Monday, May 11, 2009

My Peeps

These are some of the people I've spent the past 11 days with. Since my primary job is to make sure everything is taken care of on the floor while the guys put glass on metal, I end up spending a lot of time chatting with everyone, from the clients to the workers to the Chair of Coffee Republic Kuwait (huh?). Today I think I may have agreed to trade a piece of glass for a fifth of Black Label Johnnie Walker, but I'm not entirely sure...

The workers are my favorite, though. We have around 4-6 of them assigned to us a day, and they all speak very broken english, if any. Since it's my responsibility to manage them, my habit of talking flamboyantly with my hands and penchant for overly honest facial expressions is coming in handy. If all else fails, I just start doing whatever needs to be done myself, and within seconds, there's an army of men relieving me from my task.

The guy in the middle is Tariq. The very first thing I noticed when I met him were his stunning green eyes - an unusual characteristic in this part of the world. Turns out he's from the Swat Valley, but thankfully doesn't have any family there anymore and never plans to return. Anshea, on the other hand (to the right), is also from the Swat Valley and his entire family is there. I asked him if he was worried about them, and he said they were safe because the army was surrounding their village. He also told me this afternoon that I'm the first female outside his family he's ever spoken to. His english is sometimes hard to understand, so I rephrased it back to him in about 4 different ways just to make sure I'd heard right. Holy crap! He explained that this whole time, he's been trying to stand on the opposite side of the work area from me because he felt ashamed. Strangely, I didn't even notice, since I'm grateful for any personal space I can get.

This is the guy at the security gate/rope who greets us in exactly this manner every time we enter or leave the property.

Lunchtime.

Shafaat has gotten very clever at making things out of our discarded attachment wire.

1 comment:

  1. Did Shafaat make you a pillow? I like the idea of "overly honest" facial expressions.

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