Being a teacher is exhausting for about 9 months of the year (the other 3 months are recovery time!) And so the idea of a Saturday trip to the Camel Races was a great idea during exam week when we were relaxed and spending 6 hours of the school day sans élèves.
So when the Saturday came to actually go, it was like pulling teeth. “You want me to spend my planning/marking/cleaning/ grocery/running day doing what?”
But off we went! I drove Beth to the AWARE Centre, parked her across the street, and climbed onto large coach busses headed for the desert. (I *might* have brought my marking with me. It made me feel better, even though I only got one assignment marked for one class.) AWARE = Advocates for Western-Arab Relations, created after 9-11. They have Arabic classes and tons of cultural events all year long. Often they involve food. Delicious, delicious Arabic food.
Most of the habitable parts of Kuwait are attached together, into one urban area. It is a city; it looks like a city, it acts like a city, it smells like a city. We live in Salmiya, south east of Kuwait City, which is only 25 minutes away. The desert is also not far away. Maybe a 30 minute drive. Less if you don’t mind garbage and lots of other people around. More if you want to disappear into the sand (just watch out for unexploded mines from the Gulf War). It’s a REALLY small country.
getting stuck in the sand, and skipping them entirely
We arrived at the Camel Races and they herded us into a spectator room, much like you’d see at an arena, except closed off from the outside. They had TV screens so that you could watch the entire race from the comfort of a chair (or Laz-E-boy if you are a camel owner or a Sheik). We were served drinks and given buttons from the club.
But the room was smoky, dusty and incense-filled and we wanted to see the camels up close, so we went outside beside the track.
We saw some non-racing camels prepped for photo-ops with the tourists. Some of them were a little shy. Some of them were angry. Some were complacent.
The camel racetrack is ridiculously huge, bigger than I would have ever expected. It must be a kilometre or two long, and it goes far off into the distance on both sides. Thus the TVs, so you could watch the entire race. From where we were standing outside, you could only see them for about 5 seconds before they were gone again.
I am super impressed by the quality of my little underwater Olympus camera. I forgot to bring my bigger, better zoom Canon, but it turned out alright. What can’t this little camera do?
We watched a few races before we headed back to the busses. They brought us to a farm where they had a huge buffet set up with loads of amazing Arabic treats. If there’s one thing that Arabs do well, it’s eat. Despite the cold, we had a great time. we found our way into a diwaniya (meeting) tent where there was a fire going and it was WARM. After warming up for a while, we braved the “cold” (it must have been 13/14C, tops. Hardly worth whining about, but…brrr). Voila, some kites for entertainment.
Then it was back to the busses, back to the AWARE centre, back to Beth, back to home.
One more cultural thing to cross off the list!
