Hell is Other People

A topsy turvey kind of a day. No teaching. We got to the college to find that TOHH, who, charged with keeping the staff room, had mislaid it. It was an hour before college workmen were able to break in to the place.

Then we had a faculty meeting, addressed initially by DoS, who gave us some of the Big Picture – the best detail was that Big Cheese had presented a portfolio about what was what at the college, and that this had been okayed by the Minister. He’d said something along the way about resources, and at the end asked if there were any questions. TOHH asked if we could have a scanner in the staffroom.

He buggered off and then HD gave us the Medium Picture. This took several hours and I can’t remember very much about it now. There was nothing new, mostly speculation about when we’ll get out of the temporary-temporary classrooms and into the temporary ones – at least a couple of weeks. During a coffee break, KST teacher informed all present of the joke I’d made this morning about my home-made wine turning to vinegar. I wish he’d kept his mouth shut. This led to HD telling a story about some oil worker who’d gone on holiday and his cleaning lady had been alarmed by the sound of his fermenting alcohol (eh? Yes, I know), she’d called the police who’d broken down the door and subsequently arrested yer man and left him for two days in a hole in the ground. I said in light of his anecdote and the impossibility of making wine with all these vinegar flies around, I wouldn’t be bothering in the future.

KST had complained earlier this morning about coming home to find bulbs changed in his bungalow, and we agreed that it wasn’t a good thing to have workmen coming in whilst we weren’t there. Anyway, after the meeting I saw R., the Mr Fix It, and mentioned this to him on KST’s behalf (he wasn’t there at the time), and wished I hadn’t bothered because I got a long bad-tempered diatribe about how he and he alone had changed the lightbulbs and blah di fucking blah.

LM asked me to lead a meeting about the placement test, which needs to be refined, and suggested the three teachers take one or two bits of it each to work on. I told him that TOHH was unlikely to be co-operative. He said he wasn’t setting anyone up, but... He had to go to a meeting and could I deal with it? And so I suggested we work on the placement test, and TOHH of course refused point blank claiming to be “snowed under”. I felt very unhappy and uncomfortable with the whole situation. Trying to do anything with TOHH’s co-operation is just downright impossible.

She wasn’t done yet, announcing as the working day drew to a close that she hadn’t any money, and when would HD be here with our local currency advances. The arrangement is, we put in expenses claims at the end of the week and get the cash at the start of the next week. And we put in requests for advances at the start of the week, and get them at the end, on the Thursday. I asked her if she’d put in a request and she admitted that she hadn’t. So I don’t know how she expected to get money now. LM appeared and she asked for an advance. DoS wasn’t around, the safe was locked. LM did a fair bit of running around and eventually got cash from HD’s own pocket for her, which was accepted without a thank you and with very bad grace.

The tonight I was having a non-alcoholic beer and kebab with LM and he dropped the bombshell that TOHH has alleged that he’s been bullying her. He had a shouting match with HD about this today. Something about an investigation. He’s so pissed off, he’s thinking of resigning.

Now this is all like some bizarre game of chess. It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, for me to work with TOHH. She must be impossible to manage. I feel that we’re in a situation here which cannot continue. TOHH has certainly turned against LM big time, and is prepared to lie to get him into trouble; I can’t accept allegations of bullying, which he says stem from his telling her that her teamwork was unsatisfactory, which led to her walking out - turning-on-her-heel indeed, - from her five-week staff appraisal with LM. I can say that TOHH gives me the heeby geebies.

So during the last twenty four hours I’ve had to face the likelihood that I won’t be here much longer, especially if LM goes. I got caught in the crossfire today with the placement test – he cannot work with TOHH and tried to get me to fill in for him over that. If I’ve got any criticism of LM, it’s for putting me in that difficult situation, one I’m not being paid for – though I understand the circumstances that led to the situation. The atmosphere is poisoned. It’s not a pleasant workplace, on top of the isolation and separation from family.

And it’s that which is making it unbearable. My wife emails me and tells me how unhappy she is, missing me as she does, and worn out having to cope with a two year old on her own, and the two year old is herself missing me too. Of course, I’m pining for the pair of them.

I could cope with the family separation anxiety, and I could cope with the poison antics of TOHH. Coping with both is rather too much at the moment. But I’ll hang on – things have gone from cheerful to dark in a night and a day, and can swing around again. A coping strategy I’m working on with my class is to imagine it’s all a PC strategy game: Can I get them to Expert level? And with the LM v TOHH debacle, I’ll try to keep out of it as much as possible, and pretend I’m watching a soap opera unfold. Or something.

Garden and Telephone

Up relatively early considering it was a day off, and down to a tools shop I’d noticed on the main road, about ten minutes walk from The Bunglalows, to but some gardening tools. I got a rake, a hoe, a trowel and a spade (the pointed sort with no T bar on the shaft, which you never see in the West), all for the equivalent of £7.

At the back of our bungalow – and indeed all the others – is a turfed area, with a few trees. Beyond that there’s a wall, probably 10 yards away, and the width of the bungalow is probably about the same, so I’ve got 100 square yards of potential garden.

This was something I’d thrown into the ring way back at the interview, and could indeed be described as the clincher. Being a keen allotment holder back home, I’ve been intrigued by the prospect of gardening out here since my first trip in 2004. I’d have my own garden I was told. When I mentioned it to LM, he said I’d better clear it with higher management, and so I took the opportunity of bringing it up at the meeting we had in the first week with DoS and HD. “It’s your garden,” said the latter, “do what you want with it.”

And so I got down to it this morning, chopping up the newly-rooted turf with the hoe, and peeling it off with the spade. As I was standing by the wall trying to get the line right, I noticed a man with a paunch and an expensive hair-do, who greeted me and introduced himself as Big Cheese, the landlord. We chatted for ten minutes about the quality of vegetables here, the prospects of the site’s palm trees transplanted from Egypt, and the identities of the gardners. I askewd what the site had been before, and he told me that it was all rocky ground, and that the topsoil (about 1 ½ metres deep, he said,) came from a fertile area 100km south called Spring Valley. He also told me that the gardener had plenty of a nitrogen bearing substance if I needed it. He pronounced himself delighted that I was making a garden, and said he hoped that others would too.

He buggered off, and I got chatting to LM, who’s been eying another bungalow and secured my help with moving his stuff later this afternoon. I got back to lifting the turf for a bit, and then Ahmed appeared, wanting to know what I was doing and suggesting that the architect wouldn’t be too happy. Restraining myself from saying “fuck the architect” I pointed out that the owner of the site was contented, and that settled his hash. I got back to the turf lifting, and then Reza turned up and queried what I was doing and foreseeing problems, blah, blah fucking blah, which I told him to take up with the management and with the landlord if he didn’t like it – I said it with a bit of heat, I regret to say. It’s amazing how a reference to higher authority will stop a busy body in his tracks.

In retrospect, however, I’m simply pleased that the first interruption came from Big Cheese, the one person who could give a definitive blessing or not to the idea. So that’s sorted and, fuck the lot of them.

I didn’t get too much done, what with all the interruptions, and with LM’s bungalow move. I can’t see what he’s doing it for, really, they’re all alike. Nevertheless, I must admit to a wee bit of heard mentality, thinking “if he’s moving, maybe I should..?” But I’ll refrain, especially as I’ve started on the garden. KST is wanting to move too, on to the other side of the site, “because it gets more of the sun”. That’s just daft, the sort of thing my mother would reasonably want back in Blighty. In a few weeks from now, he’ll be glad to get away from the bloody sun.

Whilst doing the removal job, two new teachers – leadership and management, not English – and an IT bloke, arrived from the airport. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. They had that wide-eyed, tired but eager to please, trying to take everything in, kind of look that no doubt all new arrivals will and which I had a just two and a half weeks ago.

Into town later with LM, I wanted to buy a set of PC speakers, and get my Sony Eriksson k800i phone unlocked so that I could use a local sim card. The speakers were easily got for £12. The unlocking meant a trip to Madhar St, 2KM given over entirely to mobile phone shops. It was an eye-opener. Which shop out of hundreds? So of course I chose one almost at random (to narrow the search down I’d gone off the main street, but our taxi driver advised against that, suggesting there were better shops in the main drag. So we went into a place where a young man was counting an enormous wedge of wonga. “Just a minute”, and when he’d finished gave me 60% of his attention, because young men were in and out of the place all the time, asking questions, bringing in second hand phones to sell. He told me that he’d recently got back from Iran, where he’d been learning English He rang a friend, who came and took my phone away “for software”. It came back after 40 minutes, all working hunky dory and costing £10.

The Office Christmas Meals

At The Employer’s offices for the last few days, and it’s been all go. The latest plan is that we fly out on 30^th December, start testing on New Year’s Day, and start teaching around the 4^th. There’s some doubt about my visa: it needs a number from a bureaucrat in HUDC. The complexities surrounding this number are enormous, given that it’s Eid al Adha in HUDC next week and most people in the UK give up work around mid December.

Because I’m connected to two related organisations, I attended a Christmas lunch with one of them, and dinner with another in the evening. The lunch was mostly teachers, and enjoyable (TEFL teachers are very good company, and the flow of free drink helped). A few others were liable to this double-dinner. With a couple of them I went for a walk between meals, (the first finished around four, the other started at five).

Arriving at the second restaurant, I loitered outside to phone The Wife, and when I went in spotted a seat next to one of the teachers from the afternoon, and I knew he’d be good conversational companion so I happily sat there. He was talking to someone else when I first sat down so I chatted to my other neighbour, who I didn’t know from Adam. I’d told him the methodology of wine-making in a country where it’s illegal, and lectured him on my theories about the politics of HUDC before he revealed himself as THE Big Cheese behind the whole fandango.

He told me a story about being summoned to HUDC by a “Free General”, one of those in the inner circle of who took power there a generation ago. He was told not to worry about visas. Sure enough, on arrival he and his lesser cheese were ushered through immigration and customs. After arriving at the hotel they were subsequently contacted and collected in a car and taken out to a large house in the country, with big gates on it. He confessed to some trepidation. They hadn’t contacted the British Embassy to tell them they were there, and here they were in a remote location to meet a senior member of a regime noted for its playfulness.

I suggested that his story meant that this whole project had the blessing of HUDC’s leader, (let’s call him Colonel Mustard), and he agreed that CM must indeed be aware of it and have given it his nod. I was tempted to ask him to make a phone call to sort out my visa number, but refrained.

Earlier that day my Head of Department (HD) had told me that, after next week, I would be on leave until I flew out, so I decided that another week at home won’t kill me, although it’ll rather drop Line Manager in the shite, leaving him to do the testing, which would be a pity because he’s shaping up as a nice bloke with intelligent views on The Pogues

Later, I got talking to a Happily Plastered Young Man who I thought, with the arrogance of one approaching middle age, must have been an office boy. LM later told me that he’s yet another Cheese, quite a big noise on a salary three times mine. He knew all about the visa and I think he told me that it could not be resolved, and I wouldn’t be flying out on the 30^th. Or maybe that it WAS resolved and I’d be going out then after all... Truth be told, I was well on my way to being happily plastered myself.

The coda was a chat with LM about Dowland, and a guarded exchange of views on the often naive comments made by his Line Manager, HD, at dinner the night before. (Yes, that’s right: the first of three large meals in 24 hours. The generous breakfast in my hotel, you’ll be pleased to note, I’ve hardly touched the last two mornings.)

The eating drinking and chit-chat with people I hardly know was a trifle exhausting. I drew on my store of a strange mixture of Anthony Powell and John Le Carre to get me through. And, an intense mixture of rich food and alcohol will do me no harm with two years of only occasionally broken abstemiousness on the horizon. Well, perhaps not that long, as I had rather airily told The Big Cheese: homemade wine is alcoholic grape juice after only a couple of weeks, but should be more like wine after six months. Theoretically. I hope I told him I was speaking theoretically.