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And so to Kuwait - it was terribly sad leaving the two Adbullah's and Ibrahim behind; they had been a pleasure to travel with and it was marvellous not to have had to worry about routes, accommodation, finding places to camp and all the other things that go hand in hand with overland travel. Our month in Saudi Arabia had been truly fantastic, we could not have wished for more - it had opened up many more opportunities and really brought Shakespear's 1914 journey to life.
In Kuwait we are incredibly fortunate to have friends of Richard's family who have welcomed us into their home - we seem to have become something of a permanent fixture and as I type this we are halfway through the sixth week of our stay. The initial plan was for us to return to Saudi Arabia towards the end of February, after the Eid holiday, meet up with the team from the King Abdul Aziz Foundation and continue with our travels. But... a few days before we were due to depart came the news that the British Embassy was advising people to leave Kuwait and to avoid travel to Saudi Arabia. We couldn't just hop onto a plane back to the UK and while we felt certain that we would be quite safe travelling back into Saudi Arabia and on into the UAE and Oman we had no idea if and when a war was going to start. We made the decision to stay put and wait to see what would unfold - in fact, we could easily have made it back into Saudi Arabia and would probably be in Oman by now, but then hindsight is a wonderful thing and events could have been very different.
So, what have we been up to over the past five and a half weeks..?
The border crossing was easy - although they had the same problem locating the UK on their computer system - and we were back on the road after half an hour. No customs checks - not that shocking as we had just come out of Saudi. We had crossed at the western end of the Kuwaiti/Saudi border and had to get to the coast - but this is not exactly a big country and even drifting along at a leisurely 55 m.p.h. we were approaching Kuwait city after one hour's driving. On the motorway we began to see evidence of the military build-up - long convoys of US vehicles, heavily laden heading up to the north of the country and empty heading back out to the coast.
Spent the first weekend at the beach - though not a time for me to replenish my rapidly fading tan as the weather is surprisingly chilly - why does it always surprise me that the Middle East is not permanently like an oven? Back in Kuwait City we began to organise Shakespear related places to visit - the old Political Agency, the Centre for Research and Studies on Kuwait, the British Embassy and the Christian cemetery, where we knew there was a memorial to Captain Shakespear. The cemetery was in a poor state - the invading Iraqi's had dug up and smashed the headstones, which have now been repaired and there is a plan to create a memorial garden on the site of the cemetery.
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Nasreen El Qassem, who looks after the Dickson House (as the Political Agency is now known - ) was delighted to see us - she knew very little about Captain Shakespear and we were happy to be in a position to be able to provide more information about him. Quite unexpectedly, Nasreen organised a reception for us at the former Political Agency - a really superb evening attended by a mixture of Kuwaiti's and British and, rather to our surprise, half a dozen reporters and photographers from the local press.
The Centre for Research and Studies on Kuwait proved to be a mine of information and our collection of books and papers is steadily increasing. On the positive side, our delay in Kuwait gives is the chance to wade through all the information that we have collected so far, to begin to put together articles, plan the next stage and to start on the most daunting job of all - producing a book. We have also begun the difficult and demoralising task of looking for financial sponsorship, not only to cover the costs of this expedition but to fund the continuation of our project.
The Reef Check aspect of the project has not been forgotten, but at the moment the weather in Kuwait is not ideal for diving - because the coastal waters are so shallow (if you reach a depth of more than 30 metres here it is probably because you took a shovel with you!) the slightest wave movement will stir up the sand and silt and bring the visibility down to a few feet. However, all is not lost... click here for a look at a very different dive site!
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Our stay in Kuwait has not been without drama... While I was working at the Centre for Research and Studies on Kuwait, I had a phone call from Richard - 'Hels, we have a big problem.' And indeed we did - the external hard drive, external CD writer and laptop power lead had gone bang, one after the other. Now, Richard is a known slayer of computers, however this time I really couldn't blame him - the problem was a power surge and the effects were, as far as we were concerned, catastrophic. Ah, I hear you say, you will of course have been sensible and backed up all your information onto CD. Um, well, no actually - we had managed to back up all the photographs as far as Jordan but hadn't had the chance to in Saudi Arabia. So all the really important photographs were still on the external hard drive which, at that point, had smoke pouring out of it. Not at all funny. Fortunately for us we knew where the Apple Macintosh centre was in Kuwait City as I had visited them a few days before, close to tears, carrying my laptop which was refusing to start up and would only display a message saying 'Fatal Error' - apparently all I needed to do was rebuild the desktop (what?) and the technician gave me a long lecture about backing everything up on CD - which is precisely what Richard had been doing when everything blew up. This time we thought it would take a miracle to fix the hard drive - and it appears that the technician at the Mac centre is in fact a miracle worker because, a few days later, the hard drive came back, albeit in a new case - apparently the hard drive's capacitor (who?) had exploded; whatever the cause, it all works again and yes, everything is backed up in triplicate.
If that was not enough, Florence has had to go to undergo running repairs - click here for all the gory details...
A few weeks ago, staying at the beach, I was woken up by a deep rumbling noise - no, not Richard snoring; on further investigation, it was coming from the hovercrafts and helicopters zipping backwards and forwards between the US ships and the shore. It was extremely strange to be sitting on the beach, watching what we usually only see on the nine o clock news. In Kuwait City, the military presence is not as obvious as one might expect - yes, there are soldiers armed with machine guns sitting in armoured vehicles strategically positioned around the city, but Richard and I have only had our passports checked once, driving through the city late at night - compare this with Jordan, where you could hardly move without someone asking to see your passport. Understandably, people are concerned about what might happen in the event of a war in Iraq - but this concern seems to be linked to the possibility of a terrorist attack in Kuwait rather than a missile reaching the country from Iraq. The 'will they, won't they' guessing game seems to have shifted to 'when will they?' - I am not a supporter of the war, but I do hope that whatever happens is over quickly and the suffering of the Iraqi people is not prolonged.
In an effort to make Florence a little less conspicuous, we have removed all the sponsor stickers - as you can see from the photo below, she now looks a little naked.
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