Mideast tour: Jen shops for camels
Don't buy a sickly camel! This is me negotiating for camels in the PX at Camp Arafjan, Kuwait.
One fun fact I learned in my brief time in the Mideast is that citizens of oil-rich nations such as Kuwait and Qatar don't have jobs. (Why bother, when you receive reverse taxation from the government?) They also, judging from the shopping I saw in the airport and in two malls, buy a tremendous quantity of Bulgari, Burberry, Hermes, and other designer goods.
This means that all of the actual work in countries like Kuwait is done by Indian and Southeast Asian people. I bought a dress from a Filipina woman in Kuwait who closed her shop every time the call for prayer came around -- and then she just hid inside the shop, arranging racks of clothes in front of the glass windows.
When visiting a foreign country, one's contact with locals often comes in large measure from interacting with servicepeople. In Kuwait, however, since none of the servicepeople are locals, and there are taboos against men talking to strange women, and it hardly seems inviting to test out the English skills of a woman who keeps her face covered and carries a $2,000 handbag ... a person can spend a long time in Kuwait without ever talking to a Kuwaiti person.
Another consequence of reverse taxation is that it's really pretty difficult to purchase a souvenir of Kuwait. Kuwaitis don't make handicrafts. You can certainly, however, go to Kuwait and buy something from an Indian vendor, imported from India, with a picture of a camel on it and the word "Kuwait" stamped on it by Indian laborers. But that's as close as you can get.
How terribly unfair that India didn't get any oil. And how baffled the Indian vendors on base must be when mistaken by Americans for Kuwaitis.
Update: The Intrepid Young Journalist points out that India is lucky it didn't get oil, because instead it got democracy. To explain: the "resource curse" is the phenomenon by which states that are rich in resources do not have to negotiate with their people for wealth and productivity; thus, resource-rich nations typically rule absolutely and have no need to develop the means for democracy. When oil is free and the government owns it all, the people had better shut the hell up and just collect their checks. This creates a quite different dynamic of power than in states in which elected leaders have to campaign and extract taxes from working people in order to rule. As a result, they rule -- to put it mildly -- less absolutely.
One fun fact I learned in my brief time in the Mideast is that citizens of oil-rich nations such as Kuwait and Qatar don't have jobs. (Why bother, when you receive reverse taxation from the government?) They also, judging from the shopping I saw in the airport and in two malls, buy a tremendous quantity of Bulgari, Burberry, Hermes, and other designer goods.
This means that all of the actual work in countries like Kuwait is done by Indian and Southeast Asian people. I bought a dress from a Filipina woman in Kuwait who closed her shop every time the call for prayer came around -- and then she just hid inside the shop, arranging racks of clothes in front of the glass windows.
When visiting a foreign country, one's contact with locals often comes in large measure from interacting with servicepeople. In Kuwait, however, since none of the servicepeople are locals, and there are taboos against men talking to strange women, and it hardly seems inviting to test out the English skills of a woman who keeps her face covered and carries a $2,000 handbag ... a person can spend a long time in Kuwait without ever talking to a Kuwaiti person.
Another consequence of reverse taxation is that it's really pretty difficult to purchase a souvenir of Kuwait. Kuwaitis don't make handicrafts. You can certainly, however, go to Kuwait and buy something from an Indian vendor, imported from India, with a picture of a camel on it and the word "Kuwait" stamped on it by Indian laborers. But that's as close as you can get.
How terribly unfair that India didn't get any oil. And how baffled the Indian vendors on base must be when mistaken by Americans for Kuwaitis.
Update: The Intrepid Young Journalist points out that India is lucky it didn't get oil, because instead it got democracy. To explain: the "resource curse" is the phenomenon by which states that are rich in resources do not have to negotiate with their people for wealth and productivity; thus, resource-rich nations typically rule absolutely and have no need to develop the means for democracy. When oil is free and the government owns it all, the people had better shut the hell up and just collect their checks. This creates a quite different dynamic of power than in states in which elected leaders have to campaign and extract taxes from working people in order to rule. As a result, they rule -- to put it mildly -- less absolutely.
posted by JenIsFamous at 9/13/2007 10:13:00 AM
2 Comments:
Dear Jen,
There are taboos against men talking to strange women? You definitely are a "strange woman", but in the most delightful way.
Love your MOM
Or said another way: an oil-rich India might have still been under British rule. Then again, at least my school taught me that India was better off being under the British.
---
By the way, did Intrepid Young Journalist make the argument that democracy > resources? Not everyone buys that.
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