Rumble: A woman arriving at Jeddah airport
An extract from CarpetBlog, an excellent blog by a lady living in Turkey.
She describes what happened when arriving at Jeddah Airport (Saudi Arabia):
| Carpet blogger's picture[i-Carpet blogger's picture]This place looks normal on the outside, but it so clearly is not. Social codes and cues for women are impossible to interpret without assistance. Where can we go? What can we do? What do we do if we run into trouble? What kind of trouble could we run into? Will we be able to recognize the trouble when it comes our way? Some trouble is screamingly obvious. We recognized it immediately when we arrived in Jeddah at midnight, after our passport was taken away. "Where is your brother?" snapped passport control. "I'm sorry. What?" "Your brother. He is picking you up?" "Uh, no. The hotel is picking me up." "Not acceptable." Like a naughty child, we were told to sit next to half-naked Nigerian hajis while arrangements were made to accommodate a rogue foreign woman without a brother. Our resentment brewed, but remained unexpressed. The problem resolved itself, with no intervention from us, and we departed the arrivals hall two hours later, with our brother, the hotel driver. |
More on The Road about emancipation and Saudi Arabia
Picture courtesy CarpetBlog. Read the full post...
News: Saudi Arabia becomes major UN donor
link[i-link]The UN appealed for US$755 million to cover the high costs of food and fuel which have risen dramatically since June 2007, hampering the world's most vulnerable nations in the global food crisis.
31 countries responded in donating a collective US$460 million. Saudi Arabia now close the gap with a US$500 million donation.
The half-billion dollar contribution puts the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the forefront of the large-scale, high-level, multilateral UN action by the global community. (Full)
Picture courtesy Tom Haskell/WFP
News: Saudi Arabia uses 11 planes to bring rain.
Desert Clouds[i-Desert Clouds]
Saudi Arabia has started the fourth phase of its program to extract rain from clouds, part of a project started five months ago to secure more water resources in the kingdom.
The head of the Meteorological and Environmental Protection Administration, Saleh al-Shahri, said 11 planes are being used in the current phase, together with a high-tech network of mobile cloud physics radars, a communication and satellite network, and experts from various Saudi universities and research centers.
The process, commonly known as "cloud seeding" is a form of weather modification, attempting to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei.
The program is part of the kingdom's ongoing efforts to counter the scarcity of water, especially since ground water is subject to depletion. The average annual rainfall for Saudi Arabia is around 4.4 inches (112 mm) per year but whole regions may not experience rainfall for several years. (Full)
This post was written as follow-up to "World Water Day: One billion people without clean water".
Picture courtesy 3D Nature. Source: The Road Daily