Simmons GSLIS: Dispatches from the Field

Posted on behalf of Harvey Varnet.

13 May 2007 – Sunday

I’m back!! Got in this morning at 6 a.m. from the USA via London – long flights and boring, boring, boring. Took a shower and headed off to work, which is where I am now at 4pm.

The campus seems ‘wired’ today – lots of things happening, many of which have been troubling. Apparently someone leaked a letter to the press detailing our shortcomings and naming names, etc. – not pretty. As one might suspect, the university administration was less than happy about this (can you spell ‘furious’) and wired may perhaps not be a strong enough term. Then I’m told there have been some interpersonal difficulties – hmmmm, is the end of the academic year in sight – why, yes, it is, thank god! All this and the Board is here for its summer meeting – remarkable how things can get charged up and stay that way. Perhaps the steadily increasing temperatures will force everyone to bury her/himself in an air conditioned cocoon and things will settle down – one can only hope . . .

For those who asked, all is okay on the home front. Terrie as usual is doing yeoman’s work on ‘stuff.’ We have bought another house, directly across from Jennifer, which is smaller than our present house and hopefully will be easier to take care of in our senior years. The new place needs some work, of course, so annual leave in July will find me focused on house tasks.

Now, off to rest, do laundry, run errands, say goodbye to Lydia for a bit as she heads off to Russia (Siberia) for some language training and generally try to catch up. I’m back here for a week, then T & I will be in England for a week before I go to a conference in Morocco. And, yes, Jim Matarazzo, they do pay me to do this job – gottaloveit!!

16 May 2007 – Wednesday

I was hoping things would quiet down, but, silly boy, that is not the case . . . Folks remain wired and the level of tension is way too high . . . I had a nice chat with Nizar Hamzeh. He has taken the dean’s job – he’s a good man and I’m hopeful his formally taking the job (he has been associate dean yet doing the job without formal authority) will help settle some things down. He has one heck of a task in front of him as we need to get ourselves organized in so many ways.

I took Ildiko out shopping again for furniture Monday evening – she is good company and an excellent bargain hunter. She lives right behind the campus, and she has moved from 6th floor to 10th floor – she has a very nice view overlooking AUK and right out to the Gulf. She bought a desk, office chair, a small dining room set and a bookcase. All she needs now is a sofa and she’ll be all set to hunker down for a spell.

On campus, we are hosting the 2nd Liberal Arts Conference with the majority of presentations being done by AUK faculty. This year, though, some others are presenting, from GUST and ACK and KU – that is welcomed as these connections are valuable. The conference is a 2 day affair, with Ralph as major domo – he is very organized and focused and on top of all the details.

19 May 2007 – Saturday

On Wednesday evening, the Student Government Assn. called for a Town Meeting to discuss “issues” with the administration. I did not attend, as there was no agenda. One of the main issues is that we will soon have graduates in two majors whose degrees are not ‘licensed’ by the PUC. As you might suspect, no license means your degree is ‘problematic’ at best, and students pretty darn upset – can’t blame them – can you spell “e t h i c s.”

I had a very social weekend. Ate out with the gang on Wednesday evening, visited Rena, Simon and Adam Thursday morning (Conerly gave Adam a swimming lesson), and had a lovely dinner with Lynne & Howard Garmany and their friends Thursday evening (no AUK folks, so a very different evening). On Friday, I joined Abby & Kurt who were showing around a colleague of Abby’s from San Antonio who is here in Kuwait doing presentations – her name is Pat Burr. Breakfast first, then a tour of the Tareq Rajab Museum.

Weather report from Kuwait – dust, thick dust – no, very thick dust – no, very very very thick dust! The air has been white from dust for several days now – worst since I’ve been here. Temperatures in 90s F now every morning – do people really live here?

Once again the diary to go a-snoozing while I am away – I know, you’ll miss me. :)

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2 May 2007 – Wednesday

Dinner last night was at Baalbek, a Lebanese restaurant (now there is a surprise) very close to AUK – 5 minute walk. Michael Herb, a faculty member at GA State in Atlanta and here on a semester Fulbright, gave a talk at 5pm on “Democratization in Kuwait and the Gulf.” It is interesting to compare the various Gulf countries, their governments and their relative successes – wonder how Gulf nationals feel about having the navel examined every day by so many others – hmmmm…

1 May 2007 – Tuesday

Happy May Day – workers of the world unite!!!!!!! In this region, there are still many countries that celebrate May Day, just as we did before the beginning of “pc-ness” in the USA.

Last evening I had dinner with Shafiq, our Afghani colleague who is leaving Kuwait in a week or so. He is very interesting in that his life story is mind-boggling to me but he is very casual about it. At 18, he left home because he didn’t want to be absorbed into the Russian system – walked for 20 days into Pakistan, then found work. Because he has a gift for languages (he taught himself English), he was able to do translation work for the Mujahadeen fighters (and US spies) who were the being supported by us, the USA. He eventually got himself to Saudi Arabia (in and of itself a story) and got a BA degree in Persian Literature with a minor in English – studying all the while in Arabic, not his mother tongue. Got himself married by asking family for a suitable bride – he is both remarkably resilient and very traditional. Now, he finds himself in Kuwait without a job, his family shipped off to Cairo, and he goes back to Kabul to try and sort things out. Amazing! My, what you can learn…

On a very much lighter note, tonight I am hosting all of the in-country Fulbrighters for dinner. There are 6 here, and all nice people and mostly young (only one mid-career person). It’s my chance to ‘do something’ for a Fulbright program that helped jump-start my interest in working overseas (Nigeria 1979-80). And, by ‘hosting’ I mean paying the bill at a nearby restaurant – heaven help them if I cooked!

We have been having serious dust storms of late. Last night was ugly – very windy and dusty, and as the temperatures rise you feel like you are being blow-dried – very un-cool.

30 April 2007 – Monday

I forgot to mention that we started training another Kuwait University LIS field work student. Zabihullah is Afghani and about to finish his masters degree. Similar to Shafiq, he is multi-lingual and very smart. It seems Afghans have a reputation of being more than survivors, which makes sense if you consider their former environment. Zabihullah will be with us for 40 hours. It appears KU likes to have us as one of their preferred field work sites.

Last night I spent a delightful evening with Ildiko, enjoying a very nice Lebanese mezza at Awtar Libnan (eating outside) and far-ranging discussion. As noted previously, Ildiko is Hungarian and a product of U.C. San Diego. Her field is communication theory, and she is very bright. AUK is probably wise to hire people like her, as the living conditions here and especially the salaries are very good for eastern Europeans. She has made a rapid adjustment to AUK and Kuwait – nice to see.

It is now 10 a.m. We just had a small electrical fire upstairs at one of the 4-station computer banks. Yours truly blasted it with the fire extinguisher. The post-fire situation was almost comical: every security guard turned up, as did most of our campus services staff – lots of kafuffle. The data port cabling did not burn, so we got lucky there as that would have put out all 16 computers instead of just four. The cleanup is going on now – fire extinguisher stuff gets all over the place very quickly. I did say something about it being never dull, didn’t I !!!

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