Saudi Roads Lead to New Apartments!

As we all know, I love road trips. Pack up the car, pile in, turn up the music, and get moving. When I visited Doha back in January of last year I desperately wanted to take a road trip through Saudi but time didn’t allow for it. This past week this wish finally came true. I attend the NASPA ACPA Gulf Regional Conference in Abu Dhabi and instead of taking the 45 minute flight from Doha to Abu Dhabi, we opted for the 8 hour road trip crossing the borders of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. I was joined on this road trip by my friends Chris and Mohammed. The distance between Doha and Abu Dhabi is not that significant but the border crossing is, especially in Saudi.

Let me paint a picture for you. Immediately upon leaving Qatar the quality of the roads decreases. You can literally see on the ground a line between Qatar and the area between Qatar and Saudi, which we called “no-man’s land”. As we approaching the Saudi border we see a LONG line of trucks waiting to enter the country. These trucks can wait at the border for weeks waiting inspection to be allowed to pass through into the country. When we reach the area for passenger vehicles there are four lanes of traffic merging with no clear lanes or location to go. As we ask questions of the customs and immigration officers to find out where we need to go, we are greeted with shouts, points, and turned backs! Mohammed could have traveled straight through with no issues, as GCC residents are able to pass easily through borders, but Chris and I were not so lucky. I thought I was an expert on the Saudi border from my last experience with Wil and Sulayim, but all the procedures had changed in the few short weeks since I had visited the border. Chris and I proceeded to get finger printed and photographed in a trailer, then the three of us waited 30 minutes to get added insurance to drive in the country, and by the time we actually crossed the border two hours had passed! The rest of the trip to Abu Dhabi was relatively smooth and we arrived late on the night before the conference. I have some thoughts on the conference itself but I will share those at the end.

 

After the conference was over we had a PACKED weekend of activities. We rode the world’s fastest roller coaster at Ferrari world, we drove up to Dubai, we spent time out on the beaches, explored all the beautiful nightlife that Dubai had to offer, and road tripped 10 hours back from Dubai to Doha. This was my third time visiting Dubai and it is really growing on me. After my first trip I really did not like the city but now I have found some of my favorite areas. Specifically the Jumeira Beach Residence area is a great place to hang out and spend the day. There are tons of shops, restaurants, hotels, and beach side places to relax. While spending time at one of these beach side restaurants we encountered my favorite server that I have met since moving to the region. His name was Oscar and he was from Norway. He was doing an internship with Hilton and was working at their Dubai hotel. Oscar was struggling to adjust to life in Dubai. First off, the man’s fair skin was not faring well in the Dubai sun. It actually appeared as if he was melting right before our eyes. By the end of the day we couldn’t help but feel bad for him, perhaps Nathan from Cracker Barrel could help him out…

A final story from the trip was on our way back to Doha. I was charged what we called an “idiot tax” because I just don’t know how to keep my mouth shut. Two Americans (myself and Kevin) enter customs at the UAE border to exit the country. I walk in and begin chatting with the customs agent, greeting him in Arabic. He proceeds to ask how much Arabic I know, and I tell him very little. He asks me how long I have lived in the region, I tell him five months. He tells me that I should know more Arabic and to go pay an exit fee of 30 Durhams (about $10). Kevin walks up, smiles, doesn’t say anything, and gets a stamp in the passport to leave freely. No exit fee. When we left we all looked at each other in one of those, “did that just happen?” kind of scenarios. I guess that’s what I get for trying to make connections…

In other big news, I moved into a new apartment this weekend. It is a fully furnished three bedroom apartment in the middle of Doha. It is about 15 minutes from work for me and 15 minutes from “downtown” where Brennan will be working. Brennan moves in next week and I am doing my best to get everything ready for him before his arrival. The apartment is a perfect size and much more central than where I am living now. We will be getting a third roommate as well, who is yet to be determined. We should know by the end of the week. Although moving is never fun, this was the easiest move of my life. Mostly because I still have so few possessions here in Doha. The entire move, including packing and unpacking, took me about 6 hours!

My last thoughts here were stemmed from the NASPA ACPA Gulf Conference and my role here as a westerner working with mostly local Qataris. The conference I attended featured about 100 student affairs professionals from the Arab Gulf region and beyond. It was fascinating to see how each institution was working on implementing student affairs and who was doing the implementation. It made me reflect and think about my own role here in Doha. Should I be concentrating on developing the talents and skills of locals who have no background in student affairs? Should I be concentrating on providing the best practices in student affairs from the US model? Do I develop students or do I develop staff? How do we bridge the experience gap between westerners and locals to be sustainable in the future? How well does the Student Affairs model fit within the regional culture? The list goes on. I haven’t found many answers to these questions, and doubt I will. Now that I have been here for just under six months I have a more clear perspective on just how complicated the work we are doing here is. I find it fascinating to think about what we are trying to do here by introducing an entirely new model is a system (the branch campus model) that inherently creates duplication. In the end I think it is a comfortable tension to know that you can’t change everything at once because hey…Rome wasn’t built in a day. We need to be able to identify what is a priority to develop now and what can wait until future phases of the process. Overall I have been amazed at what we have been able to accomplish as we lay a foundation for the future. In the student center that I work in we have significantly increased the programs offered, how we work with students, and the complexity of our thinking in terms of creating learning opportunities for students. It has been an amazing experience so far and I can’t wait to see what directions we head in the future.

I think that about covers it for now. My next week will be busy with preparing for Brennan’s arrival and planning for my upcoming Thailand trip. March will be crazy as I will be in Thailand Feb 28-March 9, Doha March 10-14, Orlando March 14-20, DC March 20-26, NY March 26-29, and then back to Doha! Really looking forward to my first trip back to the US since moving and being able to connect with friends and family while there. Until next time!  

Kenya: It was WILD

Let me be up front with all of you before you continue reading. This is my longest entry by far and it is fitting because how to you capture the essence of an African Safari in words. I did my best here but can’t do justice to what transpired. I apologize for the length of the post but hope this gives some idea of how the trip was. Would love to follow up to share more stories, experiences, and reflections but this is a good place to start.

As most of you know, my latest adventure was one that brought me on the trip of a lifetime. A wildlife safari in Kenya. The story of this trip really begins a few months ago when flights to Nairobi were casually booked in an effort to simply get out of Doha. What transpired was one of the best trips of my life and one I will never forget.

Over the winter break I did not travel out of the country for a variety of reasons. Brennan was visiting, I had a lot of work commitments, and the timing simply didn’t line up. I really wanted to take a winter trip and my supervisor was kind enough to give me some time off right at the start of the semester. My friend Arooj and I had been in discussion of traveling somewhere in East Africa. The list was narrowed to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. When we finally got to the point of picking a location, it really came down to price. We were able to get round trip tickets to Kenya for $500 USD!!! At that point it didn’t matter what we did, or how long we stayed, it was a great deal! We ended up choosing to go for 6 days and work on recruiting others to join. We were leaving early on a Thursday morning and returning late on a Tuesday night. We had A LOT of interested people, but in the end no takers. So there it was…Arooj and I. Once the flights were booked we looked at safari costs and were SHOCKED at how expensive they were. Who can spend $2000 USD on a 5 day safari?!?! Definitely not us. After scouring the internet we were given a recommendation for Kenya Express Safaris. They were reasonable, took care of lodging and food, and were responsive to our e-mails. We booked the safari about a week before we left with no expectations and flew to Nairobi.

When we left for Nairobi we didn’t know what hotels our Safari package included or where we would eat our meals. We didn’t know if we were joining a group or we would be on our own. We didn’t know the name of our driver or where exactly we were going. We were just showing up in Nairobi at 2pm local time and going for it. Throughout the ENTIRE trip our very few expectations were shattered. We expected to camp in tents and barely shower all week, instead we were at 5 star resorts. We expected to be part of a large tour group, it was a private tour with us and the driver. We expected basic meals, it was all you can eat buffets. We expected to have to seek out animals on safari, the animals were EVERYWHERE! All in all we could not have been happier with the trip and highly recommend the company we used, Kenya Express Tours (http://ketsafaris.com/).

 The safari started off at Lake Nakura, which was a park about a few hours from Nairobi. On the way we stopped for a boat safari where we saw hippos, a variety of birds, and did a nature walk at a preserve. When we finally got to Lake Nakura, there were animals ALL over. There were even zebras, baboons, and buffalo right outside where we had dinner! While we were at Lake Nakura we saw giraffes, rhinos, buffalo, zebras, and much more. It was our first day of safari and Arooj and I were like little kids. When we left early the next morning to drive 5 hours to Maasai Mara we saw our first Lions! They were literally sitting on the side of the road right next to our van. Our driver, Duncan, kept telling us “You are SO lucky!”. When we got to Maasai Mara there was no way to be prepared for what we saw. In every direction you looked not only were there animals, but herds of them. We saw giraffes, elephants, lions, gazelle, zebras, wildebeests, and buffalo everywhere we looked. In Maasai Mara we also saw cheetahs every day that we were there. Generally the lions and cheetahs are lazy animals and just lay around, but the first cheetah we saw was hunting although we didn’t actually get to see it attack. No matter how much time we spent in the parks on safari seeing the animals never got old. We saw no less than 50 elephants yet it was breath taking every time we drove next to one. We saw hundreds of zebras, and we considered them to be the most underappreciated of all the animals. Zebras are AWESOME but when you see them every time you get in the car, the novelty wears off a bit. 

As part of our tour we also visited a Maasai Village. This visit is something that I am still processing through and will not do justice to the range of emotions we both experienced while visiting. The whole experience started with a member of the Maasai Village, Samare, who came to get us from our resort at 7am. We walked about 20 minutes from the resort with him to the village which was hidden away from the sight of the resort. On this walk he pointed out different plants that the tribe used, explained some of their culture, and answered many of our questions. He told us about how the village depends on cows for food, building their homes, medicine, blankets, and just about every aspect of life. In the village the ration of cows to people was about 1:1. He explained how the men have multiple wives and when they marry they pay 10 cows to the family of the woman to bring her to their tribe. He explained that all of the homes in the village are made of sticks and cow poop which makes for a waterproof home. He also shared that the men at birth are either placed on an education track or on a cow herding track. If you are a cow herder your ears are cut and if you are in education you give your bottom front teeth. The information he shared goes on and on. It was fascinating to gather all of this information and it wasn’t until we arrived in the village that we got a little uncomfortable.

First we walked through the village. As you enter the village you see cows and people scattered amongst the homes that Samare has described earlier. There were flies EVERYWHERE from the cows and cow poop that covered all of the ground. Samare encouraged us to take pictures while in the village, but the Maasai people appeared to not want their pictures taken. As you could imagine, Arooj and I stood out in the village and felt very much like outsiders. We were invited into one of the homes which was probably about 15 feet by 12 feet with rooms for baby cows, goats, and the family all together. Once in the home, Samare wanted to sell us beaded bracelets, which we were happy to buy. He wouldn’t tell us the price but encouraged us to take as many as we wanted. We took 4. After the home we went outside where Samare and some of the other men did a “dance” for us which felt more like forced entertainment than it did a display of culture. We couldn’t help but get the feeling that they thought that doing this dance would make the “White Maasai”, as they called me, happy. On the contrary, it made both Arooj and I incredibly uncomfortable as it felt like we were objectifying their culture. After the dance was finished we were walking towards the school and I asked Samare how much the bracelets were. He informed us that they were $25 USD each, which was an outrageous price for what we had. Arooj and I agreed that we would take one as more of a donation but return the other three Samare had given us. When I informed Samare of this he immediately became quiet and stopped talking to either of us. Arooj and I had already committed to giving $100 USD in total to the village for being toured around and did not feel comfortable giving more than this. It was at this moment that we both felt a wide range of emotions. Should we be giving more money? What would that do? Why are they expecting us to just hand over all the money we have? Is that why they did the dance? What is the purpose of this visit? How does the tribe get access to money? How do assess needs of a community so vastly different than any other in the world? How do you balance modern advances and maintain tribal culture? What is the value of the missionary work that built a school here? What quality of life should be maintained by all people? How does a person from the tribe live to be 120 years old yet all the children appear to be sick? The list goes on. After visiting their school we got back in the van and headed back out for safari. Arooj and I didn’t talk about the experience until much later in the day and began to debrief what happened. Both of us are still trying to figure out what it all meant and how to understand it from a variety of perspectives. I would say that it was a transformative experience which I will be making meaning from for quite some time. I really can’t do justice to the experience with words but I hope that paints somewhat of a picture of what we experienced.

Although a very short trip, it was incredibly impactful. It was a very humbling experience to visit Kenya, and it is something I never expected to be able to do at this age. For some reason I always thought that trips like this would take place later in life. Perhaps after retirement, kids growing old, I would finally be able to get out and see the world. Being able to casually take a long weekend trip to Kenya reminds me of just how lucky and fortunate to be in the position I am in. I am lucky to be here in Doha were I can travel easily and affordably. I am lucky to have had such great mentors, family, and supports throughout my life to get me to this place. I am lucky to be able to see parts of the world I thought I would never see even in my lifetime. As I look ahead to other trips I am planning I can’t help but be amazed how it has all worked out. The trip gave me plenty to think about and reflect on as I prepare for my next trip this week.

Life hasn’t really slowed down at all. This upcoming week I am going to Abu Dhabi for a conference and then Dubai for the weekend. I am planning a trip to Thailand with my friend Kevin for the first week in March followed by a conference in Orlando March 16-20 and trips to DC and NY the week following. Brennan arrives in just 23 days and I have been hard on the apartment hunt to get us a place to live. Yesterday was my 5 month anniversary in Doha and it is incredible to think of everything that has taken place in such a short period of time. I have grown more, both personally and professionally, in 5 months than I would have in 5 years back in the US. Thanks to everyone for checking in and I will give some more updates after the UAE trip!