Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
I am a year away from university. Such a sentence holds so much: excitement, fear, promise and also a fair amount of expectation. Obviously, knowing this leads me to question how day to day life will be, and it baffles me to think how students that preceded me managed to transition from life in Bahrain to university life abroad. As a member of the youth of Bahrain I am highly concerned, because I question how we will manage to function in the real world.
I am sure that we can all agree that life in Bahrain is unique and that is neither a judgement, a critique nor a snide comment. It is mere fact. Things are different here. Live-in: maids, nannies and drivers are commonplace; the lifestyle here is comfortable beyond belief.
Doing things for yourself and by yourself is near impossible as you always have weary hands behind you, guiding you as if you are constantly taking your first steps. A couple of examples are: pumping your own petrol and bagging your own shopping.
When I was in London two years ago, I had my first encounter with a self-service checkout in Tesco, and I had clearly been in Bahrain too long as I found the notion laughable as it places an enormous amount of trust in the competency of the customer.
It made me wonder what kind of strange and gargantuan revolution would have to take place, in order to get something similar in Bahrain.
All teenagers must learn to do things for themselves when they leave home; however for us, the learning curve is considerably steeper. To say we are ‘wrapped in cotton wool’ is an understatement. Instead we are wrapped in numerous layers of: cotton wool, bubble wrap, candy floss and feathers. Then put in a box of foam peanuts by kid gloves, said box, is then placed in a cupboard made of pillows, and said cupboard, is then left high upon a cloud of privilege, which no planes are allowed to fly past.
Yes, that metaphor did go rather far, but hyperboles aside, the point remains: that we have to find our feet in so many different senses once we leave. On the other hand, walking down the road to get a pint of milk is an experience I’ve long forgotten and one I look forward to in future.
