When I worked in Kuwait back in the '80s, I was talking with a liberated Pakistani female computer operator. I mentioned how my old car lasted a long time because I often changed the oil. She put on a look of disgust. "YOU changed the oil? We have PEOPLE to do that."
I suspect that is a common foreign attitude that sometimes changes to awe when an American rolls up his sleeves and fixes something on the spot.
As to that last, I suggest reading of a great WWII example in Under The Red Sea Sun". That book makes you, yet again, proud to be an American.
That is why Kuwait fell in a day to Iraq; they expected their abused imported laborers to defend the country.