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House

Good boy! Good boy! Shall we go outside?

Life

I’m already hot. We’re not even outside

Street

Normally I like to start my days off with a dog walk

Come on baby

We need to make it super early so that my little fury baby

Can walk on the ground without burning himself

Are your paws ok?

Room

I think it was around 56 this year as supposedly hot as it got

But it feels like 60

Street with dog

Yeh its hot. You get dehydrated?

It sucks the life out of you. It goes like this ‘swoop’!

Impression of falling faint

And then thats it you are just like this

street

Lets go home its hot come on

Im done bro

Add Youtube Clip here to show what she does

room

I think in my line of work when I’m going a lot of content creation

I can really see when the heat effects me

When you do have the best light in a day to be able to film

Its absolutely to hot for you to do it outside

Youtube Clip

The hours between 11 in the morning until around 4 o’clock in the

Afternoon are no go times for being outdoors.

Street with kids

Wait wait we need to look both ways

The heat impacts your life in ways you don't necessarily anticipate

On a day to day it makes things that are supposed to be a

Minute long an hour long

car

Alright. Yes lets sit down my love

You want the AC?

One of the things that I was not anticipating

When I did finally have children

Was now I had this tiny little being that needed to be protected

From the sun

Alright lets get going

And because I had rear facing car seats

The AC unit actually never touched

His car seat so we would have to prepare far ahead of time

If were going to pop out with him

And we would turn the car on 30 minutes prior to an outing

Put the icepacks onto his car seat to cool it down before

I could place him in it

And then you had a tube that would

Extend from the front AC in the front seat to the back

Just to make that we could get him enough Air Conditioning

In a rear facing car seat

And that is the reality for all parents here

street

Push the door! Push push push

Ice cream shop

Do you wanna try the Awarga? Its like mango with strawberry

son

I want only chocolate

Mum

Is there chocolate for you?

I would spend my entire adult life living in Kuwait

But I did have a little bit of time where I got to grow up

In the States and got to really be on my bike and be outside

And make treehouses and climb trees and I guess really did want

That for my own children

How is it? Is it cold?

Drone shot

This is the hottest I’ve ever seen Kuwait

Its getting to the point where its really unbearable

And I feel like everything about living here is hostile sometimes

Did you say you like swimming inside or outside Mark?

Inside. Inside? Why do you like inside?

Mark

Because...garden..inside

Hard to make out

mum

Oh so its too hot?

Do your feet hurt when you walk on the grass outside, in our garden?

boy

Yeh

Mum

It concerns me that the only life my

Children have known has been in scorching heat.

room

They wanna be kids and go to the playground

And they’ll beg to go all day and we’ll finally break and take them

And it will be so unbearable that they are begging to go back home

Essa 1980’s weather report

Essa

In the past, at the beginning of my job as a predictor of weather,

I studied the data available in Kuwait since the 1950’s and after,

There were no differences in temperatures,

But when we reached the year 2,000, and looked at the data,

We noticed there was one degree increase to the general average

But from 2016 up to now, the 50 degrees Celsius

land

That we did not record in the past we bagam to record repeatedly

It is a very quick change and a change that is frightening for us all.

Essa climate or weather reporting footage

The weather is changing, there are extreme weather conditions,

People should be aware of this.

Essa climate or weather reporting footage

Essa

This is our duty, warning people is my job

So what can we do?

So I suggested an initiative to the government

Which is to plant green belts,

To increase green areas,

Essa, map

What affects Kuwait mostly are North Western winds.

These arrows show where the winds are coming from

These North Western wind are hot.

They come in summer with sand and dust

So the best thing is to have green belts of forests,

And local trees available in Kuwait

We should use them to reduce dust waves that are coming from Iraq

And the hot winds during summer.

These trees that we shall plant would reduce the temperature

And the hot winds during summer.

These trees that we shall plant would reduce the temperature

3 to 7 degrees Celsius (English).

This is what would reduce the temperature of Kuwait City

So that Kuwait would transform itself from a dry, arid, desert

Prone to sandstorms, to an inhabited region

Settled by people living in green areas

Where temperature is decreasing

This is my aim and this is my dream

That I hope will be realised

Car. road

At the moment, I am driving my car in an arid desert area

But I always said,

That although the region is not planted, it could be so

Tree

This is one of the trees planted

By one of the women of Kuwait

She planted these trees and secured water for it.

She comes all the time to water these trees.

And the truth is that a desert area can be planted and this is the proof.

There is a difference, a difference

Between the temperature there and the temperate here

A thousand thanks for the woman who cared to plant those trees.

truck

Woman watering tree

I started at this place and the place up on the mountain, in 2015.

There was nothing green there. So i was determined to do something

Everyone would be astonished by.

I spoke to some officials

I even spoke to experts

They all told me it was impossible

Impossible to plant anything in the sand

They told me that it was too dry, too hot

I wanted to prove them that I could improve it

So i started planting

A canadian visited me

And told me that this plant was impossible to grow

Praise be to God, look at it now

Look how big it has gotten

If you’re determined enough

You can do anything you want

Ever since I retired I took care of the plants

I even rented a water truck

With my own money

This is the meswak tree

And this is the wild sidr.

And this is a willow

I learned about the desert and drought

Where the drought and global warming come from

Trees fend off dust

They eliminate pollution

Clean the air and lower the temperatures

We need to grow and revive the desert

I built a drip irrigation system

Look at the water here

I made water accessible for everyone

Man cleaning

The heat in the 70s was less

It was full of Athel trees, it was planted

And we were able to sit outside

But now I can’t leave the house without AC

If you stay outside it feels like you’re inside an oven

Mankind can’t stay in natural spaces

They can’t bear it

This thing has got to change

House

Hi!

child

This is a table and i put two chairs

mum

Your hair is crazy bud

Lets see, oh wow

You’ll notice that we have a playground esque thing built into

One of their rooms

Because the majority of their time is spent indoors

And we really wanted to make the investment of building

That into our house so

That on the days when it was obscenely hot

And we wouldn’t even be able to touch the playground equipment

Let alone use the playground equipment

We wanted to make sure that we had to give them

A little something, you know?

Something that replicates childhood, but indoors

Are you gonna try and go in ?

child

Thats easy

mum

Thats easy?! Oh wow

You did it! Good job!

window

The absolute best invention in the world.

The only way to stop it

Look you can’t even feel it now

There's absolutely no way to survive here without AC

And I think that what's really disturbing about that is that

You’re cooling your little section

But you’re heating up outside

And so we are in this awful, awful cycle of

Trying to cool ourselves down, but also heating up

The country even more as we go on

Drone shot

driving

I think that we gotten a little fatigued

With the idea of climate change

We’ve stopped looking at what it means

To do with the individual person

We’re looking at things that are quite

Micro where its like

You’ve gotta stop using straws to save the turtles

You’ve gotta turn off the lights in your bathroom before you leave the house

To be able to save a little bit of energy but

All of those things are not the big picture

The big picture is what it actually means to live here

What it means to raise children here

And i sometime worry

And it is one of my largest fears

Is that my children are still young right now

And these are probably the best days of their life in terms of weather

This is probably the coolest it might ever be for them

If you don’t live here, and you’re not affected by it everyday

You forget that it’s happening

But it is, and its terrifying

Desert drone shot

If we’re looking into the future

I don’t see how much longer we can consider Kuwait habitable

tree

Essa

I will measure the ground’s temperature with this thermometre

That is registering more than 68 degrees Celsius,

Almost 70 degrees for ground temperature

As for air temperature it registers between 49 degrees and 50,

8 degrees Celsius

Even my hand is burning, burning from this dry wind

Let’s see the difference in temperature

Between the (arrid) land and the trees,

It is 56 to 57 degrees Celsius,

Whereas there it was 70 degrees Celsuis. See the difference!

If we take the temperature of the tree itself,

It is 55 to 54 degrees Celsius

Because there is a space for the wind to move

This region should be planted,

But unfortunately up to now people are not listening.

woman

Nayf put water here, tell the guys it’s cold

Open them

I created this place

I built it for people to pray and rest.

For anyone who passes by

I achieved something that everyone told me I could never do.

Man praying

A danish convoy visited me once

“Thank you for doing this” they said

“We thought that this land was empty”

In the area I planted

I found spiny-tailed lizards and hedgehogs

And now you can find fresh water and shadows

I also find wild owls setting their nests

This is a beautiful thing

Perhaps this drought and global warming

And pollutants, perhaps we can create something

That remove all of these toxic things

And we can benefit people will them

Malcom

My name is Malcom Bedali

I used to work in Qatar as a security guard

For about two and a half years

Summer in Qatar, is very very hot

I’m talking about highs of 50 degrees celsius

And thats not even factoring in the humidity thats comes after

So…. very very hot

And unbearable to be honest..unbearable

I myself, have been posted outside on a number of occasions

In different projects here and there

In just the shortest amount of time you can be covered from head to toe

In sweat. Like you are drenched, completely drenched.

Its that hot

Some companies are considerate

They can provide you with Air conditioning cabins

But that's only those that care about their workers

Like for the rest, its just maybe a hat or an umbrella

Or something of the short

I used to get like headaches

Headaches, headaches, headaches. yeh

I used to write about my experiences

My work-mates experiences, other people’s experiences

So one thing led to another and uh….

It was around mid 2020

This was around the peak of summer you know,

This was when the temperature gets crazy high, 49/50 you know

00:01:20:09

During this time, the ministry of Labour prohibits

People from working under the sun

Under direct sunlight, from around 10 to 3

On one occasion we had one VVIP visitor who came to the property

This one particular person, she is the Chair person for Qatar foundation

Shes also the board for (?) properties

Sheikha Omoza (?) that’s her name

A member of the ruling family

00:01:51:11

As early as 7am people were just outside providing security you kknow

But even 7 itself, its already hot outside

So from 7, she probably arrived at around...10 or 11 I think

Any by this time you know the temperatures are like crazy high

00:02:10:11

I was working in the CCTV control room

It was like the central command centre kind of thing

So I had cameras everywhere so I could see

Uhh...people were posted on like different junctions

Leading up from the road all the way to the building

And these guys were outside from 7am to the morning till around past 12

Almost close to 1 probably when she left

And during this time mind you, people are prohibited from working

Outside you know? So this was a violation actually

Of that mandate from the ministry of labour

So you would think, you would think that the presence of such

An individual. This is the chair person for Qatar foundation, I mean

Uh….if theres any person who is supposed to be mindful of other people’s welfare its this person

00:03:08:01

I saw people sweating, I saw people just struggling to keep still all that

And this person came and saw people standing outside

And did nothing about it

And this went on for the remainder of summer and nothing was done

I tweeted about it, I actually tweeted the first time,

I tweeted something about it but I had to take it down

Because I was afraid and people around me were telling me

Like don’t do that, that’s risky

00:03:38:04

I tweeted what I saw, like

This VIP came to this property

And people were standing outside in the sun

And people were not supposed to be outside in the sun

Uhhhh.whys this happening? Something of the sort

00:03:52:21

Fast forward to 2021

Sheikh Omaza is still visiting the property she has an office there

Ughh.. and I’m reminded of the past year’s incident

So I don’t want it to happen again this year

I’m still working at the CCTV, I’m still working at the control centre

At the control room

And uhhh…. I keep seeing this person coming

The guards are stilling standing outside

For extended periods of time

And I’m thinking, summer is just around the corner

And this thing might happen again, you know

I have to do something about it

00:04:34:06

I wrote an article describing what happened

And I published it

That story, is a story of one particular security guard

Who is a security guard who represents all of the security guards

Who were there on that particular day

I was describing our conditions, I was telling our stories

Just the reality of what we go through on a day to day

My company gave me up

Thats as simple as that

They handed me over to the authorities

00:05:10:02

He began asking me ‘do you know why you are here’

And i was like Uhhh. no I do not know why I am here

Tell me why I’m here

And he said we are the ones who are going to ask questions

Not you ask us questions

They thought that I was working with foreign agents

Thats what they said, foreign agents

To spread this information and spoil the name of Qatar you know that

00:05:37:18

For the first 2 weeks I had no contact with anyone

I didn’t even know where I was being held

You know I was blindfolded, handcuffed, all those things

So i didn’t really know where I was

I didn’t have any hope

The Kenyan embassy and the (?) came to visit me 

They mentioned that a lot of people were working to help me freed

And all that

So thats when I gained some level of courage

We cannot change the climate crisis without freedom of speech

You have to speak up about certain things

And for change to happen you cannot limit freedom of speech

You cannot silence people

If Qatar gets any hotter

The people who feel it

Are the migrant workers, the low-wage migrant workers

They are always on the receiving end of such things

So i think they will be the ones in problem