We’ve Got It Over With

There are these things in a parent’s life that you know are bound to happen one day, but they always happen when you’re least expecting them, and when you’re least prepared. Chickenpox is one of those things. Or more specifically, three kids with chickenpox in a row.

Now between preparing oatmeal baths and applying lotions for itchy red bumps,  the scientist in me recognized an excellent opportunity to put the healing properties of vitamin C to the test. Let me give you  bit of background info about this vitamin C thing:  Ever since I’ve seen the documentary ‘Food Matters’ and read about the research that has been done on the benefits of taking vitamin C in large doses, we have been taking considerable amounts of vitamin C daily. So far the result has been: more energy and far less minor illnesses like the common cold ( from which people here in Madinah suffer a lot, I mean really a lot). Vitamin C, if taken in large enough doses, has strong anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties and it boosts your immune system in such a way that it helps the body heal itself.

Allright, so after checking how vitamin C can be used with viral infections like chickenpox, I decided to give my oldest one 500 mg of vitamin C per kilogram of bodyweight in one day. That meant a total of about 27 tablets of 500 mg (13500 mg). I was a bit worried it might not have the desired effect, since we only had 500 mg chewable tablets available, which are not as effective as purer forms of vitamin C  like ascorbic acid powder, and have added substances like sodium and sugar. It was the best we could find here in Madinah, though. At least they didn’t contain aspartame, like almost all vitamin C found here in the pharmacies. Since this was my first time dealing with chickenpox,  I didn’t have experience with the normal development of the illness, but during the day, my son’s chickenpox ‘dried up’ and the bumps didn’t turn into fluid-filled blisters. The next day, no new spots had appeared and the itch was almost gone, I gave him vitamin C, but not as much as the day before. From the third day on, he was fine, and the scabs started falling off. After 7 days, his skin was clear and he was back in school.

Alhamdulillah, that was one case out of the way… When my second son came home with chickenpox next, I repeated the same thing, about 500 mg per kilogram of bodyweight. I had a bit more trouble making him take the required amount of tablets because he didn’t like them too much. His chickenpox breakout was also much more severe, almost every inch of his body was covered! So I ended up repeating the vitamin C treatment the next day, and by the end of that day the result was the same as with my eldest son. Chickenpox dried up without blisters, no new spots, no more itch. In the mean time, my youngest one also started getting the red bumps. I tried giving him as much vitamin C tablets as a 21 month old sick baby will take – which is not much I can tell, so I couldn’t really test my vitamin C hypothesis on him. It’s ok, I’m convinced. One more thing I need to stock up on when we go back ‘home’: Good quality additive free vitamin C.

Cleansing Coriander

My favorite herb! Almost every meal I prepare has coriander in it (also known as cilantro). Apart from the wonderful, fresh taste, coriander has a great benefit too.  According to research (by Dr. Yoshiaki Omura), coriander helps the body excrete heavy, toxic metals like mercury, lead and aluminium. It was even shown that coriander was able to remove mercury that was absorbed by a patient’s body after the removal of an amalgam toothfilling. It’s been well-established that mercury is very toxic for the human body, causing severe neurological damage. Mercury, particularly the mercury present in vaccines, has also been linked to the dramatically increased rate of autism. And then there’s the mercury in fish, which has even led the food authorities to warn against eating too much fish (and that says a lot!).  But even when you’re not taking vaccines, or eating fish, we are probably exposed to different heavy metals in our environment.  It’s a good thing there is coriander, Masha Allah, such a simple herb, with such a great benefit! Coriander’s cleansing properties are attributed to the many flavonoids and phytonutrients it contains. Coriander also contains magnesium and manganese. Particularly magnesium has been linked with normal heart function, normal blood pressure and reduction of PMS symptoms.

And it is really simple to use. Fresh coriander tastes delicious in soups and salads. To get the most benefit, it’s probably best to eat it raw, not cooked. Or, if you’re using fresh coriander in a cooked dish, add it when the dish is almost done, to minimize the loss of nutrients and to maximize the flavor it gives. I’ve even tried juicing it, but you’ll need quite a lot of of coriander to get a considerate amount of juice. You can mix it with other vegetable juice though. Coriander seeds are all well-known spice, used in Arabic and Indian rice dishes. The coriander seeds can be grinded, and they give a sage-like flavor to your dishes. I’m using coriander both ways, and it sure is a really tasty way of cleansing your body!

History of Al Ka’bah: Talented Young Saudi Artist’s work

http://arabnews.com/lifestyle/art_culture/article265899.ece

Masha Allah, I really love the symbolism in these beautiful and unusual pieces of art, based on traditional calligraphy in the Tholoth, Farsi, Diywani, Jalidiywani and Roqaa scripts. The artist (Nasser al Salim) is a young Saudi architect, born and raised in Mekka. He has represented the history of the Ka’bah in seven pieces of work, according to the six historical stages and one futuristic stage. The serenity and tranquillity of the Ka’bah is represented by the Sukun, the Arabic letter symbol for ‘silence’.

The first stage represents the first sa’ee, the running between the hills of Safa and Marwa, done by Hajar (the Arabic letter) in desperate search of water:

The second stage represents the time when Prophet Ibrahim and Ismail had built the Ka’bah and people started the ritual of circumambulating the Ka’bah:

The third stage refers to the time the polytheists had erected idols around the Ka’bah and pure monotheism was lost. Respresenting this, the artist changed the color theme from pure black to grey calligraphy (it doesn’t show very clearly in this picture):

The fourth stage depicts the time when Islam was established by the Prophet Muhammad (saws) and pure monotheism was restored:

In his fifth piece of work, the globalization of Islam is represented by calligraphy in different languages:

The sixth picture depicts the scattering of the religion of Islam and the different sects and groups that have emerged, although their goal remains the same, i.e worshipping Allah:

And in his last piece of work, the artist refers to the Day of Judgement when the world will perish and the Ka’bah will be raised:

Don’t Let Them Go!

As I was writing about children in my last post, let me tell you about a parenting book that, for a change, really inspired me. Ever since I had my first child, I had this insatiable hunger for books and information about parenting that would give me the keys to deal with  the waves of counterwill, aggression, compulsive behavior, screaming, shouting and fighting that daily engulfed me. Once I read this expression in a book: ‘I was a perfect mother, until I had children’. Hmm, these could have been my words! As time went by, I started to realize that my children were unique, as was our way of living, and no ‘Supernanny’ technique really ever fitted the bill for us. I was never a big fan of these punish and reward techniques anyway. In my opinion, there is something unnatural and counter-intuitive about those reward charts on the wall – you can even buy them ready made in the toys store here!- No offense to the mothers who do use them, I’ve put them on the wall myself too, but it just wasn’t my thing. Then, one time when I was on another quest for information, I came across this book called ‘Hold On to Your Kids; Why parents need to matter more than peers’ by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate. There was one review about the book which said if you were only to buy one book about parenting, this should be the one. So, desperate as I was, I ordered it. And the person who wrote the review was right. Rather than offering techniques to deal with the symptoms of the defiance of many of today’s children, the book explains the reasons behind this defiance. And this was very insightful. There is a thorough explanation of the widespread phenomenon of peer dependency and how that has affected a lot of today’s children in many ways, as well as the need for children to be securely attached to their parents and other important adults in their life. The book also offers advice on how to establish a stronger relationship with your children and avoid peer dependency. For me, reading the book was a sequence of ‘aha’ moments. The ideas sounded vaguely familiar, like they were part of some forgotten heritage about parenting. The ideas connected with something within, they made sense. I guess I’m not the only one to whom the ideas hit home, as the writers are giving lectures around the world about the book, and offer courses for parents and professionals – or professional parents -  So instead of telling you in detail how you should raise your kids, this book lets you understand why today’s kids are as they are, and how you can work on your relationship with your children, and then you go from there. I think the ideas work very well within an Islamic way of living and dealing with children. One interpretation of the words of the Prophet Muhammed (saws), when he said that one of the signs of the last days will be that the slave girl will give birth to her master, is the defiance of today’s children and how they turn away from their parents. If we want to strenghten our Ummah and raise our children as good Muslims, we just can’t afford to let them go!

Bilingual kids: Why don’t you just speak Arabic to them?

One of the main reasons to bring up my children here was to give them the opportunity to learn Arabic. Or more precisely, not just to learn Arabic, but to reach the level of a native speaker, together with our own language, Dutch. The idea that we had from the beginning is that we would speak Dutch with the kids, and at the same time give them enough exposure to Arabic to become fluent in both languages.

So why don’t we just speak Arabic to them? Some people around us raised their eyebrows about us speaking Dutch to our chilren. Some thought that they would never pick up Arabic that way and others held the opinion that Arabic is the One and Only language to be spoken when you are a Muslim in KSA, and we were just being inappropriately nationalistic (and some assumed that I couldn’t speak a word of Arabic anyway). In my opinion, being fluent in a second (or third, or fourth…) language is beneficial for anyone, and research shows that being bilingual greatly benefits children cognitively. In 2009, Belgian researchers found that bilingual children and children enrolled in bilingual education exerted less effort than their monolingual peers when completing calculation and reasoning tasks (http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/educating-better-brain). Alhamdulillah, weren’t we just in the perfect environment to achieve that!

As I said, there were some people in our environment who thought that a practising Muslim in an Arab country should aim at speaking Arabic only. Now I’m not questioning the value of Arabic, but I’ve seen mothers struggling to speak Arabic with their kids, and the kids, in turn, struggle with it as well. Needless to say, communication between these parents and their children wasn’t that great. And they couldn’t speak with grandma and grandpa back home either. Ironically enough, also the children’s Arabic was not very well developed, most likely because of the lack of exposure to authentic Arabic.  It’s true that, in the past, immigrants were advised to speak the new language as much as possible with the children to promote language aqcuisition. These days, especially since researchers discovered more about the benefits of knowing more than one language, experts say to speak your own language to the children and make sure they get enough exposure to the other language. This way, they’ll get the best of both languages.

Of course we – like the people around us- also had our worries, especially in the beginning. The children were still very young and spent most of their time with us. Were they going to learn Arabic as we hoped? It takes some time before you can really notice their development in both languages. They moved from one stage to another. At first, when they were very small, it was mostly Dutch. After they got a bit older and gradually spent more time with Arabic-speaking people, they seemed to understand, but didn’t use Arabic themselves yet. One ‘breakthrough’ came when I heard my son, three years old at the time, speaking Arabic to himself. At the next stage, they understood Arabic well, and would use it if necessary, but they were still reluctant to speak Arabic in all situations. Although the children would speak Arabic to each other when they were playing. At the present stage, they are quite fluent in Arabic and they speak it to each other most of the time. Actually, the Arabic is going so well that I have to think of ways to improve their Dutch!

One thing that helped them with Arabic and Dutch as well was watching cartoons. Although I’m not a fan of TV for children (or for anyone!) I have to admit that it did help with learning the language, improving their understanding and their vocabulary. Maybe it’s because they’re so highly motivated to understand  I also think that because they didn’t speak any English when they were younger, their Arabic developed faster. English is spoken by so many people, also here in Saudi Arabia, it’s an easy language to rely on, and it can, in that way, impair learning Arabic. Many people can probably testify to this  – including myself! 

The approach that we use is called the ‘minority language at home’ approach. It seemed the best approach for us, because Dutch is just that, a minority language, and because we are living in an Arabic-speaking country, there would be enough exposure to Arabic. There is another method that I have seen working, which is the ‘one person one language’ approach in which both parents have a different native language and use that to communicate with their children. I’ve seen it working with Arabic and English, maybe bacause both of these languages are widely spoken here, so the child would get enough exposure from different sources to either language from a very young age.

Right now, we’re moving on to the next challenge, which is reading and writing. Reading and writing in Arabic is going well, but the fact that Dutch is such a minority language is starting to give some problems. They know the Latin alphabet, but they’ve been taught English phonics, and the vast majority of materials available on learning to read and write is in English and I’m still thinking about how to go about that.

A Few Lines of Poetry

I came across these lines of poetry today in the newspaper. The poet is Faiz Ahmed Faiz from South Asia. It’s a translation, but still very beautiful. The author of the newspaper article linked it with what’s happening in Egypt now, but I feel it could be about the Last Day too.

We shall see certainly, we too, will see. We shall see

the day that has been promised us which is written on the tablet of fate

We shall see

When the mountains of cruelty and torture

Will fly like pieces of cotton

Under the feet of the governed

This earth will shiver, shake and beat and over the head of the tyrant

When lightening will thunder

We shall see

When from this God’s earth

All the idols will be removed

Only God’s name will remain

We shall see certainly, we too, will see. We shall see

We shall see

The Kabsah Effect

If there’s one thing I don’t like about the Saudi’s, it’s their agonizing uniformity. Let’s start with the food. Because you are what you eat, right? Regardless of all the food available, a Saudi must have his daily kabsah (rice with meat or chicken). I mean every day. And at parties, weddings and other occasions. Ok, at least you know what to expect when you’re invited somewhere. Once I visited a Saudi family in Riyadh. When tea was served, they offered me a box with cookies and pretzels to choose from. Of course, having a sweet tooth like me, I chose a cookie, but I was kindly instructed to put the cookie back and take the pretzel instead. Because tea was sweet. And so I couldn’t have anything sweet with that. No question about that! I am still grateful for the insight in Saudi culture that this incident gave me. It’s about appearance too. I’m sure an aerial view of the inside of an average mall would look something like a chessboard. And when you want to name your baby boy, there’s a rather short list of acceptable names. We named one of our sons after the Prophet who succeeded Musa. I’ve had a couple of people asking me why we won’t change his name……into something more common.

It goes further than food, clothes or kids. It seems there is some factory somewhere here that produces the people’s ideas. Whether it is politics, health, education, religion, history or what to do in your free time, everybody sings the same song. It must be the kabsah.

I wonder how deep this uniformity really goes. Are they really all the same and do they like the same things? Or am I just seeing it all wrong? Or is it a way of hiding tribal differences which would undermine the very existence of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia?