Local FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2011
Satire Wire
How did people survive before A/C? By Sawsan Kazak
Conspiracy Theories
Life’s mysterious ways
sawsank@kuwaittimes.net
I
s it just me or have Kuwaiti summers gotten ridiculous? Forget being able to cook an egg on the hood of your car due to the heat, I’m pretty sure I could cook a complete thanksgiving feast inside my car. I can only imagine what is happening to the inside of our bodies as we inhale pure heat. Just walking to or from your car will result in your clothes being soaked as though you just stepped into a sauna - and don’t even let me get started on the makeup situation. This kind of weather is inhumane, and should be reported to the United Nations, maybe they could do something about it. Yesterday as I sat in my car hugging a bottle of frozen water and waiting impatiently for the air conditioning to start working, I thought of people who lived without A/C or refrigerators for generations. Kuwait didn’t always have temperature-reg-
ulated malls, offices or electricity for that matter, after all. How did people do it before AC, frozen lattes and summer vacations abroad. My father tells me that people used to sleep on mattresses soaked in water with ice laid underneath. But according to my calculations that would only keep you cool for about half an hour in the Kuwait heat. How did people go about their daily life, cooking, cleaning and sleeping? How did they keep cool and comfortable and not completely dehydrate? Were previous generations different genetically? Did they have certain genes that would cause their bodies to cool down during the summer months? Obviously not, but there must be an explanation for how they survived this heat. Maybe the principal idea wasn’t to be completely comfortable all the time, but simply
to survive. We are so spoiled these days that we expect the environment around us to be regulated while we do nothing about it. With a flip of a switch we want a warm room in winter, a cool room in summer so that we feel a constant state of ease. We try our hardest to avoid any discomfort, be it hot, cold or pain. Psychologically we feel like it is unnatural for us to feel variations in our environment, even in our emotions. But the opposite is true; feeling the changes in the weather and in ourselves is natural and staying in a constant state is not. Feeling hot and sweating or being angry or sad might be temporarily uncomfortable but we must keep in mind that this is normal and not something to be avoided at any cost. Facing life, and Kuwaiti weather with this philosophy might ease the pain; that’s what I’m telling myself anyway.
Local Spotlight
Juvenile crime: What’s the answer? By Muna Al-Fuzai
muna@kuwaittimes.net
A
lthough I don’t see the connection between juveniles and summer yet, it’s very common to hear and read more about juvenile crimes during this period. This is possibly because many people leave the country in summer heading off on their vacations and leaving their homes and other properties unwatched or with a limited number of workers and staff so, those thieves assume that it’s easy to break in without being seen or worrying about being arrested. Funnily enough, although the theory is correct most of those juveniles end up being arrested before the end of summer. What we really need to focus on today are two things: first, why are juveniles used to commit these crimes and second, do they receive the right punishment to help them - and I stress the term help rather than punish - and are we as a society giving the right support to our juvenile citizens? And what of non-Kuwaiti juveniles who commit the same crimes? Should these also be our responsibility? For example, recently the police arrested five youngsters (from other GCC states and Somalis) for stealing cars, which they used to commit thefts! During interrogation the youngsters admitted that they had committed 12 crimes. That’s twelve crimes - not one or two but 12! Whilst this number seems large enough it should ring alarm bells over whose mistake this is and why these boys were allowed to freely go about committing their crimes 12
times before they were arrested. Those youngsters were referred to the Juvenile Prosecution Unit. While I know that they may spend some time in juvenile prison, this will still not end their problems or our concerns - and here’s why: according to the news, those juveniles are not Kuwaiti citizens, but from other GCC nations, with a number being from Somalia - so why should it be our job to take care of them and what about their countries also having responsibility for them? Those adolescents should serve a sentence in juvenile detention here and when that is over they should then be transferred to their countries; we should not release them back into our society just because of their age. Another issue here is the Somali member of the group, all of whom are juveniles. I wonder how he ended up in Kuwait. Social services don’t exist in our dictionary to teach the juveniles the lessons they need to learn. They need to learn how to pay the price of their crimes and I don’t think that prison is the only solution, especially given the kind of kids they may mix with there which could mean they come out of prison worse than they went in. I think this issue needs close attention. As a society, we are responsible for confronting our problems and saving our members from the possible threat of being victims of crime. Juveniles are young and can make mistakes, so we should help them while not tolerating their crimes or the results thereof.
By Badrya Darwish
badrya_d@kuwaittimes.net
F
ull of appreciation for life, I had just got into the office to give a piece for Friday Times. Honestly speaking, I had something totally different on my mind to write about. Unfortunately, life sometimes takes unexpected turns. As I walked in, I met our editor Velina and everyone was surrounding her to comfort her. I found out that she escaped a fatal accident in a nanosecond. She was driving to work on the Fifth Ring Road but, bless her, she was a bit on the speedy side when her rear tire exploded. She hardly managed to control the car and to pull over into the emergency lane. As she was maneuvering, other cars tried to escape a collision. The best part, thank God, is that she managed to control her vehicle but look at the irony of what happened behind her. On the opposite side of the road one car flipped and overturned and definitely other cars behind him, also speeding, crashed into each other. It looked like a New York police chase on TV. After comforting Velina, I heard Lisa’s story. Lisa, a young American woman who joined the newspaper only two weeks ago, has already experienced her share of bad luck in Kuwait. She decided to go for a walk near the Scientific Centre in Salmiya. Naturally, she left her handbag in the car, locking the car before she started jogging. All seemed well, despite the heat and a deeply unpleasant stench from the shore area, which you all remember from the Mishref sewage plant affair which remains unresolved and still affects the sea. The young lady managed to finish her jogging, returning to her car to find the glass smashed and her handbag missing. The worst part of the story is that she kept all her identification papers, ID, bank cards, money and passport in her bag. Lisa went to the police station to report the theft, only to find out that seven other, similar incidents had taken place in the same area that night. I know this news might have given her peace of mind that she wasn’t singled out and the same thing happened to others on the same street at the same time, but this still didn’t resolve the problem of her money and documents being gone. Another editor at the Kuwait Times, Xavier, was a victim of a similar theft, with his car windows also being smashed. Luckily, Xavier didn’t have any valuables in the car at the time, but the shock of someone breaking the car window was enough, with the pathetic thief even stealing the small change he kept in the vehicle for parking fees. With these three incidents, I do not think I have the passion to write the story I came to write initially. Life has its peculiar ways. Have a good weekend and take care of your cars and bags because incidents like this can happen in important locations where we never think they could happen.