ADVENTURES WITH DAVE
A visitor from the Desert
My wife, and three children 4, 7 and 10, traveled with me to Saudi Arabia in 1982. I had accepted a teaching job in the Eastern Province. We went thinking of it as a one year adventure. We stayed six . One consideration in our decision to stay those five additional years, was a biologist named Dave. Dave taught biology to medical students at King Faisal University, the same college where I taught Architecture. Dave provided many outdoor adventures to add to the rich tapestry of experiences we enjoyed during our sojourn there. Dave guided us into remote places in the desert and beaches of the Eastern Province. These trips took place in the Winter months when the days are comfortably warm and nights cool.
Dave’s trips would start with his recruiting two or three families to join him. In the week prior to one of Dave’s excursions, while the families would anticipate the adventure and organized clothing and food, Dave would collect fire wood. It is not easy to find fire wood in Saudi Arabia. The few trees, that are there are usually in some far off oasis or in private gardens. Dave would gather broken pallets and similar wood scraps and pile them into his jeep. On the day of the trip he would pack it with camping gear, camp stoves and cook wear to be used by all. This gear he would pile on top of the fire wood. On the morning of the trip, we would form a small caravan of high center, four wheel drive vehicles, and follow Dave over highways, small roads and then on the sand to go far into the desert until we would arrived at a spot, often against a large sand dune, where Dave would stop and declare it to be our camp site. In camp, at night, Dave would stack a great pile wood and light a monster bonfire. The children were delighted. We adults loved them also.
While on one of Dave’s desert camping trips we had camped next to a sixty foot high sand dune. In the morning, after breakfast the men took took the older kids off for an adventure among the dunes. It is great fun to climb the gentle sloping side of a dune and jump, down the steep side falling and tumbling in the sand with shrieks of joy until we would reach the hard pan of the desert floor. I had climbed the tall dune over looking the camp and the expanse of desert beyond. While there, I saw a white Toyota pickup emerge from behind a distant dune and come toward the camp. It stopped at a distance away. There were four women and a couple of small children left there. I recognized it to be the type of vehicle which the king provides to Bedouin nomads who live in the remote desert and herd goats or camels. The king does this to support the Bedouin traditional life and to promote an independent source of meat for the Kingdom. Women were not allowed to drive in the kingdom, though I was told that some Bedouin women drive in the desert. It was for these reasons I believed the driver was certain to be a man, From the place he stopped, he could see that the people in camp were all women and children. I became concerned when he wheeled his truck around and sped directly toward our camp. The Toyota stopped next to our huddled women and out of it climbed a Bedouin woman.
From stories my students had told me, I knew that Bedouin women often feel isolated. Their husband is the one who enjoys contact with others. When a trip to town is necessary, to sell a goat and buy supplies, it is the man that would go, leaving his wife in the desert to care for the children and tend the goats. Men would occasionally have visitors to their desert camp. Women had none. While a male visitor was in camp the woman was expected to stay in the enclosed “woman’s section” of the Bedouin tent. So this Bedouin woman was delighted to see other women in her desert. She came to chat. One of our women knew a little Arabic, and was able to interpret for their conversation. They shared tea and enjoyed an extended conversation with no men around. Eventually she climbed back into her pickup and drove off, disappearing among the distant dunes.
Copyright 3/4/21 by Theodore “Tod” Lundy, Architect