Here There and Everywhere

“Where You From?”

AdventureMan calls, full of chat, wanting to tell me what he is seeing at the airport. Normally, it’s a good time for a chat, but today, I’m having none of it.

“I just called the police again.” I told him.

(I can hear him thinking “Oh oh.”)

First I dialed the neighborhood police number, and nobody answered – again.

We have accidents in front of our house all the time. Sometimes I can see everyone with their phones out and I don’t call. This time, I called. No answer. I dialed 777. Thank God, they have WOMEN who answer, women who speak a little English, and I speak a little Arabic, and together we figure things out. They are smart, they are competent and they are sweetly polite, not officiously bureaucratic.

I tell her about the accident, tell her the neighborhood.

Two minutes later, my phone rings. He doesn’t speak English.

“Bolice?” I ask.

“Bolice” he affirms, and says my neighborhood.

I start telling him, in Arabic, the block, the street and the cross street. See? I’ve gotten so smart!

“Where you from?” he asks in amazement, and I can hear him grinning.

“I’m from (the neighborhood)” I answer.

He leaves the phone, and he is yelling and everyone is laughing in the background. Someone else comes.

“Where you from?” he asks. He just wants to hear me talk.

I tell him – in Arabic – the block, the street and tell him “CAR CRASH! TOO MUCH TRAFFIC. NEED BOLICE!” He is laughing. He calls someone else.

This guy speaks English.

“Car crash?” he asks.

“Yes!” I respond, glad to be on topic.

“Why you call me?” he asks.

(I didn’t call him. I called 777 {the emergency number here.} They called me!)

“Car crash.” I repeat. “Too many cars” (I say this in Arabic) Need BOLICE!”

He is laughing.

“Where you from?” he asks.

I say I am from the neighborhood.

“You in car?” he asks.

“No, I see from my house.”

“Come to station.” he says.

“No, BOLICE COME HERE!” I say, and tell him again the street, block and cross street – in Arabic.

He laughs and hangs up.

Forty five minutes later, traffic is still snarled up, no one is managing traffic, there are any number of near accidents as a result, and it is just a mess. No BOLICE.

For my non-Kuwaiti readers, the law in Kuwait is that when there is an accident, you cannot move your cars, not even out of the way, until the police have come. Until they come, everything stays as it is except for an ambulance can come and take away someone who is hurt.

October 23, 2008 Posted by intlxpatr | Bureaucracy, Community, Cross Cultural, ExPat Life, Kuwait, Law and Order, Leadership, Living Conditions | 15 Comments