Intersections

It took me nearly an hour to drive home from work here in Manama last night. It's a trip that usually takes me 10 minutes. The chaos was partly caused by a road being closed, and exacerbated by people continually blocking intersections. In fact, blocking intersections is very common here. It's not uncommon at all for a car to sit blocking an intersection, holding up lanes of traffic from the other side, while a policeman or two sit impassively on the corner observing it all, yet doing nothing. The police just can't be bothered to do anything to help the situation. As I sat in traffic observing all of this, I got to thinking about Bahrain and its culture. Here you have a country that imports most of its labor from South Asia and the Philippines, to the point where non-nationals outnumber nationals.

Taking that thought a little further, we Americans are nothing more than imported labor as well. Driving or walking around, no one here really pays me any mind. I'm just another imported worker from abroad. What's my role? I'm here to help prevent this country and some of the other Gulf States from being overrun by the Persian hordes. When we think of Iran, many of us might think that only the US, Israel, and a few European countries take the Iranian threat seriously. Not so - the Gulf States, to include Bahrain, are quite wary of Iran as well, and I have no doubt that fact helps explain our presence here. The United States might not export a lot of tangible things these days other than agricultural goods, but we still do export our culture, and more relevant to my situation, war. (We'll call it 'security'.)

So if you're Bahrain, at the national level the decision has been made that allowing in all these foreigners is desirable, since with their presence you don't have to do those jobs yourself. As for the jobs you do have to fill with citizens, such as police officers (presumably), if the people filling those positions aren't able to take the initiative and make much of a positive contribution, you'll just live with the results and chalk up the resulting inefficiencies to culture.

Inshallah.

Bahrain

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I luckily got the opportunity to come over here to Bahrain. I wasn't supposed to be on the list of those that came over, but it worked out for me, which I was glad for since I'm always happy to see a new place, wherever it may be. With the trip only being about three weeks, I can more or less consider this "deployment" a Middle Eastern vacation as much as anything else, since I'm well accommodated out in town and will have a few days off to see what sights there are.

Bahrain has a fairly large US military presence...one that seems to be growing. The headquarters for the Navy's Fifth Fleet is here, and the Marines have a couple of units here as well. The country itself is primarily located on one big island, the northeastern part of which is dominated by the city Manama, the capital, where we live and work. The whole country has maybe 1,000,000 folks and occupies some 620 sq km, making it about 3.5 times the size of Washington DC.

I have to say it's a little odd walking around freely in a Middle Eastern country. This is the first time I've really been "out" in the Middle East despite all the time I've spent in this region. I'm getting used to it, and the ever-present English on the signs makes getting around easy. Most of the workers that you might interact with in gas stations, stores, hotels, or restaurants are foreigners who speak English, often Indians and Filipinos. Like Dubai, Bahrain does not have enough local workers to support its economy, so it brings them in from abroad in large numbers - of those million people that live here about half are non-nationals. The strength of the Bahraini economy (supposedly the "freest" in terms of government regulation, taxes, etc. in the Middle East) has resulted in quite a few skyscrapers in downtown Bahrain and malls are pretty common. The buildings and roads are not much different from what one would see in an American city, though I'd be hard pressed to remember a place that had more construction cranes working on buildings in various stages of development. I can't believe that a market exists for all these buildings at this time, but when/if another economic boom hits the world I'm sure they will be ready for it. Walking through the souk (market) today we saw all the same fake goods you could expect to see in markets around the world. The watches are "Genuine good fakes!" according to one of the stall owners we spoke to briefly today.

The liberal attitude that prevails here results in a lot Arabs (often Saudis crossing the causeway that connects Bahrain to the mainland) coming to Bahrain on the weekends to explore the vices. We checked out a few bars last night and found them to be largely devoid of females, but everyone seemed friendly enough. I wanted to check out the clubs but none of my friends were interested. The majority of the folks out in the bars are dressed Western-style, but you'll see the odd traditional dress. The local women are more often than not covered up more or less completely in their black robes, though the foreign women dress how they want. Interesting to see such different styles side by side for both the men and women, but they co-exist peacefully enough it appears.

The little base where we work is quite nice. Much like the oddness I feel of being in public in a Middle Eastern country, the base has some strange aspects to it as well that I'm still getting used to. The base almost feels like a college campus since there are few roads and you walk everywhere on little tree-lined boulevards. You must park outside, walk through the security checkpoint and then head for your building. It just doesn't feel anything like a military base, but everything is very convenient and I have no complaints at all.

As for the driving, the cars are pretty similar to what we see back home. Not surprisingly, you'll see more small cars and compacts here than anything else, and few SUVs or trucks, but the cars by and large are the same makes and models we have back home. The driving is pretty tame and police do pull people over. The roads are wide and well cared for, so nothing is really interesting about the driving other than the traffic lights, which show yellow before green to give drivers a heads-up. I like that system - it kind of feels like a race with lights like that...gives you that countdown almost. They've got the lights set with a pretty good cushion of time between red on one side and green on the other - a fact that the drivers seem to be well aware of, since they will run red-lights blatantly. And they do let their women drive here. When a car is stopped on a merge ramp holding up traffic trying to get onto the road, don't be surprised to see a black-cloaked figure behind the wheel. Got to be tough to merge when one is wearing a mask with a small slit to look out of.

We drove out along the causeway today until we got to the entry point for Saudi Arabia, at which point we had no choice but to turn around. What we could see of Saudi in the distance just looked empty and brown as you might expect. I'll mention here that they are planning to build one that goes the opposite direction to Qatar, by the way, which will be the longest bridge in the world when/if it gets completed.

I think that's about all I've got for now. I'll be here another 10 days or so.