Part 19

After an extremely long and exhausting working day, I come home and go straight to bed. The prayer of the muezzin wakes me gently after a few hours. I decide to go for a walk since it is still light and bright.

I step out the door, take a deep breath, the air is clear and pure and very refreshing. Since it is still prayer time, the streets are still deserted. No soul to be seen on the wide road in front of our residence. I walk pass the nearby petrol station and see some cars and people waiting for the owner to come an open the services and to fill up the vehicles and do their shopping. My route leads me to a place where many trucks like the one on the photo are parked. I have often passed this place, but never dared to go closer as it always seemed very busy and I was afraid of being asked various questions and/or get into trouble. Now, as it is deserted, I dare go in and have a closer look and find out what it is, although I can guess what this is. It is a well from where the city gets its water. The trucks are filled with water, that is then brought to the households. In Saudi there is no running water from the tap like anywhere else. That’s why it is distributed to the houses. You should under any circumstances, never ever, drink water from the tap. If you do, you’ll get stomach pain and diarrhea. This water is used for washing only. Drinking and cooking water is available in the supermarket and in many shops.

Each house has a water tank on the rooftop and gets the water from there. The tank is filled up frequently so the household doesn’t run out of water. But what do you do with the waste water? Where does it go to? You call a truck to take it away. So now you can imagine the truck traffic on the roads.

When I leave the site, I see a particularly beautiful specimen of a truck parked along the street. It is a yellow truck with nice décor. I walk once around it and then place myself in front of it and marvel at it. I then take my BlackBerry out of my pocket and photograph it. When I’m done with it, I hear somebody shout:

“Doctor!”

I turn around and see no one.

“Doctor!” yells the voice again, “here!”

I look at the other side of the street and see five boys wave at me.

Can it be that they are our students who call me ‘doctor’? Our project manager has told all our students that all teachers hold a PhD and are university lecturers back in their countries. When I come closer I realise that they are not our students. As I stand in front of them, one of the boys starts asking me questions, like what my name is, where I am from, what I am doing here, etc. Then he translates my answers to the others.

“Do you like the truck?” he asks.

“Yes, very much!” I reply.

“It’s mine”, he says.

“Very chic” I say.

We talk for a while and I am amazed how good his English is.

“Where did you learn English so well?” I ask him.

“From the telly”, he replies.

No shit, I think to myself, but say: “Fantastic!”

A few minutes later, a door opens on the house on the hill behind the boys and a woman shouts a name. All five turn around, say something in Arabic and turn back to me.

“Mum has called. Dinner is ready. Unfortunately we have to go now.

We shake hands and walk to different directions. When I reach the next corner and am already lost in my thoughts, I think to myself, what a pity, I didn’t even take a photograph of them. I turn around, but there’s nobody there. Only the yellow truck stands silently along the road and shimmers golden in the setting sun.

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Part 18

After a week in bed, I’m feeling well again and am allowed to go to work. What was wrong with me, I do not know, but the meds seemed to have worked and I’m fine now. My voice is back, fever has gone and I’m full of energy.

Sunday morning, 7.20 o’ Clock. The sun is shinning and I’m going with a queasy feeling down the stairs towards the entrance. As I stand in front of our residence, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Cool desert air. The colleagues come out slowly and we greet each other. Only a few have visited me during my illness, but now all of them are happy to see me well. Why? The poor guys had to experience a really painful week.

One of our teaching colleagues has resigned and left. This means that roughly twenty students have no teacher. Our project manager however, has decided that I take over the class and teach both, mine and the colleague’s class. The two classes are merged and became on. The problems? The boys don’t like each other and refuse to merge. I’ll have 35 or so (noisy and full of temper and energetic) students and will have difficulties in keeping them calm. Also my class is far ahead in the books.

I have proposed to split the other group and divide the boys to the rest of the classes, but our project manager refused. Then I got sick and put a spoke in his wheel. Nevertheless he is sticking to his original plan and is making us all suffer.

During my illness, almost all teachers – except one or two who stand very close to our project manager, had to teach their classes and go every few minutes to the other class that has no teacher and do something with them. It reached my ears that my colleagues spent an entire week running up and down the corridors from one classroom to another and were really exhausted after work. So the first thing they did once home was to go to sleep. Some of them slept through the night until the next morning. Some got up for dinner and went back to sleep after that. No wonder almost no one visited me.

Our project manager has rigorously refused to come out of his office and teach the class the resigned teacher left behind, but did what he does best: he terrorised the colleagues by sending them little pieces of papers with his orders.

That’s why they are happy to see me well again. I can’t blame them, but I’m not amused about going back to work. Anyway, soon it all will come to an end and we’ll get rid of our useless project manager.

The quietness and peacefulness is over when he comes out at 7.30 to check if we are all gathered by the bus. I take my earphones out and put them on and turn the volume to extremely loud. 30 Seconds to Mars. Finest guitar rock, so I can’t hear anything he has to say.

I stand in the classroom at 8am and have to listen to the complaints of the students. I start my lesson after a while when all students have arrived. I have my difficulties to keep 35 or so young energetic Arabs calm and interested, but it seems to work. The first hour flies by. It’s still too early for those night owls and they are not fit enough to be noisy. Some participate, some don’t and a few doze off.

After the first break, I see some students sleeping when I return to the classroom. As I’m surrounded by some students who want to give me their homework, I don’t get the chance to wake the sleeping ones. The project manager comes along the corridor and sees some of the sleeping boys and immediately freaks out. He bangs the door, comes in, shouts at me and wakes the boys violently. Then he turns to me and continues shouting at me. After two or so minutes, when he is still shouting, I say calmly that we haven’t started with the lesson yet, because I’m collecting homework and that’s why I haven’t woken them up. Then he looks at me puzzled, looks at his watch, sees that it is already five past and yells at me and demands to know why I’m wasting lesson time, etc. Then comes the school’s manager and wants to talk to him. He slams the door as he leaves.

Half an hour later, we’re having a vocabulary class, some students find it difficult to understand some of the words and secretly take out their mobile phones and look up words in online dictionaries. They do it secretly because our project manager has banned mobiles from the polytechnic and has strictly forbidden the use of them within the campus. As fate would have it, he passes by the classroom from outside and sees one of the students with his mobile in his hands. He shouts through the open window and I go and close it. Seconds later he appears by the door, opens it by force and it bangs against the walls and he shouts immediately at me and accuses me of many things, among them not following his orders. I grab a chair and say calmly: “If you do not go away right know and close the door slowly behind you, you will make the acquaintance of this chair!”

He leaves and closes the door slowly behind him. My boys cheer and clap their hands, but I’m not feeling proud, but at least I’m left in peace for a while. The day passes quietly and we have some fun. Still, I’m waiting full of hope for the last day when we get rid of this little Adolf. But until then, a lot is going to happen and our project manager will make our lives a living hell.

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                                We're having fun!

                      I had a long sleepless night

    No, it wasn't me.

                       If I don't see you, you don't see me, therefore I am not here, am I?

    Uh, that smells funny!

                       A ghost?

   We're having fun!

    AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Teacher, your lesson is boooooring!!!!

                             

Part 17

If you live and work in Saudi, you have at least as a westerner certain advantages and privileges. One of those benefits is free medical treatment. You get a card from your employer and a list of hospitals and doctors you can visit. For some peculiar reason I still haven’t got such a card, even though I’m entitled to it contractually. I have often asked and got a different answer every time. When I last asked about my medical card, I raised my voice. Well, I didn’t get the card, but I achieved something. The manager of the polytechnic ensured me that if I ever need to see a doctor, he would pay for the visit and the meds. That’s at least something. Now I got sick and need to see a half-god in white.

My project manager noticed that I’m unwell and suggested that I stayed at home until I’m well again. He doesn’t want me to infect the others, as he sees us as his livestock and we’re too precious and he can’t afford it to have half the staff sick in bed. What do I have? No idea. I feel dizzy and weak, my voice is gone and I have slight fever.
After three day in bed, I inform my project manager that I would like to see a doctor and that he should inform the manager about it. Around lunchtime I receive a phone call from the manager. He asks about my health. When I insist I want to see a doc, he says I should be ready in half an hour. Not even a quarter of an hour later he and his treasurer stand in their car outside our residence. They drive me to the military hospital, park in front of the entrance, we get off, the two Arabs walk in front of me and I follow like a little obedient boy. Inside we go through a few corridors, turn a few times and go into a small room with no windows. We sit down on three extremely comfortable big black leather arm chairs and the two start immediately small-talk with the employee. After what felt like 10 minutes, the clerk turns around to me and asks for my passport and wants to know what I have. While he types my details on his computer, the small-talk continues. Sometime later I get my passport back, we stand up, leave the room and walk through what it seems to be the same corridors. After a while we arrive at something like a help desk. Located next to the desk is a room that looks like an examination room.
“Stay here”, says the manager and disappears into the room.
“There’s no doctor in there”, he says when he comes out again.
He goes to one of the nurses and asks for the doctors. The nurse says that we have to go to another desk and have our form stamped and come back again. This we do.
Then we’re back to the same nurse.
“Where’s the doctor?” asks my manager.
“He’s with a patient” replies the nurse.
“Where?”
“In that room.”
“Aha. Where will our patient be examined?“
“Here in this one. You’ll be called. There are three other patients before you.“
This did not please my manager. He walks around the desk and disappears into a room, nurses’ or doctors’. A few seconds later he comes out with a doctor. And then there they stand all three of them (doc, manager, treasurer) and chat in Arabic. I look around and wait patiently. At some point I hear the word “Professor” and all three heads turn and stare at me. Then the whispering and chatting continues. After a minute or so I hear the word “European” and the three heads turn again and stare at me.
Then the doc comes to me and asks me to follow him. The Egyptian doc who is two heads smaller than me goes first, I follow and behind me are my two Arabs in the thobes and headscarves. On the way the doctor takes two nurses with him. I’m asked to lie down on a bed, the two Arabs sit on the bed next to mine, the doc stands at the bottom of my bed and I have the two nurses on each side, one left and one right. They immediately start to examine me. The small-talk starts too. After a few minutes the show is over, the nurses disappear, my Arabs follow them out of the room, the doc stays with me for two more minutes and then I’m allowed to get up. I feel a bit dizzy and threaten to fall, but a nurse jumps out of nowhere and holds me. We go outside to the desk and there I see the treasurer how he throws a bundle of banknotes on the desk. My Arabs get a prescription and run to the pharmacy. I’m asked to sit until they come back. After two minutes they appear through the door with a bag full of meds and drive me home.

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Part 16

If you get a Job in KSA, you won't have to worry about accommodation. Your company will do this for you. If your job is in a major city, you'll get to live in a compound. Compounds are apartment complexes for westerners. These compounds can be of different size, but the flats have more or less the same size and are similarly equipped. If you are single or with a partner, you get to live in a one bedroom flat with living room, kitchen and bath. The size is approx. 50-60sqm. If you have your family with you, you'll get a bigger flat with more rooms to fit in your dears.
All flats are fully equipped with furniture, microwaves, washing machines, oven, etc. There is also a high speed internet connection and a cleaner who comes several times a week. The best is yet to come: you live rent-free! You don't even have to pay any bills. No council tax, no water and/or electricity bills, nothing.
Depending on the size of the compound, it can consist of flats and a garden only, or be bigger, greater, posher and offer you sheer luxury. There can be a swimming pool, indoor, outdoor or both, a billiard room, a gym, restaurant, supermarket, tennis court, football field and much more. There is also an underground car park and security guards all day round. All the luxury you have always dreamed about and were never able to have.
For some, such a compound is terrific, because you have everything and don't have to pay for it. And if you come from a rainy and cold northern country you will surely enjoy the sunshine every day. The drawback is that you live like in a ghetto, in a western community in an oriental country. You don't get to see much of the Arabs and their culture and you hardly mix with them.
In Ar'ar, we might be lucky or unlucky, depends on how you see it, we don't have such a posh and luxurious compound, but a simple building with flats. It's only a few of us here, that's why. We might have significantly less luxury, but for that, we live in the midst of the Arab community. Each of us has a flat of about 50sqm and it is fully furnished and it comes with a flat TV, double bed, air-con, etc. The cleaner comes six times a week! On the ground floor there is the landry room, with washing machines, dryers, ironing boards, etc. All for free. You only need to buy the powder. The internet connection is very, very slow and sometimes doesn't even work. We don't have an underground car park, but there's plenty of room to park your car in front of the building. And in the shed is enough space for bicycles. What we don't have is curtains in the bedrooms. That's a pain if you want to sleep a little longer on your days off. I make use of my sleeping mask and manage to sleep until lunchtime sometimes.

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                                                The entrance to my flat.

   Livingroom. TV receives over 1000 channels.

    Livingroom with kitchen in the back

                            Sink outside the bathroom

    Bedroom with no curtains.

   Bathroom

                             

Part 15

What do you do in a country where there is no cinema, no theatre, no opera, no clubs, no bars and where no concert stake place? Well, for one who comes from the western world and is used to the western lifestyle, it will be difficult to get used to the Arab way of life. For some it may come as a shock if they find out that nothing of the aforementioned exists in the kingdom. Others don’t notice it at first, but are surprised about it when they notice it later on at some point. People who are not averse to alcoholic beverages and like to have a beer or a glass of wine with their meal, will have a hard time. Saudi is in this respect a dry country. Alcohol is strongly prohibited and despite all stories and reports in various blogs, books and guides, there are no alcoholic beverages available in certain hotels for foreigners. This might be the case for some neighbouring countries, where westerners are able to find beer and wine in certain hotels, but not here in KSA. It is also strictly prohibited to import alcohol in any form. So if you take a bottle of whisky with you and get caught at the customs, a small sized Arab border official will appear out of nowhere, jump on on, throw you down, scream and shout something unintelligible in Arabic, and when you open your eyes again, you’ll find yourself in a dungeon on water and bread. Well, maybe not quite like that, but you’ll end up in prison.

It is not like that you have to give up on beer and forget its existence for the length of your stay, you can find non-alcoholic beer everywhere. Here I saw for the first time ever such a large selection of non-alcoholic beers. Brands we know from home, offer here a variety of beers in many different flavours, such as apple, lemon, raspberry, etc. that don’t exist back home. I have even seen non-alcoholic wine.

In your spare time you can go to cafés, in larger cities there are western chains like Starbucks, in restaurants, there are many chains here too, you could do sports, go for a walk in a park, go on a sightseeing tour, or go with the Saudis to the desert. There you can ride on camels, camp, stay overnight in a tent, have a BBQ, etc. Many Saudis spend their weekends in the desert. They pitch their tent and have a nice time with family or friends.

If you want to eat out, one of the most popular pastimes in the country, you really will be spoiled for choice. In Ar’ar however, there are no western chains. No golden M, no Burger King, no Pizza Hut, Applebee’s, etc. Here you can experience Arabia as you know it from picture books, 1001 nights sagas. Sure there is fast food in Ar’ar, but it is rather sold in kebab shops. No chippies here, my fellow Brits! The restaurants are divided into two groups. One with tables and chairs, and one without. Restaurants in Ar’ar are usually kept traditionally. Which means: no tables, no chairs, not even cutlery. You sit on the floor and eat with your hands and fingers. If you are not accustomed to eating with your fingers, you will have a hard time. I manage to eat pretty much everything with my fingers, except rice. This is something I’m still working on. That’s why I ask for cutlery and get some of plastic. My colleagues however eat with their hands and fingers. In the restaurants there are small booths with doors in which you sit in to eat. Of course you leave your shoes outside the booth. Depending on the restaurant, the walls are of different height and different material. They can reach up to the ceiling and be made of fabric or of brick and about half the size.

So it often happens that we see heads of our students peering above the walls when we are in a restaurant. Because us teachers are probably the only ones who speak English with each other, our students stop when they hear us. Of course they tell all the other students where their teachers are and so the entire school is immediately informed about which teachers are eating in which restaurant. And then we get those cheeky questions, like: “How was dinner at the … teacher?”

Inside the booth you sit on a carpet and lean on pillows. This way you eat in absolute privacy without any disturbing and/or annoying table neighbours. The waiter brings the food and places it on a paper table cloth which is spread on the carpet in the middle of the booth. The table cloth is usually coated with cling film.

Kabsa is being served. It is the national dish of the Arabs. What it is exactly and what it looks like can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabsa I am sick of it and can’t see that stuff anymore. Unfortunately it is being offered every single day in the cafeteria of the polytechnic. I refuse to take it and take whatever else there is, if there is anything else. Once I was late for lunch and the only thing left was Kabsa. So I took a plate of it against my will. Then the chef asked me:

“Do you like Kabsa?”

“The Kabsa-thingy, you can shove up your ****, but unfortunately I have no other choice today!” I replied in Bavarian dialect.

“Ha?” asked the chef.

“Oh, yes, I love it!” I replied with a big grin on my face.

The chef was happy and swung his ladle and put some more Kabsa on my plate. Great!

Well, there are restaurants offering Kabsa only. Others that have a normal menu, but serve on Friday early afternoon, straight after the morning prayers, only Kabsa. Thus it is sometimes hard to find something to eat. My Muslim brothers have no problem with it and can eat it every day.

The portions are huge in this country. Two people can easily be satisfied with one plate. That’s why we don’t order individual dishes for ourselves, but choose all together and place the food in the middle so everybody can taste everything. Camel meat is a specialty here. But you have to get used to the taste. It’s not for everybody. What you can’t find here is pork.

We eat out every weekend. It is very cheap to eat in a restaurant, that’s why we choose not to cook. In the popular Safa-restaurant you can dine with as little as two pounds. One can of PEPSI costs around 30p. Elsewhere it is a little more expensive. Prepare to pay four pounds. Once we went to a turkish restaurant, one of the most expensive in town. It was three of us and had a fantastic dinner with salads, meat, rice, chips, drinks, etc. and paid something like 16 quid inclusive tip. Together, not per person!

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 Fooling around in the Al Bustan restaurant (the most expensive in town) while waiting for the dinner

   FOOD!!!!

    Pool in the Al Bustan restaurant

   Chandelier

   What's left

    Waiter just got a good tip.

   Inside a booth in a restaurant

    The only tables of the restaurant

    Dessert

   Stylish ceiling

   Yummy!

    Entrance to the booth

    The restaurant from outside

    The Al Bustan cafe

   Me, tea total.

    My colleagues inside a booth in a different restaurant

                             Me in the same booth

    Booths

 Me having lunch in the SMP cafeteria

   Line up for some Kabsa

    Lunch