Ahmed, the collage-artist/peacemaker

Ahmed runs a newsstand just inside Bab al-Yemen, the main gate to old Sana’a. Business, he said, has not been going so well. No one wants to buy the glossy magazines he has for sale.

On a lark, he started to carve the magazines up, carefully cutting out the faces of Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, and Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s autocratic leader.

To make himself laugh, he began pasting those heads onto picturesque backgrounds like the old city of Sana’a or the savannahs of Africa. He made a collage of what Barack Obama would look like as a Yemeni groom. Another features Angela Merkel, in traditional Yemeni dress, shaking hands with Mr. Saleh. His friends were amused.

So were the tourists who slowly began to discover Ahmed’s artwork. Soon they started to request collages featuring themselves holding guns aloft in front of famous Yemeni landmarks, or posing with Osama bin Laden.

Ahmed’s humorous handiwork has become the buzz of the expat community in Sana’a these days. Orders are pouring in for quirky collages to be sent far and wide as Christmas gifts and souvenirs of Sana’a.

Ahmed said he sees his work as a way of changing Yemen’s negative image among foreigners.

“My work makes tourists laugh,” he said. “They leave Yemen with a different impression than they had before.”

The Children of Yemen

An audio slideshow dedicated to the resilience, innocence and exuberance of the wonderful children of this country.

Fog: Nature's Stain Remover?

Living in Nova Scotia these past few months has given me my first real experience with fog. I have to admit, I find it fascinating. On the south shore this weekend, I heard the fog before I saw it. The fog horn started to send out the alert as the clouds (do you call them clouds?) began to roll in. Soon enough, the blue skies were gone, replaced by grey mist.

People here complain about the fog, but I think it's incredible. When the weather is hot, it's the perfect air conditioner. And standing outside as fog envelopes you is sort of like being in a spa.

Our friend Carolyn tells us that fog gets stains out too. Wash your clothes on a regular cycle, she says, then hang them outside for a day or two in the fog and the stains will be gone. I have yet to test this theory myself but I'm intrigued, and so far Carolyn has not led us wrong.

'I likes where I'm to'

Lottie Drake lives by the sea. One would imagine from looking at her that she's always lived by the sea, though judging by her Newfoundland accent, not always by this sea.

Her husband Tom was once a fisherman but now, somewhere in his 80s, has knees so bad he has trouble making it across the living room.

"He fished his whole life," she said, even though he gave up the life about 30 years ago.

Still, considering that he started out on a boat in Newfoundland in his early adolescence and fished till back surgery laid him up in the 1980s, that's probably a good 40 years of hard work aboard a ship.

Lottie's house is white with blue window trim and overlooks Ritcey Cove, in Lunenburg County. She doesn't have much land, but that's all right by her. Once her son, the youngest of six children, offered to put them in a bigger house.

No thanks, she said. "I likes where I'm to. I like my spot."

And a good spot it is, Lottie.