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I repeat, put me in charge of Salmiya

Back in January I posted about how they dug up the middle sidewalk in the old Salmiya. They decreased the walking space and created new dirt space around the already planted trees to add more greenery. I was against the idea since first of all they shrunk the sidewalk and second of all I knew it wasn’t going to work. The new Salmiya near Sultan Center and Al Fanar has never had a green middle sidewalk and somehow my old Salmiya was going to? A lot of you were against me and said I was being pessimistic, well the picture above is how it looks like 6 months later… very green indeed. It’s always going to be just sand exactly like how it’s always been sand in the newer Salmiya so I hope everyone now understands why I preferred to have a full proper sidewalk instead of “greenery”.

Check out the picture above. Do you know what that is? I think it was back in the late 80s or very early 90s someone decided to build a public bathroom right in the middle of Salmiya. I think it was functional for a month and then got destroyed by vandals and became so dirty that no one was using it and it just got abandoned. That was like 20 years ago, today it’s nothing. It’s not a bathroom, there are no doors, no toilets, no sinks or anything. Just a place to store red cones or whatever garbage is lying around. Recently as you can see in the picture they dug up the area around it to replace the floor tiles with newer ones but they left this abandoned ugly block of cement right in the middle. Couldn’t they have just demolished it?

Another strange thing happened recently, someone realized how much garbage was filling up the streets of Salmiya and so came up with a brilliant solution. They decided to put bright yellow garbage bins all over Salmiya and at around 10 meters apart. Check the video above I shot today. I drove maybe 200 meters and I counted around 66 bright yellow garbage bins! And that only includes the middle sidewalk and some of the sidewalk on the left but completely ignoring the right sidewalk since it was in the video. It’s the most horrifying scene since all you can see on the street now are the garbage bins. Do we really need that many bins in the middle sidewalk? [YouTube]

I’ll say it again, I love Salmiya and I want to be put in charge of it or at the very least Salem Mubarek Street. I’ll seriously make it the most beautiful place in Kuwait. I’ve been requesting this since back in 2006, so what do I need to do to make this happen? I’ve watched enough episodes of Parks and Recreation to know what it takes. Salmiya is my Pawnee.

87 replies on “I repeat, put me in charge of Salmiya”

I don’t think that you could be because you are not a citizen. However, you could always pass your ideas to someone in the Majlis Al-Baladi (municipality council).

That, OR, if you know or could get to an MP maybe they could do something about it.

Basically you need a Kuwaiti to speak for you. The only way for you Mark to be the King of Salmiya is by proxy….sadly.

But hey, I’m rooting for you buddy.

Well Mark Salmiya is part of the grand Monopoly games played by rich people now. It well turn into the ugliest place on Earth just to exploit the money farming cheat-code !

Min yom shalo il nafaq, Salmiya turned into a shit hole !

There used to be a tunnel connecting old and new Salmiya my friend, and it was a bit scary and dark LOL.

It was where the traffic light is located now on the intersection of Salem al Mobarak and Qatar St.

You’ve got a point, I’ll start putting some ideas together and posting them here. In any case I wouldn’t mind voting for Barrak since we both share the same vision.

Why not throw some of the idea to Salmiya mayor, and add to it his reputation would go up so he can have good votes when he plans to go to the national assembly πŸ˜€

Good intentions but easy on the vocab dude… its not “the old salmiya” and “the new salmiya”, just call it “old salmiya” and “new salmiya”.

And if I could do something, I would make you in-charge of the whole of Kuwait πŸ™

your forgot to mention –

1- stray disease infected cats everywhere
2 – broken pavements
3- Garbage thrown in every corner
4- dead plants
5- etc etc etc

it looks like some old poor country not one of the wealthiest in the world – thank you corruption and thank you clear government vision

-Kuwait is not a place for this greenery thing,, artificial grass would work best.
-ppl should stop throwing garbage in the streets! mentality of ppl must change
-this is not old Salmiya!!!

I know exactly what you mean. I was in the Old Salmiya the other day and it broke my heart to see how neglected it seemed. You know a few logical ideas here and there could turn a place into a haven, yet no one seems to care. You need people who love the place enough to care about its well being! Its like taking your kid to school and expecting the teacher to love him as uncontionally as a parent would…

If you ever figure out how to be in charge of Salmiya let me know because I want to be in charge of Jabriya… especially its horrid Co-Op! The place has so much potential yet the way things are being run is not helping!

Good Luck!

It’s difficult to get a sense of how narrow the sidewalk is from the picture you’ve posted. I’ve noticed in some areas they started putting field turf rather than natural grass around the trees. Maybe that would be the solution in Salmiya, but the field turf looks terrible where I’ve seen it, and I hope they don’t do it.

in the picture above you could fit 2 people side by side barely, like a couple walking together. But once you go further up the street where there is parking in the middle, you get the parking meter poles in the middle of the side walk so only one person can fit. So if two people walking face to face, one person has to stop, step to the side and let the other person pass.

I’ve seen artificial grass that looks good. Souk sharq uses fake grass check here
https://248am.com/mark/kuwait/green-grass/

If you are ever put in charge of Salmiya, I’ll add a few more suggestions:)

– The holes that exist in back roads (even if its a back road, I don’t wanna be caught off guard and smash into something)
– The so-called road renovation that’s half done (cause they still look the same after “renovation”)
– Salmiya Coop!
– PARKING

Now you have your hands full πŸ™‚

What you see in Salmiya is again just a symptom of what’s taking place in the entire country. If our infrastructure (sewage, lights, etc…) is in desperate need of change you think Salmiya and all those places wont be affected?

Another big point is why does Mark, a foreigner, have to strive to fix up the problems he sees why arent Kuwaitis the people responsible for this land as ambitious in making a change like Mark?

If you ask me all of Kuwait needs a change but no one seems to care less more than Kuwaitis for example no one pollutes, disobeys traffics laws, and act carelessly as much as Kuwaitis..

For over 2 years we’ve been pumping RAW SEWAGE into our prime coastline, why doesn’t anyone talk? Why aren’t Kuwaiti’s caring about our MOST precious resource… the sea?

La they opened Shake Shack o elevation o I dunno what, this is what’s on the minds of Kuwaitis!

I don’t see how burgers fit in. We can have Shake Shack, Elevation Burger AND a nice pretty Salmiya. We don’t need to choose one or the other.

Mr Mark, what I mean is we as a Kuwaiti youth put more energy into thinking about and placing our attention on these senseless things than rather the actually basic backbone of this state..

Without a doubt the whole GCC is not only laughing at us, but looking down on us.

Today in Saudi Arabia you don’t find these silly foreign brands but you find a HARD STRONG infrastructure, factories, companies etc… all will ensure Saudi Arabia’s progress over the years. All I’m saying is that we see none of this rather we see things that are irrelevant to our countries progress… hence my point shake shake etc…

The coming generation of Kuwaiti youth can be summed up in one word : McChicken…

It’s sad I know, this generation in Kuwait suck. As a Kuwaiti I feel ashamed as to how my fellow people act around Kuwait, and hell even the world! Schools need to do a better job on fixing up our citizens right and parents should do something to fix this as well.

Have you been to Saudi Arabia? They don’t even have a proper sewage system in Jeddah. The city floods even if it rains for 15 minutes. Kuwait is far behind, but i think Saudi Arabia is still in a worse off position than we are. And, they’ve just as much, if not more, of these “silly brands” as we do.

Agreed about the coming generation of Kuwaiti youth. It’s a shame.

Mr Anon, without a doubt you are right Saudi Arabia is not in a better situation than Kuwait currently. My whole point how ever is that they do have a plan, a vision for the future. They are building cities, schools, universities, factories… Every Saudi student who is accepted in any university across the world (regardless of their GPA) is accepted for a scholarship. They are putting some what of an effort into their country.

We need to put much less effort than they do but we don’t do anything. We have learned nothing from the past how to protect our country and love our people.

There was a lot of bad influence around me while growing up in Kuwait. Many of my friends were affected by these, but its the way their parents raised them up that made a good difference in the end.

True, coming generation of youth in Kuwait is a sad sight.

I think what Bong is trying to say is you should shut up and stop criticizing his country because goodness forbid a foreigner should have an opinion.

I have a feeling someone told Bong he was in charge of how people should feel, think and behave…Goodness knows he’s acting like it.

Your government obviously doesn’t care. But you should, because your reputation in the Gulf is on the line and everyone in the GCC knows what’s going on here but people outside have stopped caring also. Sorry dude!

It’s a symptom of the culture. Unfortunately there aren’t enough people who care about the deteriorating state of this country, and those who do care, and wish to take action, are simply stunned by how inept, and down right awful, our government’s responses to these problems seem to be. These people eventually lose hope and accept the horrible reality that nothing will change in the near future. Kuwait needs an overhaul in so many ways. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an initiative make the proper changes.

I couldn’t agree more, it’s a symptom of a weak culture that doesn’t condone responsibility of the state, community, or to some extent your people.

Check the Buildings on both the sides of Mahameed , The buildings are broken into pieces & are just lying there since past 2 yrs I guess …

yes.. I would have loved to have hardeez nearby rather than walk all the way to fanar -.- (I don’t really like the one in Marina)

I said the exact same thing about the the bright yellow garbages are redicoulisly placed all over the street infront of my university (AUK) their placed so high and repeated so often they don’t look nice and in a month or so they won’t be maintained properly anyway! Somebody needs to be shot for this decision !

They did the same thing in the hospitals area, except the trash cans are blue instead of yellow.

do u remember what old salmiya used to look like in the 90s? remember how different it was up to the first intersection after marks and spencer (the traffic lights heading toward new salmiya)

what is happening here is the person who bought old salmiya, and subsequently tore down the old buildings, like the round office building that was there after sports corner, is trying to force all the old shops to close down and move out.

theres a huge new mall that was built, right next to where baydoun is. it is literally an EYE-SORE.

old salmiya should have been renovated and kept as it always has been. but no, greed and the bottom line dictate that these old builds that used to occupy so much floor space, should be torn down, and have double the amount of shops in half the area instead.

remember the time when u couldnt go to old salmiya without the cacophony of noise brought about by DEstruction workers (not construction, coz all they were doing was drilling into walls, plastering it, and drilling again).

to me, old salmiya is part of kuwait’s heritage, pretty soon tho, sadly and unfortunately, it will succumb to urbanisation, and we will have another salmiya highstreet.

Dude, I would so vote for you (in an ideal world).

I wanna know who has the contract for the yellow trash bins and for digging up the streets? Crrrraaaazy.

I moved out of your neck of the woods about 2 years ago and ever since then, I have noticed how far downhill the place has gone. It’s really sad.

I don’t know if you’re going to ever change anything in Salmiya as basic rules in residential areas such as cars stopping to let pedestrians cross aren’t even in jurisdiction. Unless laws are enforced for the well being of residents with everyone in mind (not just westerners/whites or kuwaitis) I see no point in decorating or using your ideas to better this place. Have you seen the roads in block 10 near Cesar’s confectionary? It’s nothing but pot holes after pot holes and no ones gives a $#!t. Why? because the block has a majority of Asians? But if it was the same area near Sultan Center where the Brits and Americans live then do you think you would ever see a pothole?

FYI.. Brits and American live in Mahboula and there are many potholes there.. Potholes do not discriminate πŸ˜€

The yellow garbage are horrific, have two in front of our building down Salem Al Mubarak (AUK side).

I vote for Mark to be in charge with Salmiya urbanization. I’m on your team. Can we start a campaign on how we wanted to look like?

I wonder sometimes! does people who plan streets actually go out and see/walk on those streets?
I was horrified as much as you when I saw all that yellow garbage bins !!

Mahboula is worse. Some retarded contractor named Mushrif was given the job of laying down sewage, water and phone lines and did the most idiotic things possible. they dig up everything to put in lines and left them open. so if you come in at night, you can see pits 12 metres deep everywhere and you have to pray that you don’t run into one. These pits have been open for 10 months or so.

placing one of those yellow bins just a few steps from one another makes them accessible with ease, and having them bright and yellow makes the job of spotting them effortless, but the million dollar question is:

Did it work?

I love parks and recreation but I hate salmiya with all my heart.. I know you lived there all your life.. Sorry man but it’s a dump..

Just noticed yesterday that the bins are turned toward the street, not inwards. So it means you can stop in the middle of the road to throw your trash… and cause traffic, accidents behind you.

We have a $250bn pot of cash in our sovereign wealth fund and yet the country looks like a total dump. Its hard to argue that Kuwait is run be incompetent people. Period.

Did you never realize that everything in Kuwait is a fraud? How much money was spent on these garbages, and how much money went in someone’s pocket..

How ever thinks something can be done is a complete noob in life. What does improving the countries infrastructure involve. MONEY. Who runs the gov.?Citizens who have their high position protected with access to the money. Who protects them? Everyone who is offered a cut. Why wont they improve the country? The goal is to divert the money into his personal account. Fixing means no money for him.

Guys, just admit people here are still primitive.
Democracy needs to go.

Yalla! I wish if you were in charge, you are an active human being I mean look at your blog is amazing! unfortunately you are living in the most unmelting pot, foreigner unfriendly environment in the entire galaxy..and the kuwaitis complain ” why no one like us!!” duhhh!! I am a Kuwaiti and I give you the green light go a head man Salmiyah is all yours to beautify and if you succeed I will give you the green light to jileeb shryookh and farwaniya. We need someone to just do it like Nike says.

Hi TweeZ, take it easy i was just busting some ” B— ”

like my country Kuwait the way it is, with its good and bad’s, not to disagree with the fact that Salmiya needs allot of work, my note was intended to be funny and not offensive my friend
Tweez!

We all know that giver the power to make things right in kuwait will be faced my many endless RED TAPES and GLASS SEALING.

Given the opportunity to make changes in Kuwait would please me much, yet i am afraid and sadly admit that I am not in that king of corrupted enterprise. In my beloved Country Kuwait.

Dude, did u mention thats is the garbage pins are facing the road not the shops?
so people who will use them have to face their backs to the cars .. Weird

That’s where the mention of the yellow bins came from in your newer post. I was wondering where you saw yellow garbage bins in Kuwait πŸ™‚
I just keep shaking my head at the brilliance in Kuwait πŸ˜‰

Legally speaking. the only way you can be “mayor” is by becoming Kuwaiti. and legally only way you can do that is by marrying a kuwaiti or doing such an honoroble thing for the country (like be on the football team). and then run for majlis baladee LOL enjoyed your posts. you would be a good mayor. πŸ™‚

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