Later, they will canvas matters of substance, anything from politics to family matters, then slip into contemplation. It's also a drain on the economy and has been banned in the public service and army, although you still see soldiers with bulging cheeks. The novice, struggling with the notion of cud-chewing leaves, notices only an indefinable feeling of wellbeing and clarity, and a strong sense of time standing still. What seemed like 10 minutes was, in fact, three hours - time for a lot of questions. The qat chewers are all husbands and fathers, some grandfathers.
People marry young in Yemen, females as teenagers, and have an average of seven children.
One young man sports two wedding rings - Islamic law allows a man to have four wives, if he treats them all equally. Another has 11 children, the first 10 of them sons. Yemen, two-thirds the size of New South Wales, is a country of diverse and spectacular terrain broadly divided into humid coastal plains, rocky highlands and high fertile plateaus, and desert. We pass feudal towns and castles crowning seemingly impossible peaks, houses hewn out of the same muted browns as the landscape and emerald green, scalloped terraces. We see hand-ploughed fields of young grain and qat crops that have replaced coffee, which originated in Yemen and was once the source of wealth.