Back in the Kingdom

Yes, I know, I'm as surprised as you are. I'm back in the land of camels and bad driving. I gave Japan the old college try, but alas, after living on a coca cola diet and champagne salary, it was too hard to go back to a coca cola diet and coca cola salary. Not that Japan wasn't without it's charms--it lived up to it's reputation, but it occurred to me that I was getting a little long in the tooth to be scraping by month to month without putting anything away. It wasn't long before my employer sensed my discontent and we mutually agreed it would be best if we parted ways.

Since I was the cost of a plane ticket to Japan out of pocket anyway, I decided to do a little traveling. I spent a few days in Osaka and then flew to Kuala Lumpur. I spent the next couple months doing some soul searching as I made my way from Malaysia, into Thailand, Cambodia, and finally Vietnam (you can read about my escapades here: http://bradystravellog.blogspot.com/). Although my plan was originally to continue on westward into Burma, India and Nepal, by the time I got to Hanoi I felt travel weary and decided the best thing would be to take respite in Canada and look for a new job in the Kingdom. After all, my last contract had been the final stake to the heart of my student loan, so why not accrue a whole year in the kingdom's worth of savings?

And so, I came to spend the next three month in Canada, bouncing back and forth between Chilliwack, where my parents graciously endured me, and Vancouver where I would stay on the couches of assorted hooligans, such as my brother, who also graciously endured me. Friends and family in Grand Forks also graciously endured me. There was much enduring. It took about two months to finally find a contract and another month for my feet to hit the sand. Happily, I had time to see everyone who was worth seeing and got to spend some quality time with my parents. Was it providence giving me a chance to say goodbye to a Canada that I wouldn't see for years? Will I continue my expatriate lifestyle for the foreseeable future?

Al Hofuf is considerably larger than Rabigh. It's big enough to include all the modern amenities, but small enough that one with a vehicle and a little free time could be well enough acquainted with most of it's various places of interest. It's is, on the whole, a fairly forgettable city, dominated by vehicles, unfriendly to pedestrians, and  lined with endless drab apartment buildings and small shops, most bearing the hue of tobacco-stained teeth. Occasionally, here or there, a patch of green grass appears, and a good amount of palm-tree laden parks, where you can throw down a sheet and have a tea. There are three big malls and a railway station, where you can take a train to Riyadh or Dammam.

The school where I work, is owned by the National Industrial Training Institute. It is fifteen minute drive from my apartment, and quite outside of town. It has a highway on one side, and desert on the other. The campus is massive. There are for academic blocks. that are all adjoined, with technical training wings attached to both ends. I guess it to be about five hundred meters from one end to the other. At the moment, only two blocks are in operation, and already we have over sixty English and Maths instructors (there are, additionally, technical instructors). I don't bother getting lunch at the cafeteria, because it's takes fifteen minutes just to walk there and back to the teacher's room.

In order to keep this blog public I won't go into the sordid details about what I think about the way the school is managed and operates. I hope it will suffice to say that it's a total SNAFU. The students, while on the whole are moderately better than the ones I encountered in Rabigh, are again, on whole, still very poor students. There are, however, some very good students, and indeed, some very good classes...which to encounter are always a bit shocking.

The teachers are a good bunch. Or course, there are, as you would expect a fair number of odd and eccentric people (I don't exclude myself from either designation), but they all appear to be good-natured and well meaning. They are at various stages of their careers, with the youngest being, perhaps twenty five, and the oldest being perhaps sixty. They are mostly from The UK, and USA, with a few Canadians here and there. They are not the most social lot, but there is hope--a maths teacher and I have instigated Thursday night football (soccer) and it's proved to be quite popular.

I have found myself with a good deal of free time, and have resolved to make the most of it. My primary activities are: walking, going to the gym, meditating, reading (fiction in French, non-fiction in English), and studying Arabic and maths. I figure in the absence of women and alcohol, I might as well try to better myself, rather than falling into lesser vices, such as watching television, and playing video games. I sometimes miss the western lifestyle, but less often than one might think. Immersing myself in my hobbies is satisfying enough that I'm not too concerned about what my lifestyle is lacking.

That is not to say that I wouldn't love to leave the country. I have been here two months and I am eager to get out to Bahrain, Qatar, or the Emirates for a weekend. The trouble is, I have to first receive my iqama (residency card) and then apply for an exit/re-entry visa. Foolish me--I explicitly asked for an employment visa in order to get an iqama. Little did I know that with the alternative  (a business visa), the company would be obliged to fly me home every three months to have the visa renewed. The other advantage of the business visa is the ability to leave and re-enter the country at will. On the other hand, having an iqama will allow me to purchase a vehicle an more importantly, requires the company to give me a contract (which teachers on the business visa do not have).

The good  news is that serendipitously, all of my old chums are now working in Riyadh, at various institutions. One of whom, as well as an old friend from Korea are living on a compound, which ostensibly means I have access to alcohol inside of the kingdom. So Riyadh is only a short train ride away, should I need to get out of Al-Hofuf, take a break from the Saudi lifestyle and enjoy the company of some good friends.

So, that is, in broad strokes, my experience so far. Although, I do not intend to continue this blog in the same spirit that it was written in during my first year here (frequent postings, lots of pictures, and a style that attempted popular appeal) I intend to update this blog occasionally primarily for the sake of friends and family. I'll be taking the same approach as I did in this entry--longer pieces, without (or minimal) photographs. Until next time, salaam.












 

So Long and Thanks for All the Khapsa

It’s been nothing if not an eventful year. I carried on a long distance relationship for seven months only to have it implode upon that distance being closed. I had wild flings in the wake. I’ve seen France, Budapest (twice), Taiwan and Sri Lanka. I reunited with an old friend whom I haven’t seen in over ten years and met his wonderful family. I survived an entire year living in a strict Islamic theocracy, teaching some of the worst students I am ever likely to encounter anywhere. I’ve made new friends. I’ve picked up the basics of another language. I’ve experienced what it is like to be firmly middle-class, and have made enough money to pay off my student loan, at last. 

And now it’s time to go. 

Despite the adventure it is been, I am very happy to be moving on. I am looking forward to enjoying the liberties of my own country and Japan. But there are things I’m going to miss about Saudi Arabia. I’ll miss the evenings, which depending on the time of year, are either warm or cool, but are always good for walking. I’ll miss the cheap goods and services, and having more than enough money to buy whatever I want. I’ll miss the easy-going good-naturedness of Saudis. I’ll miss meeting people from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds that I usually don’t get to meet in Canada. I’ll miss studying and practicing Arabic. I’ll miss the weekend trips to Jeddah, Yanbu or the Economic City.  Most of all, I’ll miss my friends.

This last month, having the freedom to experience living here without the distraction of work, I think I’ve gotten some real insight into what it means to be Saudi. Although this country is probably the most strictly Theocratic place on Earth, outside of certain parts of Syria and Iraq, let me tell you, it’s only on the face of it. Young people here are just as wild and hungry for experience as young people in other parts of the world. They drink, they do drugs, watch movies and listen to music. They like to party and they have boyfriends and girlfriends. The only difference is that they are covert. It all has to be done carefully, in secret. 

Nor is the piety what you might expect from a county that is, on paper, one hundred per cent Muslim. As far as I can tell most Saudis do not pray five times a day—and some, I am sure, do not pray at all. Like in any country, there are good people there are bad people, and there are every shade of grey. As one might expect, depending on their own religious leanings, piety and quality of character don’t seem to have a direct relationship. There are pious Muslims that are wonderful, lovely people; and there are non-devout Muslims that are also wonderful, lovely people. Similarly, there are both devout and non-devout Muslims who are brutish and nasty.

Western media likes to paint a picture of Muslims in general as violent, irrational, freedom hating people, or at the very least, it focuses entirely on those Muslims that happen to be so. Of course, it’s true that there are these kinds of people all over the world, in every culture, in every religion. Even, as I am loathe to admit, within Buddhism. Of course, whenever a Muslim points out to me that in Myanmar, there are Buddhists, even Buddhist monks murdering Muslims, I am always quick to point out that these cannot be REAL Buddhists: that the first precept, even for lay followers is not to kill. Similarly, when the subject of the Islamic State, comes up in the office, they are always discredited for the same reason: real Muslims do not murder. Verses of the Quran are always cited to support this assertion. 

When crazy people storm into the offices of French cartoonists and shoot everyone inside, they don’t do it because they are “extremists”, they do it because they are crazy. Very, very few people within the Muslim community condone this kind of behaviour. I worked with a guy who, upon our first meeting told me I was going to go to hell for not believing in God and calls non-believers “infidels” behinds their backs. He gets into fights with the other Muslims over small matters of faith, doesn’t get along with anybody, and has threatened violence to several members of the staff. In short, he’s bat-shit crazy, and obsessed with the letter of Islam. But as zealous and mentally unstable as he is, I can’t imagine even him murdering people for his faith. It takes a rare bird indeed.

Saudi Arabia is a country that is changing quickly. Ten years ago people thought that women would never be seen walking around without head scarfs. But I’ve seen in numerous times—in King Abdullah Economic City (owned by Dubai investors), and even in the malls in Jeddah. 

Speaking of his highness, he does not appear to have much more time on this Earth, and his successor is likely to bring in more liberal legislation. Actually, King Abdullah himself has approved legislation that will, for the first time, make tourist visas available in Saudi Arabia. I don’t know, his decision may be motivated by him understanding the need to diversify the Saudi economy more than anything else. And granted: it is already easy to obtain visas for hajj and umrah.  None-the-less, it will open the county up to people of all walks of life, and with them, new perspective and new ideas.

To be perfectly honest, Saudis are in desperate need of a little insight into the way the rest of the world works—especially in the field of education. The quality of education here is shameful. Running a classroom here is a constant battle, and it’s exhausting. Frankly, after a while, you just stop giving a damn. A colleague confided in me today, “I’ve stopped doing all the things I used to try and make this a better place. Now, I do nothing, and nobody has noticed.” I could only nod.  The standards here are shockingly low.

I’m glad for having the experience to teach here, and I’ll be benefiting from the money I made for years, but I think it’s actually made me a worse teacher. Working here has made me complacent and lazy. I got paid very well, but there was zero accountability. Literally none of my students passed this last trimester. I tried. Oh God how I tried. But in the end, the utter incompetence of students who had only gotten to where they are because of cheating, coupled with an out-right refusal to learn on one side, and the incompetence of the administration, who refused to listen to, much less adapt things to instructor feedback made any hope of effectively English next to impossible.   

Which is one very big reason why I have decided to leave and teach in Japan.  I will be teaching adults. Adults who have had a proper education, and actually know how to learn. Gods be praised! Instead of spending classroom time reminding students to put their phones away, get their pens from their lockers, stop chatting while I’m giving instructions et cetera, I’ll be able to teach. I don’t care if I’m taking a fifty per cent pay cut—it’s going to be worth it. Also because I won’t be living in a country that thinks where I put my penis is government business.

So, it’s goodbye sand and palm trees; hello mountains and cherry blossoms. Goodbye camels and sweet dates; hello panda bears and sushi. Goodbye thobes, and shmougs; hello kimonos and baseball caps. Saudi Arabia, it’s been a slice, but it’s time for me to go. So long, and thanks for all the khapsa.

And thanks for all of you who have kept up with my blog this past year. Knowing people have been reading has kept me motivated to write. Doing so has enriched my life, and I hope it has in some way enriched yours.

Peace, Love, and Pizza

Brady  

The Penultimate Post?

T minus six days until lift-off...inshallah.
Boy, am I ready to get out of here. I haven't had a good night of sleep in five days or so. Evidently, my body has decided to protest Saudi Arabia, and is pretending I'm in Canada already. I don't get tired until twelve in the afternoon, and by the time twelve midnight rolls around, I'm no longer tired. Why would I be? That's lunchtime in Vancouver, after all.

I can't fix it with drugs. I went to one pharmacy to ask them for sleeping medication. They gave me antihistamines. Not surprisingly, they didn't help. I went to a second pharmacy, and they gave me actual sleep medication made with Valerian root. I took a double-dose, but no luck. My usual go-to, melatonin, which is available over the counter in every drug-store in Canada, is no where to be found, much less prescribed.

I've been up all night trying to sleep, and too tired during the day to do much of anything. I imagine, this is what purgatory is like.

Come to think of it, this past month has been rather purgatory-like. Since coming back from my final vacation in Budapest, due to a lack of new student admissions, I have been allowed to fulfill the remainder of my contract relaxing at home. I know, poor me, right? The problem, is I'm stuck in Rabigh. Christmas and New Year's came and went. There were no celebrations, no merry-making, and indeed, barely a mention of the holiday at all.

It wasn't that depressing--I have only spent two Christmases at home in the past five years, and even when at home, my family generally doesn't make that big of a deal out it. I went for kebab with my colleague, Dave, one of the few non-Muslims I know in Rabigh. Afterwards, I went home. I probably had tea later with friends. Purgatory.

Indeed, discounting the vacations, that's really been what this year has been like--a big old meh. These days, when trying to go to sleep, I just try to focus on the void. The void is empty, it's big beyond imagining, and incredibly peaceful. But I can never hold my attention on it for long, and I end up laying in bed for eight fucking hours, getting more and more frustrated. I'm not ready for this bland existence. I don't want my life to be meh anymore. I want to have a little color in my life. Even if that leads to more hang-overs and heart-aches, so be it, at least live will have some flavor. Next year, I want to put up a Christmas tree, and later, puke over somebody's balcony. They have Christmas in Japan, right?

I had hoped to be filling these meh days with scuba dives. The one thing I really wanted to achieve before leaving Rabigh was getting my PADI license. Even though a group of us started in November, we have yet to finish, and were I to leave things in the hands the others, I would never get my license. So after much cajoling, I've attempted to get it done without the group. I've met privately with the instructor to write the final exam, and have arranged with him to do my final dives this Thursday and Friday--my final two days in the country. I've been pushing for this for months, and if it actually get's done, it's going to be right on the wire.

Similarly, I feel obliged to harass HR for my plane ticket home. After much haranguing, I have obtained my final exit visa, and form for my final payment remittance...but I've got less than a week left in the country, and still no ticket. It's imperative that I acquire it on time as my passport expires only a few days after my end of contract date and every day that I'm stuck here, in purgatory, is another day I won't be able to spend with friends and family before shipping off to Japan in February.

Give me heaven, or give me hell, just get me out of here, Allah.

A Saudi Picnic

These past couple of weeks have predictably making me stir crazy. I've been spending too much time at home and too much time playing video games. Despite having made a schedule produced explicitly to keep me in good health mental, physically and emotionally, I really needed to get out of Rabigh for a while. Thus it came as a boon when a coworker suggested that we hold a picnic at a place he knows, just out of town.
In three cars a group of about ten of us made our way out to Mathew's mysterious campground. In the forty minutes or so it took to get there, I was astounded by the diversity of the landscape--no really! Here it was flat and sandy, then covered with shrubs, then it was hilly, then covered in boulders with little trees popping up here and there. Eventually, we ended up in a a small valley, with a shallow (but far-reaching) lake. It was a bona-fide  desert oasis. There were flocks of goats, and even camels! We had our picnic under a copse of palm trees. 

Some years ago, I read the short novel, Ismael, in which the author suggests that this part of the world was once covered in lush greenery, and that it is now barren because of man's unsustainable habits. The trip was a reminder that things really do grow in Arabia, especially in this western region--in fact tenaciously. I found myself wondering just how correct the author of Ishmael really was.

I mean, once thing is for sure: Arabia was once covered in vegetation, and inhabited by a massive amount of wildlife. We know this because of the enormous subterranean seas of oil. The only question is if there weren't endless herds of goats stripping the landscape of plant life, would the peninsula look much different?

I'm guessing it would. As the colleague who organized the trip mentioned, there used to be lions here, but the natives killed them all off. So, if there are no predators, even if there were herds of goats, sheep, camels, or whatever that weren't counted as livestock, they would not linger in any given place. Instead of stripping the ground of vegetation, they would eats some, then move on, propelled forward by predators, spreading seeds, and fertilizing the ground as they go.

Modern man has gone a step further. A few meters from where we sat to have our picnic, one could find, here and there, among the hundreds of discarded water bottles, shot-gun shells, and the corpses of massive hawks. Clearly not shot for food, as their entire corpses were intact--but purely for the fun of it. Sometimes I think Saudis have a deep seeded resentment for all living things and are doing all they can to erase life in the peninsula altogether.

None the less, it was a nice place to picnic. I was excited to see camels so close to our picnic site, and got quite close to one in order to take its picture. Evidently, it became very curious of me as it began walking towards me then following me back to the picnic site. I was a little alarmed, until one of my colleagues approached and petted the animal. It was docile, but decided to turn away when it got closer to the group of us. 

When the sun began to set, a few of us decided to hike around the surrounding area awhile. The ground was soft and muddy for several meters where the water had recently receded. I avoided the soft ground by walking on an elevated ridge, and then hiking up one side of the valley. There was a plateau on top, and I was amazed to see that around the jagged rocks thereupon, spouted beautiful, bright green grass. The view was really nice. I could see the water stretch onwards as far as the eye could see towards the north.

We left shortly after I came down from the plateau.  The excursion was brief, but pleasant, and for a while Arabia didn't seem like such an inhospitable environment. It was a welcome break.