Former Brainerd School District administrator Jeff DeVaney regaled a large and curious audience Thursday with stories from his time working at a school in the Middle Eastern country of Kuwait.
The talk drew a crowd of 50 or more, completely filling the music rehearsal room it was staged in at Central Lakes College. They gave him their rapt attention for an hour and a half.
DeVaney served as the principal of a first-through fifth-grade elementary school for boys at the American Creativity Academy in Kuwait City, from 2010 to 2014. He was initially exposed to living abroad when he student-taught in Mexico City during the 1970s.
"I love being immersed in a different culture. I love being in a minority. I love not knowing how to find things, because that forces you to talk and and communicate with people," he said. "That little seed stayed in me."
After retiring from his post as principal of Harrison Elementary School in Brainerd, he found the American school in Kuwait and wound up loving it. He extended what was initially supposed to be a two-year hitch into four years abroad.
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The first thing he noticed about Kuwait as his plane touched down was that the in-flight entertainment monitors told him the temperature was 105 degrees-late at night local time.
As DeVaney put it, Kuwait was "freaking hot."
The Kuwaiti methods of beating the heat ran the gamut from simple to ornate. All the parking lots are covered in some way, DeVaney said, to prevent heat buildup in the parked cars as thermometers rise to 125 degrees. In the outdoor markets, or souqs, huge fans propelled air that was moisturized with misters for a simulated cool breeze.
Kuwait has the highest percentage of mosques of any Arabic country, DeVaney said, so the air was often filled with hundreds of different calls to prayer sounding at once. Each muezzin had a varying level of vocal quality, he said-they ranged from the beautifully melodic to "screechy."
His pupils were also loud and rambunctious, the halls swirling with sound distinct from the quiet of Minnesota schools, DeVaney said. The boys would get into fights often - not on the schoolyard or in class, but in the prayer room. The flashpoint usually centered on one boy belonging to the Sunni sect of Islam and the other, the Shiite sect.
The boys picked up their divisive attitudes from their parents, DeVaney said.
"This is happening in Kuwait, where things are calm," he said. "No wonder this Sunni/Shia thing is happening throughout the Middle East."
He also witnessed the aftereffects of much deadlier violence when he travelled outside the city and saw vestiges of the Iraqi invasion that sparked the first Gulf War. Amid his photos of towering skyscrapers and sandstorms were pictures of bullet-riddled buildings and rusting Soviet tank carcasses.
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He also saw sights of great beauty, however. The grand mosque of Kuwait City was full of breathtaking designs of geometric shapes laid out in tiles. He also saw grandiose light displays and virtuosic sand sculptures, the status symbols of a growing nation flush with oil money.
DeVaney forged international friendships he'll carry for the rest of his life, from the Bangledeshi cab driver who taught him how to brave the Kuwaiti roads to the Iranian fellow member of his bicycle club.
He plans to return to the school as a visitor in the coming months, and see his former students and adult friends.
"I was so enthralled and made such good friends, and met super cool people," he said.
ZACH KAYSER may be reached at 218-855-5860 or Zach.Kayser@brainerddispatch.com . Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ZWKayser .
