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!

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