Thursday, April 9, 2009

Wafra Trip




Yesterday afternoon our friend Muhammed (abu Khaled) Failakawi (the guy in the yellow shirt in the pictures) dropped by to pick us up for a trip south to Wafra. Wafra is in the southwestern corner of Kuwait, just north of the Saudi border. It contains mostly farms that use the brackish water in that area to raise a surprising number of different crops. If it says "from Kuwait" in the grocery store, then it probably came from Wafra.

Muhammed's friend Mubarrak has a small grass farm down there, along with some camels and goats that he raises primarily for milk. We were privileged to spend some time in his tent (next to his house) lounging on the ground, drinking coffee, tea and eating dates. Then he showed us his camels, and proceeded to milk one of them. Apparently, you can't milk a camel directly...you have to fool it by letting one of its babies drink, and then you can milk it simultaneously. We then took the huge bowl of warm milk into the tent and each had a bowl...well...Rowan had 3 bowls. He digs the camel milk.

Afterwards, we walked around his property, which is lovely and green due to the grass he grows for sale elsewhere in Kuwait. He also had a pen of many goats, which we had some fun with as you can see in the pictures above. We also had a delicious meal of kebab and shish tawouk afterwards before bidding him good night and heading back to Fahaheel where we live. It's about 1 to 1 1/2 hours depending on which road you take, so we were home in no time, which was good as I had to crash having stayed up way past my usual bedtime (7 or 8pm).

Such a good time had by all, once again Muhammed has shown us a lovely time in Kuwait.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice photos! Looked like a very fun and enjoyable father/son day out.

I recently went to Wafra for the first time recently. I was astounded by the barrenness of the desert once one gets outside the developed areas and away from the coast.

I went with a friend and had no idea of where we had been in relation to the country so I looked it up on an on-line map. I was also surprised at how close to the Saudi border it is (on the map anyway).

Read some of your other posts, especially the internet service escapades (searching for Wataniya data services actually brought me to your blog). I've always been amazed that a country with this small of a geographical size and insanely high national income doesn't have the worlds greatest communications systems. Guess filling the malls with the 17,000KD watches is way more important.

bj

Jesse said...

Hi! Do I know you? Just curious as you talk about your "carpool" group at work and you live at Rosa Castle (across the street from me).