By Passant Hisham

KUWAIT: Sharing an apartment with several strangers, each coming from a different culture and background, yet trying to find harmony and peace in living together, is not easy for everyone. With high rentals of apartments that exceed the average monthly salaries of most expats, more and more of them are driven towards apartment sharing as a more economical way to live. While this solves a financial problem, it brings other problems to the fore. Kuwait Times highlights some of the most common challenges faced by expats in these circumstances.

When an Egyptian woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, first moved to Kuwait, she knew nobody except a woman who made her stay with her to share the apartment rent together. She expected a peaceful and safe environment in that place, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. She recalled an incident where her flat mate’s cousin knocked on the door and asked for her permission to wait for his cousin in the living room, only to sexually harass. “I was standing in the kitchen and was surprised to find him coming from the back,” she noted.

When she confronted her flat mate about the incident, she accused her of lying. “She kicked me out of the house. I left with my luggage, having no idea where I should go,” she said. Even after what happened, she begged her flat mate to allow her to return to the house, because she couldn’t afford staying in a hotel for the rest of the night.

When she returned, she was forced to sleep on the couch in the living room for six months, even though she paid the full price of the room she supposedly rented. Even when she finally moved to another place, she suffered from various difficulties. Most often she would notice a mysterious disappearance of her personal items, such as food, clothing and shoes, only to realize later that one of her flat mates stole these from her.

Ahmed Tamer, an Egyptian man, suffered from financial constraints that didn’t just prevent him from renting an apartment on his own, but even prevented him from renting a room on his own. He settled for living in a tight partitioned room half the size of an actual room — one meter wide and two meters long. “It almost feels like sleeping in a grave,” he said. This partitioned area is one of six that each of his six flat mates have been allocated.

The only reason he went for this option is to avoid the conflicts that he used to face with his roommates in shared rooms due to incompatible sleeping schedules and working hours. For instance, when Tamer woke up to get ready for his morning shift, his friend would have just gone into a deep slumber after returning from his night shift. Most of the time he heard his mate shouting at him: “Turn off the light”, “don’t disturb me” or “don’t make any noise”. Sometimes it was hard for them to respect each other’s space. He noted that due to stress and life pressure, these little conflicts could escalate to visiting police stations.

Tamer added that one of the common issues that he faced was also related to hygiene, as he remembered once travelling and coming back to find bugs in his apartment due to his friends’ negligence of their cleaning chores.

An Indian man, who also preferred to remain anonymous, faced a different kind of challenge living among “bachelors”, due to a difference in ethics and values. His flat mates used to smoke and drink, which is an illegal behavior in Kuwait. “If somebody gets caught, it’s trouble for everybody,” he said. Even when he tried talking them out of it, they didn’t respond. Aside from the fear of getting in trouble, he couldn’t bear this kind of lifestyle. “I hated it in the morning, when I woke up and went to the bathroom — the smell drove me mad,” he said.

He is now living in an apartment with another family, which he claims is much better than living among bachelors. “The positive thing is it’s really clean,” he said. But the only problem is that there are more limitations, for instance not being able to bring his friends over or not being able to cook and use the kitchen most of the time.

One might wonder why would these people accept living in such conditions? Unfortunately, due to insufficient income, many expats don’t have the privilege of making the choice of staying on their own. Settling for a lack of privacy, security and hygiene is sometimes the only cost they can afford to pay in return for the very basic need of shelter and finding a stable place to stay in.