2 May 2007 ? Wednesday
Dinner last night was at Baalbek, a Lebanese restaurant (now there is a surprise) very close to AUK ? 5 minute walk. Michael Herb, a faculty member at GA State in Atlanta and here on a semester Fulbright, gave a talk at 5pm on ?Democratization in Kuwait and the Gulf.? It is interesting to compare the various Gulf countries, their governments and their relative successes ? wonder how Gulf nationals feel about having the navel examined every day by so many others ? hmmmm?
1 May 2007 ? Tuesday
Happy May Day ? workers of the world unite!!!!!!! In this region, there are still many countries that celebrate May Day, just as we did before the beginning of ?pc-ness? in the USA.
Last evening I had dinner with Shafiq, our Afghani colleague who is leaving Kuwait in a week or so. He is very interesting in that his life story is mind-boggling to me but he is very casual about it. At 18, he left home because he didn?t want to be absorbed into the Russian system ? walked for 20 days into Pakistan, then found work. Because he has a gift for languages (he taught himself English), he was able to do translation work for the Mujahadeen fighters (and US spies) who were the being supported by us, the USA. He eventually got himself to Saudi Arabia (in and of itself a story) and got a BA degree in Persian Literature with a minor in English ? studying all the while in Arabic, not his mother tongue. Got himself married by asking family for a suitable bride ? he is both remarkably resilient and very traditional. Now, he finds himself in Kuwait without a job, his family shipped off to Cairo, and he goes back to Kabul to try and sort things out. Amazing! My, what you can learn?
On a very much lighter note, tonight I am hosting all of the in-country Fulbrighters for dinner. There are 6 here, and all nice people and mostly young (only one mid-career person). It?s my chance to ?do something? for a Fulbright program that helped jump-start my interest in working overseas (Nigeria 1979-80). And, by ?hosting? I mean paying the bill at a nearby restaurant ? heaven help them if I cooked!
We have been having serious dust storms of late. Last night was ugly ? very windy and dusty, and as the temperatures rise you feel like you are being blow-dried ? very un-cool.
30 April 2007 ? Monday
I forgot to mention that we started training another Kuwait University LIS field work student. Zabihullah is Afghani and about to finish his masters degree. Similar to Shafiq, he is multi-lingual and very smart. It seems Afghans have a reputation of being more than survivors, which makes sense if you consider their former environment. Zabihullah will be with us for 40 hours. It appears KU likes to have us as one of their preferred field work sites.
Last night I spent a delightful evening with Ildiko, enjoying a very nice Lebanese mezza at Awtar Libnan (eating outside) and far-ranging discussion. As noted previously, Ildiko is Hungarian and a product of U.C. San Diego. Her field is communication theory, and she is very bright. AUK is probably wise to hire people like her, as the living conditions here and especially the salaries are very good for eastern Europeans. She has made a rapid adjustment to AUK and Kuwait ? nice to see.
It is now 10 a.m. We just had a small electrical fire upstairs at one of the 4-station computer banks. Yours truly blasted it with the fire extinguisher. The post-fire situation was almost comical: every security guard turned up, as did most of our campus services staff ? lots of kafuffle. The data port cabling did not burn, so we got lucky there as that would have put out all 16 computers instead of just four. The cleanup is going on now ? fire extinguisher stuff gets all over the place very quickly. I did say something about it being never dull, didn?t I !!!