suggzy

Part Two

And we’re back.

I’m still not right, you know (no laughing at the back).

The cough is reduced, but I seem to be enjoying passages of sudden choking – sometimes at 3.00am, for my added delight. I’ve made the usual second visit to the local quack and monstered a second carrier bag of medication. Improvements, yes, but the war is not yet won. At least, as I type this, I felt strong enough earlier in the week to make a return to the treadmill and get a spot of exercise. I am hoping that three days on the Gulf of Guinea at the start of the coming week will prove something of a curative.

Gulf of Guinea, you ask? Why yes, for I am popping over to Ghana for three days, in an attempt to garner some more students for my employers next year. I’m going with some grown-ups, this time, so given average luck the spaces for riotous misadventure will be at minimum, this time. So far, I am £106 down on the deal, as yesterday I had to go back to the hospital for a ‘live’ injection to vaccinate me against Yellow Fever. Hopefully I’ll get the money back – I suppose a plus side of it all is that if I get a bit more adventurous in future forays into the continent of Africa, I’ll be able to go pretty much anywhere. For it seems I am now protected against said fever for the Rest Of My Life. Now – that’s a good thing – the only trouble is that it doesn’t kick in for another 10 days, and I am going on Monday and back on Friday. So, if the wrong kind of mozzie eyes me up and tucks in, it seems I have an 85% chance of survival. These are odds I am prepared to entertain, and I have already promised SWK a fridge magnet, so I am going, and that’s that. I am promised 31 degrees of heat, and 80% humidity, so it may be a little sweaty in my suit, as I deliver a few nuggets on the best my employer has to offer. In truth, my life has already been shortened a bit by the experience of going to get the jab. It was the usual rather byzantine arrangement, conceived of in a sort of delicatessen queuing procedure. Still, no one pointed a gun at me this time, and even the nurse who delivered the goods didn’t quite get the needle to go all the way through my arm. And, as ever, the many tests of my blood pressure all pointed to me seeing out the day in fine fettle.

And after that? Why the fresh air and the cooler temperatures of the homeland, for three weeks! Got some stuff to do, in the form of a couple of job interviews (yep, I’m back on that joyous circuit – no shields yet, mind, although I have enjoyed a couple of dawn rejection e-mails – a staple favourite of the time before I came out here) and some training, but largely I shall be bathing in the pool of joyous company that is my wife and dog. On the face of it they seem pleased about the prospect of my return. No doubt reports will follow in due course, in additions to those local ramblings I was working on previously. The future looks interesting. If things go our way, we might be living by the seaside next year… who knows?

But for now, let’s go back to Kuwait, which I am convinced is where this whole respiratory ague first came to me. There’s still some of their sand an dust down there in my lungs, and for the life of me I can’t cough the blighters back out again. Any career in radio is looking shaky.

But yes, I strode away from the bus, and started to put in a bit of work on ascertaining where, precisely, I was. I had an early sense of which direction the sea was in, which was later to prove correct. But in the first instance there were hi-rises all around, and not a street sign in sight.

So, use the ‘phone then? Well, not straight away, as I thought I would go with my gut for a bit. And so it was that I did a series of short circuits, all of which took me back to the starting point. I became rather hot, and a little frustrated (me?) at the lack of progress. I couldn’t help but notice that Kuwait also seemed to be rather shut, as well. So, any hope of riding things out for a while over a glass of cold pop was out. Finally, I ducked through an underpass, out the other side and sat under a tree for a bit of shade, to fiddle with my ‘phone. Further frustration followed, with a total lack of signal or Google Maps, until I twigged I had switched the roaming data thingy off. Sweat trickled down my neck, as I eventually managed to triangulate where I was. At a healthy estimate, little more than a mile from my hotel, and as such a circuit of the Grand Mosque and a stroll ‘round the corner along the seafront were offered to me, ending up at the gaff, where I thought I might grab a snooze and a shower before heading out later as the temperatures dropped back down a bit.

My route took me through the main Souq. Which was attractive, but entirely shut. Flying into Kuwait on a Friday morning was, it seemed, not my best move. Still, there was always Saturday for the retail side of things. Explorations continued, photos were taken, and my pace slowed a bit as the sun started to beat down on my unprotected head. The call to prayer fired up, and soon enough the place was swarming with the faithful, heading off to their mosque of choice. Once they were safely on the mat, I met with my first glimpse of the Gulf, and laboured along for a while before heading down a ‘short cut’ to the hotel. And at this point, the city presented me with one of the main problems that exist for a tourist who likes to do things on foot. It’s sort of not really finished. If you conceived of a scale that had the pristine Dubai at the top, mostly completed Doha in the middle, then I fear Kuwait would only scrape a pass. I was, in no time at all, walking through a swirling dusty wasteland, with the buildings I was aiming for suddenly looking like they had move further away. It took an eternity to reach them, and I was starting to be somewhat camouflaged in a layer of sand by the time I eventually crawled into the lobby of my home for the night. The air conditioning was nothing short of miraculous, as I cooled down after a full two hours of traipsing about.

Chap on the front desk was a bit bemused about why I was there so early. I felt like I had been up for a week. We agreed to give the cleaning staff another half an hour to get things sorted, and I slumped into a chair by the café, and lunched on a doughnut and an iced coffee. Blissful.

In short order I was up on the 56651651th floor, craning my neck to see if I could see the Kuwait Towers, where I planned to take in the lofty view of the early evening. But there was no sign – all around was a beige sky full of dust. Sleep seemed the better option, frankly, so I set a couple of hours on my ‘phone and grabbed some much-needed shuteye.

I went out like a light, and was well refreshed with a cup of coffee and a shower (one of those wide-open jobs, where all facilities, loo included seem to exist in 3cm of cooling, icky water) when it was time to head out again. A look out the window revealed that the slightly spooky-looking towers were now visible, with the dust having abated somewhat. They looked a comfortable walking distance away.

I headed for reception just to have a quick word on the matter of the best way to walk there, and was met by a growing group of aghast, neatly blazered chaps all agreeing that a car should be called, for fear that the plucky Englishman would expire performing such a pilgrimage on foot. I countered that it looked to be comfortably within my ambling compass, but simply wanted to know which way to go ‘round the mighty roadworks I had espied within the vicinity. I waived off further entreaties for me to regain sanity, and marched out into the evening sun, leaving grown men blowing tearfully into their handkerchiefs. I wondered which of them would get my Kindle when my possessions were divvied up.

In the event, their advice was of little use. The route they worriedly devised involved, it seemed, walking down a two-lane highway with no pavement. Instead, I opted to off-road it a bit, and skirt the roadworks to my left, and then switch back onto a parallel road from there. I avoided falling down any holes, although it was touch and go for a while there, and on emerging on the other side of the foul-smelling earthworks I did briefly make it into the grounds of Sheikh Abdullah’s Palace, before being politely returned to the correct path. Further along the way, a man washing his car (there’s a Sisyphus-like gig for you) suggested that rather than head into the gardens of his property, I might want to take the path the other side? The path, it transpired, led to the sea-front. The beautiful blue Gulf lay before me, and I ambled down to the foot of the Towers:

The lower of the balls (excuse the expression), is in fact the Water Tower for much of the city. A stray bullet, and you’d wash away a lot of dust, as it contains just over nine million litres of the stuff. The upper ball also contains liquid, but in addition, a revolving restaurant, and an observation deck.  I queued behind a rather rowdy family, and eventually found myself walking into the compound, and into the shaft, where the lift was waiting. It appeared, and in I stepped, along with a small group of fellow Westerners. We started to sail upwards, and my nose started to twitch. For once not at the odour of drying sweat, or the foulness of a stray fart, but the unaccountably delicious smell of a rich lamb gravy. The little box was a TARDIS, and I was suddenly in my Granny’s kitchen in about 1983, awaiting Sunday lunch. Extraordinary. It went as quickly as it had come, when I stepped back out at the elevated level, and was oddly gone forever when I hungrily got into it to go down a while later.

The Towers are more impressive from outside, to be honest with you. Inside it’s cramped, the glass is too far from you to take a decent photo or really get a clear sense of the view (my hopes of spying Failaka Island were dashed by the dust). The revolutions it makes are slow, but enough to induce dizziness, and one third of the journey round gives one a view of waterpark, which only served to give me a flashback to Romania, and my various adventures in lifeguards and drowning from a couple of years ago. I didn’t stay long. Once back outside I took a few more snaps and hailed a cab to take me to a spot down the coast a bit, where I was going to wander around a few streets and drop into a restaurant I had been reading about.

It was a bit of a trek, but the chap behind the wheel was chatty and agreeable and had a good command of English. I was struck by the hanging depiction of Tom and Jerry he had below his rear-view mirror, captured a little inexpertly here:

As I alighted at our destination, I pointed it out, just as a cheering observation on things.

“Yes” said my driver. “Always I figured that Tom would fuck Mr Jerry before he ate him”.

He and I were obviously not viewing quite the same image, but I was a few blocks away before my laughter finally subsided.

I walked through a Mall, just for a change, and emerged onto a very lively street, packed with people and all sorts going on. My search for my chosen restaurant was completely fruitless. I stood directly on the blue spot where it was supposed to be on my ‘phone, which was in fact a car park. This was a bit of a disappointment, as Kuwaiti Delicacies had been promised, but in the end I risked life and limb by crossing the road, and plunged into a courtyard sports bar, and was quickly seated and supplied with a bottle of cold water and a menu.

Around the edges of the place, there were sort of ‘booths’ that looked like the top of Pope John Paul II’s famous Popemobile, and here and there they were occupied with young men tucking into a Shisha pipe. Serving them, was a bloke who circulated around with a bucket of hot coals, which was evidently quite heavy, and it swung from his wrist quite close to the ground. As the place filled-up, and I ploughed through various courses of beef, he drifted past me on a few occasions with his fiery load coming so close to my exposed calves as to make the hair on them prickle with anticipation of a horrid burn. I enjoyed a digestive little coffee, paid up and left without injury, just about.

I took a stroll, as a further aid to the digestion, and after a time decided I would like to buy a bar of chocolate and a cold coffee to have back in my room. To do this, I had to drop down into a subterranean branch of the Lulu supermarket. And rather another Dante-like vision it proved to be. The place was rammed, noisy, and frankly hideous beyond measure. The usual sport of taking one’s under-fives shopping at 9 o’clock in the evening and then simply letting them run off their energy, with the predictable falls, howls, scrapes and screams that you can imagine. By the time I re-emerged from it all clutching dessert, I was ready for the calm of my hotel and an early start the following day.

After a spot of rest, a read, and a bit of holidaymaker loafing, came my first and likely last ever Kuwaiti breakfast. The buffet proved heavier on the cauliflower than you might perhaps expect, for the Southern side of 9.00am. And, under the pressure of decision-making in a queue, I accidentally finished up eating a ball of unsalted butter. Further riotousness followed when I terrified a young woman with my offer to share my table (it was very busy). She turned her hijab on me and fled; I think I might have appeared a bit forward, and innocently showing her my wedding ring in the ensuing panic probably didn’t help matters. None of this came by design, I’d like to point out, should my wife be reading this. I imagine her Dad is probably still after me, now. The other main highlight of the hubbub of the breakfast room was the man of frightening dimensions (height and breadth) who piled 14 slices of watermelon onto his plate (yes, I counted). I calculated, roughly, that if he was doing that three times a day he’d be shedding weight at a remarkable rate; and even if he didn’t get a TV series out of it, he might very well be able to bottle and sell his fragrant wee as perfume.

All too soon it was time to stuff things back into my bag and hop in a cab to the National Assembly and the Souq, for a bit more local colour ahead of the flight back.

This time, the driver was something of political firebrand. Although this was a journey of politics without any words mutually comprehended. I emerged with the feeling I had met the Kuwaiti Citizen Smith, and that he seemed to think the Syrian War was over. Sadly this proved not to be the case, when I checked the news in hope, but, well, he grabbed my arm an awful lot, and occasionally punched the air. With every day comes some sort of fresh oddity like this. In retrospect I wonder if he thought I worked for the UN, or something, hence the polemic. Rather than drop me by my destination building he attempted to drive me into it. Before I could lodge any manner of protest, we were at an official entrance barrier and a booth, from which there arrived my usual armed-to-the teeth soldier. This does seem to happen to me quite a lot. Happily, this one was just averagely bored, and was prepared to accept that I did not in fact want to gain admittance, but simply wanted to photograph his place of work. Although in retrospect that was rather a foolish reason to have given, perhaps. He barked some Arabic at my Comrade, which I suspect was:

“He’s the world’s worst spy, just drop him across the road in that bus shelter and I’ll shoot him later, if he keeps hanging about.”

I did not – I captured the brutalist architecture from a safe distance and scuttled off to the Souq, in search of a fridge magnet to adorn the device back home. The Souq was rather fabulous, as it goes. Lively, colourful, shaded, and with beautiful wooden carved beams. Fridge magnets were in short supply, due to the fact I was the only tourist within the square mile, but I did eventually manage to get hold of one. Buffeted around by the mass of shoppers, I found myself walking through the butchery section at one point, amidst tier after tier of swinging carcasses, going off gradually in the building heat. The smell was not for me, and after a while I ducked out into a courtyard café for an expensive but utterly delicious chilled salted caramel and peanut butter latte. Don’t knock it until you have tried it. Soon enough a rather more subdued taxi driver dropped me off at the airport.

I was able to confirm my view that Kuwait airport is the worst organised one I have ever attended. My sample size is not a small one, either, let’s face it. I had various false starts and met with various glares of incomprehension about my desire to leave the country on an aeroplane. Finally I found myself in a snaking queue, wondering if there was even the vaguest hope of getting through in time. There were people and possessions sprawled every which way you can imagine. Arguments blazed, trolleys ran over one’s feet, and progress was slow. Eventually, I fell into the company of a couple of agreeable Egyptian Americans, and we agreed to pretend we were all on business in Doha together, as we were on the same flight. Remarkably, this resulted in a bit of sanctioned queue-jumping, and even my totally incorrect visa did not give us any problems. I was very nearly home free.

I staggered off through the departures hall, and scored a bit of local aftershave, before deciding to change the last of my Dinars back into Qatari Riyals, I had about £20-worth at hand, so this seemed a worthwhile manoeuvre. Only trouble was I turned my back at the wrong moment, and got landed with the small matter of 99 one Riyal notes. A substantial, but hardly high-rolling wad to cart around, and I was still siphoning them off at the café at work a full week later.

Still, the experience gradually wore its way towards a conclusion, and I enjoyed the back of plane virtually to myself, and watched the landing in Doha through the onboard cameras, which was rather cool, as you land directly over the water. The first pile of 1’s landed in the mitt of the taxi driver back my place, and soon the magnet was placed onto fridge and my arse was placed on the sofa where I am now sitting.

And I sensed a slight cough building in the back of my throat…

Okay. That’s Kuwait wrapped-up. Back next time for the arrival in my life of the Colonel, and some more local tales. Assuming I have not been claimed by Yellow Fever, of course.