Speaking in Kuwait

I was excited to go to Kuwait, as it was a new part of the world for me. And when you get to go with a conference organizer ensuring that all the details are taken care of for you, and you are staying in a 5 star hotel, it makes for a great introduction! 

​I don’t know where the poor people live, but there must be many of them among the migrant workers (who outnumber Kuwaitis by 4:1). The roads that I saw are all wide, and clean, with lots of clean cars on them that seem to be driven unaggressively. I only heard a horn honk once! Quite the contrast with Lima, Rome or Naples. According to the hotel driver a colleague and I hired to show us around the first morning, it is not uncommon for Kuwaiti families to have 8 cars! According to him, everybody has at least two. (According to one of the businesswomen I spoke with, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but certainly everyone has at least one. And that may include children.)

​When I arrived in Kuwait, after nearly 24 sleepless hours in transit, it was so wonderful to be greeted and whisked through customs, accompanied while waiting for my luggage and then handed off to the hotel shuttle driver. I must say that all the staff I met in Kuwait, whether in the airport, hotel, or even at the market stalls, were friendly and respectful. 

At the airport I promptly violated one of the cardinal rules – don’t talk about politics. I didn’t actually talk about politics, but I did get my escorts, the first one Indian and the second Philippino, talking a bit about their experiences working here.

The Indian one, perhaps because he was younger and newer in the country (less than a year), was quite open with me about some of the problems. He had seen three young house servants from the Philippines being deported, covered in bruises and scars. Personally, he was pretty happy with his job, apart from the fact that he missed home, and wouldn’t be there to celebrate his 29th birthday the next day.

I don’t remember which of the escorts told me about the fact that the immigrant workers are actively discouraged from learning Arabic; the employers prefer not to have the employees understand their conversations. 

Before going, the Arab mother of a friend of mine had translated my allergies list into Arabic. I hadn’t thought about the fact that none of the chefs or restaurant staff are locals. Pretty well all the service staff I met were either Indian or Philippino. Fortunately, in the laminated copy I had put the Arabic on one side, but added a copy of the English list on the other. They all spoke English. 

When I got to my hotel and had had a brief nap, I spotted messages from two of my business contacts introducing me to Nienke Bloem, one of the other speakers in our lineup. They both thought that we would enjoy each other, and we did.

​Nienke is a tall blonde, so she naturally attracts a lot of attention in places like Kuwait. She’s clearly used to it, and graciously agreed to let some Arab men we met at a tourist site take a photo with us. (Two of them were from Saudi Arabia; the other was a cousin, from here.) 

​My talk the next day went well. A few people approached me afterwards saying that they might have work for me. We’ll see. Interestingly, the business model of Vigor Enterprises, which ran the conference, is that they take a share of any work you get as a result of your talk. 

One thing that struck me about Kuwait: it has an interesting blend of ultra-modern (e.g. the skyscrapers) and old-world traditional (about half or more of both men and women wear traditional dress, even at business meetings).

​On the other hand, women in the business world can clearly be successful, and seem comfortable wearing anything from Western-style business suits to full black head coverings and robes. (There were several women in all-but-eye-covering niquabs and even a few full face-covering burquas at the hotel, but not as attendees at the conference. Presumably they were spouses of some of the men staying at the hotel.) I think it would be hard to create strong business bonds if you can’t see the facial expressions of the person you are dealing with. Maybe that’s just my Western bias but, as I said, you don’t see them actively participating in the business sector.