Baby Shower Kuwaiti Style
We gathered in Maria's beautiful villa.
Last night I had a delightful time at a baby shower for one of our para educators here at UAS in the KG department. The last couple of baby showers I attended here were your typical baby showers held after school in someone's classroom like most of us are accustomed to in the states. They were really nice with all those neat theme decorating and food preparation ideas you can find on Pintrest these days. This particular shower was nothing like that at all. It was held in a beautiful villa In Kuwait on a Friday evening. I assumed that anything I would typically wear to school would be fancy enough for this baby shower. Boy, was I wrong! Many of the women I work with are women who practice the Moslem faith. They adhere to a strict dress code which requires them to wear clothing that is loose and thick enough so as to not disclose body shape and attract attention. So at school they will always wear a hijab, which is a scarf wrapped around the head and neck, leaving the entire face exposed. The hijab can be many different styles, depending upon where these women have lived and they are worn with the beauty and grace befitting a princess. When our hostess opened the door, I hardly recognized my coworkers! Gone were the hijabs and conservative clothing. These women were dressed in all the beautiful colors of the Middle East. Long hair was flowing and exotic jewelry hung around their necks. My mouth must have been gaping because they were laughing at me as I looked around because they knew I could barely recognize most of them! It was too late for me to go home and change, so I decided to enjoy myself although I felt terribly underdressed. The buffet was loaded down with many of the delicious dishes we usually see here in Kuwait, but there were also many Mexican dishes served because our hostess is an expat from Mexico and Elly,our expectant mother, is also Hispanic. The cake was a heavenly four-layer concoction with caramel filling. We played "pin the bottle on the baby" and another familiar baby shower game where the participants collect clothespins from other ladies they catch crossing their legs. I didn't last very long!
Where else to play "Pin the Bottle on the Baby?"
A lovely table for party favors
It was a lovely evening spent at the beautiful home of my friend, Maria. I live in a little shoebox apartment here at the teacher accommodations, so it is a real treat to be invited into the beautiful home of a friend and coworker. These lovely women were from Canada, the US, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, India, Palestine, Mexico, Bulgaria, Armenia, Cuba and Venezuela. No one spoke of war and ISIS threats. Nothing could have been further from from anyone's mind. We were women sharing the time honored tradition of celebrating a precious life soon to be born into a loving family. The joy and camaraderie I experienced with these beautiful women will be a cherished memory I will hold for a lifetime.
A Visit to the Grand Mosque of Kuwait
Here I am in my hijab and abaya, ipad in hand!
A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege to take a tour of the Grand Mosque of Kuwait, the eighth largest mosque in the world. When we arrived at the mosque, we were directed to to the visitors center where we women were fitted with abayas and hijabs so as to cover our heads, arms, and legs. Everyone took off their shoes before entering the mosque itself.
Around the base of this dome is painted the words "Ama al-hosana," the 99 names of God.
The Grand Mosque of Kuwait, a national treasure, is considered the most important sight in the country. Our tour guide, Khalil Habash, is clearly a goodwill ambassador for the Muslim faith. Most of us in the tour were Christians, and we were made to feel very welcome in this house of his God, Allah.
vThe inside of the mosque was quite spectacular. The mosque encompasses 45,000 square feet and can accommodate 11,450 worshippers. The construction of the mosque which began in 1979 was completed in 1986 at a cost of 490 million dollars. My attention was immediately drawn to the beautiful dome. In this dome are painted the words "Ama al-hosana" which are the 99 names of God as revealed in the Quran. The mosque contains 122 stained glass windows which came from France, Italian marble, ornately carved teakwood doors from India and four 18 carat gold chandeliers from Italy. We were told not stand under them because they each weigh a ton! The walls were covered with intricate mosaics which were done by hand by special artisans from Morocco.
One of the four 18 carat gold chandeliers from Italy weighing in at one ton. Now I know where to find a nice chandelier when I decide to do some redecorating when I get back home to Iowa!
This is what we in the west would call the altar area. You can see an ornately carved pulpit on either side of the vault.
The building is truly massive and a classic example of traditional Islamic architecture with its beautiful dome, arches, and vaults covered with intricate patterns of mosaics. A visit to Kuwait wouldn't be complete without a side trip to the Al-Masjid Al-Kabir, otherwise known as the Grand Mosque of Kuwait.
Panic Attack!
At our tour of the mosque, my friend Linda and I met an expat teacher from the states and she invited us to come with her to take a tour of the Liberty Towers. That didn't work out too well because contrary to the information on their website, they were closed. We then decided to go out for lunch and get to know each other a little better. On the way to the restaurant I was digging into my purse and much to my absolute horror, I discovered that my pocketbook was missing! The last thing you want to do in a foreign country is to lose your civil ID and your bank card. It's not quite as bad as losing your passport, but it ranks right up there with all the sticky situations expats can find themselves in, not to mention identity theft. I was pretty sure it had fallen out of my purse at the mosque because I was reaching into it quite a bit pulling out my iPad mini to take pictures. I couldn't imagine traipsing all over that massive building hunting for a black pocketbook. We looked up the phone number for the mosque and, of course, no answer. We even had the phone number of our tour guide, but there was no answer there either. And on top of that, my friend, Linda, had forgotten her purse, so between the two of us, we had no money for a taxi or bus fare. Our new friend, Kristen, whom we had just met a couple of hours before, had only been in this country one week and she only had six KD to her name and I had to ask her for 1/2 KD so we could pay for bus fare to get us home. It doesn't take too long to discover who your true friends are in Kuwait! So after waiting for what seemed like a lifetime, our bus finally came, picked us up and dropped us off in Hawally. We still had well over a mile to walk back to our apartment in the 106 degree heat. I'm sure I wasn't very pleasant company! We finally got back to our building. Getting off the elevator, I see a note taped to my door. It read, "Hi, Did you leave your civil ID in Sameer's taxi? Here's his number.... He will come back, Maggie." I kid you not, Maggie is my next door neighbor and Sameer is her regular taxi driver! What are the chances in this city of 2.5 million people that a random taxi Linda and I got into this morning just happened to be my neighbor's regular taxi driver? I carry a laminated card in my pocketbook that gives directions to the apartment I live in, so thanks to that little card I've been carrying around for over a year, Sameer knew where to find me. When he discovered that I had left my pocketbook in his taxi, he brought my civil ID to the building to give to one of the guards to give to me, but then he came back after I could contact him to give me my pocketbook in person. He insisted I look through it to make sure everything was there. I was glad I had cash in it to give him for all his trouble. Unbelievable! On top of that, it was a very good thing Linda had forgotten her purse that day because had she money on her for cab fare, we would have been at that mosque aimlessly wandering around looking for a pocketbook that was never there!
I am constantly amazed at God's loving kindness He has shown to me over and over in so many ways in my life. I'm sure in the greater scheme of things happening in this world with constant war, injustice and the ebola outbreak, my little everyday problems rank pretty low. But nevertheless, God in His infinite mercy and grace continues to guard and protect me and keep me from getting into too much mischief! And this story also speaks to the basic goodness of human beings all over the world and particularly in this little corner of the Middle East!
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