This week we’re featuring two Yemeni bloggers who write about life in their country. Most of their posts are in Arabic, but with Google Translate and a bit of patience, we can see a bit of Yemen through the eyes of some Yemeni women.

Shells is about ‘Yemeni girls and the surrounding community’. In the post Shells and Pearl she says:

I mean in pearl every yemeni woman who try to be stronger and overcome all difficulties that she faces, shell are the environment around the pearl as family (father, mother, brothers, sisters and husband). Sometimes this shell dosn’t have a flexibility so this leads to damaging of the very fine pearl but even those pearls try to have her own identity and personility whatever happens. Sea is the society which also sometimes makes restrictions on the pearl, ocean is the whole world. So all of these things surround the little pearl. Is she lucky or poor? What can she do to deal with all of these things?

The second blog, Feeling (scroll down for English), aims to write about social issues. In a series of posts, the author Rahaf has been exploring the situation of street children in Yemen.

These bloggers were trained by the Hand in Hand Initiative, which is a project supported by Rising Voices, aiming to enable Yemenis to add their voices to the global blogosphere. This interview with project leader Ghaida’a al-Absi is also worth a watch to find out more about Yemen and the project, which has produced 67 new bloggers so far.

Read more:
More Middle East blogs from Blogs of the World
What is the future of Arabic dialects? Different dialects of Arabic and where they are spoken
Reem Kelani’s introduction to Arabic music
The dying art of Yemeni shoes and Kutnu fabrics

About the author

Lucy is English and first ventured out of the UK she was 19. Since then she has lived in 4 different countries and tried to see as much of the world as possible. She loves learning languages, learning about different cultures and hearing different points of view.