Rape in Kuwait (2)
There seem to be some misconceptions running around about rape in Kuwait. One misconception is that Kuwaitis commit a lot of rape. If you read the newspapers, however, you will discover that a lot of the rapes committed are nationality on nationality, for example, one senior Phillipina lady will befriend an unhappy domestic worker, will “help” her get away, and the domestic finds herself abducted, gang raped and in sexual slavery. That’s one common story.
Domestics of all nationalities are abducted off the streets, taken to apartments or villas, raped repeatedly by two or more men, and then dropped off on the street (or dropped off a balcony). People don’t seem to be very concerned about domestic servants being people here, having the right NOT to be raped, it sort of seems like business as usual, no matter who is raped or doing the raping. I have yet to read of one single case being prosecuted or sentenced in the Kuwait newspapers, but maybe I missed a day or two.
Another common story is Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani on Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani, and that can be men abducting/raping men, or men abducting/raping women. Some of these women are also recruited into prostitution, and are found when the police raid the dens of iniquity, catching the men and men or men and women in “uncompromising” positions, or, even better – RED HANDED!
There is a whole catagory of abductions – Kuwaiti, Bedoun or other Gulf or Arab nationality where a man or woman, or men or women, is/are abducted and taken to camps in the desert and raped multiple times. Sometimes they are left naked by the side of the road. Sometimes their dead bodies are found, and occasionally enough clues to guess at the identity of the abductors/rapists.
Then there are the men that rape children. It can be within a family. It can be within a building. It can be within a neighborhood. Many times the child knows the rapist, and is told that if they say anything, the rapist will kill or harm the child’s parents. There was an epidemic of child rape in Hawali, and although the man arrested cries “I didn’t do it!” the fact is that the epidemic of rape in Hawali has stopped. That doesn’t mean that children aren’t being raped, it just means that the Hawali Monster seems to be off the streets of Hawali.
Objectively, if there can be said to be a “good” thing about rape in Kuwait, it is that so few of them are fatal.
What can, accurately, be said about Kuwait is that there seems to be a lot of rape. If you think I exaggerate, I challenge you to read the Kuwait papers every day for a month.
When there is a lot of rape, it means there is a social, legal and political climate that tolerates rape. It means that rape cases are not handled with a lot of attention to gathering evidence. It means that men and women are not encouraged to persue rape charges. It means that the police are not very interested in investigating accusations of rape. It means that the legal system is not very interested in prosecuting rape. It means that the rape victims are not valued highly enough to deserve not to be raped.
Rape happens everywhere. Rape happens in wars, rape happens on the streets. In most places, we are taught, rape isn’t about sex as much as it is about power. Here, in Kuwait, I am inclined to think it may be a little bit of both.
I’ve worked with rape victims in several different locations. Working with the victims gives you so much admiration for women, what they endure, what they survive, and their deeply ingrained sense of priorities and self. You’d think the experience would be devastating, but the women who have experienced rape and overcome it have been anything but devastated – many of them become truly awesome individuals, literally, awe-inspiring. They refuse to be victims. They carry on with their lives. They accomplish. They let their anger fuel and energize them to become incredibly accomplished individuals. It isn’t surprising – wealth and accomplishment also give you additional protection against it ever happening again.
There is another tragedy in Kuwait – male rapes. When men rape another men, like in prison, it is very much a power thing. Me big – you little. Me do what I want with you. Most of the victims I have met, or heard about are young teens. Being raped by a bigger, older male really skews their lives. They begin to question what it was about themself that got them raped, they question whether maybe they are gay and don’t know it, they ask, over and over – Why ME? Young men who were good at school start getting bad grades, they can’t concentrate, they often turn to drugs.
Being forced to have sex, whether you are man, woman, or child, is wrong. And doing nothing to stop this epidemic is also wrong. To look the other way is wrong. To say it isn’t happening is wrong. To become so used to it that your heart becomes calloused is just plain wrong.
I know most of the time my blog is a nice place to visit, and these entries make you uncomfortable. I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable. I myself am so uncomfortable that, as Martin Luther said (only he said it in German) “I cannot other. God help me.”
The Cat is King in Kuwait
The Kuwait Times printed an article in the Friday Times called The Cat is King in Kuwait, a really fluff piece about how the cats in Kuwait own the streets.
In contrast – and I wish I could print out even a portion of this article, but it is not online, and I no longer have the paper – on Thursday, Ben Garcia wrote a truly heart wrenching editorial/opinion piece about how the children living in his building were chasing, catching, stomping, throwing, swinging and torturing cats. Ironically, two cats they killed, either by stomping or drowning, ended up in the building water supply. One of the maids told her employer that the water tasted funny, and the employer told her the water in Kuwait always tastes funny. (I’m sorry, but that part really made me laugh.)
Mr. Garcia’s article was gut wrenching. He found it an irony that the tortured cats ended up spreading their dead bacteria with the entire building, where the children lived. But the fact that these children think it is OK to stomp on cats makes me almost physically ill.
In the Christian religion, Jesus said we are to protect the little ones. He is thought to be referring to children, but as humans, we are to be stewards of all creation. Doesn’t that means caring for all things, great and small? It means protecting our environment. It also means respecting all life, and giving respect to all humans, no matter what walk of life they are in. If there is any justification for a belief in re-incarnation, it is to learn from another point of view the lessons we fail to learn in this life.
Like wouldn’t we be kinder to the Bangladeshi street worker if we knew he might be our grandfather who beat his servants, or imposed himself on the maid?
I don’t think it meant we are to be all vegetarian, as he gave us animals for meat, but I believe we are to be wise and thoughtful in the use of all he gives us, so abundantly, in our daily lives. I am willing to bet that the Qur’an says something similar. (Can anyone help me out, here?)
So cats are abundant in Kuwait, but King? King of the garbage bin, king of skin diseases, queen of the swollen belly looking for a safe quiet place to give birth? These poor cats have a tough enough life without anyone giving them additional pain or harassment.
And what if these small creatures are angels in disguise, and we hard-heartedly allow them to starve, to wander, to be beaten and abused? Can’t we sin as easily by neglecting to do anything as by actively choosing to harm?
How can parents tolerate that kind of behavior in their children, allowing them to torment these creatures? What kind of lessons are the children learning?
I think finding a dead cat in the drinking water supply would be pretty horrifying – and I can’t help but think it is fitting for people who would allow their children to torture small creatures.
Bravo, Ben Garcia, first for speaking up and shaming those children, and second for writing it up for the Kuwait Times. It isn’t easy to read, but it is right to bring it to our attention.
Bee Sting
How often do you even see bees in Kuwait? I hardly ever see a bee, but as I was exercising in the pool, last week, I felt a sudden sting on my left hand, and the bee – or was it a wasp? – was still there.
I brushed him off violently and left him to drown as I exited the pool. I have had bee stings before so why I worry about anaphalactic shock, I don’t know, but I do. If it was going to strike, I didn’t want it to hit me in the swimmimg pool, so I quickly came home and put a paste of baking soda and water over the sting, and then later a good coating of Benedryl cream, an antihistamine. By the end of the day, you couldn’t even see where I had been stung. I thought everything was OK.
But a few days later, am itchy bump formed. Back to the Benedryl, and yeh, I scratched it a little. Today, over a week later, it is still red and a little swollen and I find myself scratching at it absently. It itches.
Adventure Man tells me it is healing and it will go away. I try not to be a hypochondriac – I hardly ever get sick and I rarely have to see a doctor – but why would a bee sting come back to haunt me over a week later?
Big Girls Don’t Cry?
Listening to SUPERSTATION 99.7 as I am working, I find myself exasperated, from time to time, by the lyrics to some of the songs.
Today, it is Big Girls Don’t Cry. I remember a totally different song with the same name from back a while ago, and actually I like this one better, because she talks about cutting it off and just moving on – and I agree. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses.
But I think big girls – and guys – do cry.
(Picasso’s Weeping Woman)
A researcher actually explored why we cry:
Frey investigated a question his mother had asked him: “Why is it that people cry tears?” He would pursue the answer, alongside his Alzheimer’s work, for many years. He took a scientific approach to her inquiry, and he discovered emotional tears were chemically different from other tears. That research resulted in interviews with People magazine, the Today Show, Good Morning America, and others, as well as a book, Crying: The Mystery of Tears (Harper and Row). “Perhaps the reason people feel better after crying is that they’re removing chemicals that build up during stress,” Frey suggests, adding that the question remains open to further research.
This is from a Washington University Alumni magazine.
I don’t know if there has been any further research on crying, but originally, I remember him stating that emotional tears carried away poisons that stress build in the body. It makes sense to me. I don’t cry all that often, but when I do, when I cry and it’s one of those blow-it-all-out cries, the kind that give you a headache if you carry on for too long – afterwards, you just feel wonderful!
And you wonder why you even let her/him/it assume so much importance in your life?
And you wonder “What was I thinking???”
Sometimes a good cry just puts everything back in proportion and you really CAN move on.
Or that’s how I see it. I don’t mean to go all drama-queen, I am just talking about a good old fashioned lock-yourself-in-the-bedroom-and-cry kind of cry.
But maybe you see it differently. I think big girls DO cry, and for good reasons, and then we move on. But this might be a cultural thing, and I am willing to entertain other ways of looking at it. What do YOU think?
Heavy Body, Healthy Heart
I found this article this morning on AOL Health
I am always looking for hope. This doctor, in an article from Prevention Magazine says even heavy people can have healthy hearts by including 10 minutes of exercise into their daily routine; that the biggest danger comes from belly fat, which impedes circulation. Your weight may stay the same, but if belly fat decreases, you have gained in fitness.
In my practice, I’ve seen a number of overweight patients virtually eliminate their heart disease risk by losing just a few pounds. This is, of course, wonderful news. I believe that most of us, by employing a few simple lifestyle changes, can avoid having a heart attack, and I intend to use this space every month to help you do that. But while I delight in my patients’ successes, some of them are dissatisfied by minimal weight loss and tell me they “just want to be thin.” In reaching for that goal, they often inadvertently sabotage the newfound cardiovascular fitness that losing just a little weight can provide.
Fitter in 10 minutes
Are you surprised to learn that you can be fit and, to put it indelicately, fat? Many doctors I know are startled to hear this, too. But the latest research, out of Louisiana State University, shows that overweight women can improve their heart health by adding just 10 minutes of activity a day.
In that study, researchers asked more than 400 sedentary women with high or borderline-high blood pressure to add a short bout of moderately intense activity, such as brisk walking, to their daily routines for 6 months. Although the women as a group neither lost weight nor lowered their blood pressure, they ended up fitter, as measured by their oxygen intake, and – this is the really important part – their waistlines got smaller. That’s significant because belly, or visceral, fat is linked to insulin resistance, a contributor to heart disease. You can reach this level of fitness without losing a pound.
You can read the whole article HERE.
Higher IQ Linked to being Vegetarian
I found this among BBC’s Most E-mailed stories and I can see why. Holy smokes! Adventure Man and I have gone greatly, but not totally, meatless. Sometimes, we just can’t resist. About once every three months or so, we just have to have a steak or a hamburger, but mostly, we try to eat lower on the food chain. Good thing I LOVE salmon. And those hammour kofte they make at the Sultan Center on the weekends. Ummmm . . . . hmmmmm. Can you eat fish and be vegetarian?
Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, a study says.
A Southampton University team found those who were vegetarian by 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10.
Researchers said it could explain why people with higher IQ were healthier as a vegetarian diet was linked to lower heart disease and obesity rates.
Read the whole story HERE.
Kuwait Bans Melmac
Today on the front page of the Kuwait Times is the announcement of a ban by the Ministry of Commerce on selling any goods containing melamine, stating it was “based on information received from the Customs Department and office of the Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and has to do with melamine containing urea formaldehyde, which is banned” because it is “believed to be harmful to health.”
I was so curious, I had to Google “Melamine kitchenware + danger” because, to the best of my knowledge, Kuwait is now the only country in the entire world to ban melamine.
Melamine appeared in dog and cat food, and is believed to have been the cause of some early poisonings in the US, but as far as I can see, that came from insecticides, not from eating off melmac.
On the same front page is an article about hundreds of camels dropping dead in Saudi Arabia, also believed poisoned by a insecticide contaminated feed. Is there some relationship?
It isn’t an issue in our house; we don’t have melamine. But I have this irrational fondness for Melmac, because there used to be a show called Alf, about an alien that lived with an American family, and he was from the planet Melmac, which always cracked me up. I can’t imagine the generations of Americans – and others – who have eaten off Melmac dishes without any serious effects. How can this be? Is Melmac now formulated differently from before? Are Melmac plate users going to succumb to some serious problems because they ate off Melmac plates?
And why is Kuwait the only country in the world banning Melmac?
Back it up! #2 Khalid Al-Hajri
WOOOOOOO Hoooooooooooo Khalid Al-Hajri!
You WILL find this one in the Kuwait Times Online, by clicking right here.
Khalid Al-Hajri, representing The Green LIne Environmental Group, held a press conference and demonstrated how the Wafra Agricultural Area – and all of Kuwait – faces an environmental disaster due to irresponsible disposal of petroleum related wastage.
This takes a bucket full of courage, in a nation where so much wealth is produced by petroleum. And Khalid Al-Hajri didn’t just go on record giving an emotional speech, no. He had graphs and maps and photos – he had the FACTS to back up his assertions.
And bravo to the Kuwait Times for giving him page 3 coverage.
The truth is that I don’t understand the whole of the report. I understand that there are problems with oil products being illegally dumped in the al Wafra farm area and it could have a devastating impact on the farming there. And – I understand that their injecting the oil production by-products deep into the earth NEAR THE SAUDI – KUWAITI BORDER could cause EARTHQUAKES.
Hmmmmmm. . . . didn’t we just have an earthquake? And where was it? Oh . . . yeh! Near the Kuwaiti – Saudi border, wasn’t it?
And worst case of all, these by products pollute the underground aquifer.
I applaud people like Khalid Al-Hajri who care about their country enough to do their homework, and then to speak up in a responsible way to bring our attention to practices that can hurt Kuwait in the future.
Any Exercise is Good
From BBC Health News comes a report on a study that shows that even mild exercise three days a week can help forestall the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle:
‘Even light exercise’ aids health
Even low levels of weekly exercise could help reduce blood pressure and improve fitness, scientists say.Experts say walking for half an hour, five days a week, is the minimum required to achieve health benefits.
But a Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health report from Northern Ireland found walking on just three days a week gave similar benefits.
The finding could encourage those with sedentary lifestyles to take up exercise gradually, the authors say.
This could be helpful as few people currently meet the minimum recommendations for exercise, with many saying they do not have enough time.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
I find it really hard to exercise in the heat of Kuwait. If you go out during the day, it is like living in an oven. And even hitting the pool is difficult when you are surrounded by oogling eyes. I have exercise equipment . . . and I don’t use it as often as I SHOULD. Aaarrgh.
But I love articles like this that get me moving, that give me hope that even though I am not as fit as I would like to be, any exercise is helpful. Bye! Off to the pool now!
Blood Pressure: Self Monitoring
Many people in the US take their own blood pressure once or twice a day to be sure they are not experiencing overly high readings.
I have done this, but I also find that just taking my blook pressure makes me anxious enough to cause a rise in the pressure. I take it two or three times to get an accurate idea, and when I have it checked in a doctor’s office, I ask them to do it manually, as those results – at least for me – are more accurate than the automatic models. And did you know you can get different readings depending on which arm they use?
Taking control or worrying yourself sick?
There are several reasons why your GP might be sceptical about self-monitoring.
It could be a hangover from earlier times when it meant doctors training patients in the complicated art and science of using a manual blood pressure device. Modern devices pose much less of a challenge.
Even automatic machines are open to bias: it’s easy to round figures down or simply ignore unusually high results. In my experience, this can apply equally to doctors, and some modern machines memorise readings so you can’t fiddle the records.
More simply, doctors worry that patients will worry. They worry some people will develop an obsessional and unhealthy interest in every peak and trough of their blood pressure. I’ve certainly seen people panicked unnecessarily by a one-off high reading.
But perhaps the main reason is that most automated blood pressure monitors on sale to the public haven’t been properly validated, or have been shown to be inaccurate. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which issues guidance for doctors, says using home-monitoring devices as part of primary care needs more research.
Golden rules of self-monitoring
Other doctors may have a different view, but if a patient of mine wanted to buy one of these devices this is what I hope they would do.
First, discuss it with me. We can talk about how to use the machine properly, how often and when to take readings, and how to interpret them. For example, the threshold for high blood pressure is generally lower using home monitors (more than 135/85 is high) than in the clinic (more than 140/90 is high).
Without getting too obsessive, when it comes to long-term monitoring I’ve found the European Society of Hypertension advice works well – take two morning and evening readings each day for one week every three months. Alternatively, you could take readings on one day every week.
Things that temporarily affect blood pressure
Anxiety
Exercise
Meals
Tobacco
Alcohol
Pain
Time of year – blood pressure’s generally lower in summer
Time of day – blood pressure’s usually lower when you’re asleep
Second, before my patient handed over their hard-earned cash, I’d strongly advise them to check up-to-date information on which devices have been properly validated.
Just because a monitor is on sale – and even if it has a ‘CE’ mark (indicating it meets European standards) – it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accurate or reliable.
Luckily, this job is done for you by the British Hypertension Society.
Third, choose an upper arm monitor as these have been shown to be the most reliable, but always make sure you have the right sized cuff to fit your arm – too small or too large and the reading can be inaccurate.
In general, wrist and finger devices aren’t recommended because they’re easily influenced by changes in circulation, and the measuring cuff is not always at the level of your heart, which it should be.
Benefits of self-monitoring
Despite some doctors’ reservations, the tide seems to be turning.
Self-monitoring can be useful in detecting white coat hypertension. This is a phenomenon affecting up to one in five adults, in which blood pressure measurements taken at your doctor’s or in a clinic are high even though your blood pressure’s normal the rest of the time.
You can read the whole article at BBC Health News.
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