Day 9: Pomegranate Chicken

Well, it's our last night in Kuwait until Monday, as the group is heading off to Doha, Qatar tomorrow afternoon! 

Today was a pretty low-key day. We had class at AUK, but the entire campus was closed due to graduation (as if that's a reason to shut down a school when you've already promised a classroom to visiting students), so we held class in the Starbucks next door (Heaven!). We had a guest speaker, Dahem Al-Qahtani, who is a writer/blogger/television news anchor in Kuwait. He presented a very different perspective from people we have been speaking to so far. During our time here we have been learning a lot about the various divisions in Kuwaiti society, one of the most crucial being the divide between the Hadhar (urban population) and the Badu (tribal population). The urbans are usually more liberal, while the tribals are much more conservative. We have been meeting mostly with the urbans, but Dahem identifies as a tribal, and presented a very different narrative about Kuwait than we had previously heard. For example, he favors the new law passed in Kuwait that declares a person can be executed for blasphemy.

We had the rest of the day off to do whatever we wanted, so I attempted to be productive and hand-wash my laundry so that I would have semi-clean clothes for Doha. I'm not sure how much cleaner the clothes actually are, but at least I feel a little better about it. 

Tonight the group of 7 went to Marina Mall, a really nice mall (all the malls here are really nice so I guess that's not saying much) near Salmiya. We ate at a delicious restaurant that was especially cool because the menu explained where each dish was from. It was here that I experienced my favorite dinner so far on the trip: Pomegranate Chicken. Mom, we need to learn how to make this:

Pomegranate chicken with saffron rice

My mocktail for the evening was a Beirut Sunshine - pomegranate and lemon. I definitely went all out with the pomegranate tonight...delicious.

Before dinner, the group decided to say grace and go around one by one and say a little something, whether it be a prayer or something we were thankful for, it didn't matter. I'm by no means the most religious person in the world, and that's probably putting it lightly, but I really appreciated this moment we shared as a group. We held hands, and I think the entire restaurant stopped what they were doing and stared at us. I can't imagine what a sight this must have been for everyone.

After dinner we walked around the mall for awhile. We met two young men from Egypt and discussed the recent revolution and elections with them. They encouraged us to go to Egypt - I wish! That would be so amazing, I hope to go there someday. One of the things we discussed at dinner that really struck me was how overwhelming it is sometimes to realize that we are learning so much about just one small country - and there is so much more for us to learn about Kuwait - and this is just one country in the world. It's intimidating to realize that we only understand very little about the world, but exciting at the same time because there is just so much to discover on this planet.

We took cabs back to the hotel; our cab driver was from Afghanistan (first time I'd met an expat from there so far). We were asking him questions, but he really didn't speak much English. He seemed to be getting frustrated with himself that he could not communicate with us very well; as if it was his fault. He said that he could not speak English well because he had not gone to school. Something about this exchange really affected me. I felt terribly because we were trying so hard to communicate with each other, but we just couldn't. It made me very sad. 

On a lighter note, I can't wait to leave for Doha tomorrow. We have a jam-packed weekend that promises to be absolutely incredible!

Before I sign off, I want to share this article from today's issue of Alanba newspaper, the daily Arabic newspaper we visited on Tuesday:

It's in Arabic, but you should get the gist!

Goodnight!