Day 5: visiting the fishing village & the cave dweller
In the morning, we went to a small fishing community that is only accessible from the sea. The boat ride took about 1 hour.
Our group was greeted on the shore by excited kids and their very hospitable parents. They argued a little which family would host us. One man won. He led us to his house where he immediately pulled the rug out of his room, spread it outside in the courtyard and started making tea for the entire group.
The village consists of a dozen of houses. Each house has 2 rooms – one for the male half of the family, the other is for women. Boys while they are little sleep with the women. Once they reach the age of 12, they are moved to sleep outside. Every family has many kids who roam freely around the village and can stay in any house. The villagers were only too happy to show us their more than modest rooms.
The ladies of the group were showed the female room which looked exactly the same as men’s. Here, I had a chance to see Soqotri women without their head covering. Narrow, well-proportioned faces with perfectly toned dark skin made the women very pretty indeed. They eyed us shyly while we were staring at them. Of course, no photos were allowed.
We left the village with mixed feelings. Here, there was a community that lives without modern facilities. They do not know that they lack TV, refrigerators, A/C, and many other things but this does not prevent them from being happy. The villagers were genuinely glad to have visitors from the outside world. This may change in the near future. Although Socotra archipelago formally belongs to Yemen, in reality it is governed by Abu Dhabi. The UAE provides phone service there, they build roads and schools. It is possible for the locals to send their children to study in Abu Dhabi. The ties with the UAE are stronger than with the mainland Yemen.
We had lunch at the campsite and were about to leave it when I had an accident. I was on the beach speaking with others, then turned around and made a step forward without looking what was under my feet. Apparently, right behind me that was a palm tree trunk laying on the ground. My feet got stuck under it and I landed flat on my stomach. In the blink of an eye, I went from standing upright to being prostrated face down. Confused, I hurriedly got up trying to assess the damage. My mouth and nose were full of sand, my legs were bleeding. The rough surface of the palm tree trunks worked as sandpaper and scraped the skin from the front of my shins clean. I spat out the sand and quickly rinsed my face and shins with water from my water bottle. Then, I realized how fortunate I was. Had it been there a single rock where I fell, my face could have been a big mess and something definitely would have been broken but it was all pure white fine sand that cushioned my fall. Even my glasses were intact. Although the scraped area was quite large, there was nothing to do about it other than wait for it to heal naturally. I disinfected it as much as possible, changed from shorts into long pants to cover my wounds and followed the group to see the cave dweller.
Abdullah prepared a treat for us – shells stuffed with seafood. We took one shell each and sat down to talk. Abdullah’s English was good enough, he also knows many Russian words and in other languages too. He is 62, lives in this cave and visits his wife in the village. He had 15 children, 9 of them died. He eats vegetables, figs, and seafood and fish that he catches himself. Cheerful and muscled, with a lean body, Abdullah moved with the agility of a young man. Groups visit Abdullah regularly. He became so popular that he got himself a cellphone and an Instagram account.
Abdullah took us down to the beach for a field trip to teach about the local marine life and to show how he provides for himself.
When we were leaving, we saw the next group going toward Abdullah’s cave. He was busy indeed. We waded along the beach back to our cars parked at a good distance from the cave. The salty seawater made my scraped shins sting but walking did not hurt much. On the following morning, we were moving inland to stay in the mountains.
