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  

All About The Teaching Environment and Getting Paid

Recently, a reader asked me some very valid questions, which I am sure are on many an ESL teacher's mind who may be reading this blog. Today, I will answer some of those questions, in particular those about the teaching environment.

Firstly, the classrooms. My classrooms is some 125 square feet, which isn't huge, but not bad for the task, since there are only 15 students on the roster, and very rarely do more than ten show up at a time. In my particular class room, there is a large whiteboard one wall, and another is used for a digital projector. I sit at a desk with a computer, and the students sit in chairs with flaps that fold out to hold their books. The setup is a bit different from class to class. In some rooms there are e-podiums or smart boards for the teachers, and in some the students have desks. It just depends.

In the English foundation program, which I teach, our primary coursebook is Touchstone. We are free to teach the material as we see fit. We can bring in new material, skip stuff in the book, or whatever. As long as the content gets covered, it's all good. We teach other material, but we can skip over most of it if there isn't time. The main thing is that we teach the Touchstone books, and a course in study skills. The students only get graded on those two courses.

The trainees are great guys but many of them are terrible students. So, despite the fact that they are in their late teens to early twenties, a lot of classroom management goes on. You can read more about the particulars in my recent post about the students here.

My co-workers are a really great group of guys. The youngest is in his mid-twenties, and the eldest is perhaps in his early fifties. Most of them are from the United States, Canada, Britain or Jordan. Many of them speak Arabic, and many (although there is no absolute overlap) are Muslim. None of them has ever tried to convert me to Islam, and all are tolerant of my choice of religion. Nearly everyone speaks English at the institute.

Working hours are 7:30 to 3:40. Our salaries are based on twenty-four contact hours per week. We get paid overtime for anything beyond that at a rate of 1/100th of our basic salary per hour. The rest of that time is technically office hours, although we may eat breakfast and lunch at the school canteen if we like. If we need to get business done off campus, the administration is usually really good about letting us go. 

We are on a trimester system, and we get time off every three months. We only teach class nine months out of the year. The rest of the time is dedicated to preparation, staff development and vacation time. We get a lot of vacation time. Exactly how much, it just depends, but it's a lot more than in Korea, for example. We also get two weeks of national holidays off. Most, if not all time off is paid.

My company in particular is very good about paying staff on time. I've heard about there being issues at some other institutes, but  ESL schools in KSA make a good deal of money and not getting paid on time is the exception, rather than the rule. We get paid in Saudi Riyals which are deposited directly into our Saudi bank accounts, or if we have yet to set those up, we are paid in cash. (Riyals, of course.)

We can, of course wire money into our home bank accounts. We can do this online without going to the bank.

Hopefully that answered some of the pressing questions some of you had. In the next episode, I will discuss accommodation! 

Arabian Students

Up until now, I haven't written much about the actual working experience, so I'll try to remedy that with the next couple of entries. Today, I'll talk a bit about the students. 
I am teaching male Saudi students. I am teaching them English at a vocational school as a precursor to their technical training. They come from all over Saudi Arabia. They are well-off, and they are poor. They are dark-skinned and fair. They are nineteen to twenty-two. They have very different attitudes and backgrounds, but one thing is common to almost all of them: they are not good students. 

I wish I could explain to them in great detail how lucky they are. I would tell them that the Bangladeshis that clean the school grounds did not have the luxury of a college level education. Hell, some of them might not have had the luxury of a secondary education. And now they are working very hard in the hot sun picking up the water bottles that students throw on the ground, half-finished, because they can't be bothered to walk ten feet to a garbage can. I wish I could explain how obtuse it is of them to whine and complain to have to come to class, and do some actual work.

Some people bitch and moan about having to pay back their student loans. I'm not one of them. I think I got a pretty fair shake. I'm happy to have had the opportunity to get tertiary education at all. I think having had to take out loans made me take university a lot more seriously than I otherwise would have. The loans made dropping out not an option. So I studied hard to make sure I would get my degree, and get a job that payed well enough to pay those loans off.

The students I'm teaching have their school paid for by their companies. You see, they aren't just students; they are trainees. They have been hired by companies to go to school in return for service after their training is complete. So these guys get free room and board, free education, and they even get a monthly stipend. The Saudi government has wisely decreed that big companies must have a minimum number of Saudi employees on the payroll. Thus companies are giving out these amazing opportunities to Saudi students all over the place.

Despite all of this, most of the students do not take their training seriously at all. It is commonplace for students to: come late to class, skip class, sleep in class, talk over the teacher, play on their cellphones, forget their books, and not do their work. In short, they are more like elementary school students than college students. They have no idea how privileged they are, and they take their situation for granted.

Now, there are a few well behaved, smart and dedicated students, but they are few and far in between. I do my best for these guys, but unfortunately, I have to spend a bare minimum of 15% of class time on classroom management, so they're not getting the education they deserve.

So, that's the bad. The good is that Saudi students are incredibly friendly, good-natured and easy going. If they see you around campus, or around town, they are always happy to say hi and chat. They are have good senses of humor, and are generally really good guys. So, while as students they perform very poorly, their social skills are very good.

Unfortunately, they often try to use their charm to make you alter their grades and mark them present, when they are really absent.

 

Culture Shock

Although I am getting to be something of a veteran  traveler, foreign cultures still surprise me on occasion. Sometimes they make me confused or amused. Sometimes they get me frustrated. But good or bad a bit of culture shock is the price that you pay for moving to a country like Saudi Arabia.

 

One of the most immediately obvious differences between Saudi culture and my own are people's driving habits. Saudis (and expats in KSA), tend to think they are the best drivers in the world. They are not. Drivers here speed. If the sign says seventy, don't be surprised if you see someone driving one hundred forty or over. In big cities like Riyadh, there are cameras that will register your license and automatically send you a speeding ticket. Unfortunately, here in Rabigh, on the fringes of civilization, no such futuristic technology is employed.  Besides the excessive speeding, motorists tend to pay little or no attention to pedestrians--a disconcerting reality in a city without any sidewalks. I was nearly run over a couple of weeks ago by a man in an SUV, going to quickly around a corner, into the wrong lane of traffic. The worst part: I believe he saw me and just expected me to jump out of the way.

My home country is largely atheist, whereas KSA is completely Muslim. As I am beginning to see ever the more clearly, Saudi culture is so infused with Islam that is impossible to imagine what it might be like without Islam. Wahhabism is the style of Islam practiced in KSA. It is very strict. Muslims are expected to pray five times a day. Dating is not allowed. Drinking and taking drugs are not allowed; and women must be covered when out in public. When all of these factors combine, they culminate a totally different social experience.

People don't go out to socialize the way we do in the west. I don't know about elsewhere in KSA, but in Rabigh, there are no cafes (although well paid expats like myself will hang out in hotels). There are no cinemas anywhere in Saudi Arabia, and there are obviously no bars. There are many specialty stores, and there are restaurants, so most of socialization in city centers tends to focus around shopping and eating. There are a few parks here and there, and the beach is very popular. The common social experience here seems to be more of a long, protracted event, relaxing on the beach, camping, with close friends or family, rather than going downtown for a night out with friends.


One of the most difficult things for me to adjust to thus far has been dealing with the shop closures during the four o' clock prayer (asr), the six-thirty prayer (maghrib) and the eight 'o clock prayer (isha). Work finishes at three-forty, and by the time I get downtown it's four. Most of the banks close at four thirty or four forty-five, but the prayer lasts until four-thirty, so the few banks that are left open, attract massive queues. So, there is a window between four-thrity and six thirty, when I can eat or do shopping, and after that, there is a window between six forty-five and eight. After maghrib, shops stay open quite late, but that's little help when you have to get up at six in the morning. Despite the insistence of one of my colleagues, shops have to close during prayer time, or they will get a visit from the police.

Saudis pray hard, but do they work hard? The consensus seems to be resounding "no". KSA is a welfare state and most Saudis seem to do quite well, despite the fact that it's (relatively) rare to actually see a Saudi working. So who runs the shops, sweeps the sidewalks, and builds the buildings? A massive contingent of foreign workers from places like the Philippines, India and Bangladesh. Engineers and skilled tradesmen come in from places like Japan, Korea, Spain and Germany; and educators come from all over. From what I've noticed, Saudis predominantly occupy administrative positions...although its also common to see them working as freelance taxi drivers in Rabigh, at least. 

Because the ratio of foreign workers to native Saudis is so high, the government has implemented legislation requiring employers to have a baseline of  Saudis on the payroll. I've heard stories that some companies will put a Saudi on the payroll, expect no work from him, and just allow him to come by every month and pick up his cheque. I'm a little skeptical, but if I take my students as a clue, I can see it happening. My students (trainees), get hired by companies, then are sent to school to learn English and technical skills to prepare them for their future positions. Their room and board is paid for, and they are given a monthly stipend. Some of them are hard-working, keen to learn, honest and intelligent. The majority, however, possess only one or two of  those qualities. They are for the most part smart guys, but laziness is the rule instead of the exception. This, I'm told, is the legacy of a lack-luster education system. Contrary to my own education, the one Saudis get doesn't seem to teach them about environmental stewardship, either.

Having come directly from Vancouver, where there is a garbage can on every block, recycling is commonplace, and litter is met with contempt, I'm astounded at the low quality of waste management here. If you buy even a bottle of water at the store, they will put it in a bag, which you are expected just to throw on the ground, along with the bottle, when your are done with that. Foreign workers clean the streets and haul the waste off to some central location, but outside the city the garbage never gets cleaned up. People treat county like one big garbage dump. Perhaps it is needless to say, there is no recycling program in Rabigh.Unlike some of my colleagues, I do see a lot of beauty in the environment here--but too often, that beauty gets glossed over, by garbage.

So, there are the challenges, but I don't want to get too caught up in the bad. It's not my purpose to dwell on the negative, only to point out some of the differences because it's interesting. And actually, there are a lot of positives here as well, which I will write about in a future post.