Saturday, February 9, 2008
A Desert Outing
[copied from memo book to blog]
Saturday, Feb. 9 9:30 AM
I am waiting for the word to board a bus for the one-day “Desert Camp” sponsored by the AWARE Center Islamic Institute. There are about 40 or 50 English-speaking expats here, but none of my friends wanted to go, so I don’t know anyone. As I listen to them with their loud western hooting and laughing I feel kind of glad that I don’t know any of them. In the midst of all us foreigners with our sweatshirts and jeans is one Arabic woman in the most severe mode of full black cover, so that her eye slit is practically closed. How can she see? I think it would be funny to see her bump into a wall or something, but that is mean. One of my students explained to me that the real reason for a woman to wear the burka would be that she were so, very, very beautiful that her appearance would otherwise create havoc. From the shortness and squatness of this black shape, I would say that this woman has employed more than black cover to conceal her ravishing beauty; some Houdini trickery has been added to confuse onlookers and deflect their lust.
For the past few days it has felt like spring in Kuwait. Winter here was colder than I expected, once dipping into the 30’s, but generally undramatic. I was told to expect horrendous dust storms and maybe even a flash flood. We had a couple short sprinkles. Now it’s getting warm again, and winter seems to be over. I have been in Kuwait for about six months. I don’t like to say it, but …. well, Kuwait isn't so bad. I guess it’s the comfort of familiarity kicking in. Kuwait is doable. It’s not Shangri-La, but it’s doable.
Now we’re on our way. I’m on bus 1, sitting behind the driver. I hear all the English conversations going on behind me. The highways in Kuwait show it at its best. Landscaped strips of land divide the highway and also border it on both sides. Palm trees and shrubs, eucalyptus trees, even expanses of ground cover manage to stay green with the help of sprinkler systems and the cooler winter weather. I have no idea where in Kuwait we’re gong for this desert fun. We have a pretty young African girl as our guide. The AWARE Center is funded by Kuwaitis but staffed by foreign Muslims. The director is an American lady, and the woman in charge of public relations is Dutch or Belgian. Both wear hijabs (head scarves worn by Muslim women, which, once accepted, cannot be taken off in public). There are a number of foreign women who have married Kuwaitis and taken the hijab. I usually feel sorry for them. You hear about how they get stuck here. Children of mixed marriages are always kept in the custody of their fathers, so women stay and keep in line so as not to lose their children. Of course there are foreign wives who do not wear hijab, and many I’m sure who are very happy with their lives here. There are always many sides to any story, but it’s easy to imagine a life of resignation and compromise when one meets these women. The most startling case I encountered was at Kuwait University, where I went to see a presentation of skits by the Japanese language classes. There was a Japanese woman there wearing a hijab. It was almost painful to see. I don’t know what one could compare it to. Japan is not a multicultural society, and it had to be a huge transformation for any Japanese woman to end up married to an Arab and wearing hijab. I suppose I buy into the myth that Japanese people have in their hearts and souls something which is forever Japanese and quietly treasured. How did this woman bear to depart so irreversably from her culture? Yet when I saw her in hijab, I didn’t think of her as a deserter, but rather as a lonely pioneer who left her home forever to live in this alien universe. 気の毒(ki no doku) means “heartbreaking,” and that’s what I felt about it, though I’m sure she would be highly insulted to hear anyone comment like that.
We are on the highway headed to a place called Nawaalseib. I haven’t heard of it before. There are oil refineries in the distance. We just passed a town of tents. Kuwaitis set up large tents in the winter months and go there for outings. It’s like the permanent campgrounds in the States where trailers are parked next to each other long term--not really camping, but just a place for weekend getaways and change of scenery. Not that there’s much scenery here. It’s just flat fields of dry dirt, from what I can see. Now we have pulled over because the other bus has a flat tire and we have 11 empty seats. Now we’re waiting for the driver, and I’m looking at the litter on the roadside. Kuwait has a terrible litter problem. In fact, in many cases you couldn’t really call it litter, you have to call it piles of trash. Litter means “here and there.“ There are places in Hawally (where I live) where poor immigrant neighborhoods, probably Indian and Pakistani, where people have created unofficial dumps. It’s pretty disgusting. Next Thursday, the Middle School is doing a “Litter Pick-Up” as part of a field trip, but we’re going to the cleanest part of Kuwait. If we cleaned up around the school it would make more sense to me, but parents would probably not approve. Okay, here we go. I think we are headed towards Wafra. I’ve seen it on the map. It’s near the Saudi border.
An American Black lady is having a conversation with our guide, who it turns out is from Chad. It’s fun to listen to them, one with an African accent and the other speaking American “Ebonics.” The seem delighted to talk with each other, like cousins separated by history, culture, and geography.
“Yer heead scarf is so pritty, I wanna get me one a them and learn howda wrap it around my heead.”
“Oh, I wel hopily show you how to do et.”
We’ve pulled off the road and are now entering an unpaved desert lane that heads off into the north. Lots of young Kuwaiti teenagers on quad bikes. It’s a tent city in the white, flat, barren desert. It reminds me of Black Rock City (Burning Man Festival) -- same landscape minus the hippies and artists.
Now I’m at the desert camp. It’s a kind of temporary museum of Arab culture. I’m just hanging out here in a big carpeted tent set up with cushions to sit on. I watched some Kuwaiti guys play drums and do a sword dance. There a little screen and projector set up to show a move about the Arabian Desert and Bedouin life. They're going to serve us a big fancy lunch later. People are dressing up in Arabic costumes. A red-haired lady puts on one of the total head-covers with tiny eye slits, and her friends take her picture. “Smile!” they say, and everyone cracks up because of course you can’t see her smile. Sure, it’s all a little hokey, but people are doing a good job of making things fun for themselves.
1:30 PM
I walked a distance (not sure how far, maybe a quarter mile or so) from the tent area. It’s cool and windy. It feels good to be in a wide open space. I found a rocky ledge to sit on, and that’s where I’m writing this. Quad bikes are buzzing around in the distance. There is actually sparse desert life in evidence out here. Bits of small, spiky grass grow from the ground, which is crusty, not loose sand. I saw a quick-traveling long-legged beetle. I also spotted a hole, probably belonging to a reptile or maybe a desert rat of some kind. The whish of wind sounds nice. The sun is shining, but it is not harsh. There’s another beetle. A flying ant. Here is a list of some of the litter: a squashed water bottle, made opaque by sun and sand; a small KDD chocolate milk carton (our field trip group will be touring the KDD dairy after our litter clean-up); scraps of rotted wood; a yogurt bottle; pieces of plywood; tiles; a broken plastic tray with poppies and daisies printed on it; rotted hunks of carpet. Two beetles are hanging out on the carpet. A sock. A yellowed, plastic key-chain decoration with chips of abalone shell embedded in the plastic. I think I’ll keep this as my souvenir. I like this place. More rat or snake holes. Some kind of footprints, could be rabbit or fox. Things probably live here where they can scavenge from human garbage. Now pages of a newspaper are parading noisily in tumbleweed fashion across the flat expanse. A bottle here: Vitamin C-enriched Rani Natural Banana drink.
It is nice to be somewhere where I can hear my gravely footsteps on the ground. I am walking back to the tent now. I can see the flags. Strangely, a Japanese flag and a Kuwaiti flag fly side by side. If I made that up it would be too contrived, but it’s true, and I will take a picture to prove it.
3:35 PM
The shadows are getting long, and if the wind gets any cooler I’ll have to get my jacket from the bus. The lunch would have been fantastic, but the first people in line heaped their plates, and the latecomers had to settle for the picked-over bits. It was big platters of meat served on beds of rice, but in our case it was bones on beds of rice. I had some stuffed grape leaves, something I usually don’t like very much, but these were very good, the best I’ve ever had. And there were some tiny but delicious baklava-type pastry deserts. A chubby Lebanese guy who teaches Arabic at the AWARE Center came and struck up a conversation with me. He thought maybe I was from Italy because of my name. Actually, when my name is pronounced by Arabic speakers, it sounds like “Beiruti,” which is an Arabic name which means “from Beirut.” Since I’m told that I also look Arabic, I suppose I could blend in if I really wanted to, as long as I didn’t have to talk.
6:56 PM
I’m home. It was a nice day. What did I do? I went for a walk in the desert and looked at the litter. But it was a nice day. You have to make things fun for yourself.
Saturday, Feb. 9 9:30 AM
I am waiting for the word to board a bus for the one-day “Desert Camp” sponsored by the AWARE Center Islamic Institute. There are about 40 or 50 English-speaking expats here, but none of my friends wanted to go, so I don’t know anyone. As I listen to them with their loud western hooting and laughing I feel kind of glad that I don’t know any of them. In the midst of all us foreigners with our sweatshirts and jeans is one Arabic woman in the most severe mode of full black cover, so that her eye slit is practically closed. How can she see? I think it would be funny to see her bump into a wall or something, but that is mean. One of my students explained to me that the real reason for a woman to wear the burka would be that she were so, very, very beautiful that her appearance would otherwise create havoc. From the shortness and squatness of this black shape, I would say that this woman has employed more than black cover to conceal her ravishing beauty; some Houdini trickery has been added to confuse onlookers and deflect their lust.
For the past few days it has felt like spring in Kuwait. Winter here was colder than I expected, once dipping into the 30’s, but generally undramatic. I was told to expect horrendous dust storms and maybe even a flash flood. We had a couple short sprinkles. Now it’s getting warm again, and winter seems to be over. I have been in Kuwait for about six months. I don’t like to say it, but …. well, Kuwait isn't so bad. I guess it’s the comfort of familiarity kicking in. Kuwait is doable. It’s not Shangri-La, but it’s doable.
Now we’re on our way. I’m on bus 1, sitting behind the driver. I hear all the English conversations going on behind me. The highways in Kuwait show it at its best. Landscaped strips of land divide the highway and also border it on both sides. Palm trees and shrubs, eucalyptus trees, even expanses of ground cover manage to stay green with the help of sprinkler systems and the cooler winter weather. I have no idea where in Kuwait we’re gong for this desert fun. We have a pretty young African girl as our guide. The AWARE Center is funded by Kuwaitis but staffed by foreign Muslims. The director is an American lady, and the woman in charge of public relations is Dutch or Belgian. Both wear hijabs (head scarves worn by Muslim women, which, once accepted, cannot be taken off in public). There are a number of foreign women who have married Kuwaitis and taken the hijab. I usually feel sorry for them. You hear about how they get stuck here. Children of mixed marriages are always kept in the custody of their fathers, so women stay and keep in line so as not to lose their children. Of course there are foreign wives who do not wear hijab, and many I’m sure who are very happy with their lives here. There are always many sides to any story, but it’s easy to imagine a life of resignation and compromise when one meets these women. The most startling case I encountered was at Kuwait University, where I went to see a presentation of skits by the Japanese language classes. There was a Japanese woman there wearing a hijab. It was almost painful to see. I don’t know what one could compare it to. Japan is not a multicultural society, and it had to be a huge transformation for any Japanese woman to end up married to an Arab and wearing hijab. I suppose I buy into the myth that Japanese people have in their hearts and souls something which is forever Japanese and quietly treasured. How did this woman bear to depart so irreversably from her culture? Yet when I saw her in hijab, I didn’t think of her as a deserter, but rather as a lonely pioneer who left her home forever to live in this alien universe. 気の毒(ki no doku) means “heartbreaking,” and that’s what I felt about it, though I’m sure she would be highly insulted to hear anyone comment like that.
We are on the highway headed to a place called Nawaalseib. I haven’t heard of it before. There are oil refineries in the distance. We just passed a town of tents. Kuwaitis set up large tents in the winter months and go there for outings. It’s like the permanent campgrounds in the States where trailers are parked next to each other long term--not really camping, but just a place for weekend getaways and change of scenery. Not that there’s much scenery here. It’s just flat fields of dry dirt, from what I can see. Now we have pulled over because the other bus has a flat tire and we have 11 empty seats. Now we’re waiting for the driver, and I’m looking at the litter on the roadside. Kuwait has a terrible litter problem. In fact, in many cases you couldn’t really call it litter, you have to call it piles of trash. Litter means “here and there.“ There are places in Hawally (where I live) where poor immigrant neighborhoods, probably Indian and Pakistani, where people have created unofficial dumps. It’s pretty disgusting. Next Thursday, the Middle School is doing a “Litter Pick-Up” as part of a field trip, but we’re going to the cleanest part of Kuwait. If we cleaned up around the school it would make more sense to me, but parents would probably not approve. Okay, here we go. I think we are headed towards Wafra. I’ve seen it on the map. It’s near the Saudi border.
An American Black lady is having a conversation with our guide, who it turns out is from Chad. It’s fun to listen to them, one with an African accent and the other speaking American “Ebonics.” The seem delighted to talk with each other, like cousins separated by history, culture, and geography.
“Yer heead scarf is so pritty, I wanna get me one a them and learn howda wrap it around my heead.”
“Oh, I wel hopily show you how to do et.”
We’ve pulled off the road and are now entering an unpaved desert lane that heads off into the north. Lots of young Kuwaiti teenagers on quad bikes. It’s a tent city in the white, flat, barren desert. It reminds me of Black Rock City (Burning Man Festival) -- same landscape minus the hippies and artists.
Now I’m at the desert camp. It’s a kind of temporary museum of Arab culture. I’m just hanging out here in a big carpeted tent set up with cushions to sit on. I watched some Kuwaiti guys play drums and do a sword dance. There a little screen and projector set up to show a move about the Arabian Desert and Bedouin life. They're going to serve us a big fancy lunch later. People are dressing up in Arabic costumes. A red-haired lady puts on one of the total head-covers with tiny eye slits, and her friends take her picture. “Smile!” they say, and everyone cracks up because of course you can’t see her smile. Sure, it’s all a little hokey, but people are doing a good job of making things fun for themselves.
1:30 PM
I walked a distance (not sure how far, maybe a quarter mile or so) from the tent area. It’s cool and windy. It feels good to be in a wide open space. I found a rocky ledge to sit on, and that’s where I’m writing this. Quad bikes are buzzing around in the distance. There is actually sparse desert life in evidence out here. Bits of small, spiky grass grow from the ground, which is crusty, not loose sand. I saw a quick-traveling long-legged beetle. I also spotted a hole, probably belonging to a reptile or maybe a desert rat of some kind. The whish of wind sounds nice. The sun is shining, but it is not harsh. There’s another beetle. A flying ant. Here is a list of some of the litter: a squashed water bottle, made opaque by sun and sand; a small KDD chocolate milk carton (our field trip group will be touring the KDD dairy after our litter clean-up); scraps of rotted wood; a yogurt bottle; pieces of plywood; tiles; a broken plastic tray with poppies and daisies printed on it; rotted hunks of carpet. Two beetles are hanging out on the carpet. A sock. A yellowed, plastic key-chain decoration with chips of abalone shell embedded in the plastic. I think I’ll keep this as my souvenir. I like this place. More rat or snake holes. Some kind of footprints, could be rabbit or fox. Things probably live here where they can scavenge from human garbage. Now pages of a newspaper are parading noisily in tumbleweed fashion across the flat expanse. A bottle here: Vitamin C-enriched Rani Natural Banana drink.
It is nice to be somewhere where I can hear my gravely footsteps on the ground. I am walking back to the tent now. I can see the flags. Strangely, a Japanese flag and a Kuwaiti flag fly side by side. If I made that up it would be too contrived, but it’s true, and I will take a picture to prove it.
3:35 PM
The shadows are getting long, and if the wind gets any cooler I’ll have to get my jacket from the bus. The lunch would have been fantastic, but the first people in line heaped their plates, and the latecomers had to settle for the picked-over bits. It was big platters of meat served on beds of rice, but in our case it was bones on beds of rice. I had some stuffed grape leaves, something I usually don’t like very much, but these were very good, the best I’ve ever had. And there were some tiny but delicious baklava-type pastry deserts. A chubby Lebanese guy who teaches Arabic at the AWARE Center came and struck up a conversation with me. He thought maybe I was from Italy because of my name. Actually, when my name is pronounced by Arabic speakers, it sounds like “Beiruti,” which is an Arabic name which means “from Beirut.” Since I’m told that I also look Arabic, I suppose I could blend in if I really wanted to, as long as I didn’t have to talk.
6:56 PM
I’m home. It was a nice day. What did I do? I went for a walk in the desert and looked at the litter. But it was a nice day. You have to make things fun for yourself.
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