Iqamamama Sakakaka

Good afternoon, infidels. Sorry I’ve been neglecting my blog, treating it like a Saudi restaurant owner treats his Bangladeshi employees – with utter disdain. It’s not that life here doesn’t offer a great deal of excitement or change (a lie), it’s just I’ve had the motivation of a slug. Anyway, I digress; I’m back with a couple of things to tell you.

Some good news to start off with, I’ve received my Iqama (working visa). That means I can open a bank account, leave the country (go on holiday), and walk the streets legally. April 6^th is the start of the 10 day Spring break and I’m planning on going to Jordan for a few days. It’s only 3 hours away by car, it’s supposed to be beautiful, it’s way less oppressive than Saudi Arabia and most importantly it sells delicious, legal, alcohol! I’m gonna check out Amman, the dead sea, and I might even factor in a trip down to Petra for a day or two if I’m feeling “cultural”. Most of the teachers working here have been there before and they all love it, the general consensus seems to be that it’s their favourite of the Middle-Eastern countries.

Teaching has officially stopped until next term (April 16^th) which is nice, and now we’re thick in the midst of exam week. Today we let the young Arab men show off their oral skills (lol) during the speaking exams. They ranged from the retarded – “my fathermother iz blay football becauz last holyday I go teecher no good” – to the surprisingly gifted. After a morning spent listening to incoherent nonsense and awkward silences I got to interview some of Craig’s students (the second strongest class in the University). They all got 20 out of 20 except for a couple who had stutters; I was professional and managed to contain my laughter. Tomorrow we help the bilingual elementary teachers invigilate their classes, and then on Wednesday (Arabic Friday) all the reading, writing and listening exams take place. We have to mark all of the exams on Saturday (Arabic Monday), and then, in terms of work load, we’re completely finished for the term. However, for some unknown reason we still have to come into work for the following four days before our holiday starts. It’s pointless, and it’s slightly annoying, but at the end of the day we’ll be getting paid to sit around, use the internet, relax, shop and go for lunch, so I can’t really complain. I’ll have no excuse not to update my blog then (not that my current burden of two and a half hours a day was much excuse in the first place).

The social butterflies of Al Jouf (Darren, Craig and Oyin) have put their heads together and this weekend there’s plenty going on. On Wednesday night there’s the long overdue Irish night, to celebrate St. Paddy’s day. Then on Thursday we have the first ever Al Jouf Infidel Olympics! I didn’t have enough clout to get on the AJIO organisational committee so I don’t know too many details right now, but I promise I’ll write about it and add some photos, after hopefully winning a gold or two for villa 16. Insha’Allah. Speak soon x

Better think of your future

I've been chronically lazy recently with regards to updating my bloginho. I promise I'll increase my efforts soon, but for today you'll have to settle for a song I've been listening to, in the sun, on the compound. Enjoy...

Carlton finds a dead body, the King gets his wallet out, and I get my tan on

Just on the back of a surprise three day weekend thanks to his generousness King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz. Mohammed (the compound manager) sent me a message late Friday (Arabic Sunday) night saying we didn’t need to go into work the next day, as the King had declared a national holiday (the second time that’s happened in the last fortnight). At first I thought it was a wind up, but after phoning him to clarify, and checking the internet to be certain, I was delighted to find out it was true! We’d spent Friday sampling the latest batch of joy juice and I wasn’t exactly looking forward to teaching the next day, so it was perfect timing.

Perhaps fearing an uprising in the same vein as we’ve seen in other Middle Eastern countries recently, and possibly influenced by a number of protests that took place in Jeddah, KSA, the King has decided to butter his people up. In addition to this off-the-cuff national holiday, the King has pledged a vast amount of money to those working and unemployed in Saudi Arabia. According to Arab News (the biggest English language newspaper in the region), the King will dish out 500 billion Saudi Riyals (that’s $150b or £85b). That’s billions not millions! This vast offering will be shared between those working in the public sector (the majority of Saudi’s), and also Saudi nationals looking for work. This week he’ll give a bonus of two months’ pay to those with public sector jobs. For example, my friend who works for the oil company Aramco will be receiving an extra $6000 (US dollars) this month on top of his normal $3000 (tax free, of course) salary. The public spending does not stop there, however, with huge sums of money being invested in housing and public buildings such as mosques. This is a smart move by the King in my opinion; he’s seen a trend of revolt developing and wants to nip it in the bud before the seeds of revolution are even sown. The amount of money is the thing that surprises me most, I didn’t realise Saudi Arabia had such enormous reserves. As a foreign worker I don’t think I’ll benefit financially from these new measures, but if I do you’ll be the first to know about it (if I receive a $9000 in my next pay check I might even get a King Abdullah tattoo).

In other news, two of the teachers, Carlton and Nick, went for a jog near the compound yesterday, and found a dead body! This chilling discovery wasn’t as sinister as you may imagine, as there was no blood at the scene, and it looked like the old Saudi man they found had died of natural causes, but it still must have been a disturbing sight nonetheless. It was a scorching hot day and the old man may well have died of a heart attack, his walking stick was a few feet away and he was lying a couple of metres from the road as if he was sleeping. According to Nick the police were typically unorganised and unhelpful but took things more seriously once they discovered he was a Saudi and not an Arab from another country. Racism lives on in the Royal Kingdom.

In less surprising/shocking news it was a nice, relaxing weekend. The weather was beautiful and I spent a lot of time playing football, watching football, talking about football, playing volleyball, listening to music and sun bathing. I’m dark now, seriously dark, I’ll be bordering on Sudanese by the end of the summer. That is, of course, apart from my thighs, which unfortunately will always be whiter than Simon Cowell’s teeth. This is the final week of revision for the students before the mid-term exams, soon it’ll be the April holiday and the swimming pool volley ball season will truly commence (as will the ‘Al Jouf Infidel Olympics’ – more on that soon…). A lot of things to look forward to and be grateful for, but none more so than the fact that every month spent here is a month closer to my return to Cidade Maravilhosa. Ate la, galera!

عاش الملك

Party like it’s 199… nah

I don’t get bored easily, in fact, I’ve been known to suggest that only boring people get bored (a bit of an arrogant suggestion to be honest, implying that I’m too interesting to suffer from boredom). However, I will never say that again after Monday night!

Watching women’s football, train spotting, being stuck in traffic on the M25 armed with only a cassette player and Cliff Richard’s greatest hits – all riveting compared to the drivel we were forced to endure at the prince’s “palace”. We sat in the corner of a giant, non-descript, room, without the food and drink that had been promised to us, and to make things worse it was freezing cold, unusual for this time of year and this part of the world. We then proceeded to watch and feign interest for four and a half hours whilst the prince and an endless line of his subjects discussed, about as unenthusiastically as humanly possible, in Arabic, something I didn’t understand a word of. All the teachers that don’t live on the compound lasted about two hours before they sneaked out. The rest of us weren’t so fortunate; we arrived before 8pm and didn’t call it a night until half past 12. I shouldn’t really say ‘we’, considering half an hour before the end, Nick, Mikail and I made a break for freedom with one of Nick’s students. He dropped us home, leaving the event half an hour before it finished, and even took us to a restaurant on the way back and bought us dinner (a Saudi custom). It was a silver lining to an evening that was dry, even by Saudi standards.

Never mind, if you work less than 3 hours a day you can’t complain too much if you have to do something like this once in a while. It’s the start of the swimming pool volley ball season this weekend, so I’m told, and there’s talk of taking quad bikes into the desert. To quote an old Arabian proverb – “what doesn’t bore you to death, makes you a stronger more patient infidel” (I just made that up).

From Jouf with love, Ben x

microsoft paint - the poor man's photoshop

Sixteen in the clip and one in the hole

R.I.P Nate Dogg. Last night he passed away, so today he's on the laptop, he's on the ipod, and he's on repeat..

"If you know like I know, you don't wanna step to this"

Sandstorm

courtesy of American Dean. These pics are crazy! If you look at them whilst listening to this you'll feel like you were actually there...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYxT9GM0fQ

Taken in Riyadh, Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 2010

The Prince of Parties

I've been a lazy Arab recently and it’s been a while since I've posted, but now the Saudi weekend is over and I’m back at Uni with time to burn and internet that actually works, I’ll give you a little update.

All of the male teachers have been invited to go for dinner with the prince of Al Jouf at his palace tomorrow. I’m quite excited, but according to a couple of the guys that have been before, it’s a pretty boring affair. Standing round, shaking hands and waiting for hours for the prince to arrive before eating. Obviously no alcohol or girls, but I wasn’t expecting a night out with Charlie Sheen. At least the food will be good, and we get half a day off work to get ready, because we all need six and a half hours to make ourselves presentable.

In other news we had a pub crawl at the compound this weekend. Instead of pubs we used villas; instead of nice, legal alcohol we used homebrew (“joy juice”). It’s easy to make; just mix fruit juice, yeast and sugar and let it ferment for at least 10 days. Although it sounds simple the people who’ve been here longer make it a lot better than the new guys! I haven’t tried yet, I’m still at the sampling stage. The villa crawl kicked off at Craig and Alana’s house with beer pong, where Richard and I won the gold for team England. After that we went to Oyin and Richard’s villa, they’d decorated it like a British pub; a projector was showing the football, there was a dart board, a lot of booze and 90’s music. The next stop was Teri’s house, a more civilised affair where we ate and had a few drinks before moving on to mine and Nick’s place (which Darren had supplied with copious amounts of joy juice, and decorated). The previous three villas had looked incredible; the hosts had obviously put time and money into making them look the part. So I was glad people were too drunk to judge by the time they reached our villa! Our theme was the 60’s, the summer of love, and I’d made a playlist to fit and dusted off the speakers. Everyone was given a flower to wear, we got the shisha going and we had a couple of drinking games lined up. The 60’s if you were unemployed might have been a more fitting theme if you compared our villa to the previous three. Regardless, the music went down really well, everyone was dancing and the drinking games were successful. The final stop was Liz and Andrew’s villa, which they’d turned into a nightclub. You needed to be on the guestlist to get in; luckily everyone made the cut, and inside there were disco lights, a giant sound system, a makeshift bar and 25 litres of joy juice. The Canadian couple had been doing some serious brewing! By the time we’d reached the infidel night club a few people had dropped out, but the remaining hard core had a great time, dancing like idiots, unfortunately all documented by the sober Elvan – videos I certainly won’t be posting on here.

The next day was spent without internet as it had completely gone down all over the compound. So I dragged myself up from my hangover (after watching a couple of films) and went to play volleyball in Oyin’s garden next door. I then watched a couple of couple of movies before hitting the hay early. The thought of getting up at 6:15 on a Saturday morning will never sit well with me.

Speak soon x

الكفار هم العطشى

I'm not afraid to get sand on my Tuxedo

courtesy of Eck the Libyan refugee

Olha que coisa mais linda

Rio Carnival started yesterday. I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be. The biggest party in the world in the best city in the world. In honour of this, I'll reminisce from my dusty corner of the globe and post some pictures from my time in cidade maravilhosa.

Saudades de vocês...

 abençoado por Deus
e bonito por natureza, mas que beleza....

e, finalmente, o amor da minha vida!

See you in 2012 x

Top 5 songs to listen to in the Desert

Put these on your iPod, turn the volume up to 11, get on your camel and ride…

I wanted Fools Gold, but "Sony Music has blocked this in your area". Racists. Never mind, they're both class tracks that'll keep you going in your search for cactus juice.

One of my favourite songs regardless of what terrain I'm traversing. The solo that starts at 1:19 is particularly good. It's pretty windy in Saudi, but I'm pretty sure the wind cries Allah here. If it cried Mary it would probably be in big trouble with the Mutawwa'în.

I love the video for this song - robbing a bank with guitars, stealing music instead of money. I had to have one song on this list that mentioned fire, it was either this or Johnny Cash. Apparently it can hit 50 degrees here in the summer, can't wait for that..

A relatively unknown classic from Sam Cooke. This tune doesn't appear on many of his popular compilation albums, but it's probably my favourite. "I might as well be ship wrecked in the middle of the sea", life isn't that bad in the compound, but it is remote.

An obvious choice. "I've been to the desert on a horse with no name, it felt good to get out of the rain". It sure as hell does! I despise the English winter. Although I'm sure by the height of summer here I'll be singing a different tune, gagging for rain and living in the swimming pool. 10 points for anyone who can guess where I first heard this.

Working in the Kingdom

The alarm goes at quarter past six, gets snoozed a couple of times before I drag myself from the bed to the shower to the kitchen to the bus. The other 20 male teachers are there, from the States, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Nigeria and Brazil, most of them keeping themselves to themselves, listening to their iPods. A couple of them talk; the louder, American ones, unsurprisingly. The topics range from martial arts techniques to Arabic language, my mind quickly wanders as I watch the sun rise over the desert. We arrive at the University at twenty to eight; I don’t have a lesson until ten so I go for breakfast at the Lebanese place round the corner which sells Falafel wraps for 1 riyal (18 pence). It’s hard to spend money here, even if you try.

“Teacher, teacher, teacher. You have wife teacher? How many? You have car teacher? What car you have? What year is car teacher? You smoke?”

The students are excited to have a new teacher, and I get bombarded with questions. Some students turn up late, apparently an act of god driven fate rather than laziness on their behalf. I soon find out that I’ve been given one of the weaker groups, when I walk around the class and look at their answers to a reading exercise. An example:

Question: How many guests were there at the Bush wedding?

Answer: Spain

Believe it or not, “Spain” was not the answer I was looking for. I let out an inward sigh and realise that it’ll be a struggle teaching the pre-intermediate syllabus we’ve been given to students who can barely hold a pen. However, despite the occasional struggle to get across some of the simplest aspects of the English language to unmotivated students who are getting paid just to turn up, I certainly can’t complain. The students are friendly, we (the teachers) have no targets to meet, we don’t have to hand in lesson plans, and the company I work for prides itself on ‘never firing anyone, ever’. Add to that the tax-free wage, generous holidays, and the fact I only teach two, 1 hour 45 minute classes per day, and it’s a pretty sweet deal.

Normally this is the point where the blogger lets his readers know of his angst and frustration at working in a system which isn’t particularly beneficial to the disillusioned students, but I won’t lie and pretend I’m here to drastically change the lives of young Saudi Arabian men. I’m here to do my job, collect my pay check, smile and be the blue-eyed, white-faced image of development in Al Jouf that my employers want me to be, even if it’s a veil that masks the flaws in their educational process. The students that pass this year will go on to study and become business executives and directors, the ones that fail will become policemen, and they’ll all still be much higher in the food chain than the massive third-world immigrant workforce here that keeps the country afloat. Due to the relatively high living standards enjoyed by Saudi’s (by Middle Eastern standards), and due to the tight grip of religion, you won’t see an uprising in the vein of the recent Libyan or Egyptian ones in the foreseeable future. Saudi Arabia is a very modern country, with ancient attitudes, many of which haven’t changed since the 7^th century. You can make a futile attempt to try and change them, and the system that supports them, or you can work within that system, earn your money without any fuss and then, in my case, run back to Brazil with a healthy bank account, a full wallet and a decent tan.

I’ll leave you with the paragraph that my star student, Ahmed, wrote for the week 1 quiz…

Hello Mr Ben

I am happey. However I am tall. I have 3 sistar 2 brothar.

I am 160m long. I like teecher and quiz.

Thank you. Ahmed J