It's 9pm and I've just returned from walking the dog. The sun was down and there was no hot wind burning your eye balls like a hairdryer would if you turned it on yourself, so that was good. However, two hours after the sun set it was still 44 degrees. Bring on winter...
Life has just stopped. No more weekend mornings sat reading a book on the seafront. No more playing football. No more lying in my hammock. No more running along the beach with the dog. Even the Kuwaitis flee the summer. Apparently 700,000 leave for cooler climates during the 3 month long summer holidays.
I shouldn't moan though. Air conditioning isn't so prevalent in neighbouring Iraq and other hot spots like Sudan and Chad. An interesting story emerged from our research into the mass displacement of people due to the sectarian violence. It turned out that one of the reasons why the camps established by the Ministry to house IDPs weren't being settled was because the IDPs were demanding electricity and ceiling fans in every tent...
Given the circumstances of IDPs in Darfur and refugees in Chad, this sounds a little ridiculous. It's indicative of a deep rooted culture of dependency and expectancy in Iraq which confronts you in everything you do.
It must be tormenting though to live next door to a country like Kuwait with it's kept people and enormous wealth, knowing that your country has ten times Kuwait's natural resources and yet is desperately backward economically.
Life has just stopped. No more weekend mornings sat reading a book on the seafront. No more playing football. No more lying in my hammock. No more running along the beach with the dog. Even the Kuwaitis flee the summer. Apparently 700,000 leave for cooler climates during the 3 month long summer holidays.
I shouldn't moan though. Air conditioning isn't so prevalent in neighbouring Iraq and other hot spots like Sudan and Chad. An interesting story emerged from our research into the mass displacement of people due to the sectarian violence. It turned out that one of the reasons why the camps established by the Ministry to house IDPs weren't being settled was because the IDPs were demanding electricity and ceiling fans in every tent...
Given the circumstances of IDPs in Darfur and refugees in Chad, this sounds a little ridiculous. It's indicative of a deep rooted culture of dependency and expectancy in Iraq which confronts you in everything you do.
It must be tormenting though to live next door to a country like Kuwait with it's kept people and enormous wealth, knowing that your country has ten times Kuwait's natural resources and yet is desperately backward economically.
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