Crossing the Red Sea - part 2 (13)

On Sept 30, 2007, my friend and I arrived in Yemen with my inflatable boat, ready to get my children, get them across the Red Sea, and take them home - finally.

I set out to find a way to get out of the city to the capital where the kids were. I didn't have the necessary travel permission paper from the government, so I needed a Yemeni who could speak at least a little English who was willing to get us through the military checkpoints and take us to Sanaa. It took me a week to find someone. I found a man who spoke a little English who agreed to drive us 7 hours to Sanaa. He had his own taxi. So, we set out for Sanaa.

Since I was dressed in the traditional Yemeni women's clothing without my hair or face being exposed, we were able to get past all the military checkpoints along the way without getting stopped or questioned for travel papers. That was a huge relief. When we got to Sanaa, the taxi driver dropped us off and agreed to wait for us to take us back to the port city. We had purchased a cell phone when we got to Yemen, and we would call him to take us back once I had the kids. The taxi driver didn't know that I was going to be going back wth children, because his English wasn't fluent enough for me to make him understand what I was doing, but I figured it would work out.

I found my way to Ahmed's house. I stood on the corner down the street from his front gate and waited. I watched as his father pulled his car out to go to work. I waited some more. I saw his brother come out in his Land Rover and leave for work. I waited some more. Soon, his sister left in her car and went to work. The only one left would have been Ahmed. So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. He didn't come out. I figured maybe he had gone to work early and was no longer in the house, so I walked up to his front gate. Just as I was standing in front of his gate, the gate opened and Ahmed backed his car out. I had to jump back, because he nearly ran over my foot. My heart was racing and I thought, "I'm busted! He will see me and have me arrested for being here!" But, he didn't. I was wearing the black robe and the scarf and the face covering, and he didn't know it was me standing there. He pulled out and left.

I stood there and had to catch my breath for a minute, then I for the cell phone and called inside the house. My daughter got on the phone, and I said, "It's time. Very quietly, go to the front gate. It's time to go home". I had told her before that I would get her out of there, one way or another, and to never give up, because I would never give up, and she always believed in me and knew that someday I would be there to take them all home, so she said nothing except, "Okay. We're coming".

In a minute, my three kids came out the front gate. I took them by the hand and we walked as fast as we could. We caught a taxi and wen to the place where the taxi driver who brought us to Sanaa was waiting. We immediately got into his car and got out of Sanaa. If we left immediately, we would be halfway to the port city before Ahmed found out the kids were missing and send his army to look for us. He wouldn't expect me to leave the city, since he knew I didn't have a travel permission paper, therefore, he would have thought that was impossible. I was pretty sure his search would be limited to Sanaa. On our way back to the port city, we were lucky once again as we stopped at each military checkpoint, because no one asked us for travel papers. They assumed we were Yemeni, and Yemenis are allowed to pass through the checkpoints without getting questioned.

During the 7-hour ride, the kids and I were so very, very happy. We hugged and kissed, and they talked non-stop. I hadn't seen them in almost 7 months, and we had a lot of sharing to do. I was so happy to be able to see them, hear them, hug them, kiss them, and see their beautiful faces again. They were just as happy to see me. I knew we were going to make it home. We just had to.

There was a problem with the boat, however. I had packed the inflatable boat into one suitcase, and that alone weighed 50 pounds. Another suitcase contained the lifejackets that I had purchased for the kids, the waterbottles, the heat blanket and other gear, and one change of clothing for the kids. However, they wouldn't let me take the boat seats on the plane. The way the boat is made, it came with two 14-foot long inflatable tubes. Those tubes are connected when you slide these three aluminum boards across them, creating the seats, and more importantly, keeping the two tubes about 5 feet apart to provide stability for the boat. The airline told me that there was no way I could put those seats on the plane, because they were 2 inches too long. After much arguing, I ended up spending $450 to send the seats to Yemen via DHL. When I arrived in Yemen and called DHL to get the seats, I was told they hadn't arrived yet. I spent the first week in that port city looking for a ride to Sanaa, and during that entire week, the seats had still not arrived.

So now that I had the children and was back in the port city, I called DHL again and asked about the boat seats. This time, they told me that they had arrived, but that I wouldn't be able to get them out of customs unless I paid another $260.00 in customs fees AND showed up at the airport with ID to claim them. That presented two problems. First of all, I didn't have $260.00. Second, if I showed up at the airport, I knew that I would be arrested, since Ahmed had, by now, found out that the children were missing and was searching for us. Getting the seats was no longer an option. We would have to cross the Red Sea somehow just by using the two inflatable tubes. So I stopped at a store and purchased some rope. I figured we'd have to tie the two tubes together with rope and row across the Red Sea that way. It was the only option.

As soon as we purchased the rope, we went to another taxi company and requested a ride to Bab al-Madeb. This took a while, because apparently, no one ever went to Bab al-Mandeb. We had to show it to the head of the taxi company on the map, because he didn't know what we were talking about. He wanted to know why we wanted to go there. He didn't speak English, however, so my oldest daughter was translating as best she could. But, she doesn't know Arabic very well, so we really couldn't communicate. Eventually, he took my money, provided a taxi and a driver, and we set off for Bab al-Mandeb at 6 pm. We had been in the car coming from Sanaa for 7 hours, had spent maybe two hours purchasing the rope and trying to get a taxi to Baba al-Mandeb, and now we set out for another 5-hour ride to our destination. I wanted to let the kids stay and rest, but time was a huge factor. The longer we stayed around, the more chances that we would be found and caught, and then my children would never get home. If I got caught, I knew I would either go to jail or get killed, so we kept moving.