Kuwait 2/2

My management responsibilities involved targeting the top 10% of the Kuwaiti population; hiring, training, writing operations manuals, establishing budgets and marketing materials.

Members included Dutch real estate investors and developers, English bank managers and economists, American-Lebanese shipping owners, Egyptian managers of locally owned wholesale imported foods, British military defense consultants, international computer marketing directors and various embassy staffs.

I did public relations, purchased fitness and medical equipment and established the tennis program. I had a staff of 30 including a female English masseuse, Russian and Tunisian aerobic and fitness trainers for separate male and female classes, Jordanian lifeguards, an Egyptian squash coach and Filipino receptionists.

Dr. Ramadan, from Kuwait University was the cardiologist in charge of the Supervised Exercise Program. He conducted personal physical evaluations for every member. He measured strength, flexibility, oxygen consumption, body fat percentage, and resting heart rates before and after stress. He created personal fitness goals and programs.

Visas were impossible to come by. Tourists visited Bahrain and Dubai where there were fewer restrictions and more social life.

Nomadic Bedouin traders lived in the desert and gradually settled along the Gulf and began cultivating plentiful rich pearl beds. The Japanese cultured pearl industry knocked the bottom out of that enterprise. Due to a lack of fresh water supply until a desalinization plant was built, Kuwait sailed dhou boats into Iraq for fresh water.

Old photographs of Kuwait city show people filling up goat skin bags near mud walled fortresses before returning to their families in the desert.

While most of the population settled along the coast to trade with India, Persia and other Gulf regions, many remained connected to the land, focusing on natural seasonal migrations.

In the spring families and friends retreat to the desert with tents, televisions, servants and supplies. The eyes of the goat are reserved for visitors. Basic courtesies are: 1) eat with your fingers of your right hand 2) talk about family not business 3) never show the soles of your shoes 4) observe protocol and proper, correct manners. All the Kuwaitis I met were very kind. It was about hospitality.

The Kuwait infrastructure is well established. Extensive highways or ‘ring roads’ circle the city. The U.S. government has a Federal Highway Projects office here to guarantee the construction and modification of the road system. With over $50 billion invested in the states, Kuwait can easily afford to have the best highways money can buy, suitable for M1 tank battalions. Just in case as the first Gulf war in 1991 proved. Hospitals and clinics provide free health care services.

A simple existence became complicated and full of dramatic changes. Communities expanded as families exchanged sons and daughters forming connections in arranged marriages. They selected leaders to accept challenges by forming alliances with other gulf elders and created councils and cooperative states to face storms of various intentions.

White European explorers and businessmen arrived with maps and machines to drill into the desert looking for black gold. They redesigned maps to serve their national interests. Their discovery transformed the Bedouin’s lives. More and more strangers followed with their heavy equipment and map-making expertise.

Older generations settled down to conduct savvy business deals and work the international market. Japanese and Korean construction firms took advantage of the boom times to construct gleaming monolithic structures for banking, real estate and investment offices.

Daily state-run television news programs forecast a fourth consecutive day of ‘rising dust’ as yellow clouds obscure the earth. The temperature climbs past 100 and stays there.

A muezzin cries out from a mosque. Pure white crescent spires and booming speakers call the faithful to prayer five times a day. Men remove their shoes at the white marble entrance and kneel to touch foreheads on thick carpets as history repeats itself throughout the kingdoms. Part ritual, symbol, dream, reality.

I meet people on their pilgrimage through the desert.
A Filipino computer technician stationed in Baghdad on temporary assignment talked about retiring in five years to open his own fish farm at home with his wife and young boy.

I shared delicious fruit with a South African in the souk after he completed his pilgrimage to Mecca. I thanked him as we sat in the shade of crumbling mud walls, removing sweet tangerines from their skin.

“It is good fruit,” he said. We ate in silence seeing sandstorms near ancient cities waiting for archeologists to arrive armed with brushes, old maps, hammers and neolithic tools looking for knowledge and wisdom.

A businessman from Bombay going to Iraq invited me to visit his family for Divali, the Festival of Lights, celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, fortune over misfortune, good over evil.

“Oh, yes, surely you must come,” he said. “Our family will welcome you with open arms.” I agreed to try and visit but never made it.

A woman from Iraq in transit through Kuwait was returning home after seeing her husband in Abu Dubai. We met by chance. She was in a terrible emotional state.

“I don’t want to return home. I have no friends in Iraq. I have lost hope in my country. I failed my crucial third year exams in physics and cannot return to school.”

“I understand,” I said, feeling her sorrow and pain. “You will find the strength to continue on your path with good choices. I wish you well.”

In my heart I knew the scared woman didn’t require a degree in physics to see a bleak future full of famine, lack of medicine, starving children and deprivation in her country.