Leanne de Bassompierre tells the story of the Yemen she remembers.

Exactly six years ago today I was on a rather adventurous trip in Yemen for my honeymoon. Friends and family thought Yemen was, as they said an “unusual” choice, but the journey across the southwestern tip of the Gulf of Arabia is one that not many South Africans will have the opportunity to take in their lifetime.

I write this as Yolande Korkie, the wife of Bloemfontein teacher Pierre Korkie who’s being held hostage in Yemen, has issued an impassioned plea for al-Qaeda militants to release her husband. They’ve threatened to behead him by tomorrow if she does not come up with the more than 30 million rand ransom they’ve demanded. After this ordeal there certainly won’t be very many South Africans ready to pack up and visit Yemen, or even move there as Pierre and Yolande had planned. They were kidnapped shortly after they moved to Yemen in May last year to take up teaching posts there.

The country that I experienced a mere six years ago was one that has left a lasting impression. Both my husband and I had done quite a substantial amount of travelling by the time we got married and chose our honeymoon destination on firstly, a place that we had both not been to, was completely off the beaten track and somewhere we’d probably not travel to with children.

We arrived in Sana’a on January 3^rd, 2007. When we first decided to go to Yemen we did a superficial search on the internet on the ease of travelling in Yemen. We came across a couple of South African guys who were organising diving tours to both the Red Sea and Arabian Sea coasts of Yemen.

This is how we came to meet Marius, who’d been living and working in Yemen for 27 years as a Christian missionary, under the guise of IT specialist and tour operator. He happened to be coming down to Cape Town before we were meant to leave and gave a glowing impression of the warmth and hospitality of the Yemeni people and immediately we were excited. He then put us in touch with Ali al Bokhary, who met us at the airport on the day of our arrival and with whom we ventured across the country in a 4×4.

My first impression of one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and Unesco heritage site is that it looked like the houses were made of gingerbread. To give you an idea of just how old the city is, Sana’a is said to have been established by the eldest son of Noah, Shem.

After a couple of days of soaking in the rich history of the capital, drinking copious amounts of sweet black tea and meandering through the old Arabian markets, we headed away from Sana’a towards the East, through the desert into the wide canyon-like Hadramout Valley. Say’un is its capital and Shibam – the “Manhattan” of the Middle East – its most renowned landmark.

We solicited the help of a Bedouin to guide us through the desert. He joined us along the way in his new-age camel (the 4×4) and was quite keen to give us an experience we’d never forget. Part of that was getting us stuck at the bottom of one of the dunes and having to spend hours digging the wheels out of the stand (probably best that he sticks to camels). And as romantic as it sounds to sleep in the desert, getting caught in a sandstorm is something I’d rather not have to live through again. We ended up having to pack up our desert campsite in the middle of the night.

I’ve heard many Capetonians say there’s no other place in the world that has a “Table Mountain”. Clearly they haven’t been to Yemen. The Hadramout Valley is surrounded by a series of mountains that are flat like our very own Table Mountain – not as beautiful, but very close. We spent another couple of nights camping up there, waking up to the beautiful sounds of the call to pray and looking down at villagers below preparing for the day ahead.

From the mountains we headed to the coast where we spent a couple of nights on the tranquil Bir Ali beach. Yemenis are not a beach-going nation and apart from four beach huts that open up to the sea, there’s literally nothing else. Our guide had got us some fresh fish and vegetables from the local market, which we put on the fire – bliss.

Next up – scuba diving. Our guidebook and internet searches we had done before had all advised us against diving, that even though the untouched reef and coral would be amazing, it would be hard to get decent diving equipment. But that was not the case. We met up with a Yemeni guy who’d just returned from studying in the United States and was investing in getting people to visit the town that he was from. He’d imported state-of-the-art equipment and wetsuits and we were the first to use them. Needless to say the diving experience is one of the best I’ve ever had. 

So that is the Yemen that I experienced. The Yemen before US drones were being sent in. Before innocent civilians were being killed. Sure there were security checkpoints every two kilometres, offers of every kind of weapon that we wanted to buy (freely available in the markets without a gun license), issues of tribalism and abject poverty, but there was a sign of hope. And without hope, where does that leave a nation?

Leanne de Bassompierre is EWN’s Deputy News Editor: Cape Town.