Hannah Diss, YLC Student, Summer 2007

"As a second year student of Arabic and Russian at Cambridge University, I came to Yemen this summer to improve my Arabic and gain some experience of living and working in the Middle East.  I was in my room one day when I got a call from Matthew, a worker for the Yemen College of Middle Eastern Studies, who told me I had an early Birthday present. I foolishly thought I was about to receive a Yemeni scarf or something, when he asked if I would be interested in playing a role on Yemen’s Ramadan series Keeny Meeny. Prior to this I had no idea that Ramadan series even existed, yet alone in Yemen! Intrigued, I went downstairs to meet a man form the show, who explained I would be required for one days filming. I decided to throw my inhibitions aside and take part in the ultimate cross cultural experience. As I went to meet the director that week, I wondered what I had let myself in for. A qat chew later I had a vague handle on the plot, and understood that I would be playing a rich foreign aid worker. I arrived on the first day of filming where I was ushered into hair and make up and given a very unique take on Western fashion. The filming continued at a characteristically Yemeni pace, and having filmed 5 minutes in the first day I soon realised that this was going to take longer than I had originally hypothesised. Ramadan was fast approaching, and with half the series yet to film and every afternoon devoted to qat, we decided we would have to start filming at night. The production of Keeny Meeny was utterly unique; no scripts were used and the director preferring to give the general gist of the scene to the actors directly before filming and allow them to improvise round it. It is easy to see why I had actually left Yemen before they had officially finished filming my episode!  It was hard to understand him speaking in full speed Yemeni dialect at times, but I inserted some lines where I thought they seemed appropriate and managed to pull it off.  If it hadn’t been for my classes at the YLC there is no way I’d have been able to even greet the cast, let alone speak with them in front of the camera. I even started to insert some of the less ridiculous lines into my presentations in class, which nobody knew at the time! The students all thought it was great I was a ‘Yemeni Star,’ and are all desperate to see the final footage. To be honest, my limited understanding of the proceedings made the whole experience ever funnier. I still cannot quite explain to you just what part of the story involved me dressed in ancient Yemeni costume in a pool house handing a fake bag of money over to a the winner of a pool tournament. Needless to say every Yemeni I told leaped for joy at the thought of someone they knew on their favourite television series, and as soon as it aired my telephone and inbox were bombarded with my Yemeni friends wanting to congratulate me. Back in the UK, my friends and family are still desperate to see me in a Yemeni soap. I’m still waiting for the DVD, but we’re on Yemeni time, so it could be a while…"