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 7th 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
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