The shoe guardian?

Today started off like any other Sunday. Before the school day begins we have our weekly elementary assembly. Today was the kick-off to prayer week so it was longer than normal. I had my little prayer book tucked into my attendance book and while the kids were listening to the prayer and recitation, I was praying and reading a psalm and Luther's explanation of the 10 Commandments.

We headed upstairs and began our day. We were about 2/3 of the way through Math when they announced that there would be no swimming today. No problem...my kids had PE today. Then about 10 minutes later, more or less, they made another announcement. This one was harder to understand.

It honestly sounded to me like she said "we will now be decorating the mosque." Granted, it's an odd type of announcement to make but since it's prayer week and the assistants are responsible for decorating the school, they're probably calling them downstairs to hang up stuff. But then her voice started sounding more urgent. What could be urgent about hanging posters? They repeat the announcements in Arabic and when she did, the kids perked up and said, "She said for us to go to the basement!" She hadn't said "decorate the mosque", she'd said, "evacuate to the mosque"! (Slight difference in meaning there.) And what mosque? The school mosques are in the basement. They must want us to do an indoor evacuation. We start to head there but then find out we're evacuating the building. Again, what mosque?

We headed out the gate to the street in front of the school and the place we normally line up during drills is empty. Everyone is heading in the other direction toward...the mosque. {sigh} Would it have been so difficult to say, "evacuate to the mosque across the street"?

So we head there and find room in the little courtyard to line up the classes. While we were there the fire trucks turned up. Then ambulances. We stayed out there a while and after about half an hour (?) they told us to take the students inside the mosque. We have about 1000 students in our school. The mosque didn't look all that big. But the nice thing about mosques is that they have almost no furniture. Basically a chair for the imam to read from and that's it so there was plenty of room. However there was some confusion as to whether women who weren't wearing head coverings could go in or not.

I told the kids to take off their shoes and led them to the door. Then I sent them on their way. I figured my job today would be to guard their shoes. Not much else for an uncovered woman to do while she waits for the all-clear. After a bit one of the admin walks by and says to go on in and stay with the girls, it's ok. So I go in and stay with the kids.

We sat there a while, listening to different staff members keeping the kids occupied. Actually they kept the whole neighborhood occupied. It was the microphone used for the call to prayer that blares out the speakers at the top of the tower. It was rather loud.

We occupied ourselves with playing Telephone, made much more difficult than usual by the very loud microphone. We ended up with some interesting variations...except when I started them off with "I want to go home". That one they all got right. (Or was it, "I want to eat lunch"?)

Almost as soon as everyone was at the mosque they started carrying in big boxes full of bottles of water. During the various announcements and other things meant to occupy the kids someone had the wonderful idea of announcing that if anyone needed to go to the bathroom they just needed to tell their teachers. {sigh} I allowed my kids to go 3 at a time. I didn't bother because the bathrooms didn't have toilets...just holes with places for your feet on each side. No, thank you.

They had croissants sent from somewhere. The ones you find wrapped in plastic at the bakalas (Arabic version of mini-marts). They got them handed out rather quickly, I must say. I got a cheese one. It's amazing what you can have delivered in this country.

They called the homeroom teachers down for a quick meeting with the principal who informed us that messages had been sent to the parents' cell phones to come and pick up the kids. We received instructions to have all the parents sign our class lists when they came to collect their kids. They started coming right away. They were all pretty calm and nonchalant about it really. Not long after that we received the OK to head back in the building.

Less than an hour later we had a meeting telling us what had happened. A phone call was received saying that something would happen at the school at a certain time and then the person hung up. They evacuated the building. Besides the fire trucks and ambulances and police, they sent bomb-sniffing dogs and the Kuwaiti version of SWAT. (When someone told me that last bit I told her to please not say that to me when my mouth was full of water.)

It kind of reminded me of a similar experience when I was teaching in St. Louis. That time I was outside without my purse and had to wait until 5 for the dogs from the airport to check it out so I could get it and go home. This time I had my purse. My lunch would have been rather sorry by tomorrow though.

Speaking of, I wonder what tomorrow holds in store?