Kuwait

Travelling

Students are still returning from their “Christmas Break” (odd term for  a Muslim nation) and today happens to be Jan 19, 2010. Kuwaitis love to travel and often have a mental disconnect between travel and any semblance of responsibility at school.  Many students simply don’t understand that if they are gone, not in class, absent or not present because they are gone and not there, oddly, they are still responsible for the work missed.  Some students have gotten angry over this work ethic enigma and some are just  plain dumbfounded and look at me as if I am nuts.  “But sir I was travelling.” I am equally confused.

Some families don’t travel, or only within their backyard, the Middle East.  These people are the under privileged, while others travel the wide world.  My returning student today was in New York. He brought me a souvenir mug from Times Square.  He was in Las Vegas. He brought me a keychain form there. He was in Indiana, no keychain, but I did ask him if he passed through Goshen.  He didn’t.  He was in Colorado skiing (bugger).  It was his first time.  Kuwaiti desert people skiing on the slopes of the Rockies that has to be a major spectacle.  Another family did the same in Switzerland.  After Skiing they were off to Universal Studios and Disneyland, no mug or keychain.  His parents own a couple of large malls in and out of Kuwait; so I guess travel is in the budget this year.  Business is good. 

I discovered that another student went to their family home in England, stopped off in Egypt, Turkey and Lebanon.  Last month he had gone to a Shakera concert at a resort on the Red Sea for the week end.  After awhile I stopped listening to where my students went over the holidays, or why their work was not done, but I did note that there are 30 000 non-Kuwaitis in this country on travel bands because they have debt.  Kuwait has its own “No fly” list. If these people get to the airport they will be turned back, a major set back to travel considering flight is the only viable way in and out of Kuwait, unless one hopes to “escape” through Iraq or Saudi Arabia.  Good luck with that!

Kuwaitis love to travel.  They just make sure that if anyone owes them something those people don’t travel, in fact some go to jail. The idea of debtor prison is alive and well, remember Charles Dickens and Oliver or was that a different century?  

 Excuse me as I go on line to the National Bank of Kuwait web site to check my VISA balance.

From my little corner of the world,

Marty