Chapter Two: Hello from Bahrain
Hello everyone out there in
Internet land,
January 9th
We get the truck all legal and
ready to drive. So we turn in the rental car and this makes us
happy since it has been costing us money. A lot of things
happened on this date. We are told we are now in
“BRAVO” and I assume this means we have less chance of
a terrorist attack.
Still Jan.9th
Today Donna Stokes brings
her maid over for me to meet and I hire her for one day a
week (Wednesdays) to clean the floors in this big house. Since I
hurt my shoulder and arm while cleaning about a week after we
moved in here, it’s hard for me to use the
vacuum cleaner that they furnished us. It’s German made
and has no rollers and without them it’s hard for
me to use it. “Oh well” this is as good as any excuse
to hire her. Her name is Suesala ( I’m sure this
isn’t the right spelling) and she’s from Sri Lanka. On
the second week she got the Chicken pox and didn’t come.
She’s all well now and back to work.
All the houses and buildings here are made of concrete.
They paint them white or really light colors. They almost all
have flat roofs that you can reach by inside stairs. Some people
(Americans) use their roofs for sun bathing while the poor people
here, hang out their wash on their roofs.
They have no electrical outlets in their bathrooms. We have one
in our master bath because our landlord (Arab lady) is married to
an American who designed these buildings. The English were here
from 1861 to 1971 as their Protectorate and they designed their
electric system like the way they have it in England.
We were at Nick and Charlotte’s (they are our
neighbors) house last week for a fish fry. This is what we call a
party. There were different nationalities there besides us
Americans. There were about six or seven Arab men ( the Arab
women seldom come to these affairs), an Australian couple and
their 23 year old son, an Italian guy, and this British
couple. The British man said he was an electrician. And during a
conversation a group of us were having he said, “there
shouldn’t be outlets in bathrooms because of the danger of
electrical shock.” Ray, this American, spoke up and said
“Yes, we Americans always blow dry our hair while taking a
bath.” He got quite a laugh out of that. The British
man’s wife was really funny and told us of some of her
experiences with the translation between their English and our
English. I’ll save these stories for another time. Nearly
all the men at this party work at this aluminum plant, which is a
chief product here. You should hear the way the English pronounce
that word. Sort of like…a-lum-minum.
Here are some of the English signs we see here: TO LET (to
rent), GIVE WAY (yield), LIFT (elevator), FLAT (apartment), and
so on.
The greenery here is few and far between. You see a little plant
life and very little grass. They have date trees and when they
have no dates on them they look liked our palm trees. I’ve
been told that they harvest them in July and they use dates in a
lot of their foods. They export them also.
The sand here is different than in the states. It’s
hard to describe, but I will try. When we were living at
the hotel and before having a rental car, we were walking back at
night from the base. We decided to take a short cut and went
across this wide area of sand in front of our hotel before you
get to the paved street. It had rained a few days before
and so it must have still been damp. Oh well, anyway we almost
got stuck in it, it felt like what you would imagine quicksand
would feel like. Our shoes were a mess up to our ankles. We, or I
should say the hotel was lucky that there was a spigot outside in
the parking lot. We didn’t think we would ever get our shoes
clean. Their sand is like dirt, regular sand, and clay all mixed
together.
The Arabs here never say “The Persian Gulf.” They
call it “The Arabic Gulf.” People say that this
Island was the “Garden of Eden.” Their flag is red and
white and during Ramandan that had most of the buildings draped
with
red and white lights.
To be continued……………
Sylvia