The Kuwait Diaries - Part One

The Safir at night

Back in April, I got a call from a recruiter in Aberdeen, Scotland just after I was laid off from Kodiak, and he asked me if I was interested in a job in Kuwait.  I told him, "Hell, yeah!"  It took a couple of months of wrangling around to get things set up, but I flew to Kuwait the last week in June.  Napesco (National Petroleum Service Company), the only Kuwaiti-owned oilfield service company in Kuwait, wanted to bid on Slickline services with the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC). But, they had to show they could do the work, and perhaps more importantly, follow KOC's safety protocols during the competency phase of the bid process. Essentially, KOC was weeding out the riff-raff by requiring anyone who wanted to bid to prove they could do the work, follow the rules, understand and run things according to KOC's strict safety policies.

Safir's rooftop pool

The 15-hour non-stop flight from Seattle to Dubai was a beast.  I learned I can't sleep in a sitting position, even with a CPAP machine (I have sleep apnea).  Once my boss Dan picked me up from the airport, we went for coffee (I had a hot chocolate) on the way to the hotel and at 12:30 at night, it was still 108 degrees Fahrenheit.  We sat outside on the patio with the other patrons who were enjoying what I am sure for them was a pleasant evening, sipping coffee/hot chocolate and discussing the upcoming project.  I think Dan was attempting to acclimatize me to the heat. Wow, good luck with that!  It seemed so odd to be sitting outside in the hottest weather I had ever experienced sipping scalding hot chocolate.  It only drops to 31 degrees Celsius (90 deg F) at night in the summer in Kuwait.  Then Dan booked me into the Safir Hotel & Residences, an incredible 5-star hotel that is located in Fintas, a suburb on the southeast side of Kuwait City on the Persian Gulf.  It has an open-air pool and an enclosed workout area on the roof, its own beach and a spacious beach garden, with big, grassed areas with wicker chairs and couches and a beach bar that serves ice cream and shisha, or hookah pipes.

Safir's Flavors restaurant

Security is tight over there. There is a guard shack as you pull into the parking lot and you have to wait for the guard to walk around your car with a mirror on the end of a pole, checking for car bombs underneath.  It looked like he was walking around with a giant version of a dentist's mirror.  Then, I had to pass through a metal detector before entering the lobby and another security guard took a quick look through any open bags.

Flavors buffet

Exhausted and jet-lagged, I slept until ten the next morning.  I went down to the Flavors restaurant (one of six on the hotel grounds) after waking up and had some yogurt and fruit.  The idea was to get some of the local gut bacteria in my system (my friend Steve's suggestion). As well as an à la carte menu, Flavors has the most amazing buffet I've ever experienced, over a dozen different breakfast delicacies in stainless steel chafing dishes in one wing, culminating in a live cooking station with the special of the day (one day they had Belgian waffles as the special, my favorite!).  Another wing had a couple of dozen cold middle-eastern breakfast specialties like various pastries, fruit concoctions, a bread station with flat bread, rolls,  six or seven types of bread and a toaster, even a honey station with a dozen different flavors of honey.  In the center of the restaurant is a large round table with various yogurts, an amazing variety of fresh fruit, nuts and dried fruit and cereals. Probably the strangest thing was the beef bacon.  I tried it and it wasn't bad, but definitely not real bacon.

The Safir Hotel & Residences

There is no cold water from the taps.  It was either warm or hot. I like cold water, and always had half a dozen water bottles in the fridge. Almost everyone in Kuwait lives in Kuwait City and its suburbs, which is 3.5 million (or about the size of Montreal metro). Kuwait almost never grants citizenship to foreigners. As as a result there are only about a million citizens and expatriates make up 68% of the population. Only Kuwaitis have citizenship, so there are about 150,000 or so residents who came here 50 years ago or more to work, and didn't fill out the proper paperwork and now they and their descendants are stateless. They called them Bedouns.  Not Bedouin, although many Bedouns are Bedouin. Bedoun in Arabic means 'without'. They have no status, no passports and no homeland.  They can't go to school, can't drive, can't vote, and without forged documentation, can't even get a job legally.

Kuwaiti Towers

It was Saturday, which is the equivalent of Sunday in North America. There is not much going on, certainly not any business. It got up to 47 degrees Celsius (118 degrees F) that first day. Kind of like living in a dry sauna. Or a convection oven. It almost hurt to breathe at first. Fortunately, every store, car and hotel has monster air conditioning. I was a little worried that everything would be hot and the A/C would be set for 28 degrees or something crazy. However, I found that every hotel lobby, coffee shop or store is set at about 20 or 21 degrees C.  It was great. This huge love affair with air conditioning comes at a price as Kuwait is by far the largest user of electricity per capita in the world. There is a constant haze in the air from dust blowing in from the desert. They say that in winter, the air is cleaner, but in June and July, the constant wind picks up the desert sand and keeps it suspended in the air.  It didn't feel dusty or gritty, but the sun was an indistinct, but burning-hot white orb in the sky.  I brought some SPF60 sweatproof/waterproof sunscreen lotion but never had to use it.  I sunburn easily, and I never burned over there.  Too much dust in the air I think.

Dan picked me up Saturday afternoon and we did a little sightseeing.  He drove me all over Kuwait City, pointed out various points of interest, and gave me some background on the country. We saw the Kuwaiti Towers. There's a restaurant and viewing area that turns slowly in one tower and two of the three have water storage. The Iraqis shot the towers up pretty good as they pulled out of Kuwait back in 1990 and the towers had to be repaired when it was over. We didn't get close enough but there are shell holes still in them from the Iraqi occupation.

It's interesting to note that almost every woman in Kuwait (except the westerners) begins wearing a hijab or headscarf as soon as they are a teenager (little girls don't wear anything on their heads). Moreover, many older/married women I saw in public wore an abaya robe with the niqab headscarf that has an eye slit to see out of, and a few wear the burqa that covers everything but the hands and they wore black gloves as well to even cover their hands.  I asked Basel (my roommate whom I'll introduce later) about it, and his take was that as a Muslim man, it was his duty to protect his female family members from the lustful glances of others.  He said the women didn't mind it. To me though, it just seemed unfair to see a man and woman walking down the street in almost 50-degree weather, he was wearing a white dishdasha, and she was wearing all black.  She had to be sweltering inside that burqa.

The ubiquitous McDonald's

I saw many North American restaurants over there. Ranging from fast-food staples like McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, to Pizza Hut, TGI Friday's and Applebee's, Kuwait had pretty much all of my favorites available. I tried to stick with the local cuisine, or Kuwaiti favorites like Dan's favorite Indian place, but half-way through, I saw a Pizza Hut in a mall and broke down and had a deep-dish pepperoni pizza.  I would have gone with Hawaiian, my favorite, but Islamic law prohibits pork, so they substitute beef and pineapple for ham and pineapple. Ick.

I asked several people while I was there to describe typical Kuwaiti cuisine. "Well, they like Lebanese... Indian... they love Chinese food..."

No, I said, what dishes would be a typical Kuwaiti dish?  "Well, Lebanese, Indian, Chinese..."  No, no, no.  Authentic Kuwaiti food.  I got a blank stare.  This happened a couple of times.  Finally, I said, OK.  100 years ago, before this was all here, before the discovery of oil, what would a Kuwaiti be eating?

There was a long pause.  Then what I was asking dawned on the fellow.  "Oh", he said, "Fish...  On a stick...  Over a fire."

I did notice that no matter where I went fish was on the menu.  So, that sounds right.  No wonder they like Lebanese shawarma, Iraqi kebabs, Indian curry and Chinese food.

A public beach not far from the hotel.  Deserted during the day, it comes alive at night, swarmed by families enjoying  the night's respite from the heat.