Keeping the Lights on at a Video Game Cafe in Southern Yemen

September 18, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Keeping the Lights on at a Video Game Cafe in Southern Yemen

In the southern Yemeni port city of Aden, a young man named Mo runs a video game cafe called Power Net. Aden is beautiful—built on a volcanic crater, with castles, beaches, and year-round summer. But the city also faces a brutal reality: during the hottest months, electricity cuts out for up to 18 hours at a time, leaving residents with only two hours of power per day. Mo's father died two years ago from a stroke complicated by the extreme heat. His younger brother, 29, died last year from tuberculosis made worse by the same conditions. Despite all this, Mo has spent seven years chasing a persistent dream: bringing modern video games to his community.

The Dream and the Obstacles

Mo's family moved from Germany to Yemen when he was a teenager, just as political tensions were escalating. After the Arab Spring and the outbreak of civil war in 2014, the country fractured. External powers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE support the recognized government, while the Iran-backed Houthi movement fights for control. The result has been poverty, famine, and constant instability.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Introduction and Ads** - The episode opens with a series of advertisements for Primark, Taco Bell, and Rocket Mortgage.
2 (01:43) **A Pen Pal in Yemen** - Host Ben reconnects with his audio pen pal, Mo, who lives in the southern Yemeni city of Aden.
3 (03:31) **Life in Aden and the Dream** - Mo describes his beautiful but challenging home city, detailing the severe electricity shortages and the death of his father from heat-related health issues.
4 (05:46) **The Struggle for a Business** - Mo details the extreme conditions, with power being off for up to 18 hours a day, and how this makes running any business a nightmare.
5 (08:33) **The Breaking Point and a Viral Post** - After a year of immense struggle, including a friend's betrayal and constant generator repairs, Mo feels defeated and posts a selfie on Reddit, thinking his dream is over.
6 (10:28) **Mo's Background and the Civil War** - Mo's family moved from Germany to Yemen when he was a teenager, selling everything to build a dream home, just as political tensions and the Arab Spring erupted.
7 (14:56) **Why Gaming Matters** - Mo explains that playing "Batman: Arkham Origins" on a cheap laptop was a turning point, showing him that games are a powerful medium.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Mo lives in Aden, an ancient city in southern Yemen. Built on a volcanic crater, it has castles and beaches set against mountains. It's beautiful. Like the rest of the country, it is also in the midst of an ongoing civil war. This summer, protests broke out over living conditions and basic services in the city -- like electricity, which can be shut off for 18 hours at a time.

But despite these conditions, for the last five years, Mo has been fighting for a persistent dream of his –– a video game internet cafe for his neighborhood. This week on Endless Thread Ben and Amory tell the story of how Mo, against all odds, has kept the lights on (quite literally) at his gaming cafe thanks to his persistence, and the help of internet strangers across the world.

This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.