Q8NRI.com

KUWAIT: The torrential downpour on the first day of Eid Al-Adha put a damper on numerous people’s plans for the occasion, leading many to postpone plans to visit family members and friends, go to local malls, hold beach barbeques and participate in a variety of outdoor activities.

In some residential areas, overwhelmed drainage systems caused sewage overflows, while in others flooding prevented people from going out of their homes. While a few people enjoyed the rain, most were less than happy about it.

I only got two days off work," said 27-year-old Salem. "I was happy and told myself that I’d spend those days outdoors with my family and friends, but I had bad luck because the first day it rained heavily. Unfortunately I spent the first day of Eid sleeping and watching movies the whole day because of the bad weather and the fact that the sewage drains under our building were blocked and flooded so nobody could move their cars from the parking lot.

Marwa Hussein, a 25-year-old health club worker, was more positive about the rain: "I agree that the weather stopped me going out and taking part in a lot of Eid activities, but I like rain anyway and I think these showers have been a good thing because the weather recently has been really dusty, but after the rain the weather’s great.

Marwa hadn’t let the rain stop her from getting out and about either. "I went out with friends and we had our dinner in a restaurant in Salmiya," she told the Kuwait Times. "I was surprised that I saw lots of people going out for dinner and coffee while it’s raining, but thank God Kuwait offers lots of enclosed restaurants and caf?s so that people can do what they want, even if it’s raining outside.

Another interviewee, Nabil Mohammed, said, "It’s rained like it hasn’t done before in Kuwait. Rain in Kuwait is a good thing, but unfortunately the water drainage network in our area was blocked, even the highways. I saw a lot of accidents happening in front of my eyes because of the flooding the other day.

University student Sara Saeed was certainly not charmed by the rain. "I was happy when we got these vacation days; me and my friends began planning what we’d do from the first day of Eid till the end of the vacation, but I was really sad after seeing the weather changing and the rain starting – all our plans were cancelled because of the rain.

She said that she and her family had tried to make the best of it, however. "My family and I wanted to live in the Eid spirit and forget about the heavy rain outside, so we went out for dinner at a local restaurant. The most shocking thing for me was when the heaviest rain came late at night. On the second day of Eid the weather was great, but the overflow from the sewage drainage network in our area made it smell terrible.
Rawan Khalid