Religious Police

With the girls finally in school full time (& loving it!) I am finally free to get out of the compound on a regular basis, without needing him indoors to take me, as I can use the shopping bus which goes into town every week day morning. I went on the bus yesterday, it goes somewhere different in town everyday, always goes to one of the 4 main supermarkets and also goes to a selection of different shopping centres and souks. The shopping centres are pretty much like the ones at home, they have food courts, a selection of shops and invariably a Starbucks or two. Your feel very safe in these malls which are light, airy, and full of high street names familiar in the UK. Yesterday for instance I did a bit of shopping in Body Shop, Accessorize and Zara. The Souk however are a different matter. There are different Souks around town specialising in different shops. There is a gold souk, a computer souk, the main souk (which has a selection of all sorts) and the one I was in yesterday which is great for handbags, abayas, cheap shoes, in fact mainly women's stuff. The souks are generally a series of lock-up shops all undercover, a bit like a covered market in the UK, but generally alot dirtier. You can pick up some real bargains in these places. The Ladies on the shopping bus however tend to stick together like glue in these places, you tend to get stared at an awful lot more and I have heard of some instances of minor problems of being ripped off, propositioned by Arabs etc, and so I am alot more aware of my surroundings etc whilst in the souks. Yesterday, in the Souk, I had my first experience of a Muttawa (the Saudi Religious Police) It is the Muttawa's job to go around enforcing Sharia law as defined by the government, specifically by the "Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice"(CPVPV) - great name for a committee I think! The Muttawa are usually accompanied by a police escort. They have the power to arrest unrelated males and females caught socializing, anyone engaged in homosexual behavior or prostitution. It is also their job to enforce Islamic dress-codes and store closures during the prayer time. Yesterday's first meeting with one of them to be honest was quite funny. This Muttawa guy started shouting at us telling us to cover our heads. Most of us western women here do not cover our heads here when we are out about shopping. We would however if we had to go somewhere where we need to be particularly respectful, such a police station. Anyway this guy started yelling at us, his only problem was that because we had not covered our heads he wouldn't look at us, he was ranting away whilst looking almost in the opposite direction to where we were standing, so to begin with we had absolutely no idea who he was talking to. We were all staring up & down the souk wondering who it was that he was shouting at, when it dawned on us that infact we were the subject of his rant. Anyway, as we are not Muslim, there is no requirement to cover up, so we ignored him and after about 5 minutes he shut up and wondered off, presumably to find some other incident of "vice" to prevent. Luckily we were in a group of 6, if we had been in a smaller group I am sure that we wouldn't have had the balls to ignore him. I believe that in some places in Saudi the Muttawa can be particularly harsh, but I suppose we are quite lucky in the big scale of things to live in a relatively tolerant part of the Kingdom.

One year on..

A year ago today Obama was inaugurated (inaugurations always happen on the 20th of Jan, even if it is a Sunday) and this morning he has been dealt an unpleasant anniversary present. The election of Scott Brown to the senate to represent Massachusetts, is a slap in the face for Obama, and the political equivalent of the tories winning a safe seat in Newcastle in a by election. It is interesting that Obama's approval ratings in the US are sinking fast (not that you would know if you watch the media in the UK, who still report on him as if he is the messiah) I suppose it not surprisingly bearing in the expectations beforehand whipped up by the media. I suspect he is going to turn into a one term president as his rhetoric becomes even more empty. He has not held a press conference, where journalists can ask him questions, since July, presumably in order to avoid tricky questions such as Afghanistan & and his failure to shut Gitmo, as promised, within a year of his inauguration. Last April an estimated 2 million people took to the streets of DC as taxpayers showed their unease his policies and their cost. His healthcare reforms, although widely popular within the DC Beltway, are going to cost the earth, not least because the bill has measures in it that are completely unrelated to healthcare, such as the $300M of Government money going to Louisiana in order to make sure that the senator from that state voted in favour of it. If you put yourself in the place of an average middle class voter then it is easy to see why they are not happy. Your average working American is going to see a huge rise in taxes in order to pay for healthcare, but if you have a decent job in the states you already get the equivalent of Bupa healthcare free of charge, or for a nominal charge, as part of your employment package. This healthcare in most cases carries on for life after you retire. 80% of Americans have private healthcare, so imagine being asked to support something which would reduce your personal healthcare from Bupa to the NHS but cost you more. There are alot of people in the states who are not happy with the situation and I suspect that the election of Scott Brown reflects that.

Back to school at last!

I have not had much time to write over the last week but at last...finally after 4 weeks off the kids are back at school today. The Christmas holidays were extended by a week because of the new teacher (wife of the current & up to this point the only one) had her visa delayed again, but she is here now so full time school should start next week (the kids have only been going to school in the mornings up to now & concentrating on core curriculum stuff) Obviously one of the problems here is that there is no system where you can call in a supply teacher - if the staff are ill or have to go to see some Saudi official during school hours, which has happened, there is no alternative to shutting the school. Still it is not as if I, or any other mum for that matter, is at work. Once full time school starts properly I will be able to use the "shopping bus" which goes into town everyday (but at the moment doesn't come back until after the school has finished for the day) That should make life here a bit easier, as it means I will be able to get most of the shopping done during the week - so no more moaning from him indoors or the kids about having to spend every Thursday morning rattling around supermarkets. The shopping bus goes to a different part of town/souk/mall/supermarket everyday so I will probably find a whole host of new things and places that I didn't know existed here. I have been on it a few times before, when him indoors has been on nights so could be there when the kids finish school, and over the holidays the kids and I have been out a couple of times. The bus has a Saudi driver (who so far is the best Saudi driver I have seen by a long way, very reassuring!) he spends most of his time complaining at the standard of driving here and calling the other drivers "donkeys" or "Bedouin" as, in his opinion, the only/last thing they should/could drive is a camel. We also get a security guard who comes on the bus with us. He is in contact with the other security people back at the compound, just incase anything happens, but so far all I have seen him do is help all of us unload our shopping and carry it to our door when we get back.

"YOU MAY BE A TALIBAN IF..."

1. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to liquor.

2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can't afford shoes.

3. You have more wives than teeth.

4. You wipe your butt with your bare hand, but consider bacon "unclean."

5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.

6. You can't think of anyone you haven't declared Jihad against.

7. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in your clothing..

8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.

9. You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least four.

10. You've always had a crush on your neighbor's goat.



Edit added:- You don't know how the seventy-two virgins bit works, especially as no-one's sent word back, but you still want to blow yourself to smithereens in the service of your Profit!

(As seen on "A Tangled Web")

Our New Year

Happy New Year. Well we certainly had a different New Years Weekend this year. We went to the Red Sea for the weekend. We stayed in Jeddah at a reasonable hotel which has it's own "private beach". The beach was absolutely fabulous. We could wear western clothes, swim, snorkel and Scuba dive right from the beach. There was a fab Cafe which served good food and apart from 1 Egyptian lady, not an Arab in sight. The Egyptian lady wore a "Saudi Bathing costume" which is essentially an all in one affair with a cap attached - it is all black and quite tight so over it she wore a loose fitting dress - not ideal for her I am sure, as the temp was well into the 30s but she was obviously more comfortable that way. I spent the day on a sun lounger in & out of the shade watching the kids messing about in the water. It really was a great day. New Year's Day dawned for us at 5.45am (YES 5.45AM!!) we had to be at a marina by 7.15 which was a half hours drive away. By 8 we were on our way out into the Red Sea - What an awesome day - we had dolphins swimming along side us for a while, him indoors did 2 open water dives each lasting about 45 mins - he saw clown fish and most of Nemo's other mates, one of the groups out scuba diving came head to head with a turtle, the sea was 28 degrees, but on the way home it did start to get a bit rough - not sickly rough but very wet rough! One of the other people scuba diving has been doing it all around the world for years, and according to them the sea of Jeddah is just abut the best place in the world to Scuba dive - better than the Micronesia islands, Maldives, Malaysia or the Caribbean. I guess Saudi does have something going for it!