Every year in the last week of February, there is a big exodus out of Kuwait. This is the time of the double celebration of Kuwait’s National Day (25th February) and Liberation Day (26th February).
National Day celebrates the independence of Kuwait from Britain in 1961 and the reign of Sheikh Abdullah Al Salim Al Sabah, the Emir who guided Kuwait during this transformation and who earned the moniker “Father of the Constitution.”
http://everydaysaholiday.org/2008/02/26/liberation-day-kuwait/
Liberation Day celebrates the liberation of Kuwait by a multi-national force from seven months of traumatic Iraqi occupation on February 26, 1991. Each year the day is marked with public gatherings and get-togethers. However, the day is also tinged with sadness as Kuwait remembers and honours the martyrs who lost their lives fighting Iraqi oppression and the 605 Prisoners of War still held captive in Iraqi jails.
This year it was a four-day weekend as the two holidays fell on a Wednesday and Thursday and we had decided about a month ago that we would spend it in Dubai, for want of a better thing to do.
Why the exodus? Well, generally, because even if you stay in Kuwait, there’s nothing to do unless you want to just stay home and chill out. You don’t want to go out because the city is simply one big party. Unless of course, you want to join the party!
Its virtually impossible to get anywhere without spending hours in a traffic jam…not the traffic congestion you experience on normal days but cars not moving simply because other drivers have either stopped their cars dead in the street to dance or have had to stop because others were making a nuisance of themselves. Other cars slow down and toot their horns to join in the celebration.
On this day teens and adolescents celebrate by spraying untold volumes of silly string on passing motorists on the Gulf Road. What the connection is, I don’t know, but as one motorist writes:
“…despite our best efforts to avoid Gulf Road, there is no getting away from these foamy sprays. They will run after you. Chase you down the road. They will even open your door, because having white foam sprayed on your car interior is even funnier than the outside.”
http://anafilibini.blogspot.com/2007/02/kuwait-national-day.html
The closest we came to being sprayed with foam was last year when, on the eve of our trip to Portugal (the night before National Day), we had dinner with a friend who was in town on a business trip from Dubai and we had the brilliant idea of taking him for a “drive” round the city! On Gulf Road some kids had started spraying foam on passing cars. Somehow we were spared.
So like many others, we leave town at this time every year – except for 2006. Last year it was Portugal. The year before it was Jordan. In 2005 we went to Dubai and in 2004 we were in Oman. Its a good time to chill out and unwind while the city celebrates. We come back refreshed, to normality.
Happy National Day, Kuwait!
