Theo of Arabia: 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.

This blog is available on Amazon:
Theo of Arabia ebook

Theo of Arabia paperback

We're having fun!