Random Musings

When I was first talking to my sponsor about coming to Bahrain, I was sort of taken aback by the discussions of ‘walking 15 minutes to work’.  Not the distance / time aspect, but I sort of had this vision of walking through a Hollywood-esque ‘Arab city’ with teeming back alleys, crowds, etc.  Admittedly, there are portions of Manama that are a bit like that, and my first apartment required me to walk through some.  However, my current living arrangement reminds me a lot of college, in an odd way.  As I have stated in prior posts, the biggest dangers are construction sites and crazy drivers.

Ramadan is coming up – a month long Islamic religious observance that is in the ninth LUNAR month of every year, so the date on our calendar changes every year since it is NOT based on the lunar year.  (it moves up about 10 days each year).  Basically, all Muslims (with a few exceptions – e.g. pregnant women) must completely fast from sunrise to sunset and be spiritually pure.  No smoke, no whoopie - cannot even drink water.  There are also more prayers, etc.  From a US perspective, it means that our counterparts here work till mid-day at the latest, then the go home and rest and pray.  Thus, it is good not to plan much during this month, which this year happens to start on Aug 20th or so.  The upshot for me is a lot of meetings, visits, etc get crammed into my last few weeks in Bahrain… so much for coasting.  On the upside, my shot at going home for a week off is looking better – a big upside as the ‘days away from home’ counter ticks past 120.

As visitors to an Islamic country, we generally do not have to follow these rules, but policy here is to maintain a low profile, dress conservatively (long pants, no shorts / swim trunks off base – even for exercise – which will be tough because August is toasty here), and no public consumption of food or drink – even water.  Apparently the law is pretty strict – last year a couple of guys from India working construction were busted drinking water in public during the day and were arrested and deported…  It is only a month.

Other than that, not much to post – no travel in July, and the job is just a job – nothing blog-worthy.  Have been learning about my next duty station and it is just a bit less civilized than Bahrain.  Frankly, I may not blog a whole lot about my next stop ‘til after I leave…  To share a bit of gallows humor, the guy who covers the country from Bahrain – who travels there quite a bit – and I are working on our ‘last words’ just in case we end up on one of those videos with a bunch of guys in masks and AK-47s shouting ‘Allah Akbar’ as they cut a hostage’s head off.  Always good to have those words rehearsed, just in case – you only get one shot at yelling them.  Again, mostly gallows humor, but there are still plenty of places in the world where evil people live.