No, unfortunately, I don’t know anyone in Aden. Insha Allah, if I come across anyone, I will try to put them in touch with you.

I have some posts on Damaaj in my Damaaj category in case you haven’t seen those: http://tjyemen.wordpress.com/category/damaaj/

Electric bills are not that expensive. Mine is on the expensive side as I pretty much keep my computer on all day (when its working), but we have paid anywhere from 1500 riyals ($7.50) to 5000 ($25.00). We have a refrigerator, two water heaters, and we do not have fans/air conditioners.

We had a generator in Damaaj, but I can’t remember how much that cost but it wasn’t horribly expensive.

The air can be kind of dirty. I mean there’s not a lot of pollution per say (like from traffic), but since its dirty here, a lot of stuff kicks up into the air (germs) that could aggravate the asthma and Allah knows best. I know my daughter and stepson have gotten a lot of sinus infections where they have runny noses daily for like a year at a time. I have eczema as does my daughter and masha Allah, mine never really acts up, but she has more bouts with it than I have had here.

I know when we were in Damaaj, some American sisters told me not to send the kids out after asr because that is when it generally gets windy and then the wind picks up a lot of stuff. In some neighborhoods there are trash pits/trashy areas and so that stuff/germs gets picked up into the wind.

I was a little paranoid a few years back as my stepson had gotten meningitis and I was afraid to let my baby son go outside because the only place we had taken my stepson had been to the masjid. Never found out where he had gotten the meningitis from but it was serious as he was in a coma for two weeks. Yemenis tend to bundle the babies up even in this hot weather to protect from the germs.

So, not trying to scare anyone, but definitely these are things to consider especially if you have family members with health problems. Other than that incident of meningitis and the sinus infections, we have been ok, healthwise, masha Allah, none of the other children in the household got the meningitis masha Allah.

I am not sure as far as the Autism. I have a stepson who we suspect has autism (the one who had meningitis) but haven’t really checked into getting him diagnosed. You may be able to find a specialist, quite often there are more things/services here than you would expect, but I just don’t know offhand. Will keep my eyes and ears open, insha Allah…..

I apologize Umm Jamaal, the restaurant across the street closed and I never got the recipe for salta. I have never heard of 3seed but will keep my eyes and ears open, insha Allah and let you know if anything comes up. Can you tell me any of the ingredients in it? I may have come across it but didn’t know the name………

Umm Ebraaheem