2 days in a row now, I have wondered if I might end up getting arrested. Me of all people, arrested. You might think, what in the world could I have possibly done to get myself in that kind of predicament. Well, let me tell you of my further adventures in Saudi Arabia.
On Wednesday after work, the 4 of us decide we want to go see camels. We ask the hotel valets if they can arrange for us to go to a camel farm. They find a driver for us and off we go. Our driver is from Sudan and doesn't speak much English. We drive about 30 minutes outside of Jeddah. We are now more in the dessert part of Saudi Arabia. We finally spot some camels, the taxi driver does a little off-roading and parks. We all get out and start taking pictures. There are no fences and we are not sure if the camels are just out here in the wild, kind of like moose in Alaska or bison in the Dakotas. All of a sudden this man goes up to the driver and starts talking to him. Pretty soon it becomes more like yelling (sometimes it is hard to tell if people are yelling that they are upset or not around here as it seems like their voices are always very loud). But it becomes more clear that he is quite upset with us. The only words we recognize is "the Americans". It is probably a good thing that we didn't understand the rest. The man then gets on his cell phone and is yelling into the phone. I wasn't sure if he was calling the police or not. By this time we are getting back into the car, but the driver continues to try and talk to him. We are telling the driver to please get back into the car so we can leave. He finally gets back in the car and we are on our way. We ask if he is okay and he said the man wanted to box him. Our driver was an older man while the man with the camels was quite a bit younger. We also ask if he was calling the police and if we were all going to be okay. He said, he thought he was calling the owners of the camels. On a side note while he was arguing with the driver, other cars had stopped to look at the camels and 2 young children were kind of chasing one of the camels. So it seemed like the reason he didn't want us there was because we were Americans. I have to admit I was a little scared that day as we were out in the middle of nowhere.
The very next day the 3 women in our group decided to walk to a bakery/sweets store that our project manager had raved about. We thought it would be nice to bring some chocolates home. It is about a 1/2 mile walk. The stores don't open until around 5pm because of Ramadan. So we set off on our walk. We get to the store and after finally figuring out what the prices are, we make our purchases. Well right next to the store is a Baskins Robbins, so we decide we need to treat ourselves since we have walked the 1/2 mile in weather of 126 degree heat index with 76% humidity. We go in and get our ice cream. We are the only ones in the store. We decide it is best to eat our ice cream in the store as it is air conditioned. As we are sitting there a police car pulls up outside the store. The policeman in the car uses his intercom and is talking into it obviously to us. It is in Arabic so we understand nothing of what he says. We all look at each other and realize that it is only 6 pm and the sun has not set yet. During Ramadam, all Muslims fast from around 4 am until sunset which is about 7:20. We were in violation of the fasting. We hadn't even thought of it, especially since BR was open and secondly because the clerk had served us. We throw our mostly uneaten ice cream into the trash and wait. The policeman continues to sit outside the store and glare at us. We didn't make eye contact and we continued to wait until he left. Then we walked back to the hotel looking over our shoulders to see if the policeman was waiting for us around the corner. We safely made it back to the hotel. This time I wasn't frightened because I knew God would protect us and I actually felt very calm during the whole situation. On the way back to the hotel we were laughing and wondering who would have bailed us out of jail. I recollected a time when one of my sons went to Mexico his senior year in high school for spring break. I was concerned about it because he was going with all of his buddies. I had told him he had better be on his best behavior because if he got into trouble I wouldn't be able to bail him out. I wondered if he would now be willing to bail his mother out of jail in a foreign country.
I think it is time to come home.
On Wednesday after work, the 4 of us decide we want to go see camels. We ask the hotel valets if they can arrange for us to go to a camel farm. They find a driver for us and off we go. Our driver is from Sudan and doesn't speak much English. We drive about 30 minutes outside of Jeddah. We are now more in the dessert part of Saudi Arabia. We finally spot some camels, the taxi driver does a little off-roading and parks. We all get out and start taking pictures. There are no fences and we are not sure if the camels are just out here in the wild, kind of like moose in Alaska or bison in the Dakotas. All of a sudden this man goes up to the driver and starts talking to him. Pretty soon it becomes more like yelling (sometimes it is hard to tell if people are yelling that they are upset or not around here as it seems like their voices are always very loud). But it becomes more clear that he is quite upset with us. The only words we recognize is "the Americans". It is probably a good thing that we didn't understand the rest. The man then gets on his cell phone and is yelling into the phone. I wasn't sure if he was calling the police or not. By this time we are getting back into the car, but the driver continues to try and talk to him. We are telling the driver to please get back into the car so we can leave. He finally gets back in the car and we are on our way. We ask if he is okay and he said the man wanted to box him. Our driver was an older man while the man with the camels was quite a bit younger. We also ask if he was calling the police and if we were all going to be okay. He said, he thought he was calling the owners of the camels. On a side note while he was arguing with the driver, other cars had stopped to look at the camels and 2 young children were kind of chasing one of the camels. So it seemed like the reason he didn't want us there was because we were Americans. I have to admit I was a little scared that day as we were out in the middle of nowhere.
The very next day the 3 women in our group decided to walk to a bakery/sweets store that our project manager had raved about. We thought it would be nice to bring some chocolates home. It is about a 1/2 mile walk. The stores don't open until around 5pm because of Ramadan. So we set off on our walk. We get to the store and after finally figuring out what the prices are, we make our purchases. Well right next to the store is a Baskins Robbins, so we decide we need to treat ourselves since we have walked the 1/2 mile in weather of 126 degree heat index with 76% humidity. We go in and get our ice cream. We are the only ones in the store. We decide it is best to eat our ice cream in the store as it is air conditioned. As we are sitting there a police car pulls up outside the store. The policeman in the car uses his intercom and is talking into it obviously to us. It is in Arabic so we understand nothing of what he says. We all look at each other and realize that it is only 6 pm and the sun has not set yet. During Ramadam, all Muslims fast from around 4 am until sunset which is about 7:20. We were in violation of the fasting. We hadn't even thought of it, especially since BR was open and secondly because the clerk had served us. We throw our mostly uneaten ice cream into the trash and wait. The policeman continues to sit outside the store and glare at us. We didn't make eye contact and we continued to wait until he left. Then we walked back to the hotel looking over our shoulders to see if the policeman was waiting for us around the corner. We safely made it back to the hotel. This time I wasn't frightened because I knew God would protect us and I actually felt very calm during the whole situation. On the way back to the hotel we were laughing and wondering who would have bailed us out of jail. I recollected a time when one of my sons went to Mexico his senior year in high school for spring break. I was concerned about it because he was going with all of his buddies. I had told him he had better be on his best behavior because if he got into trouble I wouldn't be able to bail him out. I wondered if he would now be willing to bail his mother out of jail in a foreign country.
I think it is time to come home.
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