Dear Reader,
Back so soon, I know! Something about being a normal working person, working an 8-5 job, and going to bed at 10:30 or 11, is making me so consistent in many spheres of my life, blogging apparently included. I have a routine and I love it! How different from college (Dartmouth) life, which seems to simply be an eternal scramble to stay ahead. The 10 week Dartmouth term is most certainly an exercise in attempting to make it through term before falling irreversably and detrimentally far behind. I generally start to feel like I'm losing this battle around week 3, but have managed to make it through most terms without losing it entirely. We'll see if I can keep this trend going my senior year, inshallah. (<-- that's arabic for "god willing," which is basically used to mean "hopefully").
But if Dartmouth is a haven for hectic livelihoods, Kuwait is, by contrast, a refuge for those preferring to lead life at a slower pace, and by that I mean a normal one. Unlike the States and many of the people in it, Kuwait and the people who live here (or at least those that I have had the privilege of encountering) are not driven primarily by the goals of efficiency and accomplishment, and only somewhat more distantly by that of life enjoyment. Rather, there is a much larger emphasis here on spending time on activities and relationships, and enjoying that time spent. The goal seems to be much less to get through as many things as possible, and much more to delve as deeply into each of those things as one can, even if this means that some of them do not get accomplished in the timeframe desired. For a college student constantly working on five things at once, and attempting to simply get through them as efficiently as possible, this is a lovely change in lifestyle.
Granted, the less-emphasized value of efficiency could do with a bit more emphasis in certain spheres. Many infrastructural projects are designed and meticulously planned, only to never be actualized and constructed. Grocery stores seem somewhat haphazardly organized (and my lack of Arabic is not to blame for this one) and thus the model of the "efficient grocery shop" is out of the question - the grocery store closest to my apartment feels a bit more like a souk (outdoor market often characterized by chaos). Crossing streets is an effort in patience combined with a small adrenaline rush - there are no crosswalks, and often no real sidewalks, either, so crossing the street in a timely fashion is entirely dependent on timing the stoplights properly, or how quickly one can run across them.
Efficiency as relates to driving is not, in the slightest, lacking. Why drive 60 mph when you could go 100 mph? At an average fill-up cost of 7 dollars, it's not like gas is terribly expensive, so one can certainly afford to floor the accelerator of, say, a white mustang, when the light turns green. What would be the point of signaling to change lanes when you could simply turn your car sideways and drive straight across them? One American expat who has lived here for awhile now recently told me that using one's turn signal is a dead giveaway that one is a foreigner, most likely western.
But when it comes to interpersonal interaction, efficiency is not the name of the game. I love that I can sit at my desk in the morning and have a cup of tea and a nice conversation with my colleague without feeling that got to get back to work, I'm not being productive pressure. We will both get back to work when our topic of conversation is finished or our tea is done. Phone conversations, even when just a quick question is being asked, take at least 5 minutes. Yesterday, I was sitting in my office working on a press release (see future post for what I am actually doing in Kuwait) when one of my colleagues in the department came in with another person I had never met before (from a related department). We introduced ourselves, and the three of us started chatting. The conversation probably lasted for half an hour, and I felt at the end of it as if I had known the people I was talking to for years, rather than having just been introduced to one of them, and having worked with the other for only a week.
In that conversation, we actually talked about the phenomenon of warmth and hospitality in interpersonal interactions that seems to be present throughout the Middle East. As an anthropologist, I am skeptical of making generalizations of any kind, lumping cultures together, or even using the word culture (yes, thank you Francois Bayart for spending most of a book reminding me that culture is not a fixed and stagnant entity, but rather ever-changing and adaptive; the book is called The Illusion of Cultural Identity). What I can seem to generalize, however, is that there is a particular focus in the Middle East on hospitality and on spending time getting to know people that is not as apparent in other regions. The two people who I was talking with, and who have lived in Kuwait for much longer than I, certainly agreed on this, and insinuated that it is something that the people of this region pride themselves on. I find it an extraordinarily good quality, and I think it is largely responsible for how happy I've been in Kuwait thus far. So I'd like to thank all the people I have met so far in Kuwait that have exuded this warmth, hospitality, and kindness when I have met them. You are all helping to make my experience here a truly fulfilling one.
Until next time, readers! Hope you're enjoying the blog. If you are reading it, then I most likely like you and miss you, so again, a warm hello from Kuwait.
Maggie
Back so soon, I know! Something about being a normal working person, working an 8-5 job, and going to bed at 10:30 or 11, is making me so consistent in many spheres of my life, blogging apparently included. I have a routine and I love it! How different from college (Dartmouth) life, which seems to simply be an eternal scramble to stay ahead. The 10 week Dartmouth term is most certainly an exercise in attempting to make it through term before falling irreversably and detrimentally far behind. I generally start to feel like I'm losing this battle around week 3, but have managed to make it through most terms without losing it entirely. We'll see if I can keep this trend going my senior year, inshallah. (<-- that's arabic for "god willing," which is basically used to mean "hopefully").
But if Dartmouth is a haven for hectic livelihoods, Kuwait is, by contrast, a refuge for those preferring to lead life at a slower pace, and by that I mean a normal one. Unlike the States and many of the people in it, Kuwait and the people who live here (or at least those that I have had the privilege of encountering) are not driven primarily by the goals of efficiency and accomplishment, and only somewhat more distantly by that of life enjoyment. Rather, there is a much larger emphasis here on spending time on activities and relationships, and enjoying that time spent. The goal seems to be much less to get through as many things as possible, and much more to delve as deeply into each of those things as one can, even if this means that some of them do not get accomplished in the timeframe desired. For a college student constantly working on five things at once, and attempting to simply get through them as efficiently as possible, this is a lovely change in lifestyle.
Granted, the less-emphasized value of efficiency could do with a bit more emphasis in certain spheres. Many infrastructural projects are designed and meticulously planned, only to never be actualized and constructed. Grocery stores seem somewhat haphazardly organized (and my lack of Arabic is not to blame for this one) and thus the model of the "efficient grocery shop" is out of the question - the grocery store closest to my apartment feels a bit more like a souk (outdoor market often characterized by chaos). Crossing streets is an effort in patience combined with a small adrenaline rush - there are no crosswalks, and often no real sidewalks, either, so crossing the street in a timely fashion is entirely dependent on timing the stoplights properly, or how quickly one can run across them.
Efficiency as relates to driving is not, in the slightest, lacking. Why drive 60 mph when you could go 100 mph? At an average fill-up cost of 7 dollars, it's not like gas is terribly expensive, so one can certainly afford to floor the accelerator of, say, a white mustang, when the light turns green. What would be the point of signaling to change lanes when you could simply turn your car sideways and drive straight across them? One American expat who has lived here for awhile now recently told me that using one's turn signal is a dead giveaway that one is a foreigner, most likely western.
But when it comes to interpersonal interaction, efficiency is not the name of the game. I love that I can sit at my desk in the morning and have a cup of tea and a nice conversation with my colleague without feeling that got to get back to work, I'm not being productive pressure. We will both get back to work when our topic of conversation is finished or our tea is done. Phone conversations, even when just a quick question is being asked, take at least 5 minutes. Yesterday, I was sitting in my office working on a press release (see future post for what I am actually doing in Kuwait) when one of my colleagues in the department came in with another person I had never met before (from a related department). We introduced ourselves, and the three of us started chatting. The conversation probably lasted for half an hour, and I felt at the end of it as if I had known the people I was talking to for years, rather than having just been introduced to one of them, and having worked with the other for only a week.
In that conversation, we actually talked about the phenomenon of warmth and hospitality in interpersonal interactions that seems to be present throughout the Middle East. As an anthropologist, I am skeptical of making generalizations of any kind, lumping cultures together, or even using the word culture (yes, thank you Francois Bayart for spending most of a book reminding me that culture is not a fixed and stagnant entity, but rather ever-changing and adaptive; the book is called The Illusion of Cultural Identity). What I can seem to generalize, however, is that there is a particular focus in the Middle East on hospitality and on spending time getting to know people that is not as apparent in other regions. The two people who I was talking with, and who have lived in Kuwait for much longer than I, certainly agreed on this, and insinuated that it is something that the people of this region pride themselves on. I find it an extraordinarily good quality, and I think it is largely responsible for how happy I've been in Kuwait thus far. So I'd like to thank all the people I have met so far in Kuwait that have exuded this warmth, hospitality, and kindness when I have met them. You are all helping to make my experience here a truly fulfilling one.
Until next time, readers! Hope you're enjoying the blog. If you are reading it, then I most likely like you and miss you, so again, a warm hello from Kuwait.
Maggie
