. The first two are from a Indonesian Cultural Show that we attended in Sana’a.
Guy Piercing Himself and “Eating” Fire:
Palestinian Youth Dance Troupe:
The show turned out to be roughly half as advertised, and half a Palestinian youth dance troupe. This kind of made sense because both the Indonesian
Teenage Indonesian Group
and Palestinian ambassadors to Yemen for in attendance. The Indonesian ambassador was sitting in front of us and can be seen coming in and out of the frame every once in a while.
The show opened (and closed) with a teenage Indonesian band that did covers of American and Arabic songs. These guys were followed by the Palestinian group, who danced for about an hour so. As you can can see this group got pretty political, but the crowd loved it. Then came a pair of Indonesian dancers in what I assume were traditional costumes. After these two made their way off stage a group I Iike to call the “seven dwarfs” appeared. This was actually a group of bedouin Indonesian Dancers. Last came the guy who pierced himself and put the burning hot metal to his tongue. This is the first time I had seen something like this and the video pretty much speaks for itself.
Seven Dwarfs
Traditional Dancers
One last video: this was taken by Mac, who will be working at YCMES for the next couple years. It is of a wedding that happened across the street from where we live. To read more about it you can go to the college’s official blog:
The Middle East (الشرق الأوسط) 