The grass is always greener

Last time I brought up how things are accomplished on "Kuwait Time" and I only briefly mentioned the staggering bureaucracy that is entrenched here in Kuwait. This week I was subjected to this paper-pushing behemoth first hand. It all began at the end of last week.  At the end of the day on Wednesday I was notified (last minute of course!) that I was being flown to Jordan for my visa renewal over the weekend. Even though I had a few weeks left to my visa, school decided that I might as well go along with a few of the teachers who were here since Sept. and up for renewal.  That works for me: I get a free trip to Jordan with a few friends, and have a few days off from school on the school's dime. The only downside at that point was the extra "fun" to my Thursday afternoon: it was the day 1st quarter grades were due. So I had to whip up lesson plans for substitutes (Sidenote: our school doesn't hire substitutes, instead, they just have other staff cover during their preps). I blasted through my grades-only report card comments to enter and 1 last grade. Then I updated the online grades for the students/parents and then exported my grades to the office. I left my sub plans on my desk, clearly marked and explained, and was ready to export myself to Jordan for the weekend!

Jordan was a great country. Hence the title of this blog. For starters you can procure alcohol, legally. Our first score was at the duty free shop at the airport after we landed. A coworker said it's probably cheapest since hotels will gouge you and liquor stores are hard to find. I scored a 6 pack of Carlsberg and a nice bottle of Absolut Citron right off the bat. Other friends grabbed whiskey!

The first thing we planned to do upon arrival in Amman after hotel check-in (and a few drinks) was to find a restaurant and have a nice dinner with tasty alcoholic beverages. We found an amazing spot, on an amazing street in Amman. We ended up taking a cab to this restaurant when in fact it was a walkable distance from our hotel. The funny thing is that the cab driver recommended it! Despite picking up 2 carloads worth of fares (one cab followed my cab to the restaurant) the driver could've "taken us for a ride"-but he chose a spot right down the road. Bonus points to Jordan's cabbies being honest. And after my shady dealings with cabbies in Kuwait, (who don't use meters and like to haggle over their inflated "pale face" rates) these cabbies in Jordan use the meter and either intentionally or unintentionally save you money and get you what you want. The place to go in Amman is Rainbow Street.

(You can see the roundabout in the corner and the rest is just Amman sprawling. )

 (This photo shows you the "Jabals" that Amman covers...it's staggering how the city continues to the horizon)

Lots of shops, restaurants, cafes, and plenty of cabbies to whisk you away to wherever you might want to go. They usually announce their presence behind you with a single honk of their horn (unlike Kuwaiti persistence). I'd usually respond with a waive of my hand or a shake of my head if I wasn't interested. Walking Amman would be an extreme cardiovascular undertaking-it's really hilly.  The territory in Jordan is ancient country and Amman is an ancient city (Fact: it's the original "Philadelphia"). It was originally built on several hills, or "jabals." Our hotel and Rainbow Street are on "Jabal Amman" which is near the old downtown area. Very old, very medieval-european looking with cobblestone streets and winding roads with crazy roundabouts called "circles" every now and then. Luckily this restaurant was one roundabout down and 1 right turn away from our hotel. Amman sprawls over many hills and many dales, our hotel had a spectacular view when we saw it in the daylight the first day. After a night of pizza, beer, and sheesha (Sidenote: I tried sheesha for the 1st time. Thought it was high time to do it, pun intended! Sheesha is just tobacco with all sorts of flavors and "mildness" levels depending on the tobacco and flavoring. I tried grape-mint which was really mellow and smooth, so it enhanced my alcohol and pizza regimen very nicely that evening.) It was then time to see some of Jordan's highlights. We only had 1 afternoon open after our visa paperwork, which we started at 9am and were finished by noon. We went for fingerprints (quick), blood tests (quick), and x-rays (really quick!). In any other country, even at home in the States, those three would've cost you a whole day easily. We drove between 2 different locations and even with driving time ended up meeting our schedule of 9-12. So afterwards we took off for Jerash, or "Gerasa" which is the 2nd most intact Roman city in the Middle East. So columns, ampitheaters, and ruins here we come! It was a long-ish drive but it was good to get some exposure to ancient culture, especially one of our progenitors. We were ready to stretch our legs over and under the ancient architecture when we got there-we had been sitting on a plane and then a bus for the better part of two days when we got there.

Yes, that was a bagpiper in the theater. I know. I don't get it either but he wasn't terrible which made it all the more outrageous! It was cool to see the ruins but after a while, ruins are ruins and it starts to all look the same. I didn't want to bore you with the scores of photos of columns and blocks and crumbling what-have-you...
We had planned on seeing Petra and the Dead Sea but our driver informed us that it would be another day-long affair just for the Dead Sea and so we decided to scrap that plan and just walk around Amman and get to know the area around our hotel. Petra was a 3 hour drive and so big of a site that you needed a whole day for that, and that was pushing it. A full day we didn't have, so we opted for plan B and told our driver/guide Hani that we'd call him when we booked a trip back to Jordan. Rainbow Street was nearby and it had some good souvenir shops and cafes and basically enough to keep us entertained for the morning/afternoon that we had left on our last day before the evening flight home.  Let's just say we ended up at the first restaurant we went to that first night and had a "long lunch" of beer, taking pictures wearing a fez, beer, and appetizers. Then we ambled our way down Rainbow Street and into a cab to do some mall shopping to find some things cheaper than what we'd be paying in Kuwait.

So after a nice trip to Jordan we returned to Kuwait. We'd all vowed to return, it was such a positive experience. Our visa paperwork had been completed in basically half a day and we reentered Kuwait on work visas. The personnel director kept our passports after we passed through Kuwait customs though. This was the beginning of the battle with the bureaucracy behemoth. Generally, it takes from 1 to 3 months to get your civil identification in Kuwait. In Jordan, it would be in a day. Oh, Jordan, how I wish I taught there! Friendly people (even the armed-to-the-teeth embassy guards would smile and say hello on the street), honest cabbies (mostly), beer(!), and a rich cultural history would keep me on my toes for a long time. So we came back to school and were informed Tuesday that today, Thursday, the Jordan group would be taken to the Kuwaiti fingerprint office for fingerprints and photos-part of the civil ID process. I was told via email that the process would take "no more than 30 minutes." I left my classroom at the appropriate time. Luckily for me our team had a field trip so my absence was someone convenient in the sense that there wasn't substitute coverage required, just an extra (all too happy) volunteer to help with the field trip. I was mad to not join my students on the field trip but I didn't really have any choice. So I got to where I needed to be: waiting for the bus. I waited and waited. For a process that takes no more than 30 minutes I waited almost an hour. Finally after the HR assistant had arrived and sat with us for a while his phone eventually rang and he informed us (in fractured English phrases) that he would be driving just the 3 of us in his car and there was no bus and we weren't picking up the others at the girl's campus. Somebody dropped the ball! So we get in his car, which he insisted on warming up before we left the parking lot. There went an extra 15 minutes sitting in an early 90s jalopy of a Honda Civic. We get to the fingerprint office and proceed to wait some more. Our assistant left us and went wherever he had to go to file our paperwork and get the process started. Eventually he returned and the fingerprinting actually happened. The hilarious part of this scene were the walls in the hallway and stairwell. Picture a room in the DMV or motor vehicle registry where there are lots of mopes waiting around with bored expressions on their faces. The walls of the stairwell were white but absolutely COVERED in black fingerprints and finger marks from people using the wall to wipe their ink-stained hands. There were some marks randomly swiped on the walls of the waiting room but most of them were on the stairwell wall. What makes it even better is that when we were printed, they used a DIGITAL scanner. I never saw ink or any fingerprint cards! Printing took about 15 seconds to do and then I was all set. So on our way out we snapped a few photos:

It looks as though they fought off a zombie invasion in 2005 and then never decided to repaint the walls afterwards.  So now at this point we had everything done, finished. The Arabic word is halas which means "over, done, ended." Our driver/assistant said "halas" and after a bunch of hand gestures he collected our papers and passports again (grr) and we were soon on our way home. What was supposed to be done and finished, "halas", at 9:00am was just wrapping up at 10:30. After a 20 minute drive from Kuwait City we returned to school and resumed the day, just in time for lunch (and my lunch duty watching a stairwell, boo). So the next step in the process for me is to get my civil identification processed...which will happen hopefully before Christmas. This is a good way to segue into another Arabic phrase I learned and can teach you: insha'Allah. Pronounced casually, it sounds more like "inch-Allah" with a soft "sh" sound.  It translates to "God willing" in the sense of our American phrase: "God willing and the creek don't rise." This Arabic version has something of a negative connotation attached to it. While it's hopeful for whatever desired outcome, the utterance of this word also means that you accept that it's a distinct possibility that whatever you are hoping for will never actually happen. It's used so often in Kuwait because you're always dealing with the bureaucratic behemoth that bogs down everything so that nothing can get done efficiently. Most people utter it when they're facing long odds on having something go their way or face whatever system they're up against. So the next part of my residency/identification is basically up to my lucky stars, and insha'Allah, it happens before my flight to Qatar for Christmas...because I can't go if I don't get my passport back! I should've just stayed in Jordan!!!!! The grass is always greener...I plan on going back!

PS. Happy Thanksgiving! Arab Hand Turkey celebrates humbly and cautiously this strange tradition.

Cultural Cohesion

Culture is one of the first things that strikes you when you get here. Muslim culture. Most notably it's every few hours if you're in the city and you hear the call to prayer from the p-a systems at the myriad of mosques surrounding you. Muslims pray five times a day so you hear five calls at various points in the day: pre-dawn, mid morning, afternoon, sunset, and night. Even depending on the radio station (if you're in a cab) or watching television (if you have the right channel) they'll take a break from programming and play the call to prayer and give you time so that you can stop what you're doing, to a certain extent, and get your prayers in. The other thing to factor in is that there are many many mosques around, so the p-a systems send out their calls (based on the sun's positioning, and their clocks) at various points throughout the day-but they are not synchronized. This has its pros and cons. For example, in the morning, there's the first call that typically happens around 4:00am and is fairly distant. Crazy early! The first time I heard it I was jolted from a deep slumber and in my groggy state finally realized what was happening. On the plus side this serves as my version of a Muslim "snooze alarm" since there are calls from mosques at around 4:15, 4:30, and 4:45. They all vary in relative timing but the one around 4:30 is the one that usually wakes me up no matter what; it's the mosque closest to me and it's LOUD. This always tells me I have a little time to snooze, or get up, depending on how ambitious/tired I am for the day. The only negative is the person who owns the rooster that's on top of one of the buildings in my area. In the predawn hours it decides that once it hears the call to prayer that it's time to start crowing...probably my biggest annoyance because he's random and he sound like a screaming baby sometimes. I snooze through most of it and my failsafe is my alarm clock which is set to go off after all this morning malarkey. My bus to school is at 6:15am, so I typically rise at 5 or just before to get ready for work.

Based on this pious schedule you would assume that all Muslims follow the Koran and show respect to fellow people "of the book." Not so! Particularly from the cabbie the other night who screwed me: I was shopping at the "largest shopping mall in the world", The Avenues,  and was splitting a cab with my friend back to our different apartments. After my friend got dropped off and I was on my way to my place the cabbie randomly decided that "he had another fare to pick up" and I had to get out. We had negotiated the fare beforehand and he was expecting the full fare for his services. Unfortunately since he never took me all the way home I shortchanged him, rather logically, for not driving me to my apartment. This somehow didn't compute with him and we ended up arguing over the fare. I stuck to my guns, despite his exasperation at my not sticking to the deal. I kept saying "whole ride-whole pay!" After I repeated that phrase for about the sixth time he hopped back into his cab and I went to find another who eventually took me home. So there's always a random element of mischief involved a.k.a. "Shit Happens." Friends at my apartment say, "T.I.K." for "This Is Kuwait." When you need something, you get it done on "Kuwaiti Time" which is slightly more dysfunctional than "Island Time" if you were vacationing in the Caribbean. Actually a lot more dysfunctional.  It took 3 requests, and eventually 3 people, to finally fix the problem with my internet and phone in my apartment. My phone still isn't fixed, but I'm satisfied with my internet and besides, I have a cell phone so what's the use of a land-line when there's only ONE PHONE LINE FOR THE ENTIRE APARTMENT BUILDING! Haha, "this is Kuwait!" So you have to be flexible, laid back, and take things as they happen...it almost makes you want to become a Buddhist!

Other cultural mixing is funny, especially when it comes to American fast food culture. It's everywhere and rather insidious wherever there's a market or shopping area. I haven't been into any fast food joints yet, I'm still trying to find quality "local" places. It seems to me to be a bit of a "sell out" to go into McD's or BK and buy food. Coffee joints are another story. Totally NOT ashamed to get my Starbuck's coffee or Dunkin Donuts...coffee is no laughing matter! In a country where there's no alcohol, you have to take something seriously. So Kuwait has that going for it-they're big on coffee.

So it's an interesting mix of cultures colliding. There's the fast-paced Western food system sprinkled into the strict Muslim society, and a modernizing culture trying to hang onto its older, slower paced ways. I see the Muslim culture as the agar in the petri dish and all these Western influences as colonies of bacteria. Some are under control, and others are spreading everywhere. Some people welcome it and you, and some people resist it by kicking you out of their cab. (Not bitter!) The end result: there are almost as many mosques as there are fast food joints. "TIK"