Page 298 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

II!

The Ubiquitous Gasoline Tin
Mrs. Garrett E. De Jong
W E have no tilling stations
in Kuwait. All of our
gasoline and kerosene
comes to us in large
square five-gallon tins. But that
is only the beginning of the life
history of the tins. True, they
have already had a long ocean
journey from New York, or a
shorter one from Abadan, but the
events of those many miles are as
nothing compared to the variety of
uses and scenes to which the tin
must become accustomed after be­
ing relieved of its previous burden
of gasoline.
In a desert country a far more
precious commodity than gasoline
is water. Rich men and those in
moderate circumstances can merit
by giving water t»> the poor. On
certain days, especially in the sum­
mertime, large groups of women
may be seen seated on the beach
where there seems to be “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,”
waiting not for the troubling of the water so they may step in and be cured :
of some bodily ailment, but waiting rather for the distribution of the sweet
water which has come all the long 100 miles from Foa in small sailing
vessels, so that they may quench their thirst. The gasoline tins which they
bring are filled and placed upon their heads and they slowly walk off to
their various huts bearing their water so carefully that not a drop is lost.
Then, in the winter time when we get a few rains there are the puddles
of water standing in the shallow depressions of the desert to which the :
poor go to fill their tins and bring them back home, thus increasing the
family’s supply of drinking water. Here where water is so scarce, as it [
is in Palestine, one does not cease to think about the richer meaning dis­
cernible in, “And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little
ones a cup of cold water.” Here even that small service costs the server
something
Gasoline tins opened up and pounded flat serve to help protect our
city’s small cucumber and tomato patches against the ravages of the young
locusts which often come in armies out of the desert in the spring. It
is small wonder that Pharoah's hard heart softened and that he decided to
let the children of Israel go if only to rid himself of the “locusts that ate
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