Bedouin Bad

  I may have finished with Southeast Asia, but I certainly have not finished with Asia as a whole, and I am still far from behind caught up.  I have gone back to my slacking ways, but my goal is that before I leave this country I am now living in for my summer holiday, I will be caught up to the present date, which means I still have several countries to write about.

  My visit back home with family and friends in the US last summer was amazing.  It really was a fantastic time in my life.  Where my parents live is a small agricultural town without a whole lot for a young single man to do.  I have often felt before I would be too bored there for any extended visit beyond a couple days, but last summer, I have to say I loved every minute of it.  I genuinely enjoyed mending fences, chasing cows back in to the pasture, hauling hay, climbing and chopping trees, and mowing acres of lawn.  I loved lounging around in my parents’ comfortable living room chairs, talks with my mama, wrestling with my old man, playing with their dog Pogo, riding four wheelers and motorcycles, and taking our bicycles out for long strolls through miles of farm and country.  I was perfectly content.  I have an extraordinary relationship with my parents.  Of course, I have extraordinary parents, and I only get closer to them as time edges slowly on.  Even with my distance and rare visits, still our bond grows, and I talk with my mama typically several times a week.

  I also loved visiting the rest of my family.  My brother Dallin, who was out of town working when I arrived back in the US, made it home a week or two later and the family was all complete.  Unfortunately, he did not stay in town long, as his job calls him away frequently. 

  While back in my home town of North Ogden, I split time between my brother Dustin’s house and my sister Chandi’s house with her family.  I have already mentioned the special relationship I have with my sister, and it is far understated.  She was my best friend growing up, and we still share a closeness rarely rivaled.  Perhaps I was not as close with my brothers growing up, but no one in my life have I ever looked up to more.  Someday, I will write a blog about each member of my family and what they are to me.  They deserve it, and the guarded man that I am, and perhaps because I am a man, I do not ever truly tell them the things they most deserve to know.  In writing though, I can be any man but me, and most importantly, I can be more of me than I otherwise am.

  While in Utah I visited a few friends, mainly Jeremy, my friend, business mentor, former boss, and old traveling partner.  I also hung out with my best friend Jason.  There are certain people in your life who perhaps you may lose contact with and rarely if ever speak to, but they will always remain your best friend.  Jason is that person.  I have known him since I was one year old and his mom has a photo of the two of us out in the front yard in our diapers playing swords.  He has always been my best friend.  He always will be.  We went kayaking down the Weber River and swimming up at Pineview Damn, jumping and swinging off the rope swings hung from tall cottonwood trees.  That summer was what every summer should be, and I packed all the things I wanted in to my short visit home.  Then, I was off again to a new country, a new adventure, and here I am now.

  I moved here to the United Arab Emirates the first of September in 2010.  I took a job teaching at a public school in Al Gharbia, or the Western Region.  I am a 4 hour bus ride from Dubai and a 2 ½ hour ride from Abu Dhabi.  I knew that I would be living out in the desert in a small community, but I did not expect things to be as they are. 

  I don’t live in any town at all.  I live about 30 kilometers from the closest town, which is small with only a few thousand people in it, no mall, no movie theatre, and only a few small shapes for basic items.  I am surrounded by miles and miles of sand, with telephone and electrical poles and lines swaying through the blank desert.  The sea is about 20 minutes from where I live with clear blue water and soft white sand, but the beach is only accessible at the one hotel in the area.  I go there several times a week to work out and get away from where I live.  This is not a pretty place.  In fact, I would undoubtedly consider this the ugliest place I have yet seen, and I have seen a lot of places.  It is flat, dirty, polluted sand with only those obtrusive electrical lines and the grimy air filled with dust and smog that comes from one of the world’s larger industrial complexes.  I have heard that where I live has some of the worst air quality in the world, and while it is bad, I find it hard to believe it is among the worst, though with the plastic plant, rubber plant, natural gas and oil refineries and dredging stations, there certainly is a lot of ick and blah spewn in to the air. 

  I live in a labor camp with about 600 day laborers.  Living in a labor camp is a unique experience.  It is exactly like what it seems it would be, living in a labor camp.  I have a private room and bathroom with basic furnishings.  It isn’t much, but I do not need much and I find the room comfortable enough.  I have a TV, a small table, a pitifully dull lamp, and a mattress that lets out loud groans and creaks with every move I make and has, I fear, given me permanent harm to my back.  I have not had a good night sleep since I have been here. 

  I have no kitchen, but there is a cafeteria with free food at scheduled meal times.  The food gets old and tiresome, but I eat more than I would if I were cooking and shopping for myself.  It is a bland and boring place to live, but a good place to save money and use my paid vacation time to travel around in the region.  I work in a primary school teaching Math, English, and Science to first grade boys.  I admit I had the misconception that kids in the Middle East would be well disciplined and behaved.   Wow!!!! I could not have been more wrong on that.  It is a 90 minute bus ride each way to work, waking up at 5:00 a.m. every day to ride out through a long and bland stretch of desert, no towns to pass through, just 150 km of sand.  I have two separate classes, and I could never have imagined children could behave the way they do out here.  The first few months of school were particularly bad.  My students are only six years old.  They speak no English at all, except to tell me to F**K myself and flip me off.  I have been bitten, kicked, hit, slapped, spat on, had desks and chairs thrown at me, had my stuff constantly being stolen from out of my bag, and the kids would take their off and show me the soles of their shoes or throw their shoes at me, which in the Arab world is considered one of the greatest insults you can give to a person.  The first two months were a nightmare.  From bell to bell the kids would scream and shout and run around the classroom getting in fights, and I would spend my whole class time breaking up fights, screaming at kids to sit down and trying to teach a lesson during all of it.  Teaching out here is like turning on a television show of a bunch of young kids on speed out on the playground, and then trying to teach to the kids on the TV show.  They don’t seem to even recognize that you exist at all.  After about two months, I did begin to gain control of the class, though they still can act out of control.  In most countries, I would think that half of my students would have been permanently expelled for violent behavior.  Teaching here is enough to frighten anyone away from ever wanting children.  Still though, I do. 

  I have had huge piles of blood on my class room floor, kids with permanent teeth marks in their arms, knocked out teeth, and constant crying.  The classrooms are filthy.  The kids are filthy, and there seems to be no respect or discipline instilled in these kids from anyone.  They always get what they want, and the only form of discipline they ever get is when they are beaten by adults.  The Arabic teachers beat the kids and constantly hit and kick them, but it doesn’t phase the kids at all.  They are out of control and crazy with lots of psychological problems and most are years behind academically, but they are tough. 

  Teaching here is difficult, not only due to behavior and the complete lack of attention, but the kids here are definitely far behind where they are expected to be.  Out where I live it is a Bedouin community, an area where for thousands of years people lived in the desert with their camels and sheep and small desert farms or fishing boats.  They ran wild, did what they wanted to, and never even thought of education, and all that still persists.  They have that Bedouin mentality still in them, a lifestyle that has been handed down to them through generations, and this is the first year this school has had a native English speaking teacher.  It is difficult, and I do feel like enduring this will act as penance for future sins I may commit.  Surely God must forgive me for things when I have proven myself with the patience that this place requires. 

  In fairness, the kids have calmed down some, and I do have some very bright kids, kids who I only feel sorry that they attend this school.  I have a few students who I do think could do a lot with their life if they went to a proper school and were not stuck with classmates as wild as most of the kids here are, and many of the students have learned a lot and progressed incredibly since I have been here.  It has been hard work though.   About sixty percent of my kids are expats from countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, etc.  The U.A.E. nationals are definitely the worst behaved and the furthest behind academically.  They are also the ones most stuck in tribe mentality and the Bedouin mentality.  In the future, when I think of or see people truly misbehaved or disrespectful, I will laugh and smile and think to myself that they are Bedouin bad.  It is unfortunate, but it is the reality of this place.  I have heard that my school is one of the worst in the region, and I have heard there are two others even worse.  I feel really bad for teachers at those schools.  If you have never taught at a place like this, you cannot imagine what it is really like. Sixty percent of the teachers in my area have quit, several in the first two weeks.  The rest of us have often wanted to.  I wish I could say it was something less than awful.  It certainly isn’t teaching.

  As impossible as it is to try and teach the kids collectively, and as horrible as they are as a whole, many of the kids can be fun and adorable individually, but pack mentality, or rather tribe mentality, takes over.  The kids LOVE attention, and many love to try and answer questions, even when they have no idea what the answer is, or even were listening to what the question was.  They love to play, and crave for attention, and violently fight over it.  Throughout the year, I have developed my favorites and become attached to a few specifically.  It is common here to greet each other by rubbing noses, like an Eskimo kiss, and some of the kids will come and nuzzle their nose against mine or kiss my arm or stomach, or put their arms up in a plea for me to pick them up and hold them.  They fight to hold my hand or sit on my lap, and some come and rest against me and try to sleep with their head on my chest or shoulders and wrap my arm around them.  It is those moments that I love here, those moments that helps me to remember how much I want to be a father and have kids of my own someday.  ‘Nsha’Allah, as they say here, God Willing. 

  I only have 5 ½ weeks of teaching left, and we expect the kids to stop showing up a week or two before the end of the school year.  I hope they stop coming before that.  I will miss some of my kids, but the classes and the job, I won’t miss at all.  It has taught me a lot, and I am ready to learn new lessons now.  I leave for summer holiday in two months, and next year will come back, but to a different school and to a different city with my own apartment.  I’ll write more about the country and my life here in general before leaving.  Next though, we’ll begin with more travels and trek our way through whatever we can.