Sidi likes teaching in Kuwait. He was seconded as an English teacher to the Kuwait Ministry of Education from the Mauritanian government 26 years ago. He has enjoyed teaching English in Kuwaiti public schools, and feels like Kuwait has been good to him. The government provides him with a housing allowance and healthcare and continued to do so during the pandemic, despite the fact that the school was shut down at the beginning of the outbreak. For all these years, he has been able to visit his family every nine months, but next year he will be 65 and will pack his bags for good and go home.

The Mauritanian community in Kuwait is small and dispersed-- they connect via WhatsApp but mostly, his community are his colleagues at the public school where he teaches, the people in his mosque and his online Scrabble community (he is responsible for seven Kuwaiti government schools setting up scrabble clubs and competing locally and internationally).

Sidi has enjoyed the move to online teaching, and his students have also seemed to enjoy participating in this format. His colleagues at work have been extremely supportive and helpful in getting his skills up to speed. However, the pandemic has really changed the ways in which they interact at work—they used to eat together as a community, hug, share breaks, but not anymore. No shared food is allowed on campus, staff must maintain distance and cannot gather. This has been a big shift for them as a close community, but he feels lucky because they all kept their jobs and have all kept safe. Private schools threatened to lay off teachers he knew, without pay, while the government schools were the opposite, supporting and training their staff to adjust to the situation.

He knows his situation during the lockdown was privileged. Although it was hard not being able to go to the mosque, he spent much of his time praying at home and reading the Quran, which he found helpful. He was more fortunate than his neighbors and assisted them when they had difficulty. Sidi reflects on the fact that the lockdown has exposed the Kafala system and the trafficking system, and he believes this is an important lesson for Kuwait. He thinks laws should be enforced with big fines, so that visa traders will think twice about sponsoring people with no jobs. He believes this will lead to more equality and a better demographic balance.

“[…] having spent twenty-six years of my life here, this country is dear to me, you know. It has brought everything for me that is joy, happiness.”

In this clip, Sidi takes a closer look at the Kafala and trafficking system which was exposed by the pandemic.

SIDI - A Mauritanian public school teacher shares insights into the lives of expats in Kuwait

Nadia is a perfectionist. She likes to plan well and control outcomes. This quality probably makes her good at her work, but made the pandemic a nightmare for her in the beginning, increasing her anxiety. Nadia is a pediatric physiotherapist working with children with disabilities. She is originally Syrian, but holds an Egyptian passport and lives with her husband, a doctor, and her two young daughters. At the beginning of the pandemic, Nadia worried about so many things, especially related to her children’s health and the treatment of her young patients at work, as well as the general uncertainty about all aspects of their lives. Many clinics started to lay off their non-Kuwaiti workforce and she feared she and her husband could lose their jobs. 

The worst time for Nadia wasn’t the lockdown, but the end of February when they announced that schools and clinics would be closed. How would she manage her girls’ lives, stuck inside a 60 meter apartment? How would she manage to continue her work with her patients and their families? Initially the scenes at the grocery stores, with everyone lining up and hoarding food reminded her of things she had seen during the Egyptian revolution. Those first few weeks, she had panic attacks nightly and couldn’t sleep.

As Nadia realized that her previous plans were dashed, she surrendered to the situation and was able to feel less anxious, focusing on controlling only what she could. She moved furniture so that her girls could do a fitness class daily, and lifted their screen restrictions so they were able to meet up with friends online. In early March, her team designed and implemented an online treatment program for her patients and their parents, so that the children would not lose the gains they had made in their therapy. Once online school began for the girls, she supported them during the day and offered online therapy sessions to her patients after school. 

As a physiotherapist working with children, she needs to be psychologically strong to support the child and the family. Surprisingly, the move to online therapy was positive overall. Previously the children worked exclusively with therapists in the clinic, but parents usually neglected their at-home maintenance therapy program. During the pandemic, the parents had no choice but to engage. They had to log on and be with the therapist and child for their sessions to facilitate the process. Parents are reporting feeling closer to their children, understanding them better and feeling more confident to take a role in their treatment. Nadia feels this is an important positive outcome of the pandemic. 

As for Nadia’s family, they have coped with the changing situations and have been ok. The clinic supported their staff throughout, which made Nadia feel more connected to her workplace. What has been concerning her is the outpouring of hate speech against expatriate communities that became prevalent on social media after the pandemic started. 

“I remember I was standing at the balcony once and saw an expat woman looking in the garbage for food in a country where food is available in abundance and it tore me apart from the inside at the poor people who can’t manage. So if these expats had better living circumstances the virus would not spread rapidly among them. If there were buildings special for them where each two live in one room their life would be better and hence fewer problems would occur. I felt terrible especially for workers who don’t get paid much.”

In this clip, Nadia reflects on some of the disruptions and positive outcomes of the lockdown on her work.

NADIA - A pediatric physiotherapist & mother juggles online schooling and therapy with her own angst

Hussein caught COVID. It was unexpected...he has worked in Kuwait for the past 17 years as an oncology nurse, and was exposed through a patient. Eight out of 28 nurses on the unit had been infected, and when Hussein started to show symptoms he was given a chest X-ray and sent home. After five days, he was finally able to get tested and was confirmed positive. He quarantined at home in one room, separated from his wife and 16-year old daughter. His wife, also a nurse, later caught the virus as well. Hussein feels like the government system is good until it gets to the clinics, where communication breaks down. He was sent back and forth to three clinics before being tested and each gave different information. Sometimes the medical forms he had to fill out were not available in English. The quarantine protocols shifted from 28 to 10 to 14 days while he was sick. Some people weren’t aware of the policy changes and re-entered the workforce while probably still positive. Hussein believes that the system has gradually broken down, with less testing and less enforcement of health protocols.

During lockdown, his family was depressed. His daughter missed meeting up with friends, and his wife wasn’t working. They felt claustrophobic and anxious. They were unable to travel in February to visit family in Iran, and his 22 year old son studying in Iran couldn’t come ‘home’ due to the travel ban. The long separation has been hard. In addition to Hussein’s concerns about the family’s visa renewals, he was also worried his son would end up losing his residency if he couldn’t come back in time. Hussein has begun to feel that his status in Kuwait is unstable. He reads about Kuwait reducing the quotas of foreigners, and now residencies need to be renewed yearly. On social media, Kuwaitis are writing about disliking expats and some expats are writing bad things about Kuwait. It increases his anxiety about his future here. He already felt things were different here than in his home country. There is no real “neighborhood”. His neighbors are Egyptian and Indian and they say ‘hi’, but there is no community, no support network. 

Thankfully, his work colleagues and the hospital have been supportive. When he returned to work, it was difficult because he continued to get fatigued easily, as did his colleagues who had COVID. One of the nurses caught the virus twice, so they never feel like they are fully safe or immune. They have also been severely short staffed so the work has been much more demanding. He admires his colleagues who ended up working double their time to cover for those who were sick. His Filipino friend, a nurse who had worked for years in Kuwait, delayed her annual leave to help and ended up dying of COVID. Another Filipino colleague and an Egyptian colleague both lost their mothers to COVID and couldn’t travel for their parents’ funerals. He feels these things. He is disappointed that frontline nurses were not given better information and care, as if nursing was just a regular job. It is not-- seven or eight other medical staff at his workplace have also died from COVID. Hussein worries he could be next. He realizes now that plans are only plans, they may never happen. The feeling of chaos and instability is compounded by the contradictory rulings and circulars issued by Kuwait’s ministries regarding the status of expats. He is not sure what all this will mean for his family’s future. 

“I changed. I felt some things, you know, inside my soul is deeply affected by these things and changed really because the, you know, this like is not a joke. People say tiny virus changed all the world. So of course it changed the person also.”

In this clip, Hussein talks about the unease and nervousness brought upon by the anti-expat sentiment which heightened during the pandemic.

HUSSEIN - An Iranian oncology nurse navigates the chaos, loss & uncertainty of life in Kuwait

“Honestly, I feel like [if] one more thing happens, I'm going to collapse […] I'm on the verge of falling apart.”

Amal is a 25-year-old Palestinian woman who has been living in Kuwait with her family since 2004. The lockdown hit Amal’s family hard; she witnessed multiple mental health crises in her closest family members during the period, which heavily impacted her own stress and anxiety levels. Married for just over a year and a half at the time of our conversation, Amal had to learn how to navigate living with her husband 24/7 under the new restrictions and the intensities that brought along.

Then, her 23-year-old brother in the US suffered from terrifying hallucinations, tried to harm himself, and ran away from home. Fortunately, together with her 20-year-old brother who was with him in the US as well, they managed to get him help through a crisis management hotline and admit him to a mental health institution for a few weeks. He was diagnosed with a severe bipolar disorder. Amal is thankful her younger brother was there, as without him it would have been impossible to get help.

Meanwhile, the lockdown triggered episodes in her father in Kuwait, who was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This happened during the lockdown, that coincided with Ramadan, during which curfew was lifted for just two hours every day, and only walking was allowed. Every day during that time, Amal would walk for up to an hour from her apartment in Salmiya, to her parents’ in Jabriya to check on them and to help calm them down as they would start blaming each other for what happened to their son. “It was hot. It was dusty. I was depressed. It was the worst time to be an adult.” She would tell her 13-year-old sister to block out their parents’ fights by locking the door and putting a pillow over her head.

As if her familial challenges weren’t traumatizing enough, Amal also faced discrimination at her workplace, with the company she’d worked at for nearly three years temporarily shutting down operations and telling her to consider herself on vacation... a vacation without pay. As a result, she could no longer contribute to household expenses and help her husband financially, which made her feel extremely guilty. To add insult to injury, she found out that some of her colleagues were receiving full salaries, despite the company being shut down. When the lockdown lifted and operations resumed, she was called back but on half pay. She resigned soon after, and was almost cheated out of getting her indemnity when the accountant gave her misleading information to save the company cash. Fortunately, another employee came to her aid and she was able to secure what she was owed.

Since Amal’s husband has a Canadian permanent residency, the couple is planning to relocate to Canada next year. Her mother and sister have already moved to the US, where her sister has been able to go for therapy, since it’s more affordable there. She’s saddened to be moving further away from her grandparents and extended family in Saudi, but she says, “[...] it's time to leave, hopefully to a place where you [will] be able to eventually get the passport and own a home, and have your rights.”

If there’s one thing Amal has learnt from this ordeal, it is the value of mental health. “Sometimes it's okay to not be the adult in the family [...] I learned to open up and speak to my husband and close friends and not let it eat me up inside. You never really know what's going to happen tomorrow. So I really just try to be in the moment.”

In this clip, Amal tells us how she and her family dealt with the intense effects of the pandemic on their mental health.

AMAL - A Palestinian copes with workplace discrimination & mental health challenges during lockdown

Meriyemi is from Ethiopia. She has lived in Kuwait for eight years with her husband and, now, their baby girl. Her daughter was born in Kuwait, while her five-year old son was born in Ethiopia and lives with his grandmother back home. Meriyemi loves her family so much, but this pandemic has made her feel a little crazy, worrying all the time. Her mother and sister in Ethiopia worry about her too. Does the baby have enough to eat? Is the family able to buy food? Thankfully she has a really good employer who she loves. She works as a nanny, and the family has continued to pay her salary and supply her with milk and diapers for her baby, and even food when it was not available. Even whilst Mahboula was under lockdown, her employers would come to the police station to give Meriyemi her salary and supplies across the barricades. Although she hasn’t been able to see their child for months, she still talks to her online and misses her. She is so grateful that her employers have supported her because her husband, a taxi driver, cannot work. Lockdown and curfews have made life extremely difficult. Sometimes the stores have no supplies, and shopping can take hours. Also, because they are living on one salary, she cannot send the monthly support home to her mother and her son, which makes her very sad. Prices for food in Ethiopia are very high now because people are still hoarding food due to the pandemic. Many people are getting sick. Meriyemi’s husband has recently started working again, but very few people are using taxis so he hasn’t been able to earn much. 

Her baby just had her first birthday, but they did not celebrate with a cake - they were fasting, and they could not gather with their friends anyway. Usually, the Ethiopian community is very tight-knit, and they celebrate birthdays and Christmas together, sharing food on injera (traditional flat bread), along with their special coffee. 

Right now, Meriyemi only meets with one friend in her building - just to help relieve her stress. Like many others, the lockdown in Mahboula has made them want to move to a new area, but it is too expensive now. Meriyemi is still afraid of catching the virus-- people don’t take care in the bakala, they use cash, no one is paying attention to the rules. She thanks God because despite so many people sick in Mahboula, her family’s health is ok. Earlier they all had terrible coughs, including the baby, but her husband insisted there was no way they could have COVID because they had stayed inside. They never got tested and to be honest, Meriyemi says, she was afraid of being separated from her baby to quarantine, and couldn’t imagine what she would do. 

Meriyemi says she and her husband have learned from the pandemic that they need to make a savings plan. Meriyemi wants her children to go to university, to have books, to learn all the things she wasn’t able to. She is optimistic about the future though.

“Someday life good, someday life not good. I am accept, you know? Only pray for God. Sometimes for everything change, you know? No money, no thing, whenever you want, you can't do. I will smile. Yeah. I will smile. No angry. No angry for God. Please God [...] Something you give. I will trust for God. You know, I trust to God.”

In this clip, Meriyemi reflects on the gratitude she feels for her sponsor, who continued to support her and her family through the extended lockdown in Mahboula.

MERIYEMI - An Ethiopian nanny nurses her newborn child & constant worry whilst trapped in lockdown

Ram was born in a remote area near Kathmandu, Nepal, close to the Himalayas, in 1979. Growing up, the closest school was an hour and a half away by foot, which Ram traversed everyday. He moved to Kathmandu after 10th grade to finish his higher education, and pursue a bachelors degree in English to fulfill his dream of becoming a teacher, but it wasn’t meant to be. He had to flee the country because of Maoist terrorist activity, his journey leading him to Kuwait in 2004. He then worked between Kuwait and Iraq at an American base camp for four years, where he notes that everyone, regardless of their position, was treated with respect. 

Ram’s dedication over the years got him steady promotions, and eventually to a management position at a major F&B company in Kuwait. He is an active social worker, volunteering with an informal volunteer organization that supports Nepali migrant workers in Kuwait by orienting them on the rules, regulations, labor law, and cultural practices of the country, and helping with legalities and paperwork. It’s a cause he hopes to continue working towards until he dies. 

Unfortunately, Ram was let go soon after the pandemic hit Kuwait. Undeterred, he focused his attention on social work to help those who had been adversely affected by the lockdown— working with his volunteer team to conduct Facebook live sessions on a weekly basis, connecting with workers and listening to the challenges they were facing, and holding interviews with mental health experts and government bodies. They also interviewed individual workers over Zoom, including those who had been diagnosed with COVID19. Since several Nepali residents who’d worked in salons, restaurants, hotels etc. lost their jobs without notice and had no money to even buy food, Ram’s team joined forces with other local community organizations and charities to distribute food to over 500 people in Kuwait, using embassy vehicles to reach those in areas under strict lockdown, like Mahboula.

Ram’s organization also appealed to their government and local charities to sponsor airfare, and organized webinars with colleagues from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines to understand what their governments were doing to financially support migrant workers and to enable their safe return to their home countries. This was to note best practices so they too could help migrant workers return to Nepal. During the Amnesty period in late April, he was involved in helping undocumented workers—”not illegal,” he says, “as no one in the world is illegal,”—with travel documents so they could register for amnesty. It was during this time that he contracted symptoms of COVID19: fever, respiratory problems, and body pain, but was allowed by the doctor to quarantine in his room, where he lived alone. 

Through his conversations and experiences helping those in need, Ram has encountered some truly heartbreaking stories. He recounts one of a worker he visited in Adan Hospital, who was pushed out a fourth-floor window by an unidentified man while on the job. The fall broke his backbone and paralyzed half his body, leaving him unconscious for two months. He was given good treatment and care by the doctors, but was not visited by his employers, which Ram feels is very painful as “companies are our second home.” He also wonders how his family will be able to support him if and when he returns home, permanently disabled.

How is Ram able to stay optimistic amid such difficult circumstances? “Always, you have to think positive. I'm always telling my fellow workers and [...] whoever I meet, if you can do something good for people just do it, but don't do bad for people. If I can support somebody, that's fine. But [if you can’t], don't destroy them.”

In this clip, Ram shares the advice he offers to members of his community, on how to maintain hope during the pandemic.

RAM - A Nepalese social worker recounts his efforts to help those affected by the lockdown

Hamza is originally Lebanese, but has lived in Kuwait since he was four years old. He is an architect and he lives with his parents, who also work here. Kuwait has provided his family with the stability that Lebanon couldn’t, even during peacetime. Growing up a third culture kid, Hamza felt a strong sense of belonging in Kuwait, as did his whole family, but the pandemic has changed this. It wasn’t because of the loss of his job - after all, construction companies and architecture firms have been badly hit all over. It was more about the way that expats were talked about in the media and amongst the local Kuwaiti population. Suddenly, he felt, they were being treated as disposable - seen merely as workers, not as people. This narrative has made residents feel unwelcome, and many in his community have decided to leave, even giving up good jobs, because they are hurt. 

“So like, like we always feel like there is sense of belonging to Kuwait. And then when we, you know, when you're treated like as if we are just numbers, you feel like you are being undervalued, not just [...] as a person, as a human being in general.”

When the crisis hit, Hamza wanted to volunteer, but the opportunities he found were restricted to Kuwaiti nationals. He thinks it was a mistake not to include expats in these efforts.
‘Kuwaitis and expats together would have been… positive points… because it's more like a cooperation between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis. So this serves a country. So instead of you splitting the society, you are trying to, to merge it together in a very positive way in order to help the country...So instead of the expats becoming a burden on the government, they would have been an aid for the government… because in the end, the society is like a huge well of human beings and human resources that you can utilize…”
He was also upset that when the government or aid groups came to distribute food to laborers in Hawally, the headlines were about how these expat workers didn’t follow rules and overran the trucks. No one thought about the way the food was distributed - in a sandlot instead of to buildings - or how bad the system was, and how desperately hungry workers had become.  He saw more hungry workers outside the co-op, begging for 100 fils. They sat and roamed in groups and you could see how tired they were. The barbed wire enclosing the area kept bringing images of concentration camps to Hamza’s mind, and reminded him of refugee camps back in Lebanon. 
“... So for some reason when I'm driving around in Hawally, the image of that, like clustered prison, like a full area as a prison, started to come to my mind, especially after I saw the barbed wires at the edge of Hawally. And I'm like, why?”

When Hamza went walking around his neighborhood in the allotted two hours during lockdown, he thought the empty streets made it feel like a European city, but his architect’s eye also noticed the lack of public and green spaces. He also saw many more laborers, single men, where once there were families. He found out later that during the pandemic, many families relocated to Salmiya and many laborers then moved into Hawally to avoid being trapped in the outlying lockdown areas. He felt upset when they extended the lockdown in Hawally, an expat neighborhood, when Jahra and Ahmadi had more COVID cases but both remained open.

Becoming suddenly unemployed for the first time in his life, Hamza decided to treat it as an opportunity, and he applied and was accepted into graduate school. He also took online courses to upgrade his professional skills. The entire experience has made him reconsider what “stability” would look like in his future, and to rethink the role that Kuwait will play in it.

In this clip, Hamza talks about the unfair policies and media portrayal of the expat community in Kuwait during the pandemic.

HAMZA - A Lebanese architect rethinks his future in Kuwait

Ahmed is an assistant pharmacist and has been living in Kuwait for 11 years. His young family is back in Egypt -- his wife was pregnant when he last returned to Kuwait three years ago, and he has yet to go home. His first month back, his sponsor did not pay him, and when Ahmed notified him that he wanted to quit, the sponsor opened a court case against him as “absentee”. The sponsor said Ahmed could leave the job if he paid him 500KWD, twice the salary Ahmed was never paid. If Ahmed refused, after 60 days he would be arrested by the police. Only the sponsor could lift the charges. Ahmed had no choice but to pay. He got into 1500KD debt from paying his sponsor, looking for work, paying rent and sending money home. It meant he couldn’t travel home to see his family for a while.  Luckily he found his current job, but had to wait the legal minimum of nine months before he could request leave, and then travel got banned due to the virus. Sometimes these days, he feels like he is dead to his own children, merely a picture they see and a voice. Although he is upset not to see his family, he is thankful that he is in Kuwait. He feels that Kuwait has done a good job taking care of people’s health, enforcing serious measures to contain the virus and making sure to meet people’s needs in lockdown. Ahmed follows all the guidelines, not even seeing his brother who lives in Hawalli. For the past seven months they have only spoken online.

Ahmed lives with seven men in a clean apartment. They are not interacting as much as they used to because everyone is scared that the others might not be careful enough when they go outside. When they would cook together during the full lockdown, they would sterilize all their shared cooking items and use plastic utensils. His roommates are depressed. Luckily, the apartment is near the beach so Ahmed can walk to let off steam, but, honestly, he has also been going crazy with stress during the pandemic. He feels mentally exhausted, doesn’t feel like eating, cannot sleep and has tremendous anxiety. He cannot reply when clients are disrespectful to him at work - he always thinks that because he is Egyptian, he could be deported if he argues. At night, he replays the conversations in his mind and cannot sleep. Usually he is patient but now he finds himself getting angry… he tells himself that everyone is unhappy, stressed, on edge, but he takes the anger home with him. He thinks that what he has learned from the pandemic is that you should only be kind to those who are kind to you, and for the others, give them back what they give you. He didn’t feel this way before, but you really learn who cares for you when crisis hits, he says. He has gotten closer to his family. 

Ahmed thinks Kuwait is incredibly generous. His father worked here his whole life, and he himself came when he was 21. He feels he shouldn’t complain because he has earned his living here and worked with many Kuwaiti friends over the years. Things have begun to change though. People used to feel excited to come to work in Kuwait, but because of the recent rise in discriminatory rhetoric and policies, that is not the case anymore. He thinks Kuwaitis can solve their problem with demographics by investing more in their own country, and asking people they don’t need in their labor force to leave, yes, but with kindness and courtesy. 

In this clip, Ahmed b. talks about the importance of patience, and how it helps him manage the pain of being separated from his family in Egypt.

AHMAD B. - An assistant pharmacist reflects on separation, injustice, and life in Kuwait post-COVID

Helen is proud of supporting her family in Ethiopia. It has not been easy. She left home to work in Lebanon when she was just 17, to support her four siblings and parents when her father got ill. She left before she even saw her 12th grade exam results. Her mother told her that her scores were good, and that she should return to study teaching or nursing. But then her father passed away. Helen decided to continue working, because she didn’t want her siblings to struggle. Her journey has been hard. After three years in Lebanon, she went to work in Dubai.  After three years, her sponsor in Dubai, who was like a father to her, suddenly tried to sexually assault her. When Helen fought him, the police were called in to intervene. Although she was the victim, the police deported her back to Ethiopia. Her mother begged Helen to stay with them-- they didn’t have much, but at least Helen would be safe.

Helen feels lucky though, because in 2008, soon after leaving Dubai, she was able to get a job in Kuwait working in an abaya shop. She is 37 now and has been supporting her family all of these years--her sister now has a good job after studying to be an accountant, and the other siblings studied as well. Helen also supports her adopted daughter. She became the godmother of her friend’s baby when she was just a girl herself. Helen’s friend died 18 days after the child’s birth, and Helen adopted the little girl. Her daughter is now 20 years old and in university.  

Although Helen has been through a lot, the pandemic has been one of the worst times she has lived through. Her salary was stopped, there was no work, and when she returned she was working full time, but only getting 25% of her salary. Her landlord cut the rent payment by 25%, then 50%, but Helen is still in debt to him, and for other loans she took out. But she feels lucky because she lives with three Ethiopian roommates, and they help one another with food and necessities; they pray together, and support one another. She says that she has become closer to God.

Helen’s voice is thick with tears as she talks about the hunger of people in Mahboula during lockdown. A very young man in dirty tattered clothes approached her begging for just 250fils for food. Helen asked for his phone number, she wanted to cook for him, but he couldn’t speak her language and maybe he didn’t have a phone--he just motioned to his mouth saying “ruba dinar”.

She was crying when she got home, because she didn’t know how to help him, and there were many like him. Maybe he didn’t have anyone in his community to help him, the way she and her roommates help one another. Helen says that for those that don’t speak English or Arabic and lost their jobs, there was nowhere to turn, no way to communicate what they needed. She cried and asked for God’s forgiveness to help them through this time. She knows aid was being given but she doesn’t think it was well-managed or she wouldn’t have seen so many hungry people.  She hopes that Kuwait will not lock out the people who work here in the future because they wouldn't be here if there wasn't a need. She misses her mother’s smile and her smell...if she could, she would give anything to be home with her, but she stays in Kuwait because she needs to help her family. She says today the people who come here to work need the jobs in Kuwait but someday, maybe Kuwait will need them too.

In this clip, Helen reflects on how badly the neighborhoods of Mahboula were hit during the lockdown, leaving many begging for food on the streets.

HELEN – An Ethiopian sales associate shares her struggles during lockdown in Mahboula

Laila has been in Kuwait for the past seven years. She is an assistant second grade teacher. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and works to support her five children, her husband and her parents in the Philippines. When the pandemic came, her school went online from February to July but continued to pay staff. She lived with the school owners as a tutor for their children for the first two months. Staying in a Kuwaiti house for the first time in six years was lonely and she felt shy, but she had to be tough and remind herself she was lucky to have work. So many in her community in Kuwait lost their jobs due to the pandemic, as did her cousins back home. She and her cousins abroad coordinated to send money home to support their extended family, but Laila also used part of her salary to support her jobless friends in Kuwait. In addition, she volunteered with a group providing aid, collecting the names of those in need to submit to the coordinators making deliveries. 

Laila, crying, says you need to act strong when you are helping others. As a mother herself, she felt very emotional for the lactating mothers who didn’t have enough food, or for those who didn’t have formula or diapers for their infants. When listening to those suffering from depression, she struggled to not show her own emotions. ‘Bayanihan’, which means taking care of community, is so important. You must take care of your own health and then take care of those in your community, she says, and the Filipino community all cared for one another during this time. But also, Laila stresses that you shouldn’t only seek to help those of your same nationality. Their volunteer group reached out and coordinated with members of African, Indian, Bangladeshi and other communities, to together find those most in need and make sure they got assistance. The five head volunteers were Filipino nurses who could get the food into the fenced off areas. They would work such long hours to ensure all the food was delivered that they often forgot to eat themselves. 

Her emotions have been so mixed throughout. She sees the distress of parents who have lost their jobs and cannot provide basic food and necessities for their children. But then she also sees all of the groups working together to help these families, and she feels joy at the heroism of so many. Also, when Laila wasn’t able to go to work because of the restrictions, she would stay up late and call her children at a time when they were all able to talk, about 2am in Kuwait. These nightly talks were a positive and precious side of the pandemic, strengthening her bonds with her family. She said many of her friends had the same experience with their own families. 
“I appreciate small things now in my life, especially my health... even if you don't have enough money and if your health is good, you’re considered yourself as a wealthy person. And you know, everything is temporary in this world. And one thing maybe that also made me mature is that you're not thinking of yourself only. You're thinking of other peoples’ conditions, other peoples’ struggles. You try to reach out more than before. You try to give more than you can have, even though you have only small things left on you for yourself. There is, you know, the feeling that, ‘Oh! I have to give this to you. I have to share this with someone because they need it more than myself. They need it more than I.’”

In this clip, Laila talks about the importance of having your own space, whilst living in her employers' home during lockdown.

LAILA – An assistant teacher works to support her family and community in Kuwait and the Philippines

Pedro was an assistant professor of computer science and taught at a university in the Philippines before coming to Kuwait 12 years ago to work as a systems administrator. Over the last few years though, his core work has shifted, and he is now a full-time social worker. He also volunteers for a local migrant rights organization. He is talking from outside a warehouse as they complete a food drive with other charities and prepare boxes to deliver to workers who have no jobs or income. The organization he volunteers with has coordinated with different migrant community groups to deliver aid. He and other volunteers with day jobs are now working 12 hours after their working days and averaging 3-4 hours of sleep a night. This is because they must prepare and deliver all of the aid in limited time frames to different areas across Kuwait. Boxes need to be adapted for families with infants, or communities’ differing staple diets. Due to lockdown restrictions, the aid workers try to coordinate with the police to arrange food delivery into restricted areas and to the amnesty centers where workers wait to be sent home. The authorities have largely been helpful with permits and assistance because the aid group is wearing full PPEs, delivering door to door, and does not create security or health threats. Sometimes though, there are just too many checkpoints and some police will not allow them to pass, so they just try again at the next opportunity. They have to be so careful with the health of their volunteers---they have maintained a small team in order to minimize risk of any of them contracting the virus. One of the aid recipients was in a household where two family members died of COVID, so the volunteers adapted their PPEs, doubling them and wearing face shields when delivering the food. So far they have served over 12,000 people. The project consists of 28 volunteers. 

In addition to food aid, the group has been providing other forms of support. There are a lot of couples who delivered their babies and then couldn’t go see them in the hospital. The project has tried to help those couples get in to see their newborns and provide transport. But the greatest challenge has been to get psychological services to those with COVID. At the time of our conversation, there were an average of eight suicides every day, and Pedro and his team didn’t have access to counseling professionals that could assist them in seeing people through this period. Pedro reflects on the fact that migrant workers are meant to be the strong ones, the providers for their families - but now, they are barely able to afford food for themselves, and the pressure they feel can become unbearable. If they catch COVID, it can put them over the edge. 

Pedro says nothing will return to exactly how it was - we will all need to adapt to a new normal. This applies to labor laws, to personal behaviour, to everything. We must all work together… what is my normal as someone from a specific background, he says, may not be normal for someone else. That means that all of us have to be included in determining how we move forward, to think of that path together and try to work between our different political, religious, and national identities. 

As soon as he is able, Pedro plans to go home to see his wife, his three sons and his daughter.  He says you must never forget to make time for yourself to be a husband, a father, and to dedicate time to your own family. It is only by taking care of your own life that you are then able to help others. 

In this clip, Pedro imagines the 'new normal' and life post-COVID, and stresses the need for new standards, particularly when it comes to the labor law.

PEDRO - A Filipino social worker shares his efforts to deliver aid and support expats in lockdown

en.v mobilizes and connects change-makers to effectively and collaboratively address community challenges, with the long-term goal of fostering a more compassionate, innovative and sustainable society.

SIDI - A Mauritanian public school teacher shares insights into the lives of expats in Kuwait

en.v

Related tracks