Arrival

The surreality is wearing off now: it was a frantic few days, getting to the airport and faced with a €1000 excess baggage charge; a flight home via Schipol, where I was hit over the head with more Euro-fun given the current crippling exchange rate. And then home for a few hours with Wife and Bairn. Thursday morning, partial unpacking and repacking; a lift from my dad here to a University at an Unnamed City in Northern England (UCNE).

The Assistant Course Director, (ACD) has done a brilliant job in holding everything together. We chatted things over, and everything seems fine. Next I had an informal meeting with my opposite number, Welfare Director. My job is the teaching, hers is everything else. Head Office had told me that she was "a bit of a flapper", (and on the poor phone line to HUDC I thought they were saying "slapper"). Whatever. Let's just say that she's not laid back.

There are forty something Italian students, thirty-odd Spanish. Friday, I met the Group Leaders, the students' teachers from their own countries. Two Spanish and three Italians. Experience at previous summer schools suggests that keeping these ladies sweet is the crux of the biscuit, so I did my best to make up for being absent for a week. The rest of Thursday was spent sorting out my room, which is in the halls of residence normally used by 1st year undergrads. Very nice, with cable internet access - the download speeds make me dizzy after the connexion in HUDC.

Friday I was intending to catch up with paperwork, of which there's a lot, it seems. I had a meeting with the teachers, who all seem very nice but very young and a bit nervous, (or maybe I'm just old and thick skinned?) One of them was off sick, and so I covered her class - I had no time for prep but "winging it" is my middle name so that was ok. The class was 13 year old Italians. Lovely kids, after teaching the cynical, miserable and often downright nasty blokes in HUDC.

A morning's teaching, actually, was just the ticket to get me oriented and to know some, at least, of the students. I think I'll try to get an hour with each of the classes over the next week. There is a special relationship between teachers and students, established over a relatively short time. Better to have that underlying your connexion with learners than being some kind of remote figure, "El Director", as I overheard the other day.

The residential staff are in "flats" of nine en-suite rooms and a kitchen. So that's an adult and 8 students. My flatmates are Spanish boys, 16 and 17 years old and very noisy. They can't seem to enter or leave the place without chanting the way you do at a football match.

This necessary supervision of the flats is a problem: we have one residential teacher, me, and three activity staff (including WD). That's enough for one adult per flat. But on Thursday this week the Italian group go home to be replaced by a much larger group of their compatriots. WD doesn't think we'll have enough adult bodies to supervise them. I've promised to look at the numbers and try to sort something out this week. The new intake will also leave me a teacher short. Head Office have said they are dealing with that.

Speaking of HO, they seem to be very good. I'm dealing with a woman I'll call Nichola. We spoke on the phone on Friday, and she actually apologised for not contacting me sooner, saying she felt guilty about leaving me in the lurch... I explained that I'd spent the last fortnight in a swamp of guilt over my non-arrival, so we could feel even on that score.

That's it. Here. Settled. Been a bit of a long weekend, actually, the euphoria of repatriation having subsided. Last night I went to a shisha cafe, amazingly, just across the road. It was strange, after HUDC, smoking indoors, with techno music and women fetching the pipes. The old legs felt very heavy when I left - can't be good, all those charcoal fumes indoors.

Next!?

Should I continue?

May as well. Somebody might even read it. And anyhow, something as hands-on and occasionally draining as TEFL, it's good to blog at the end of the day or the week, get it off your chest.

Might have a name change now, though.

Hope it's raining outside next time I blog.

Conclusion

The absolute clincher came when LM, appraised of "the changes" by Fraggle Rock, told T3 and me that, for the second group of students, we will return to the cave of the temporary-temporary classes. Oh, no. No, no, no, no. This is despite the fact that there are plenty of big, unused classrooms where we are now. The reason is that the Local Big Cheese wants the two groups of students kept apart.

And so I'm away. A month as course director of an ESOL summer school, and then, hopefully, six weeks pre-sessional work. And then, God only knows: fingers crossed in-sessional for the rest of the academic year at A University in North East England or South West Scotland.

"Rick", acting DoS, was really good about all of this today. I had to speak to him direct because, putting in my resignation through LM, and citing "a variety of personal and professional reasons", HD told him that because I had "professional" reasons he would have to discuss it with me. Like fuck he would. HD is the single
consistent factor in my decision to resign. I told "Rick" as much.

Indeed, I suspect that HD's need to discuss my professional reasons stem from a primitive but acute cockroach-like realisation that he's the reason, and that his handling of the Brokeback-Bulldozer affair was one bit of bullying incompetence gone too far. The chateau-bottled bastard.

It's looking good then, I'm back in Blighty for now at least, on the same money is here, and I'm celebrating tonight with no-alcohol Becks and humus from a tin. And the only fly in my chick-pea based dip is the HUDC bureaucracy which means I need an exit visa to leave the country in good order - I could actually leave without this, but that could cause me trouble if I ever wanted to return, and one should never say never again on Planet TEFL.

That would be ok. I'm still on the payroll, and not required to go in to work. The problem is that the summer school course I'm supposed to be directing starts in a week, and this visa business can take up to ten days...

I'm actually holding onto two summer school director offers, and have been havering as to which to accept, based on an algorithm around the one's slightly later start date, and the other's closer proximity to home.

I spoke to the Closer to Home organiser today, and she said they could hang on until Thursday next week. Which is ten days away and cutting it bloody fine. The other, in Southern England, could be kept at bay possibly until the following Saturday. I really should in all decency and for peace of mind email one or other of them and let them down so they can get someone else, but...

Tomorrow, I'll email the Southern England one and tell them I can't do it. The Northern England one, if the visa isn't through early next week, I'll go home anyway. Inshallah.

Changes

We've not been told overtly, yet, but it appears from what was said at the meeting last Monday that all of our students, no matter what their level, are to begin teaching in a few weeks. "Group 2" are due to begin in three weeks time, and it's not clear whether they are to go through the motions of an examination course when the results are irrelevant and they can begin to pretend to teach in English whatever their level in the language.

HD said yesterday that we'll have a meeting on Sunday (when LM is back from his holiday) about "the changes, which you may like but probably won't".

We went to collect cheque-books this morning for our local bank accounts, and whilst waiting at the bank I got chatting with KST2 about this. Clearly, she knows a fair bit about budgets and accreditation. She said that when a project hits the budgetary buffers, and it appears this one has, then external exams will usually be the first casualty.

This is not what I've signed up for. I know from experience that if a teacher is responsible for marking important exams in this part of the world, he or she'll come under enormous and unfair pressure to pass people. What counts here is not ability but influence, and that influence is invisible to us unless someone who possesses it is thwarted. Brokeback is an example.

In other words, the whole rationale for the project is lost.

During an earlier contract out here, I got chatting to a student who desperately wanted to be elsewhere. As he was a graduate engineer, I suggested he could get a visa and work in countries that needed his skills, but he said that wasn't possible because HUDC University degrees were a joke even in the Arabic speaking world.

I had thought that we were here now to reverse that, to begin a process which would give this country's education system global meaningfulness. If we aren't, then we're just in the business of organising sham English classes in which learners and teachers get through the morning as painlessly as possible, and there's nothing more than a pretence of genuine language learning.

Students turn up at classes if they feel like it, and regard their foreign, infidel, powerless teachers with contempt. It's ok for the hacks who haunt the TEFL world, on the run from a failed marriage or a drink problem, but it's not for me.

There's not much point in speculating, I suppose, but as my elderly mother-in-law says, hope for the best but prepare for the worst. So this morning I've sent my CV off to several UK Universities for pre-sessional work (which carries the possibility of in-sessional teaching in the new academic year, too, if I'm lucky and reasonably diligent). And a job with the British Council in another part of "the region".

Another and more obvious change is that The Company will no longer pay for taxis from the Bungalows to the city for shopping. This is a fundamental change, as it was always understood that we are in an isolated spot and need taxis. I would go two or three times a week. Others went every day, twice on Fridays. It seems rather unfair on those of us who only went in for essentials.

The former students, now colleagues, seem cool towards me - with a couple of exceptions. This could be a result of Brokeback's self-serving propaganda campaign, or the natural result of the end of deference marked by the end of the teacher-student relationship, or more probably a subtle combination of the two. In any event, it doesn't make me feel any more comfortable here.
And as for HD! I really struggle to be civil to the little bastard. I lost my temper with him the other day when he came up to me as we were waiting on our first visit to the bank, so close that his pot belly was squashed up to my hip, and I could smell the toothpaste on his breath, and whispered that I should be careful carrying my camera everywhere, in case someone robbed me. "I'd like to see them try," I snarled, resenting this old-lady like advice from a man scared to drive here, who regards this safe and peaceful country with an imperialist's fear and loathing.

Speaking of driving. I've got a licence now, but can't drive because the UK bit of The Company can't agree the terms of indemnity with the local bit (under the auspices of Peter Lorre). So we've got a brand new company car parked up, its tyres rotting in the desert sun, I've got a driving licence in my wallet and a restless spirit, but I have to pay for taxis if I want to go beyond the corner shop.

All in all, it's not a happy time. I've not exactly begun to pack yet, but I am contemplating how many suitcases I'll need.

More Knives

The thing is with Brokeback Mountain and The Addams Family is, you can't turn your back on the treacherous bastards for a moment. Or put it another way, you think that you've discovered a modus vivendi, or at any rate can avoid them, when... whack! ... and there's a bloody big blade between your shoulder blades.

Briefly, in a classroom discussion in the final lesson before the exam, Brokeback Mountain was chatting away in Arabic even more than usual for him, and distracting the rest of the class. He's such an intractably bad student, that the only way to deal with this is to try to ignore it and soldier on, but I could sense deep emotions and asked what was going on.

I was told that he was warning them all about "the yellow", the appearance of bulldozers to enforce HUDC's government uncompromising attitude to breaches of planning permission. And then Brokeback said: "this college should be bulldozed with only the English people in it". I was too taken aback to say anything professional, so said nothing.

I told LM after the lesson. He too was nearing the end of his tether. He told PTI, Brokeback's nominal line manager, who apparently hauled him over the coals. I instantly wished I'd kept the remark within the four walls of the classroom.

Apparently, Brokeback excused the remark as a joke, and said that I was always joking , in particular about bestiality and hashish. Like all really good slanders, this had a grain of truth in it. One of the students had remarked one day that one of colleagues, I'll call him Aswan, a cheerful butt of most classroom jokes, must have been smoking hashish in the break, he was so disconnected from the rest of us. Over the next few weeks, like a bloody fool, I kept the joke alive.

Aswan, a few days before the English/bulldozing remark, had arrived at class with an eye infection. I asked him how he got it. He mangled the reply "I was working on a boat" to "I was performing a difficult task with my sheep." I can't remember if it was me or someone else who first saw the funny side to this, but we all laughed and it was clear that everyone got the joke. I referred to it again obliquely the next day, and there was great hilarity.

Big mistake. Suddenly I'm a teacher who can be painted as obsessed by drugs and sheep-shagging.

Meanwhile, we have the extraordinary rise and fall of "Janice", who soon appeared to be even more disassociated from reality than Brokeback, Old Gomez, and TOHH put together. Her inappropriate dressing got worse. Cleavage really won't wash in the workplace here. It seemed fairly clear that she wouldn't last long.

And indeed it turned out that when I got back from holiday in Blighty a few days ago, her contract had been terminated at the end of her month's probation - well, a bit earlier than that. HD told me and T3 the other day that he would swear that the person he and L&M Manager interviewed over the phone wasn't the same one who turned up here.

Also PTI. He's told the others that he was unhappy with the management of the project, and was taking up a job in "The International College".

Anyway, cut to this morning, HD asked to see me in private. A "group of students", he couldn't say who, had asked for all three of us to be removed. PTI and Janice for sins too numerous to mention, me for the sheep and the dope. The other two had gone , but he drew the line at me, he said. However, it would appear that I had been "culturally insensitive", and I bridled at this, having more experience of this country than the whole SMT put together.

I was angry. And then I was nonplussed that he knew nothing of the bulldoze-the-English remark.

The matter appears to have been wrapped up with a rather clever pair of letters, one to me and one to the college's local "Director" saying that the remarks had actually originated with a student, and admonishing me to be more culturally sensitive. In the circs, given that I fostered two jokes which I should have been aware could be wielded against me, and that I then foolishly blabbed about Brokeback's English bulldozer, I had to accept. HD then went on to say that he was out to get Brokeback now. We shall see.

I see the hand of Old Gomez here, too, and Pugsley - both of whom appeared to avoid me this morning during a cake-and-pop do for a student whose wife recently had a baby.

What's upsetting is that I am certain that no-one was genuinely offended by the sheep and hashish humour. But Brokeback is a thoroughly nasty bastard who would happily see me lumped together with fuckwits like PTI and Janice, and sacked. And I would get other work, but I actually really enjoy this job.

We had a meeting this morning, teaching, management and our former students, now hailed as colleagues, who were being exhorted to prepare their own teaching programmes over the next weeks. This is great news. You can't indulge in workplace warfare with students; but your fellow-teachers, they're game.

The first bout of teaching is over. Today the students are doing a mock exam. The real thing is scheduled for Sunday next week, the 1^st June, although that is subject to the arrival of the papers.

The Advanced class are cruising along to the exam. All of them can pass, but there’s always the chance of a badly drafted test paper, or excessive nerves. There’s a student in that class who I’ve never mentioned, because he’s hardly been here. He’s turned up a few times recently, and he’s a horror. Literally. A cold stare, complete corpse-like non-communication except for staccato Arabic to his class mates, seeking clarification. Or, as T3 who teaches him in the afternoon, tell me, spreading alarm and despondency. She speaks and understands Arabic, and heard him tell the others that there would be “an explosion” here in July. One hopes he was speaking metaphorically. I’ll call him Nightmare, because he scares me.

Brokeback mountain has regressed. He does not partake in the classes at all, and conducts conversations with other students in Arabic throughout. To say that this is disruptive is to downplay in considerably. The other day even good students had stopped work and I asked them why. One of them told me that they were worried about The Yellow, the local idiom for government hired bulldozers, flattening the college.

I asked him who had told him this would happen, and of course he pointed to Brokeback Mountain. I asked where he got this information from and he characteristically refused to answer the question but said that the college would be bulldozed “with only English people in it”.

There’s some talk of helping the punctuality and attendance situation with some blood-letting. The current candidates are the worst attendees and most disruptive students: the Nightmare, Brokeback Mountain, and Pugsley.

We shall see. Everyone is jaded and stretched and desperate to see the end of this first few months. There’s to be no teaching now for several weeks, to enable us to design a new course, and (for me) to restructure the placement test. There’ll also be space for us all to take some holidays.

With the arrival of Janice, odds on the imminent collapse of the not-really-yet-started “Leadership and Management” course’s collapse have dramatically shortened. She’s an extraordinary piece of work. Every time I see her, I’m thinking: “What strange path brought you to this place?”. She bears out a personal theory of mine that Glaswegians are great but folk from the peripheral towns are often odd.

Like TOHH, with whom there’s a worrisome deal in common, she managed to tell me in our introductory small-talk “I don’t drink alcohol.” Fair enough. I don’t do heroin, but I’ve never felt the need to work that fact into casual conversation.

And then the other night I called into the communal room to see what football was on telly, and she was there indulging in banter with IT Bloke, who seemed very uncomfortable that she was ribbing him as if they’d known each other for years.

I said I was going to the corner shop and she asked if she could come, and went to get some cash. She was gone ages and I hoped that she was changing, but no, she re-emerged still in tight jeans and vest, long dyed-blonde hair uncovered... It crossed my mind to say something but I chickened out. I couldn’t now think of an excuse not to go to the shop.

We set off and she said “these sandals are a bit big but all my other shoes are high heels.” I looked down and she was indeed wearing a pair of roughly size ten plastic sandals. She’s a very small person and I suppose her shoe size would be five at the most. “I don’t know whose they are, I found them in the house when I moved in.” I looked down at the sandals again and noted how scruffy they were, the sort that the workmen here use.

In the hundred or so yards to the shops she managed to tell me as she shuffled along that this area, which I think is quite posh, would be one of the poorest in Dubai, except of course for the Indians who get treated like shit... And then we were at the shop and the usual young lads hanging round, and everyone staring, and I was mortified.

In the shop itself the young guy who runs it tried not to look. Just as people would if, say, a woman went topless into a corner shop in the UK. That’s what it was like, dressed the way she was, here. I bought the beer I’d come for, and waited. She was looking around the meagre shelves. “I’ll get milk. I’ve got milk at home but I’ll get some in case I run out.” Another long look at the shelves. And then up to the counter. “Is this chewing gum?” she asked me. I didn’t know. Then some banter with the mystified shop keeper. An old Haj came in then and I couldn’t meet his eye. Meanwhile, Janice is getting the shop keeper’s help with regard to the contents of the ice-cream cabinet.

I said I had to be back for a phone call. She was obviously having too much fun to be hurried because she said she’d find her own way back. I fled.

She claims to have lived in Dubai and to have been married to an Arab. Surely she would have learned something about the way not to dress?

And the next day, I was helping HPYM find someone, and went into a class to see her sitting on a student’s desk. This is absolutely not on, here.

Fwiw, I do think that any religion or culture which purports to tell people what they can or can’t wear is absurd, and that the physical gender separation here is damaging to all concerned. But I’m not on a crusade. This is not my country, this is not my culture or my religion but I am here and I need to respect it. By analogy, I think that laws prohibiting cannabis are absurd, but I wouldn’t dream of walking to the corner shop smoking a big spliff.

Janice seems to have upset KST2 (I don’t know what the story is there), and T3, who heard that she’d gone to Shelly, fucking and blinding, saying that we (that’s me and T3) didn’t want her to use the kettle in our room. This was entirely untrue, and if the report is correct, Janice’s need to manufacture anger about something which never happened is just downright weird.

I know that she might say, and probably will, that we’re a clique and that she’s being excluded. Nothing could be further from the truth. I spend an evening a week with LM, and that’s enough. All of the others apart from PTI I quite like, but don’t particularly want to spend any social time with them. Of the others, LM spends the occasional night on a student organised expedition, T3 and KST2, I think, sometimes go shopping together. Shelly goes out on her own, and seems to be carving out some kind of party-life with the locals. Mostly, we all stay in our houses and do our own thing.