finished

i am done. school finished yesterday (here's a picture from class),  headed to cyprus tomorrow, and will be stateside in ten days. i'm having flashbacks of returning from oakland--trying to explain an experience that really, well, cannot be explained. it must be experienced. in short, kuwait has taught me this: normal is relative. we truly are products of our environment! perhaps as a graduate student in sociology i should have already known this. and i did,  intuitively, but not personally. it's similar to my experiences living in oakland: it's one thing to study poor people (as sociologists love to do), it's a completely different experience to live and work with poor people. 

ethnocentrism is the fancy sociological term which means the tendency to view, experience and evaluate the world from one's own cultural perspective. in other words, conceptions of right, wrong, and normal are socially and culturally constructed: they are relative, and thus, are not consistent across all cultures. but...but... some of you may be saying. some things are just wrong and others are just right. perhaps. 

after deciding to come to kuwait this summer the initial question i received from most was this: are you going to have to cover (i.e. wear a hijab)? nothing wrong with the question. but why was it even a question? because it's not normal (and we can debate that meaning some other time) for women in the united states to cover. admittedly when i first arrived in kuwait i probably stared a bit too much, especially at women who were fully covered wearing a burka. but now, i pass them just about everyday and don't look twice. it's become normal. 

i leave you with this: "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."- mark twain

oppressed?

tuesday night the women meet. they number about twenty. they convene in the basement of one woman's house and discuss  relevant issues, islam, etc . this tuesday was special: it was imam husain's birthday (the grandson of the prophet muhammed) and we celebrated. different women read in both arabic and english stories about imam husain's birth, life, and death. at designated points throughout the reading we threw candy to celebrate his life (insert chaos of halloween and children scavaging for as much candy as possible.) after the meeting, there was, of course, more food. 

earlier in the evening, amnah (my student who i went to the meeting with), introduced me to her friends as her anthropology professor (good thing i was wearing the shortest skirt i have in kuwait--to my knees--and hadn't had time to change prior to the meeting.) many women joked with me, "i hope you're not taking notes or observing us." afterall, no one likes to be a subject. 

after the meeting i found myself chatting in a corner with amnah. i just came out with it. i said, "do you know that a lot of people in the united states would look at this group of women and see them as oppressed?" (all women were wearing at least a hijab and many wore an abaya--i was the only "non-covered" woman there.) amnah then made an excellent point: in the west we always talk about it doesn't matter what you wear (if women chose to dress scantily clad or whatever), but all of a sudden when the women cover it matters--what a contradiction! in kuwait most women chose to cover; in other words, its not required. i asked amnah if she ever thought of taking off her hijab. she said she did. she somewhat misses the attention she received when she didn't cover ( if a woman wears a hijab she also is covered from wrist to ankle). but, most importantly, she tells me, she wears it because she wants to show people its no indication of her intelligence or ability. 

her eyes teared up. "i hate it. i hate that people think that because i wear a hijab i am stupid, or i am naieve, or that i won't get certain jokes or don't listen to certain music. it's not true." i responded, "yeah, it's almost like the scarf is symbolic for how people then perceive your life: sheltered, restricted, covered." and this is exactly why amnah refuses to take off her scarf. 

and so, just as we do not like to be judged on our appearance, neither do women in kuwait. are some women oppressed here? without a doubt. but i'm not so sure, anymore, its much different than anywhere else.