“It’s Just Like Living in Alaska, Mom . . . or Kuwait . . . “
My Mom was concerned; the temperatures are approaching 90°F in Seattle, and most of Seattle does not bother with air conditioning. At night, the temperatures go down into the fifties, cooling everything off, but the day time highs can be more than a little uncomfortable.
“How do you manage?” she asks. “I see the temperatures in (nearby) Mobile are in the 90’s almost every day.”
“It’s not that hard; it’s like living in Alaska – or Kuwait,” I tell her. “When it gets cold in Alaska, you dress warmly, you turn on the heat, you stay inside, and when you need to go out, you get into your car in the heated garage, go in your heated car to a heated store, and you come back home. You don’t spend a lot of time outside.”
I do pretty much the same thing I did in Qatar and Kuwait. I get up and do my devotional readings, and on some days I go to my aqua-aerobics class. on other mornings I volunteer. If I need something, I stop at a store on the way home. Sometimes, I clean house, or do laundry. We often go out for lunch, from the air conditioned car to the air conditioned restaurant and back 🙂 In the afternoons, I quilt or I read, or I quilt and I read.
AdventureMan grew up in the South, he is comfortable with the heat and the humidity. He works out in his gardens; once the temperatures go over 80° I rarely even visit the gardens, maybe when October comes and the temperatures drop. Yesterday morning I looked out as the sun was rising over the gardens and all I could see was swarms of insects rising. I don’t think they were mosquitoes, they looked like little no-see-up kind of things, all speeding around in the rising sun. I don’t do insects, the same way I really don’t do heat and humidity.
The Qatari Cat loves the heat. Part of his daily routine is to eat, then to go into the garage and sleep on one of the cars. It’s like an oven in the garage; it must remind him of living on the streets of Qatar when he was just a tiny thing. He is no longer a tiny thing. When we have international guests over for dinner, they always ask to take photos of him; he has grown to be a very long, tall cat, kingly but gracious.
Yesterday morning, as I headed out, there was a hint of – well, it was not coolness, but it was just not blasting me with heat. It was a respite from the relentless heat. I don’t begin to think it was a hint of winter to come; the summer torment has really just begun and is unlikely to end before late October, but I treasure even a hint of “not a blast of heat.”
AdventureMan asks me if I miss Seattle. Not so much, really, traffic has gotten so bad there, but I miss the climate. I feel energized by the cool mornings, even rain doesn’t bother me. I love the sound of the wind whistling around, I love taking a walk along the waterfront after lunch or dinner. I don’t find it at all surprising that diabetes is associated highly with countries with hot climates; heat makes you lethargic, inactive, all the things that encourage sloth.
Torrential rains are forecasted for this 4th of July weekend; in Pensacola there is a possibility they will diminish just in time for the fireworks. Hmmm. Heat. Humidity. Mosquitoes . . . I love fireworks . . . weighing my options 🙂
Americanah and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Rushing from one meeting to another yesterday, I had just an hour – but during that hour, Terry Gross was interviewing one of my favorite authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does GREAT interviews. She is funny, and educated and insightful; she can talk about painful topics and make you laugh and cry with her. That interview was a blessing on my day.
I started reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie when I was in Kuwait. A good friend approached me and asked me to form a book club. LOL. This is a friend I can’t say no to. Every introverted bone in my body was screaming “NO! NO!” and I smiled at her and said “Yes.”
God is good. He laughed when I said “yes” and through the book club, introduced me to authors I might never otherwise read. The club was made up of many nationalities, and we read books from everywhere, unforgettable books. We read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Half of a Yellow Sun.” Once you read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is no going back. I wonder if I will be able to hold out on Americanah until it comes out in paperback?
This is from the National Public Radio website, so you can actually listen to the interview yourself, should you want to get to know this delightful author a little better.
‘Americanah’ Author Explains ‘Learning’ To Be Black In The U.S.
When the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was growing up in Nigeria she was not used to being identified by the color of her skin. That changed when she arrived in the United States for college. As a black African in America, Adichie was suddenly confronted with what it meant to be a person of color in the United States. Race as an idea became something that she had to navigate and learn.
The learning process took some time and was episodic. Adichie recalls, for example, an undergraduate class in which the subject of watermelon came up. A student had said something about watermelon to an African-American classmate, who was offended by the comment.
“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘But what’s so bad about watermelons? Because I quite like watermelons,’ ” Adichie tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross.
She felt that her African-American classmate was annoyed with her because Adichie didn’t share her anger — but she didn’t have the context to understand why. The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not taught to students in Nigeria. Adichie had yet to learn fully about the history of slavery — and its continuing reverberations — in the U.S.
“Race is such a strange construct,” says Adichie, “because you have to learn what it means to be black in America. So you have to learn that watermelon is supposed to be offensive.”
Adichie is a MacArthur Fellowship winner and author of the novels Purple Hibiscusand Half of A Yellow Sun. Her new novel, Americanah, explores this question of what it means to be black in the U.S., and tells the story of a young Nigerian couple, one of whom leaves for England and the other of whom leaves for America.
The title, she says, is a Nigerian word for those who have been to the U.S. and return with American affectations.
“It’s often used,” she says, “in the context of a kind of gentle mockery.”
“So There We Were, Two Naked Guys in the Shower and . . . . “
LOL, no, no, this is not going where you think it might go, but it got my attention, too!
AdventureMan was in the locker room with one of his exercise/aerobics buddies, cooling down from his water aerobics class when this story started, and was sharing the story with me later, at lunch, as we exchangin details of our mornings.
“. . . And he asked ‘do you know what today is?’ and I said ‘Yes! It’s the 63th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War,” AdventureMan responded.
Guy talk. Guys discuss their combat experience in different wars. Combat is so intense, it imprints memories the way childbirth does in women, or a huge traumatic event, like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, or 9-11, or the Kennedy assassination, or the Tsunamis that hit Japan and washed entirely over the Maldives – experiences when the earth beneath your feet shifts, and things you once took for granted are shaken forever.
Who said guys don’t connect? AdventureMan has another old friend he needs to get in touch with today, to tell him he is thinking of him; Korean War veterans are largely forgotten in the tallying of combat in our country.
Pensacola is a wonderful place to be a military veteran. There is a Veteran’s hospital, and veteran-friendly policies at the clinics, commissaries and BX/PXx. Today we had lunch at Mellow Mushroom, where every Tuesday they give 20% off to all active duty and retired servicemen and women. Home Depot and Lowe’s give 10% off on every purchase, even plumbers, electricians, contractors, banks, theaters and many stores often give military discounts. And they thank us for our service. :0
To those of you who served in the Korean conflict: Thank you for your service.
St. John the Baptist and the Holy Spirit
This entry is a totally Here There and Everywhere moment; the impetus of which is today’s reading from Luke about the birth of John the Baptist, or as he is known in the Moslem world, the Prophet Yahya. We visited his tomb in Damascus; at our church in Kuwait on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, one of the readings was from the Quran. I love it when our worlds intersect and we can discover what we can learn from one another, to the advantage of all.
I also love it that each meditation from Forward Day by Day lists at the bottom the area of the world we are to include in our daily prayers. I love praying for Nigeria. I have old friends from my Kuwait church living there, and also a neighbor from Doha, a sweet book-club friend who lived across the street, who now lives in Lagos.
When I pray for Nigeria, I see the tiny flame of the holy spirit entering into each heart, and then I see God blowing lightly on each person, so that the flame grows. The flame helps them reach out and encourage one another, and others see, and are attracted, and thus the holy spirit spreads. I imagine it covering Nigeria, all believers, seeing one another as fellow believers, not as Ibo or Christian or village or . . . you get the drill. I pray that the light spreads through all Africa, and tiny embers spread out to join, and then further, so that sparks unite all over the world.
I pray, too, for Damascus, and for Syria, and all our friends there; I think of all the wonderful adventures and times we have shared in Syria, and I know and trust with all my heart that our good and loving God can bring good out of this horror. I pray for it to happen sooner rather than to allow this suffering to endure.
. . . And that was just ONE synapse connecting early on a Monday morning, LOL. Have a great day. 🙂
MONDAY, June 24 The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist
Luke 1:57-80.
On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “No; he is to be called John.”
Most of us don’t receive such pointed visions that show us the fork in the road—“this way, not that way”—but all of us are constantly cultivating either a disposition of “my will be done” or of “thy will be done” that will suddenly show up in those crossroads moments. It may appear like divine intervention, but it is long-term divine cultivation.
Living into a larger pattern is both exciting and terrifying, because it means letting go of convention and stepping into new territory. Like Elizabeth and Zechariah, we do not step forward blind but with a promise: God remembers, and God is gracious.
Prohibited For Travel in Kuwait
LOL, the have you been to the web page of all the items that are banned for traveling in and out of Kuwait? It’s all in Arabic, but you can understand the photos.
My last move to Kuwait, I was allowed several hundred pounds to take on the airplane. I packed an entire set of flatware, and all my good kitchen knives, and lots of scissors. . . like, who can live without scissors???
Honest Judge, so sorry, I had NO idea! No one asked me if I was carrying dangerous flatware in my baggage!
What Are Kuwait Traffic Laws?
You all know me – I am a law and order kind of gal. I like order, I like laws, especially those voted on by the people. I like laws which can be enforced, and are enforced, equally, for all people equally in the country. Oh? I did? I said EQUALLY twice?
We are all equal before the law.
Now here is the tricky part. Have you ever seen a listing of traffic laws in Kuwait? Can you find a listing of laws, violations, and their charges? When we apply for driver’s licenses in almost any country, we get a little booklet to memorize, with the laws written inside it. The laws are clear. Clear laws are enforceable.
I’ve looked at the MOI website. I see something that looks like it might be a traffic code in Arabic. I have looked everywhere; I cannot find one in English. I find no reference to any handbooks for people applying for their driver’s license.
How can you enforce a law if the law is not published? Is there a code somewhere listing violations and fines? I published one many years ago, something that all the expats were sending around as ‘the new Kuwait traffic rules’ but IF it was, there was never anything in the paper about it to confirm its validity.
If you are going to have a major campaign to enforce traffic codes, you might want to publish the laws . . . in all major languages use today in Kuwait.
From the Kuwait Times:
Ali vows to rid traffic ‘disease’
Interior Ministry Assistant Undersecretary Maj Gen Abdulfattah Al-Ali
KUWAIT: Interior Ministry Assistant Undersecretary Maj Gen Abdulfattah Al-Ali stressed that all traffic violation-related deportations are in accordance with the law. Speaking at a press conference at the Kuwait Journalists Association (KJA) headquarters, Ali said that deporting people for traffic violations was also adopted by the US and other countries worldwide. “The problem is that we were very tolerant with violators and this does not mean that law violation is a right for motorists,” he underlined, urging all human rights organizations who have criticized Kuwait’s traffic police to examine human rights in their respective countries before talking about Kuwait.
“We have filed over 70,000 traffic citations including 43,000 serious ones such as running red lights, driving under the influence of alcohol, driving on the wrong side and many others,” he elaborated, pointing out that those already deported did not want to respect the traffic laws they had repeatedly violated. Ali added that the results of studies of traffic problems revealed many and that once one problem was solved, another emerged immediately.
“We have various problems… including the fact that motorists speak many languages and dialects which requires a large number of specialists to develop their traffic awareness,” he explained, noting that the traffic remedy strategy started by diagnosing the “disease” by studying random “specimens” at different times of the day at places with heavy traffic flows such as Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, Shuwaikh Industrial Area, Amman Street, Bnaid Al-Gar, Khaitan, Farwaniya and Fahaheel.
“The specimens showed some major problems such as domestic drivers using private vehicles as taxis, taxi and large vehicle drivers who do not hold general driver’s licenses and people driving without licenses at all,” he said, adding that this called for strict law enforcement.
“Traffic in Kuwait is like an old sick man who once treated for one aliment develops another,” he noted, adding that 18 traffic inspection teams dressed in civilian clothes had been formed and deployed in various places. “Fortunately, traffic police only file 100 daily citations in Jleeb compared to 1,000-1,500 in the past”, he concluded.
Ramadan in Kuwait Starts July 9
Ramadan on July 9
KUWAIT: The fasting month of Ramadan is forecast to begin on July 9 on the basis of astronomical calculations, said astronomer Adel Al-Saadoun yesterday. Saadoun told KUNA the crescent will be visible on July 8 at 10:14 am and disappear some four minutes after sunset.
He added the sighting of the crescent would not be possible at any spot throughout the Muslim world, but would be seen through telescope in southern America. However on July 9, it would be visible in some countries including Kuwait.
Ramadan is a yearly month of fasting observed by millions of Muslims throughout the world. Kuwaitis observe and celebrate its advent and Eid Al-Fitr marking its end. People fast from dawn to dusk, and public eating, drinking or smoking is punishable by law.
My very first year blogging, I wrote a post which has become one of my all time statistical highlights, Ramadan for Non-Muslims. It was a rich time for blogging in Kuwait, lots of interchange of ideas. If you want to know more about Ramadan, be sure to read the comments by clicking on ‘comments’ at the end of the article.
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