Teenage Experiences

After having some experience of living in the Middle East as a teenager, I thought there would be some people out there who would want to know what I went through and perhaps maybe even what to expect.

Truth is…there is no way to predict what you’ll experience. Everyday is an adventure.

I moved to Saudi Arabia when I was 9 but I was a child so didn’t get to experience the teenage life until I moved to Bahrain 3 years later.

Bahrain is a small island just off of Saudi, which still owns a piece of my heart today.

Piece of advice, when you move to a different country, ALWAYS go with an open mind. Never go with ideas of how you think it will look like or how you think people will be. 99% of the time, you’ll be wrong.

Obviously the main reason we moved to Bahrain was because of my dad’s job however, I still to this day believe it was so my parents could drink legally and we could finally buy ham and pork in the supermarkets…no matter how much they deny it.

When not allowed for so long: Walkers smoky bacon crisps= Heaven.

I thought being in a Muslim country would mean that as a teenager, I wouldn’t experience the ‘real teenage life’ such as going to a field and getting rat arsed, sneaking out of the house to meet in a park for no reason and walking around town aimlessly just because I could. However, like I said before, I was wrong.

Its true, I didn’t meet in a park, walk around town or go to field because lets be honest here, they don’t really have any of those things in Bahrain.  So we had to compromise.

When living in the Middle East, you either live in your own private house/villa or in a compound. A compound consists of several villas in one gated area with usually a community swimming pool, tennis courts and a small play park for very small children. 

In these certain areas, you can walk around and some compounds can be quite big however, friends always seem to live in a different one to you, which is never a small walk away.

Another tip: In a majority of the Middle East, you can’t just walk around the streets- it is definitely not like England. Most of the roads are made simply on sand waste grounds and if you need to get to somewhere, you have to get a lift- everywhere. Hence my mum jokingly calling herself a taxi (which she kind of was).

So, back to what I was saying before without all the rambling,

We had to compromise where our ‘teenage experiences’ took place. A large group of us all wanted to try alcohol and get drunk just because it was the cool thing to do and word got around school that a Thai restaurant in Saar would serve anyone as long as they had money. So instead of a park or field, we had a Thai restaurant with all foreign waiters serving us vodka, gin, wine- whatever we wanted.

Now at the age of 15, we all thought we were badass. Going out on the weekends drinking and smoking indoors- sounds pretty familiar to the life in the UK.

In Bahrain, there was only one main mall- Seef Mall that everyone went to. A place where you were guaranteed to bump into people you knew.  Seef Mall was where all the kids used to go to walk around aimlessly for hours and go to cinema (rarely) and use the arcade games. A majority of the time, it consisted of me and my friends walking in circles with much older guys dressed like the rapper Nelly with a plaster on their faces giving us their numbers. None of which we ever called and definitely not healthy that I think of it now.

Teenage life consisted of school, going out to sheesha cafes, drinking, shopping and chilling by the pool.

I remember my first time going to my now best friends house. My mum dropped me off and the house was HUGE. Private house with gates, a swimming pool, massive garden right next to the beach. I sat there thinking I was poor.

Next thing I knew a women walked up to me and asked if I wanted a drink, I politely said “yes, please” and got a drink- pretty standard really. Next thing I knew, people were ordering her around to do things and I couldn’t understand why. Then it clicked. MAID? Who actually has maids? I asked my best friend who casually replied “yeah, but only one”

ONLY?

Next thing she casually says, “we have a driver too, its not a big deal” I nearly fainted. Driver? Is that even normal? Apparently it is very normal for people to have a driver. I went home so pleased that if it was normal then it meant I could have one, I asked my parents who looked at me laughed and turned around.

Take that as a no then?

I heard it was pretty standard in Bahrain.