hot fun in the summertime

It's 118 degrees outside right now. If it were 118 anywhere else I know, people would be panicking. Here, they just go about their business. I myself am starting to adopt a ho-hum attitude regarding the heat. A day or two after I arrived, I saw a construction worker out digging a building foundation in the intense oven heat with a shovel. The idea of toiling in this heat just boggles the mind, but you see them doing it.

One afternoon I walked home with my coordinator who lives in my building, and I didn't have a hat. I was worried that I was going to end up with burns on my head, but I was okay. If you spend hours inside in the air conditioning, it's actually kind of a rush to go through the sun and heat for a short while. It's sort of like those polar bear club people who jump into icy water in January. It's a feeling of being very daring. Of course the people who work out in the heat have none of that, they just suffer. But at least Kuwait provides public drinking water in big tanks on practically every street.

I went out to tell our shuttle driver that we were going to need a little more time before getting a ride home, and there was a distressed little bird on the sidewalk. I picked it up and put it in the shade where a water sprinkler was sending a fine spray into some planted greenery. (Yes, I did wash my hands immediately afterwards - don't want to get bird flu). Very little could survive here without drastic environmental manipulation. Desalinization of salt water from the Persian Gulf (called the Arabian Sea here, because the Arabs don't like Persians) and gargantuan airconditioning systems enable this city to exist.

Sometimes even the powerful air conditioning systems can't keep up with the heat. I joined the gym at the Holiday Inn, and I found it to be just a little too warm for a good work-out. The swimming pool there usually has coolers, but they are not working, so the pool is like a hot bath. I swam a few laps, but when you start to warm up from the exercise you just don't want to keep going. Hopefully they'll get that fixed. The gym membership was a bit of a splurge, and I'm not sure I'll get my money's worth. Can you believe people go there and sit in the sauna? I just have to laugh when I even think about it.

The heat at night is very different from the daytime heat. The wind starts blowing, and it's a very hot wind. It feels like a hair dryer. When the sun's shining intensely, the heat doesn't surprise you, but when it's dark out, you don't expect it to be so hot. Night time is when the skinny little stray cats come out of their hiding places and go scrounging for scraps in the dumpsters. They're never very big - kitten size. They're feral, of course, but you sense they know they come from a domesticated breed and once had a symbiotic relationship with people. They don't run immediately when you stop and look at them. They look back, momentarily confused, perhaps from some leftover feeling that tells them people will give them food. Or maybe people really do give them food sometimes, like we do with squirrels and pigeons, but I don't think there's a whole lot of that.

The speaker at the AWARE Center (Association for Western - Arab Relations and Exchange) told us that the women wearing those black-from-head-to-toe burkas aren't any hotter than the men in their white dishdashas. She postulated that black fabric forms a more shaded space and the sun doesn't penetrate, so the women are enjoying the shade as they walk around. Not sure about that one. Many of them wear gloves to cover their hands and put black gauze over their eye slits. Rumor has it that many of them wear Victoria Secret type sexy clothes under those robes. It wouldn't surprise me.