A Quick Visit Home

Three of us left the University for Baha airport around midday; I was bound for SA, one colleague for USA and the other for Qatar. My flight was at 1700 so it was quite a long wait before I got going on the first leg of my trip which was to Riyadh. We got to Riyadh about 1830 and took a leisurely stroll from domestic arrivals to international departures. Leisurely because my connecting flight was only leaving at 0430. 

When I went to check in I was told that I couldn't check in before 0100, so that meant I had 6 hours to kill. I also couldn't enter the transit lounge and there was no waiting area for passengers who were waiting to check in. We (Alan and I) ended up in a small coffee shop and had to pay SR10/hour to sit in the "TV lounge". The TV lounge was a two-seater couch and two armchairs in a semi-circle around the TV and about 2 meters from it.

While we were there a football match was being broadcast - KSA vs Iraq. I wasn't particularly interested, but most of airport security were enthusiastic fans and were gathered around the TV. Some had brought their own chairs and there was lots of excited chatter and cheering. An unexpected window of opportunity for smugglers and other baddies!

Eventually one 'o clock came around and I drifted back to the check-in counters. I was disheartened to see that the queue waiting to pass through security had grown from zero to about 100 passengers while I was languishing in the TV lounge sipping Pepsi. While I was gazing despondently at the crawling queue a Pakistani gentleman offered (for a small consideration) to help me. He grabbed my bags, forced them onto the conveyer and then pushed me through the metal detector. Total time taken: about 1 minute. Of course if I had been in the queue and seen someone else pushing through like that I would have been seriously pissed off, but since I was the one benefitting...

In due course I boarded my Ethiopian Air flight. As I was making my way down the aisle a hostess asked me if I would mind sitting by the emergency exit since I spoke English. In case of emergency I would be asked (in English) to open the exit and see the other passengers safely off  the potentially blazing and toxic-smoke filled aircraft. I was OK with that but I was a bit alarmed at how easily the door could be opened in flight. For all she knew I might have been flying to get my regular ECT treatment to alleviate my suicidal depression and irrational behavior! I considered telling her that I would only open the emergency exit if the voices told me to do so just to see how she'd respond, but I resisted the temptation.

My thoughts were interrupted by a commotion on the opposite side of the cabin. The same hostess was stridently explaining to three Arab gentlemen that they would have to move from the emergency exit because they could not speak or understand English. Since she was doing the explaining in English, she was not enjoying much success in getting her point across. Her frustration made her all the shriller and she declaimed loudly that the safety of the entire aircraft and the hundreds of passengers depended on these three gentlemen vacating their booked seats. Eventually someone translated and they sulkily found other seats while replacement, English speaking passengers took their place.

Once we were airborne and the set-belt light was turned off, a large Arab gentleman required these three passengers to vacate their seats. It turned out he wanted to pray and needed space to bow and prostrate himself. I watched this with some alarm; I know we tend to stereotype, but when you are on an international flight and you see an Arab praying and prostrating himself, potentially making peace with his maker, one does feel a certain amount of unease.

A bit later breakfast was served. This was a warm, grayish-brown sticky paste and a few thinly sliced pieces of potato. All the potato slices were stuck to each together and the bottom one was stuck to the container. Trying to prise them loose with my springy, plastic knife resulted in me almost flicking the entire potato cluster-bomb across the cabin to where the three original passengers had reclaimed their seats.

We landed at OR Tambo on time and I quickly passed through immigrations and customs. I always feel a bit uneasy when the drug-sniffing Bassets are around my luggage or the customs officials give me the evil eye as I pass them in the "nothing to declare" line. I know I'm innocent but what if the dogs pay me too much attention? I always say things like "what a clever boy" (to the dog, not the handler) to try to establish cordial relations with the sniffer.

I passed into the arrivals hall and was a bit deflated to see nobody was there to meet and greet. I drifted around grumpily for a while and finally sat in a quiet corner. There I tried different sims from different service providers in different phones to try and find a winning combination so that I could ascertain whether I was, in fact, expected by my loved ones. It turned out that I was expected and an hour later I was on my way and all was well.

I only had five days in Johannesburg and I didn't see all the people I wanted to see, meet all the people I wanted to meet or go to all the places I wanted to go. Nonetheless I had a magic visit where I got to see green plants, trees and grass, had a cat sleep with me, spoke to women AND saw their faces. I went to pubs and ate in restaurants. I had a Wimpy breakfast with pork sausages and bacon. I could drive my car and go wherever I wanted. It was refreshing to be back in a "normal" society. And it was wonderful to spend time with my loved ones.

All too soon I was back at OR Tambo again. Saying goodbye at the airport is always a heart-wrenching business, but this time we managed it without tears (or very nearly). I was once again appointed the guardian of the emergency exit, along with a lady who was going to Riyadh to teach English in a ladies university. Soon after we were airborne (Ethiopian Air again), the captain came on the intercom and made a lengthy announcement in Arabic. Then he switched to almost inaudible and incomprehensible English. All I could make out was "Lusaka" and "technical issues". Apparently a flight from Lusaka to Riyadh had been scrapped and we were on our way to pick up the stranded passengers.

We parked a good distance from the terminal building at Lusaka Airport. The aircraft doors were not opened. No new passengers came on board. No baggage carts appeared and no additional baggage was loaded. Then the captain asked us to switch off all electrical equipment as we were refueling! Based on the evidence, I surmised that they had forgotten to fill up before we left (or maybe fuel is cheaper in Lusaka) and we had been in danger of ruuning out. One of the hostesses told an American lady I spoke with that we had landed to change a tyre??  WTF? There's an Afrikaans saying that summed up my feelings: "Ek ken modder en ek ken kak, en hierdie is nie modder nie". After they finished doing whatever it was that they were doing we took off again with no explanation. The lost time meant we had to sprint for our connection in Addis Ababa. We got to Riyadh at 0230 where I waited till 0730 to fly back to Baha.

Eight days later I'm back "home" with a stock of South African groceries: chutney, Simba peanuts, Cadbury Chocolates, Knorr stock cubes and various other bits and pieces. And most of all, lovely memories fresh in my mind.

Internet in KSA

KSA - Internet 

As I mentioned in my Peruvian blog last year, the internet is very important to me while I am away from home. It is my only link with home, family and friends.

Internet access is provided by Al Jazeera in our accommodation block. The downstairs area has been designated the recreation area with plastic garden furniture, a table-tennis table and a pool table. It is a cavernous room with large pillars which support the building. Running down some of these pillars are all the toilet pipes from the dwellings above. When upstairs toilets are flushed, one can hear the merry gurgling of water, soggy toilet paper and waste matter rushing by on its way to the underground septic tank.

The recreation area is a non-smoking area and as such there are no ashtrays. This does not deter the smokers (99% of the teachers) in the least. A variety of containers have been pressed into service as ashtrays; bottles, cold-drink cans and various lids are filled to overflowing with cigarette butts with a tasteful sprinkling of butts and ash on the carpet. The area has no ventilation or windows and consequently smells permanently of stale tobacco smoke and stale farts. The couple of waste-paper baskets are also filled to overflowing and there is an interesting variety of litter spread across the floor; paper, plastic bottles, bottle tops, cans, wrappers and plastic bags filled with miscellaneous crap and the ghost of meals past. Various unidentifiable liquids have stained the carpet with Rorschach-like patterns. One wonders about the home environment and upbringing of some of our colleagues!

This then was where I initially accessed the internet when I got to Al-Baha. Several of my colleagues had their own Wi-Fi routers from STC (Saudi Telecommunications) which gave them internet access in their rooms. This clearly was the way to go. The only problem was that to purchase an STC router one needed an iqama, the Saudi ID and work-permit, which I had not yet received. I spoke to my next-door neighbor and asked him if I could share his router until I was able to get my own. He agreed and I had reasonable internet access in my room, although the signal from his wireless router was somewhat attenuated by the several walls in between. Also, if he went to bed before me that was the end of my internet for the night.

I then went to STC to get a sim card for my BB (Blackberry) and to get my BB service activated. An iqama was needed for this too, but a colleague kindly used his iqama to get me up and running. There are some problems with BB in KSA; the Facebook app does not work here, neither does Twitter, AppWorld and various other downloaded applications. HTML emails are displayed as text which means you have to sift through several pages of text to find the body of your message. However, apart from these caveats it (BBM and internet) worked reasonably well, and since I was on a prepaid plan they simply docked my airtime balance each month to fund my BB service.

In due course I got my iqama and immediately went to STC to get my router. When I got home I discovered that my apartment did not receive a very good 3G signal – I could only pick up an EDGE network which is dead slow. However, I persevered and eventually found a location where I got HSPA+ (fast) and I happily surfed with my own router.

I did, however, experience huge differences in network speed from day to day; some weeks I had really fast access where I could download a 1gig movie in 15 minutes, and then for several days I would be stuck with effectively no internet access. Each time this happened I could be seen wandering around morosely with my router in hand trying to find the magic <ahem> 3G-spot.

In December I decided I would buy myself an iPhone 4s for Christmas. As part of the package I was given 250meg of data per month for 6 months. I figured that would be more than enough. The reality was that I had used my month’s allocation within 3 days! So I returned to STC with a view to purchasing more bandwidth. In this I was totally unsuccessful and the only winner was the language barrier. The consultant I spoke to (the only one with any English) eventually told me to buy SR200 of airtime which would, he said, give me 5 gig of bandwidth. In retrospect, I suspect he told me this just to make me go away. Using airtime for data is undoubtedly the most expensive was to access the internet; I was paying about SR1.80 per meg of data and 24 hours later my SR200 was gone (SR 1.00 = ZAR 2.00)

This last weekend we went to Tief (a large town a couple of hundred kilometers from here) and when I spotted an STC office I decided to pop in and get some advice from another consultant. This worthy told me that I could buy 1 gig bandwidth for SR100 – all I needed to do was to top up my balance to fund the data purchase and come back to him so that he could activate the service. By the time I got back with my airtime voucher (they don’t sell air-time at STC, you need to go to a café or supermarket) they had closed for prayer. 

After prayer I went in and we tapped in the voucher code. When the SR100 did not reflect on his computer screen, the consultant (Abdullah) concluded that the money had gone towards funding my BB service. Although I assured him that my BB balance was enough to cover this month’s subscription he insisted that I would need to buy another SR100 for my iPhone. This I did and after entering the code, he found to his consternation that my balance still hadn’t been updated on his computer, although my phone now showed a balance of SR225. He drifted around the store seeking advice from the other consultants who were apparently just as baffled (or who were simply disinterested) as he was. At this point he conceded defeat and said that he would consult with his manager after the weekend and get back to me. Much to my surprise Abdullah has not to date contacted me, and the saga continues.

In the meanwhile I am being viewed with great suspicion by some of my online contacts who are muttering darkly and hinting that I am avoiding them when they are online. Hah! My wish for them is to have STC as a service provider and to deal with a non-English speaking Arabic consultant, instead of Vodacom or Telkom. Then again, tis the season of goodwill so I wouldn’t really wish that on them. Ho-ho-ho…

KSA - The First Month

Teaching at Bahah University initially was chaotic – it was quite common for two (or more) teachers to arrive at a lecture room and have no students, or to be assigned to a room that was already in use. The students call us “doctor” – this is how they translate “teacher”. I rather enjoy being Dr. Gregory! The students face a daunting task in learning English; apart from the grammar and spelling, they also have to learn an alien alphabet and learn to write from left to right. Many of them cannot write their own names in English and in general their handwriting resembles a 7 year-olds in the west.

Things have, however, improved and we are now much more organized. There is however some resentment between the various nationalities regarding pay and perquisites.  At the top of the food chain are the westerners. Then come the Egyptians/Syrians/Jordanians etc. who earn half of what we earn.  They are disliked by Al Jazeera as being trouble makers and lazy. Then come the Filipinos who earn about half of what the Egyptians earn and have even fewer privileges but hold responsible administrative positions.

Al Jazeera is also big on paperwork and admin. There are always reports to be written, forms to be completed, papers to be filed… The type of criteria that teachers are evaluated against are: dress, neatness, reports submitted on time, all paperwork completed, all filing up to date, signing in and out on time, relationship with supervisor, relationship with supervisor’s boss… the quality of the teaching seems to be largely overlooked in their zeal to generate documents.

Warning letters are also issued at the drop of a hat and can entail a fine by means of a salary deduction. You can get a warning for going to the wrong room (no matter that your schedule says), speaking to university staff or breaking any one of dozens of rules of which you have no knowledge. So far, I have navigated this minefield safely! Having said that, the work is not difficult, the students are reasonably well behaved and the salary and perquisites are good.

One of the points of travelling to other lands is to experience different customs and KSA certainly offers many opportunites to experience these differences. It is quite usual to have to vacate a supermarket or other shop at prayer times. You leave your trolley right there and go outside for half-an-hour or so till prayers are over. I have frequently been locked in restaurants during prayer time. The owner lowers the blinds and dims the lights so the Mutawa can't see in and evict the patrons while prayers are in progress (5 times a day);  you are required to abandon your meal / shopping /work / teaching until after the faithful have concluded their discussions (broadcast loudly over external loadspeakers) with the Almighty.

Contact between the sexes is strictly prohibited. An unmarried couple meeting in a coffee shop could be arrested by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Religious Police) if seen. Pleasure spots (!) are mostly for family use only and off-limits to singles. Fun fairs and such are for family only.  Most malls have family days when singles are barred from entering. Apartment blocks are segregated. Bank branches are segregated – there are even ATMs reserved for women only; if your bank card identifies you as a male the ATM won’t dispense any cash. No wonder the Saudi divorce rate is around 70% - when a couple get married they don’t have the foggiest idea of what to do with this alien being with whom they now cohabit. 

And while no effort is spared to keep the boys and girls apart, it seems that, despite being an offense for which you can be beheaded, homosexuality is widespread and (unofficially) tolerated. And if a homosexual couple is bust, only the “receiving” male is considered homosexual - the "dispensing" (?) male is deemed to have been led astray. Despite all of this, I am told that prostitutes, male and female are readily available in larger cities if you have the right contacts.

One of the ways to discourage the boys from panting after the ladies is to require all females to wear the black and voluminous abaya to conceal their figures and a hijab to cover their hair and faces from the bridge of their noses to their necks, leaving a thin slit from which their eyes peer. Lest even the sight of female eyes inflame the lusty Arab lads beyond endurance, many ladies wear an additional veil that covers even their eyes and black gloves so that not the tiniest speck of female flesh is visible. The only titillation available is to try to imaging them wearing the most outrageous and wildly erotic underwear underneath those acres of black cloth! 

In the larger cities like Jeddah attitudes are much more liberal. One even hears music in the malls that are owned by the princes since the mutawa are banned from these (music is considered haram - against the laws of Islam, which basically covers anything that may be seen as fun. This includes bells (ding-dong bells, not the Whiskey), drinking, smoking, movies, dancing, flirting, singing…)

Since alcohol is illegal in KSA there are no pubs and no going for a beer after work or on the weekend. I have been offered a bottle of vodka for the equivalent of R1500. Considering the exorbitant price and the potential 200 lashes if caught, I have resisted the urge. I understand that some ex-pats brew a rather horrible homemade wine from fruit juice, sugar and yeast. And to be found in possession of narcotics will lose you your head (I believe about 70 heads have rolled so far this year in chop-chop square.)

The authorities are cognizant of the fact that this lifestyle is very alien to most westerners (and indeed, human beings in general!) and that since they require certain western skills here, they have made concessions. These are in the form of “compounds”, which are fortified villages for westerners. Saudis are strictly prohibited from these dens of decadence. In the compounds a western lifestyle prevails – normal dress, pubs, shops, males consorting with females (!!)… in short, a western oasis. Most people who inhabit the compounds are sponsored by companies as they tend to be expensive – around 6000 riyal per month for a studio apartment.

Some cities are more liberal than others - Jeddah, for instance, is considered to be probably the most liberal city in KSA. When I was there I found the malls to be lively and "vibey" with many women having uncovered (and expertly made up) faces. There was a Yemeni "band" performing at one of the malls while I was there one evening and the young girls, faces uncovered, were cheering and shouting and swaying like young girls anywhere in the world. I found this encouraging - it confirmed to me that you cannot legislate against human nature. I suspect that there are going to be large scale changes in KSA within the next 10 - 15 years. Who knows, maybe women will even be allowed to drive cars!!

Arriving in Saudi Arabia

The plane was a bit late in landing at Riyadh. At immigration control I stood in a queue of about 50 people for about an hour with absolutely no movement. Then a military type in a colonel’s uniform who had been strutting around the entrance hall all night barking instructions waved me to a much shorter queue. The immigration control is by far the most slapgat I have seen. The officials slouch in their chairs sleepily, then wander off to go chat with their buddies in the next cubicle, let their cigarette smoke drift into your face and very obviously discuss you in Arabic with their buddies.

I got out of the airport at about 4am and was met by Mohammed (there are many Mohammeds here) who took me to my accommodation. It had 4 bedrooms, 3 of which had 2 beds. On a few of the beds there was a sheet & pillow slip set – 1 sheet and 1 pillow slip. The sheet was about the same length as the mattress so tucking it in was out of the question. Also, the edges weren’t hemmed so they were unraveling. Both bathrooms and toilets were encrusted with dirt, as was the kitchen. The rubbish bin in the kitchen I threw out with the rubbish as it stank like week-old road kill.

The next day Mohammed took me shopping – luckily it was a “singles” day so we were permitted into the mall to do shopping. "Hyper Panda" in Riyadh is very large and modern and you can get about anything there. On “family” days no singles are admitted to the malls. The temperature in Riyadh is about 40 during the day dropping right down to about 30 at night. Happily aircons abound, including one in each bedroom.

The school is an impressive building – very modern and clean. The academy itself is very bound by rules and everybody is called “mister” – Mr Gregory, Mr Mohammed, Mr Achmed… The whiteboards in the lecture rooms are smartboards – electronic and computer controlled. The different coloured pens are actually dummies and you can even write with your finger if you like. You can also scroll up & down, save sheets and recall them, and the textbooks are also on the computer. Very impressive.

Everyday at 12pm and 6pm is prayer time. The devout gather in the lobby and face Mecca and the prayers are piped through the PA system for about 20 minutes. All the shops and malls also close for the duration of prayer time.

The first few days I had a couple of “remedial” classes to teach - these are students who missed classes and need to catch up. Then on Monday evening at about 20h30 Mr Ayman told me that I would be flying to Al Bahah in the morning and the driver would pick me up at 5h30. Also, 4 other guys would be sleeping at my place that night and flying with me in the morning. I stayed awake till 12am and when no one had arrived I went to sleep. Just after 1 I got a phone call – the first guy was waiting outside. I helped him carry his stuff up 2 flights of stairs and after half an hour went back to sleep. An hour later the next traveler arrived (these are all Egyptian English teachers and had travelled about 500km in a cab to get to Riyadh).

When my alarm went off at 5 I wasn’t feeling too chirpy. Anyway, we got to the airport and after some discussions with airport officials regarding baggage weight we took off for Al Baha. Al Baha airport is small – 1 runway and the plane has to make a U-turn to get to the terminal.

We were picked up and taken to the university, which is very large, with lots of construction going on and in the middle of nowhere. We were introduced to herds of people and then left to our own devices for the better part of an hour. Then Mr Reda told us that he wanted us to start teaching immediately. This was not a popular idea with us. We were all dressed in casual clothes, needed a shower and were knackered from lack of sleep. He kept on at us and I asked him if he’d like me to unpack my suitcase is the sandy parking lot to find my suit and wrinkled shirts. Eventually he gave up and sent us home.

Home is like a double block of flats – one block for married couples and the other for singles. I share with an American (Tim) who is health conscious and very into cleanliness (for which I am grateful - the place was spotless). The other is Sam, a young English guy. The flat has an entrance hall, lounge with flat screen TV and couches and chairs, kitchen with a gas cooker and fridge and there is also a washing machine. My room also has a “sun room” which eventually I intend to make “nice”.

The shower head is broken and Sam had rigged something with a wire hanger. The first time I showered the whole thing fell down which distressed Sam when he went to shower the next morning. Also, the toilet leaks if you don’t close the tap and the remains of a previous explosive movement seemed to be embedded in the porcelain. So yesterday I used a brand new hanger and made a more stable arrangement for the shower (I also put in a request to get it fixed), fixed the toilet and bought a toilet brush to clean the toilet.

We are also over the road from a mosque and just before 5 in the morning the first call to prayer rattles the windows. This is followed up with further mournful chanting at about 5h20 for a further 20 minutes. No danger of oversleeping here…

Downstairs we have a large recreational area with Wi-Fi, a pool table and a table tennis table. All that's missing is the fridge stocked with Amstels.

The university (men only) is about an hour away from our accommodation and a bus collects us at about 6h30 and brings us back again about 17h00. There are about 100 TEFL teachers on contract at the university and they are recruiting more. There is a very large contingent of Egyptian teachers. A bus is also available to take us into town (about 10km away) for shopping twice a week… singles and families on different days obviously.

The first day was chaos. Nobody knew what classes they were teaching, no teacher’s guides available, students wandering around aimlessly… I was told to go to lecture room 2123 and start teaching. When I asked for copies of the relevant books, what level the students were at, pens for the whiteboard and directions to the lecture room I was told to just go there and start teaching! So after wandering around for 15 minutes I found the lecture room and my students and gave a class. There was no white board to write on as the room was equipped with a smart board which was not yet functional. So instead I had to write stuff on sheets of paper and hold them up for the students to see. Loads of fun. I believe the smartboards will soon be functional. I can’t wait - I can’t teach without a board!

Anyway the next day I was given my office and tomorrow I get given a laptop – for school and personal use!

There’s a few South Africans here –a good bunch of guys. It’s nice to have compatriots to talk to. There are places worth visiting around here but transport is a challenge at the moment – unlike Chachapoyas nothing is in walking distance here, but I will sort something out. We are in a “mountainous” area (Peruvians would laugh at that description) and there are forests and mountain passes that are worth a visit.

We will get to them.