by Amanda Nachman > Publisher | photos Ryder Hask

Water’s flooding in, wind’s gaining speed and everything’s getting soaked. Amber Oliva, a senior at Georgetown University, is camping in the mountains outside Sana’a, Yemen, when she realizes her tent is directly in a water channel above a dam. Welcome to her semester abroad.

Yemen and Egypt probably aren’t at the top of your travel wish list—they’re not at the top of the State Department’s either. In fact, most students would probably admit they would be afraid to travel to these countries. Both have strong anti-American sentiments and have histories of well-known terrorist attacks.

But one student with a passion for the study of the Islamic world placed Yemen and Egypt at the very top of her desired destinations queue. As a regional and comparative studies major, Amber Oliva had learned the Arabic language, the history, and the culture in class; by her junior year, she was ready to experience it herself.  For this Alaskan native, flying to Yemen meant breaking in her passport for the first time. 

Cue the Culture Shock

In Yemen, public restrooms are BYOTP – Bring Your Own Toilet Paper. Restaurants are separated into different sections for men and women, and the interactions between the sexes aren’t at all like they are in America. Oliva worried that her friendly nature would be perceived as flirty. “Do I make eye contact, do I smile, do I act friendly?” Oliva said she asked herself. “Should I be talking to my male professor?”

And with the Yemeni dress code of a long black dress (an abaya), a face-covering veil (a niqab) and a headscarf (a hijab), Oliva
constantly wondered if she was dressed conservatively enough. “I had conservative clothes to wear, but it still felt a
little weird,” she said. “The boys could wear what they would regularly wear, their jeans and their t-shirts,” but it was clear that the women couldn’t.

The headscarf proved especially confusing; everyone around her gave conflicting messages about wearing it or not. When she and her roommate went to withdraw money from a bank, her roommate, who had a scarf wrapped around her head, said to Oliva, “Are you trying to make a statement? You’re not covering your hair.”  But while some of her friends and professors said that it was offensive to show her blonde hair, others said that donning the headscarf would seem like she was mocking the Yemeni custom. “It was just all these new sensations coming at me,” Oliva said.

Women’s Parties

Although her first taste of Yemen was overwhelming, Oliva eventually adjusted to life abroad. She bought an abaya to throw over her regular clothing and decided to wear the headscarf while out at night. She became more comfortable with exploring the city and on some days after class in Yemen, Oliva and her friends would go to teashops and pay a premium to sit on the roof for a view of the city.

Her more unusual experiences there involved camping in the mountains, which ended with Oliva and her friends packing up their tent and hitching a ride to a hotel to escape from the flood. She also attended an exclusive women’s party where the baltos were shed in exchange for colorful clothes. A relative of a Yemeni professor at her school was hosting the party for a bride to be and invited the female students.

“At the women’s party, the women are chewing Qat, smoking shisha, dressed up, and they’ve got a lot of makeup on,” Oliva said. Shisha is flavored tobacco and Qat, which is actually illegal in the States, is a plant that’s chewed into a ball and, according to Oliva’s European friend who tried it, is roughly equivalent to downing a Red Bull. “It doesn’t smell good.”

Theater Projects and Internships

After five weeks in Yemen, Oliva joined around thirty-five other students from her college at the American University of Cairo, part of a Georgetown exchange program. Although it was tempting to hang out with her American friends, she tried to meet new people through classes and travel. She worked with a group of Egyptian students on a performance theater project. It was very informal—four students meeting in a classroom for a couple hours at a time.

“Sometimes when the student director was explaining things to us, she’d say it in Arabic. It was cool; I was like, ‘Yea I get this,’” Oliva said. Spending this time with the Egyptian students outside of class allowed her to cross the cultural divide and become friends. “They have a different experience from growing up in Egypt, but they’re my peers.”

An internship with the American Embassy in Cairo also gave her an opportunity to connect with the Egyptian people. One Egyptian woman who worked at the Embassy was comfortable enough with Oliva to speak to her about her thoughts on religion. Her message was simply that “we’re all praying to the same God” and “it isn’t right to judge.” This stayed with Oliva. “I think a lot of people misunderstand the Arabic world,” she said.

Prayer

On the first Friday of Ramadan, Oliva and her friends took a day trip to Alexandria. Right on the water there was this “large stone citadel thing…big and beautiful.” They sat on the citadel and watched the waves. During her trip, Oliva recalled waiting as one of her Egyptian friends went to go pray.

Oliva had taken a course on Islamic religion at Georgetown University. “I liked the opportunity to see the things I had read about. I tried to be very observant, really take it in, and get an idea of the place I was at,” Oliva said. She explained how even at the gym at the American University of Cairo, prayer rugs were placed in the locker room for girls to pray.  On the street, she would sometimes see a soldier or guard take his shoes off, move out of the way and pray. “It’s not like ‘excuse me, I need to go pray.’”

Awkward Stares and Midnight Horseback Rides

Compared to Sana’a, Cairo was liberal, but even so, Oliva still felt that she stood out, especially as a woman. Once she and her male friend were outside by a shisha café when he walked away to talk on the phone. Oliva was left standing alone in front of the café filled with only Egyptian men smoking. “I felt out of place, the only girl that I could see in the area. It’s not that I felt in danger, it’s just that I felt a little bit awkward,” said Oliva. “My friend came back and I was like ‘Don’t do that to me.’”

At night, a lot of students would frequent shisha bars, but Oliva stuck to other plans, usually heading to ice cream outings or salsa dancing. Her Egyptian friends planned a midnight horseback ride around the pyramids one night. Oliva explained how when she sat on her horse, the person in charge suddenly yelled “Yalla!” (similar to “Come on!”). The horse shot off into the pitch-black night and couldn’t be slowed down. “It was exhilarating, to gallop on a horse—I had always wanted to gallop on a horse like that.”

Snorkeling and the Black and White Desert

One weekend, Oliva traveled to a beach along the Red Sea to go snorkeling. They stayed in little rooms right near the water. “It’s absolutely amazing. You know the Discovery Channel with the fish, just imagine seeing that in person. Bright orange and little fish, green coral, orange coral...”

For the Eid holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan, the students had a few days off school. Oliva and a large group of friends ventured to the Black and White Desert in two Jeeps. When one would get stuck in the sand, everyone would get out and push it and then jump back in.

That night, they camped out in the desert and cooked dinner. The students danced around the campfire and Oliva’s Egyptian friend, a drummer, taught her a common beat in Egyptian music. Oliva said, “I’ve never seen so many stars in the sky in my life. If you watched long enough, you would see a shooting star.”

“Spending the night in the desert—that’s badass. Being from Alaska, I thought we had stars in the sky, but being there, there were so many... When my Egyptian friend was teaching me the drums, I was thinking, ‘Where else would I learn this? This is so cool. I’m sitting in the desert, how cool is this?”

Want To Study Abroad?

Here’s our checklist to help you get started

• Find resources on campus: Visit your abroad office to research program offerings and check out opportunities through other schools too.

• Talk to the veterans: Get in touch with students who have experienced your specific program. Ask them about the housing, the culture, and the challenges.

• Research your program: Find out if there’s a support system available. It’s helpful to have university aid abroad to assist with class registration, housing and adjustment to living in a different country.

• Get classes approved: Meet with your advisor to discus credits for your major. This can often be a harrowing process, so act early to get your classes approved.

• Prepare travel documents: Do you need a passport, visa, or vaccine injections for your destination? These can take considerable time to handle, so work on your travel requirements at least two months before hand.

• Start saving: Though it may not be fun, start considering your abroad finances. Talk to your parents about who’s paying for what. Grab a summer job and start saving up for flights and hostels!