Fire on wadi Dibnhe Oasis

From Ahmed Saeed:

After the rain last month, we have fire on wadi DIBNHE the fire so big start yesterday June 18, 2011 at 7am morning to 5pm afternoon.

Many people from Hadibo and the Army helped to assuage the fire, they use water pumps some people buy new pumps just for take down the fire, but because of the wind the work was so difficult.

The fire start from one garden of palm trees, when a woman was cleaned her palm trees garden from the dead leaves, collect them and make fire of the waste (bush) dead leaves. The wind spread the fire to her palm trees and to the others palm tree on other gardens. The density of palms in the area and the strong monsoon help the fire to spread very fast.

There are many damages, first of all hundred of palm trees which is full of date, 3 fishermen boats which where kept under the palm trees because of windy season and hundreds of fences. On the other side the environmental problem from dying of many insects, reptiles, palm trees crabs and destroying of habitats for birds and many other organisms.

Female guides welcome visitors to Socotra

The quiet life of the fishermen’s village of Terbak got new stimulus when tourists started coming to visit a cave located on its tribal land. Overlooking the northern coast of Soqotra island, Hoq Cave is a more than 3 km long karst formation with beautiful stalagmites, stalactite curtains and a lake at the very end. Hundreds of tourists don’t hesitate to hike for over an hour across difficult terrain to enjoy the cave’s charm.

After the Socotra Eco-tourism Society, founded by the UNDP Socotra Conservation and Development Programme in 2003, included Hoq Cave in their tourist itinerary, local guides were needed. For the last three years, guiding services in Terbak have been organized in a way that allows all the local inhabitants to share in the profits. Guides take regular turns, and from the YR 4,000 earned for each journey to the cave and back, YR 1,000 goes to the community and the rest to the guide’s family. Similar benefit-sharing works run in many other areas on the island, and together with community-run eco-campsites, create an economic system directing income from tourism to poor local communities.

But what you will not see anywhere else but in Terbak is that local women also guide the tourists.

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