Higher education in time of war and disease

As with coffee and Yemen, there was no previous association in my mind between Yemen and China until I've met a few Yemenis who have studied in China. That association gained more details during this horrific global spread of the Covid-19 as I read Supreme Council continues to follow up on evacuation arrangements for Yemeni students in China (Feb 6) and later, UAE evacuates Yemeni students from China (Feb 20).

This got me curious how people in war-ravaged countries like Yemen manage to continue their education despite the odds, particularly those who were able to get out and study in another country, in this case China. I do not know the individual stories of the 187 Yemeni students evacuated from Wuhan. From where I'm sitting, I can only look up online and learn a little bit more in terms of numbers.

I was not able to find stats on Yemeni students abroad in any functioning Yemeni government website for education or foreign affairs but found some Chinese gov't data on international students in China. The latest that I can find is this Statistical report on international students in China for 2018 which gives a total of "492,185 international students from 196 countries/areas pursuing their studies in 1,004 higher education institutions in China’s 31 provinces/autonomous regions/provincial-level municipalities..." It's hard to tell how many of this almost half a million students are from Yemen since Yemen is lumped into the continent of Asia. There is a table of number of students by country of origin but only the top 15 countries are given.

Poking around some more, I found this data on Inbound International Students to China, 2011-2016 which shows that for 2016, the number of students from Yemen was 3,247 out of the total 442,389. That's less than 1% of the total but the increasing numbers from 2011 to 2016 for Yemen is quite interesting considering that the country's ongoing war is now into its sixth year. See my chart of the data below:

I found this study Leaving Home: Yemeni Students Discuss Study Abroad Migration whose author interviewed Yemeni students (all males) in Guangdong province of China about their decisions to leave Yemen to study abroad. The conclusion notes how "tribulations brought about by war and financial devastation have been catalysts for personal growth" for the participants and how they are "highly motivated toward economic success, and that this drive comes from older male family members in whom participants exhibit a great deal of pride and affection." I guess we can say the same for any group in similar circumstances but to me this highlights a fundamental difficulty in fighting for principles that require a level of detachment from personal, family or tribal ties. I see this especially as the author of the study continues to note the participants' detachment from the humanitarian toll going on in their country. But maybe, I, who considers herself a humanitarian, do the same. What really drives me to keep waiting for a visa to go work in Yemen? Or, as I started writing this post amidst the fear of a Covid-19 pandemic, how much attachment and detachment do we cultivate in our lives to truly be engaged, involved and caring about the issues of our times?

Yemen and Coffee

Eggers, Dave. Monk of Mokha. New York: Vintage Books, 2019.

I chose to buy this book because I was intrigued myself that the origins of coffee, this drink that I cannot start my day without, includes Yemen, of all places. I also thought it would be a good break from reading articles on the conflict and humanitarian situation in that country.

The first chapter of the book deftly hooks you into the story with a satchel filled with money and a new laptop only to get lost as fatigue caught up with the boundless energy of dreams for a bright future. It reminded me of how I felt sunk and very stupid, when I lost my new Surface 3 laptop, in circumstances carrying lesser dreams than what the protagonist found himself in but gut-wrenching nevertheless. And with that, I wanted to know how our hero, Mokhtar, overcome such a loss to become the founder of Port of Mokha, a company selling highly-rated coffee from Yemen.

The next chapters offer that joyful possibility that an individual, struck by a knowledge that makes him or her dream of big things, will open himself/herself to opportunities and key people along the way and somehow carve out a path, circuitous and perilous that may be, and make a dream a reality. Mokhtar wasn’t even a coffee drinker when he got excited upon learning that coffee had its origins in a Yemeni port called Mokha. Why did that discovery stirred and drove him to learn more and, against all odds, to bring Yemeni coffee to the U.S. and beyond?

We could look at the story from several angles but still the angle that I can understand is that of an immigrant whose identity was otherwise linked to war, conflict, terrorism, religious backwardness and poverty but who found something worth redeeming about his country of origin’s link to coffee. He embarked on an uncertain path whose twists and turns were guided by a network of family, friends, mentors, employers, colleagues and other people along his way.

There was money to be made but also a lot of money needed to get the dream become a reality. There were several points in the story when we worried that Mokhtar will not be able to get anything going because of lack of money to pay the coffee farmers, to build a mill, etc. But the guiding principle behind Mokhtar’s journey can best be summed up in a saying that his grandfather instilled in him, “Keep the money in your hand, never in your heart.” Or as fully stated from a quote from the medieval Islamic imam, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,

“When there is money in your hand and not in your heart, it will not harm you even if it is a lot; and when it is in your heart, it will harm you even if there is none in your hands.”

That's my big take anyway from the story. For a review of the book as one of Dave Egger's series of books on immigrants to America 'caught in the jaws of history', see the New York Times review.

Following the immigrant angle, I got curious how many Yemenis immigrated to the U.S. On the website of the Migration Policy Institute (which draws its data from the U.S. Census Bureau), I see that for the period 2014-2018, there were 51,800 - mostly in the states of Michigan, New York, California and Illinois. Interesting to note that almost 30% of that number is for Wayne County, Michigan where Detroit is the county seat. As to how these numbers compare to other countries of origin and other time periods, that's for another day of browsing the web.

Maputo's Street Names

[Note: I actually wrote this post while deployed in Mozambique from Sep to Dec 2016. I left it as a draft and did not really develop the blog as I wanted to. I've lost so many written notes on places I've visited so I decided today to work on this blog.]

In Maputo (at least in the area where I stayed), it is rare to find street signs at street corners, on poles, like in most cities I've visited. This has disoriented me during my first few days in Maputo when walking from A to B. I would have the street names and directions in my head from browsing Maputo on Google Maps but once I stepped out onto the streets, I got a bit lost as I tried to look for the street names on poles. I soon learned to look instead for plaques on concrete walls.

Beyond navigation though, the names of major avenues in Maputo remind me of the socialist and communist ideological inspirations for the revolutionary movement in Mozambique. To go downtown, I almost always walked down Av. Kim Il Sung or Av. Vladimir Lenine, both of which run into Av. Mao Tse Tung which is joined by Av. Salvador Allende. Further on, I could take Av. Karl Marx which runs into Av. Ho Chi Minh and if I walk towards the beach, I could stroll along Av. Friedrich Engels.

Beside these familiar names in history are street names in honor of men who played pioneering roles in the independence movements of other countries in Africa: Av. Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Av. Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Av. Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Av. Marien Ngouabi (Congo), Av. Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea), Amilcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau), Agostinho Neto (Angola), Av. Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana).

And, of course, Mozambique's own revolutionary heroes are also given tribute through streets named after them: Av. Eduardo Mondlane (FRELIMO's founder), Av. Samora Machel (1st President), Av. Josina Machel (Samora's first (?) wife but was also a key figure in the struggle for independence) , Av. Joaquim Chissano (2nd President),  Av. Emillia Dausse, Av. Tomas Nduda, Av. Armando Tivane and so on.

As if to set these intersecting names in historical time, a few major avenues in Maputo are named after important dates in the country's revolutionary history: Av. 25 de Setembro - the Mozambican war of independence officially started on Sep 25, 1964; Av. 24 de Julho - Mozambique's Independence Day; 16 de Junho - Massacre of Mueda; Av. 10 de Novembro (Maputo Day).