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Crazy Place: The Podcast!
In recent months Yemen’s economic and social problems have been well documented but the most evident problem to the visiting tourist isn’t covered by the news.
It is ‘gat’, also pronounced ‘cat’ and spelled ‘QAT’ which is a legal drug openly available and openly consumed throughout the country. It is a growing concern as more and more of the population spend their earnings on this opiate. Our taxi driver, small-time tour operator and all-round nice bloke Selim takes Cilian of ‘Cobble’, Robbie of ‘Rhumb Do’ and Jamie on a tour of Aden.
He constantly refers to ‘Crazy Place’ which, we eventually find out in this podcast, is the Gat den. This covered market, with men selling the drug from wrought iron beds or from the back of their pick-up trucks, truly is a crazy place.
Crazy Place
Come with me to Crazy Place, a place like nothing you have ever witnessed before. Crazy Place is the name given to the qat market, the covered area where the locals come to buy their drug. It is an insane place. It is Crazy Place.
Letting The Qat Out The Bag
I found Yemen a difficult place to love when I first stepped ashore. With the beauty of the desolate marsas of Sudan and Eritrea behind us I found Aden an industrial mess. After spending some time there and traveling around, especially to Arab Town, I began to understand it a bit better. Some of the people we met were wonderful. But the problem I had with Yemen was qat.
The Virile Man of Aden
The beauty of what we are doing is that you get to make friends in high places. Meet Colonel Mohammed, the big cheese of the Yemeni Coastguard. This happy chap hosted a reception for the Vasco da Gama rally, showed us his fleet of boats and eventually invited us back to his office. It was here that along with Fiona and Terry of Roam 2, Francesca and Marco of Easy and Free, we learned about the colonel’s sex life. His secret is the aphrodisiac-cum-opiate ‘gat’. It is chewed in the afternoon but its effect in the bedroom takes place after dark. Apparently. It’s all in this week’s podcast.
We learn more about gat, and how it is destroying Yemen, in next week’s podcast.