Life “Between Conflict and Peace”

[Original by S. Kutsukake, 2024 Intern (October 10, 2025); Translated by J. Tsuchiya/A. Taguchi]

Aden, a temporary capital

Unfortunately, it is currently difficult for ordinary people in Japan to go to Yemen. When JVC staff members went on a business trip in October 2024, they could only arrive after changing planes three times and going through a troublesome procedure.

Aden, the current temporary capital situated in the south, serves as a gateway to Yemen. It has commercial districts such as the Crater and Tawahi districts, and there are restaurants and cafes along the coast. With hotels and restaurants opening one after another,

Aden seemed to be growing economically at first glance.

However, according to the staff member of our partner organization, only rich people can benefit from such economic activities, and the lives of ordinary people are becoming difficult due to high prices. In fact, we saw a lot of homeless people on the streets. We heard public safety was deteriorating with an increasing number of thefts and murders.

There are scars from the conflicts, too. We came across many checkpoints on the roads, and they checked if we had weapons in our car before coming into the hotel. Many buildings remained collapsed by air strikes or had bullets remaining on the walls, which reminds us of the fact that this is where intense battles happened, and the aftereffects are still continuing.

Taiz, an ancient city

On the other hand, Taiz is a cultural center of Yemen. It is a business district and the third largest city in Yemen; at the same time, it is an ancient city that has been around since the twelfth century. It is a beautiful city which has houses with gorgeous and delicate decorations on the doors and at the windows, and mountains and terraced fields lining up in the suburbs. The city is located at a high elevation, and there is Mt. Saber at an altitude of 3,006 meters inland. From the summit of this mountain, you can relax by spending time enjoying the scenery.

In Taiz, there are two main sightseeing spots: one is the Ashrafiya Mosque, and the other is Al-Qahira Castle. The Ashrafiya Mosque is a building from the thirteenth century, and the interior is very beautiful. It was damaged by bomb shelling when Taiz became an intense battlefield, but the recovery work seemed to be completed. Al-Qahira Castle was built in the twelfth century. It had been closed for a while because of the damage from the conflicts, but now it is open except for some parts, and the illumination at night has resumed. It is crowded with families, groups of women, and men who are biting an herb called Khat which has awakening effects.

Taiz has been closed by the Houthis since the start of the civil war in 2015, but it was reopened in 2024 for the first time in nine years. It gradually became safer, and the old town is lively. On the other hand, there are more street children than in Aden, and there are remaining buildings destroyed by airstrikes.

Shadows cast on life

For several years, prices have continued to rise in Japan, and in Yemen too, which is a big problem. One of the reasons for this is a drastic depreciation of the Rial, Yemen’s currency. Within a year, it fell to 2,000 Rial a US dollar from 1,560 a dollar. Even though inflation is progressing, workers’ salaries don’t rise: a monthly salary of a teacher is 30 US dollars, and that of a waiter at the highest-ranked-hotel is 45 US dollars, and even that of a doctor is said to be less than 100 US dollars. Malnutrition is becoming serious, which might be the result of the situation. In cases of severe price increase, with the price of tomatoes becoming eightfold, some people cannot eat food, and it is said that there are those who pick up garbage to eat. In the area controlled by the temporary government, the suffering of the people is attributed to the high price of goods rather than the direct conflicts, which is a serious problem.

Recently, there have been no large-scale armed conflicts; however, the nation is divided severely into two: the southern part that is controlled by the temporary government and the northern part that is under the Houthis, where social division is intense, although people still have mutual exchange. The domestic soccer league is also divided between the north and the south, and both teams face each other only in the final. In Taiz, there is a boundary between the territory of the interim government and that under the Houthis’ control, and you can see the buffer zone covered in green. People cannot live in this area because there are still gunfights.

A stark symbol of the division is a parody of a song of Ayoob Tarish, a national singer. Her original song goes “Our homeland, our homeland, Yemen, forever, I admire you, our homeland.” But it is said that school children sing a parody that goes “Our homeland, our homeland, a southern country, the capital is Aden.” Hopefully, children will not forget the original one, and a ceasefire will be realized so that the division between the north and south does not progress any further.

Life stage and gender gap

There are checkpoints to go into Taiz, where you could see some women among soldiers stationed there. Many women are said to continue working after they get married, but the situation is different in the countryside. In the countryside, there is a culture in which women take care of homes, and some women couldn’t participate in the job-training in Aden because they are married. And there is another problem of getting married too young in age, although the cases are decreasing. JVC also conveys the demerit of getting married too young through the training for facilitators in the Yemen activities.

There remain inequalities in education. It is attributed to parents who prevent their daughters from attending school beyond the sixth grade. 99% of Yemenis follow Islam, and according to the strict Islamic interpretation, it is considered inappropriate for adult men and women who are not family members to spend time together in the same place. On the other hand, while the number of schools is limited in conflict situations, some schools are co-ed schools because they cannot afford to separate boys and girls. And then, parents would not let their grown daughters go to a co-ed school. In addition, the hurdles to learning seem to vary depending on income. There remains confusion in Yemen; however, girls from a rich family can get higher education, and there are options for the youth to go abroad to study. Comparatively, it is easy to go to the Arabian countries, but there are those who go to Malaysia, England, and Japan.

Boys also have worries. One of them is the money necessary for marriage. During the ceremony of marriage in Yemen, meals are served for hundreds of people for several days. It requires thousands of US dollars a day for the wedding venue fee, and in addition, it is a customary practice to pay “Mahr” to his marriage partner, which is a kind of engagement money. All of the money related to the wedding becomes a burden for a man, and the cost of living and preparing for a house needs to be done by the man. Therefore, there are many men who cannot get married because of this burden.

People connect to people

One of the important Yemeni cultures is chewing Khat, which we introduced in the part of Taiz /Mt. Saber. Khat is an herb that has an awakening effect, which JVC staff found grassy when they tasted it for the first time. However, it is very familiar to Yemeni people, and you can find people here and there seated chatting and chewing Khat. Khat also seems to serve as a communication tool, and sometimes it is difficult to reject an offer of it in a tribal society where the bonds among members are very strong.

People in Yemen are very warm-hearted, even though they are under very harsh conditions. In a restaurant, when our staff told a staff member of the restaurant that the bread which he had eaten for lunch was very good, he was offered some pieces of bread as a present. In the restaurant of the hotel, people were chatting even though they were strangers to each other, and there were some who talked to our staff member.

What it is like to have one’s home as a place of conflict

While we were in Yemen, we had an opportunity to hear from the people in town about their lives. Mr. Salim, who works for a prestigious hotel in Aden, came back to Yemen after a 30-year stay in Cairo. He moved to Egypt, escaping from the North-South War in 1994 and spending a stable life working for a trading company; however, he decided to come back to his home country because he was getting old. He had expected the shortage of electricity, but what he was most shocked by was that people had lost their morality. He finally found his current job, but half of the salary only pays for his transportation fee. Even though he came back after 30 years, he said that he would desperately like to go anywhere out of Yemen if he could because of the current circumstances.

In the Al-Qahira Castle, we met a young man named Amran, who was chewing Khat while studying. Since he was a child, he dreamed of becoming a doctor, and he continued to study to enter university while working in his father’s clothing store after graduating from high school. He couldn’t stop dreaming of becoming a doctor even though he was cornered by poverty. Later, we received the good news from him that he passed the entrance exam of the Faculty of Dentistry at a national university. 1300 people took the examination and only 50 have passed. He opened the door for the future by overcoming the severe competition. Until he enters university, he is working and living at a restaurant in another city to support his family budget.

During a layover in Cairo, we talked to men from Yemen. A student studying in Cairo spoke passionately about the prolonged war. He studied in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan; however, he had to evacuate urgently because the war broke out in Sudan. His home country has been in a state of conflict since his childhood years, and he worried about the influence of the 10-year war on children, introducing the proverb: “Knowledge that you get in your childhood is like carving on a stone.”

What we knew from the conversation with them was that Yemenis go forward earnestly, even though their lives were tossed around by the unstable condition of their country. As the university students said, severe damage to the children’s education and mental health by the prolonged confusion might be a concern. Therefore, JVC has been making places in Yemen called “Child Friendly Spaces” where children can enjoy their youth.

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