This is the END!! Good-Byee to KSA!

Saturday 20th February 2010
Let's start with a quotation today - “It's weird...you know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one more second … just so it can hurt a little more." (author unknown). To qualify this a little, let's say that the meaning of “great” that is best here is “large and/or imposing”.

I think this sums up a large part of how I feel today, Saturday 20th February 2010 – the day on which (at around 2am tomorrow morning) my plane will leave the ground and take me out of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the last time.

So … this is IT!

The day I have waited for, the day I have needed to come for ohh so long now.

At around 9pm tonight the transportation boys will come and take me, my two large cases and backpack to Dammam Airport, will then drop me off, probably shake hands and then say goodbyes.

What about THAT! I will be saying goodbye to people I have never met before and THESE people will be the last people from within the walls of this compound that will see me off back to the UK. An anonymous farewell!

Appropriate in a way I suppose, and maybe it is better this way. I arrived anonymous back in mid-March 2009 and I will leave that way too. And I am not one for long goodbyes. Keep em short and sweet otherwise they will never end and you will feel you can't break away after all.

And after all, I AM returning to anonymity since I will be starting again sometime, I suppose, in autumn 2010 in, quite possibly, a new country, new life and new experiences to come. Anonymity will follow me from Dammam Airport right up to wherever I happen to end up.

“Even though its anonymous, it's still ominous,” - Daniel Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, USA said once. He is, you can note, not a well-known person and yet he makes an excellent point on this topic. Being anonymous is NOT such a great thing since as well as being alone, you have nobody who knows what you can do or what you are capable of. When I get back to London early next morning, that is as good as it will be. Yes, I know a few people by sight around where my mother lives but it is not a place I am in regularly. Few people, I can be sure, know who I am and know where I have been this last year, and why should they even CARE about it? Well, no reason of course. I will not be around there long enough for it to matter and I definitely have no plans to return to live and work in London or indeed ANY part of the UK. It WILL be another overseas “adventure”, though DEFINITELY not as far as Saudi Arabia again. I'll be keeping to mainland Europe thank you very much!

Catherine Deneuve, famous French actress, said once, “I like being famous when it's convenient for me and completely anonymous when it's not”. In my line of work, English teaching, being “famous” refers to the classroom and to the students who know you and know what you do there. Yes, you may also meet and socialise with them outside, but when you step outside your classroom and your place of work and move on to another place, you really ARE the second of those. Perhaps American actress, Alison Lohman said it better - “Obviously you don't want to be anonymous, but you don't want everyone to know your life. ”

What, I ask myself, have I actually achieved this year in the desert? Have I advanced and/or developed as a person, as a human being? Am I a better person than I was one year ago?

And what IS success or failure anyway?? I'm sure I don't know, but Bill Cosby, famous American actor said, "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody". Well, I don't try and do THAT – as a teacher it is as good as impossible ESPECIALLY when your class is 30 students in number as it was at the end. And I did not try to please them all anyway. Teaching does not have to ”please” people to help them learn. Thee are those who enjoy what you do and those who are 50-50 and those who do not. For the first of those groups you can say you HAVE achieved success, for the middle group it is “could be better”, and the last group probably gave up on the whole learning thing long ago anyway. There ARE those in TEFL circles who say you SHOULD be able to involve and inspire EVERY learner in your classroom. And theory is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Ach anyway – today is the day I cease to be a teacher and return to being a “nobody” as far as job status goes. That will not last long and I am sure I will be back in the swing of things come September 2010 or earlier.

Beginnings … they are always hard and this is one thing that REALLY bugs me about this job I do. We, as TEFL teachers are always moving on, always saying goodbye, never in one place for long enough to call it “home”. Whereas some years ago this did not matter much, it is something now that REALLY unsettles me. I don't like endings and I ESPECIALLY don't like new beginnings with all that there is as far as re-establishing yourself in the English language learning community I find myself in. Oh yes, there are many positives too – you get to meet a whole lot of new people and there are new experiences a-plenty. And that is a GOOD thing, a VERY good thing!


"The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy." - so said English novelist and playwright, John Galsworthy. Ohh, how right he was! When he says “untidy”, perhaps he means more emotionally so than in any other way because that is the hardest thing especially if the “endings” are done in a hurry or earlier than you'd like. That was how it was when moving on from my previous teaching job in Krakow, Poland to here in Saudi Arabia.

I do look back and wonder what would have been if I HAD stayed there after all. One thing IS for sure – I would STILL be in the financial problem area that existed back then. Nothing HUGE you understand, but big enough to be a burden that would have NOT gone away if I'd not come here. So for THAT, I AM glad I came to this country. I had a problem, and now that problem is solved leaving me a nice “breathing space” and room to move again.

But of course, money is not the whole of life and nor is work. What about THIS quote from Jim Rohn, American entrepreneur - “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time”. VERY much applies to me here. Yes, I have had the benefit of the money, but I feel MORE that time has been lost and that a year of my life has drifted by without achieving anything else. One of the reasons why I would not stay here any longer – I am simply NOT prepared to put my life on hold life this just for the sake of an enhanced bank balance. No, I am not old, but I am not so young either and there is more I want to do than just EARN.


OK, I have just come back after lunch. The LAST lunchtime, of course, that I will spend in that hospital canteen / cafeteria. Today I had the beef with lots of cucumber slices, tomato slices and green pepper slices on top. And a couple of bottles of that nice Danone yoghurt-milk drink (not, NOT laban this time).

So … back to my “Leaving Speech”. Well, as I was saying before lunch, I am glad that I will be returning to what I am “used to”. This is not the same thing as “home” for THAT is another thing whose definition is hard to put my finger on.

Home is, as many people say, where the heart is. Or it is “wherever I lay my hat”, or other such things. German author and poet, Christian Morganstern, said, “Home is not where you live, but where they understand you”. And THAT is a tricky one to pinpoint. One thing is for sure though – with THAT definition of 'home', I KNOW it is not HERE in this country and could NEVER BE! Trouble is, WHERE IS IT? I also do not think my 'home' these days is back in the UK since I have been away from it as a regular resident since 1995 now and both it and I have changed much and, I often feel, grown apart. So that leaves Poland which HAS been my home and workplace for just about all of these fifteen years. However, there are even problems THERE these days (but those are not the subject of this blog). So being “released” from here does not necessarily mean I am going “home” but just back to somewhere more familiar. Lois McMaster Bujold, an American sci-fi and fantasy author said about home, “My home is not a place, it is people.” and I have to agree with her. In England are parents and in London my son, and they ARE people I want to be with, but in addition there are those there I do NOT wish to be with. In Poland there is the house, but again I am not sure about the people who live around it. Doesn't leave much, does it?

Yeah, a complex thing is “home”. But not half as complex as WORK. Ohh, check out this BRILLIANT quote from William Faulkner, Nobel-Prize winning American author - “It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work”. I just LOVE that! Well, I've known a good few men who actually COULD drink for eight hours in a day, and perhaps there are some people out HERE who could eat for that long. But the idea of it is GREAT! Just how DO we endure this thing called “work” for so long every day? Well, “Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction”, so said Anne Frank, that famous WW2 diarist.

Yes, she is right – work SHOULD be satisfying or else why do it? And I DO find teaching, on the whole, a very satisfying job to do because when you work with PEOPLE as opposed to machines, you see HUMAN reward and not just an error-free run. And after all, “Nothing will work unless you do”, according to Maya Angelou, American writer and poet.

As enjoyable as teaching is, it IS only work and it is NOT life. “The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life”, so said Charles Schwab, leading American businessman. Well, I do not have the wealth that HE does and never will, so in a way this is a rather ironic quote from such a wealthy man. But taken in isolation, it makes a very good point.

I asked the question earlier – how has being out here for the year helped me in my working life? I mean, from a career point of view and/or for what it does to my CV. Well, at the start of the year I thought it would serve me very WELL being out here in a different work environment teaching a different type of student for a while. Would look really GOOD on my CV, I thought, for any future employer to see that I Had been out here.

Now I am not so sure. I have seen the type of teachers who come out here, and of course I know only too WELL the type of students here and, sadly, the kind of institution they come to for their learning. While it will be, no doubt, a nice talking point on my CV for any future workplace, I really don't know what being here has added to my skills and knowledge “tool bag”. Was I able to try out new ideas? Not really. Did I do something different here that I hadn't done before? Well, YES I did actually – I had to make up a whole 18-week English course as I went along with the soldier boys since there was no credible coursebook and certainly NO resource materials I could refer to. All I had was my colleague, the DutchBrit who was doing HIS class in a similar way and the few “hints and tips” given along the way every now and then by other teaching colleagues who took an interest. And then, as we ALL KNOW, it was all for NOTHING at the end so whether ANY of it was of ANY VALUE at ALL is debatable.

What I fear is the reputation of places like this being a kind of “teachers' graveyard” - the place all good teachers go to when nobody else will take them on. Well, don't be so cynical now! I am, at age 42, the YOUNGEST of the teachers in the English department. What does THAT say?? Exactly! I think you see my point. The others have been here for MANY more years and they seem content or happy to continue here. Do they actually LIKE it here? I think with them it is not a question of liking the job or not but more a case that it is EASIER to stay than to go.

Yes, if you are able to keep your head down, if you can shut off the absurdity of it all, if you can just come in, do the job and go home without troubling your conscience, then for SURE you can make it out here. Everyone needs a Survival Strategy here, and you have to develop one. For one colleague, it is to always be planning and thinking about his next holiday. It works for him, but in my opinion is NO WAY to live your life! A couple of other older colleagues have only a year or two to retirement age so they are content to stick it out till then because, for them, it “isn't that long” to go. Well, what's a couple of years when you're in your 60's, eh!

But there ARE stories of teachers who have NOT bee able to cope. The most famous of these (true or not I don't know) is the story of one guy who totally FLIPPED one day, chopped up all the furniture in his room with an axe or something and then, so the story goes, ran out and ran down the road totally NAKED! And I mentioned the guy who TWICE ran away down the Causeway to Bahrain only to be “lured back” as his skills and knowledge were in need. There is also a story about a teacher not long ago, in his late 60's I think, who HATED the students so much that he got into a shouting and swearing fit one day in class with them. Unfortunately for him, one student recorded the whole thing on his mobile phone and he was dismissed from the job shortly afterwards. And there are odd little stories you hear of minor things that didn't actually get a teacher sacked but COULD have caused him more trouble had he been staying longer. AmericanMan himself somehow was lured into doing some kind of “mock prayer” in the classroom and THAT got reported. Ahh, and what about the teacher I referred to before as “pervert man” who, for some reason did a kind of dance in front of the class and – yes, somebody videoed him on their mobile phone and it was reported to the bosses upstairs!

Make no mistake – you HAVE to have your wits about you here at all times. If you let your guard slip, and say or do something that you SHOUDLN'T, then just HOPE nobody dislikes you enough to make a big deal of it! I myself let a few unguarded comments out at times only to realise what I'd said too late. Luckily nothing came of them as far as I know.

Whatever anyone else may say, it IS a hard place to live and it IS a hard place to work. If, as a teacher, you have any principles on HOW teaching should be and WHAT you should do in class and not do, then FORGET IT! Working here is unlike ANY OTHER teaching experience you will ever be in! OK, it is not ALL doom and gloom, and along the way you WILL have successes and some high points. But they will be few and far between and, in any case, there will be so much SHIT in between that you will hardly notice them. In my case, the first half of my time here was a complete NIGHTMARE and the second half MUCH better though still with many frustrations and annoyances. Thankfully that second half WAS a great improvement on the first, but by the time it arrived I had had MORE than enough and the Exit Plan was already in mind. The soldier boy experience was SO BAD that I even considered for a moment NOT coming back at ALL. But I realised that if I did THAT, then it would leave a BIG hole in the CV which would need explaining for years to come. And I would not have the money benefit that I HAVE had. Endurance was the key there.

“Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance”, Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), a classical Roman poet said many, many years ago.

Well, I think I have done that! So … what is next?