Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Wearing my grandma's pants

Hello All,

Today I woke up feeling really ill, sore throat, fever cursing because I really want to dive. Look after yourself they say!

Two particular things have haunted me yesterday:
1) The overwhelming rubbish by each beach and inside the sea. It now truly upsets me to see it so dirty especially when I can understand the impact and most of all the short time I have. I understand that my principal role in a month is to raise awareness but I feel limited and helpless when I see such rubbish adorning the beaches and then happen to find itself in the sea. Its awful!

2) Well as they say, there has to be a night where you feel the 'loneliness' of not being around your family or friends. Last night it was exactly that and the guys at the centre picked up on it and asked me to come around to the staff flat around the corner from me to share a meal made of liver. I first thought I really don't want to intrude and refused but Abu Karim is a very persuasive man and kept insisting. Personally, I wanted to be on my own, listen to my music and sleep. However, it got to the time of 8.30 and I phoned Abu Karim who dutifully picked me up and I sat with him and our Driver Ashraf in their flat. Its a three bedroom house and as you enter it has a seat from a car beautifully upholstered in a strong blue casing of leather. It was beautifully sitting on the ground as the sofa and besides it was a big rubber tyre with a cushion across it. I sat on that instead because its a novelty and watched an old (mediocre)hindi film as we ate very well cooked kibbdeh liver with rice. Delicious. We then walked for 40 minutes towards the beachfront where we sat in a cafe, me drinking mint tea (from a teabag) and the others drinking a birella..beer without alcohol. Thats just strange, they asked me to taste it and I felt sick cos the smell is like beer! Whilst i was looking up at the stars and then look down, two big fat rats run up and down the beach hoping for some type of morsel. Nice to know they don't regard eating rats as a delicacy here instead a big thump on the ground is the best tactic to scare them...but they are not scared. My legs were up to my chin and my banter was reduced to nervous chatter much to everyone's amusement. Yukky shadows of blobs hanging around you is no way to enjoy your wonderful shai nana!

One thing that made us all laugh our heads off was my ever faltering Arabic. I was asked what type of clothes do i wear in the UK, I mentioned that I wear asian and english clothes, however, I was using a verb that translates something like..'I wear clothes/pants of my grandparents', (ilbaas) since they eat up every word here..I should be saying 'Libs'...hilarious. The guys were so kind and humble with my faultless arabic, they finally told me where I was going wrong!

More to come later peeps, I am being disturbed by our centre manager Khalid, who loves to entertain me when I am working. Its great! I am worried that he will chain smoke it seems to be a hazardous environment here regards smoking..EVERYONE lights up as you are just gasping for air!

Any suggestions to cleaning up the beach guys?
Hxx

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