Namaste, burra Sahib! Abdul was Graham's crab which became the Terror of the Church Parade. My crab Ahmed was useful only for terrorising my little sister until Dad threw him over the verandah, thenceforth to live outside the kitchen. I did catch Mum feeding him scraps when she discovered his voracious appetite for cockroach.
Chugalug, on looking again to Google Earth I think our school building is still standing though I'm sure Abdullah the chowkidar and his box are long gone. On the subject of soil, Aden's volcanic sand was very fertile, requiring only the addition of precious water. (Same in the Canary Isles I think). If you look back at my #12320 you can see a siphon hose dangling from the kitchen lean-to window, draining sink and shower water into a trench alongside the garden path. This trench contained a row of parrot trees, so called because of their curved flowers resembling a parrot's beak; they are about three feet high in the picture, but when we left less than a year later they were up to the roof.
Again from Google, the skeletons of the old hangars are still standing. From my 1951 picture, the NAAFI building is still there as well.