Teaching in Oman 4 - Al-Sharkiya University

Kate and I were heading to Ibra without Neil to start teaching at Al-Sharkiya University, but the morning of our trip from Al-Buraimi, we had no driver. Kate texted our big boss Hassanoui who said a driver would be there soon, but when the driver showed up Kate recognized him as "the pimply pervert who tried to get in my room two days ago." He had his dick in his hand when she opened her door. When I suggested she say something to someone, she didn't agree. 'It's not a big deal. I slammed the door on his nose.' She told me that Alisa, the new girl from America, told her that he had slept in her hotel room because he said "I have no place to stay."  We refused to drive with him, so we left with Haseem, a young fellow who had driven us to the university everyday. 

We finally got to Muscat and Kate went in to talk to Mohammed Al-siyabi, a gorgeous hunk of flesh with an immaculately trimmed beard sprinkled with gray. He asked Kate what happened with the driver and she went into some sobbing blubbery bullshit, a complete show.  

After all the silliness at head office, we finally arrived in Ibra to a four-storey chunk of concrete with windows on a dusty lot strewn with construction debris thrown out of the building during its fabrication - metal, lumber and broken glass sat off in a tangled heap outside. Built to house the teachers at Al-Sharkiya, it would be nearly empty with only the few of us, so wandering through the building, we got to pick our own apartments. I flicked the light switches in the hallway and most of them didn't work, as did very little else electrical, so I took an apartment at the ground level so I wouldn't have to grope around at night and possibly electrocute myself on the stairwell. We had to use flashlights until they were fixed, inshallah, within the next few weeks. I had no water in my kitchen, but there was water in the bathroom. I could take a shower, but just barely. I didn't dare turn on the gas stove for fear it would expode. The floors were grainy with cement and sand and the windows were frosted with dirt, but I was too tired to think. I unwrapped the plastic wrapping over the bed and blankets and pillows and fell on my back across the bed. It's exhausting being an overseas ESL teacher what with the constant adjustments to people and places. 

My first day of working at the university and the taxi driver didn't know where it was, nor had he ever heard of it, so I was late to school after doing official business in town. The school is way the hell off in the sweltering desert on a barren expanse of beige sand without trees, only a sand-swept road leading up to it. But luckily, I got to the conference room just in time to witness the end of an argument between Brian and Cynthia, our coordinator, and her storming out of the room. Brian, who I haven't met, is a slightly built, blonde-haired retiree from El Paso, Texas, who somehow has a British accent. Mansouri, admonishing Brian, said "you mustn't be disrespectful towards her because she's a woman and women are sensitive. This is not acceptable Brian. You must love everybody." 

I should have put a sock in my mouth and pulled a bag over my head and said nothing, instead I said "no, it's not water under the bridge as somebody has suggested, but a problem that will just get bigger and bigger." And just like that Mansouri looked at me and said "okay, you will be the coordinator from now on." This was not my objective, I just wanted to be the voice of reason, but I instantly wondered if being the voice of reason came with a raise. After the meeting, we wandered the halls and looked in the classrooms and found our offices. I wanted to be alone if I could, so I waited until everyone had picked their spots and then I took another office. There were three other desks with computers for future teachers who would be coming, but that was down the line, more teachers would arrive as student enrollment increased. As I was checking out my desk and surroundings I heard yelling coming from Mansouri's office. "What kind of Muslim are you!" and "You're a liar!" I peaked into the hall and joined the others, tip-toeing down to Mansouri's office to get a bead on Cynthia screaming at Mansouri, but by the time we got there, Mansouri had quieted the beast. She was banished to Al-Buraimi in exchange for Neil. Such is the first day getting oriented to the university.

When I got back to my apartment that afternoon I heard some raised voices in the hall. Brian, along with Teri and John, are upset and angry because they don't have any water. They're standing outside Neil's apartment grumbling. I approach, but don't stand too close because Brian has terrible body odor. However, never mind the shower and lack of water business, I'm gobsmacked by the size and shape of Teri's breasts and lose track of the conversation. It wasn't just their size against her skinny frame that slackened my jaw, but their perfection - not flat, not droopy, no nipples peeping out from under the bottom of her shirt, no weak breast tissue there as you would expect from someone in their mid-fifties, but perfect, like a cantelope sliced in two, scraped clean out and glued on. I was pondering all the ins and outs, pros and cons of breast implants when Brian cut into my thoughts. "So when is the goddamned water supposed to be fixed? Does anybody know then? This is going to be a bloody nightmare, I can tell you."  

We're in teams of three now. There was a switch and Kate is now with Jackie and Tom and Brian is with me. He’s too saucy for them, too critical of them, says Kate. He came in and out of my room with silly questions about the text, about the full colon being wrong before a capital and I said “Put it on your list of things that are wrong with the book.” I repeated that all day as he wandered in and out, “Just put it on your list.” He knows he could do a better job of things and he's becoming a right pain in the ass, what with the smell he leaves behind in my office. But lo, at the end of the day Cynthia (or Cindy as I call her), our ex-coordinator, came back to the school and cursed and screamed at Mansouri once again. "You're not a true Muslim!" and  "I''m not going to Buraimi!" He had to close his door because of her screaming, some of it obscene. Speaking in Arabic later to someone on the phone, I heard him repeating the phrase “you’re a liar.” What will it be when the students arrive? 

We got to find out fairly quickly. Classes started and as far as organization goes - what organization?  The schedule needs to be redone. Books for most of the classes haven't arrived. The Study Skills exercise books are scattered across the floor in a locked spare room which nobody has the key to. We can't figure out what Mansouri wants, our Director for the General English Program who set the whole business up. He says one thing one day and then another thing the next. At staff meetings we're puzzled and this is nonsense from a fellow who supposedly has a Ph.D in communication. What books we have are way over the heads of the students since I had to go over abcs in a Study Skills class. Most of these kids come from the desert where they've been herding goats and camels and racing buggies over the dunes their whole lives. Typically, they're late for class and when they enter they go around shaking the hand of every other student. They sit down, take out their cell phones and chat with each other and if given a test, they brazenly give each other the answers. In Oman, if somebody asks for help, it's considered rude not to assist.  

There is grumbling and dissatisfaction over the English level of the students and the classes and our living quarters, so much so that Neil has put in for another transfer to Al-Buraimi and Brian, who we've nicknamed Brains, has been wandering around the neighbourhood at night drunk. One night, he attended a party at the teacher's quarters for Ibra College, but he was so drunk when he left at midnight that he pounded on some random door, cursing and swearing and kicking, believing it the locked door to the street. An Omani family cowered on the other side of it. Brian woke up the next morning on his living room floor with no memory of how he got home or what happened or who he'd annoyed. He's not welcome back.   

Mansouri took this time for a week's vacation and left the children in charge of the candy store and needless to say, we ate all the candy and trashed all the displays. One day, half the students didn't come in so I combined two classes. But Kate and Teri decided to let their classes out early and their students kept knocking at my door and piling in and chatting with my students. After numerous little battles trying to keep them out, I gave up and let my kids out, even though some didn't want to go. Brian had a class and he got so mad at one kid he grabbed his dishdashya and throttled him, telling him he didn't have a brain. The kid said he was going to report Brian to the Dean. Anthony, a new teacher, with a thick red neck and a huge gut who loves guns and acts and talks like he should be in the police force because everybody's either a "fruitcase" or a "nutjob," had to listen to so much shouting and fighting going on in the hall with Brian, he also let his students out early. 

Our biggest dispute seems to be the hours we're teaching. Evidently, we're supposed to teach a 3-hour Study Skills book to kids who don't even know their abcs and I said, "There's no way I'm doing three hours with those kids. They don't even know what the word study means."  Kate agreed. But then Jackie said we were supposed to do three hours for the second level group. "It doesn't matter their level. They're both bad," I said. Kate argued with Jackie about the time schedule and said,"I'll listen to what my boss tells me, not you" and then Jackie and Teri got into an snit over Jackie's schedule because Jackie can "sleep in in the morning and wouldn't it be nice if we all could?" because Jackie only works 18 hours instead of 21 and then we're all choked because Mary, the math teacher, only works 8 hours a week and collects the same salary. Jackie and Tom, the only married couple, also got into because "You're not supporting me!" she sobbed. 

Kate, Mike and Tom rushed off and went to the bar. Brian has no friends here and then there's Neil. He wrote me a two-page letter about what the problems are with the program and I read it and said it was good but then he snatched it from me and tore it up and tossed it in the garbage. "Okay, I'm starting to feel like Nellie Bly. My day's over." I said. I called our driver to come and take the the children home and he said, "I'm not coming until later because Abdul still has a class."  "Dude, there's nobody here but us teachers!" I said. Everyone was pissed because we now had to wait for Abdul to do his math class, so I got a taxi with Teri. But just as we're about to take off, Brian comes running out the door waving to us to wait and we're like "go, go, go, don't wait for that asshole" and we made our escape from the madhouse for some ice cold screwdrivers at home. At one o'clock in the afternoon. 

I saw Brian later on. As I walked past his flat his door was open and he was having a drink. He invited me in to ask some questions. "When is the medical? When are the visas going to be done? When is my bloody air conditioning going to be fixed?" I shrugged and told him his guess was as good as mine. "Do you want a beer?"  We sat down to watch a live broadcast on CNN of some Chilean miners being rescued after weeks of being trapped in a mineshaft. Watching the harrowing endeavor and the tearful families and the miners as they rose from the dead exhausted and blacker than coal dust, Brian started to wax philosophical about his own life and the close-calls he had lived through. Evidently, he had been an Olympic diver and was in Munich when the Israelis were attacked and killed. His quarters happened to be adjacent to the Israeli athletes, so German marksmen used his apartment to fire off their guns at the terrorists. "The explosions from the gunfire was so loud I almost went deaf." Then he told me he was in Kuwait when it was invaded by Saddam Hussein and he was held as a hostage by some Iraqi soldiers in some dumpy Kuwaiti palace so that a few Iraqi soldiers could get out of town. "They were nice guys." When they let him go, he was put in a car with some British "chick" as they were driven out of town. Suddenly bullets whizzed around the car, pinged off the hood, shattered the side windows and they had to duck and cover.....

Mansouri, our Director of the General English Program, asked me to write and update him on the school program, seeing as I was a coordinator, so I wrote him a note outlining all the problems. He wasn't happy with my report.  

"The university General English Program is in chaos. The atmophere is poisoned and everybody is unhappy. What books we have are unteachable to students, many of whom don't know their abcs. There are no teaching supplies (cds, cd players, copy paper, books, dictionaries, etc.) There is confusion over the scheduling. The goals are unattainable for this semester. The boys and girls should have separate classes as their knowledge and commitment levels are at odds. The Study Skills course needs to be scrapped entirely. Evidently, we're supposed to teach one Study Skills lesson for three hours. It's not tenable. Also, one teacher (Mary) is teaching math eight hours per week and (evidently) making the same salary. This is causing resentment, perhaps that teacher could do some English teaching hours? Brian went off on a student today in a totally inappropriate manner. Just giving you an update. Hope your holiday goes well!" 

Paul, our teacher friend from Al-Buraimi, has been phoning Kate. "Get your asses up here! We really need you! It's crazy here!”  I wrote to Ottawa Steve to ask what was going on and he said that after one of the staff meetings Paul slammed Steve's head against the wall and throttled him for being "disrespectful" and they had a scuffle in the hallway and Daniel had to tackle him to break it up. Paul downplayed it but Paul, according to Steve, has major "issues." Steve said he overheard Paul at the bar talking to one of his buddies and telling him that they don’t like “black” people in Oman. Paul was transferred to a school in Sur, which means you just have to assault someone to get a transfer. Are they racist in Oman? Yes, they are. But to be fair, in all my travels I haven't lived in or travelled to one country that isn't intolerant of some race or ethnic group. 

And the weeks went on. Mansouri cut Neil's classes in half, taking away his grammar classes. But when I observed Neil's classroom with his students sauntering in and out of the room making phone calls or texting at their desk, or viewing videos in little groups and chuckling, while Neil stood at the front of the class trying to conduct a lesson, it was easy to see the writing on the whiteboard for Neil. He came into my office complaining, looking close to tears his face was so blotchy and red. But no, he was angry. "Mansouri cancelled my classes! Do you have Dr. Ali's phone number?" I told him Dr. Ali was no longer in Buraimi, he had been sacked. Neil was breaking down. 

Over the Xmas holiday, Anthony, John and Neil went to the Empty Quarters, or Rub Al Khali, the world's large sand desert, to go camping. It was cold at night and Anthony only had two shirts while John brought a coat. But as Anthony lay shivering in his tent he heard mumbling and moaning and cursing and some yelling coming from Neil's tent, so Anthony thought Neil was being attacked by something. He peeped outside his tent to see Neil hopping around in the dark, cursing while kicking some of the gear laying about, his arms thrashing the air. It was at this point Anthony wished he had his weapon with him. The Omani guide lay awake. None of them slept the rest of the night, only falling asleep when the sun crept over the dunes at dawn, except for Neil, who continued to wrestle ghosts in his tent. 

I was having breakfast in the little restaurant downstairs one morning when I heard Neil yelling at a workman who was drilling into a wall, putting up a picture in the hallway.  “ARE YOU FINISHED NOW!” he screamed at the dumfounded fellow, who doesn't understand English. ‘NEXT TIME TELL PEOPLE BEFORE YOU START DOING THAT!” and stomped off upstairs. I said to him later. “You need to get in touch with that noise bullshit that you’ve got going before you freak out.” “I’m trying to. Before I hurt somebody," he said.   

At every weekly meeting there is a dispute. One day we went over the new schedule, the mid-term exams and today, a portfolio we're expected to create for each student, which is time-consuming. We whined about that and I said something to Mansouri about the redundancy of it and Brian looked at me and sneered. "It's called teaching."  When he looked at me a minute later I mouthed  "Fuck you."  He ignored me but when he looked over again I mouthed "Fuck you." He leapt to his feet and shook his fist. "What did you just say?" and I said "Absolutely nothing" all innocent like and Mansouri shouted. "Shut up and sit down Brian!" Teri can’t stand Jacqui, Kate can’t stand Jacqui, Brian can’t stand Tom or Jacqui, Jacqui and Tom can’t stand Brian, Brian hates me, no one likes Anthony and everyone questions Neil's sanity. Dispositions are unraveling. 

The problems are ongoing not only with school, but with our apartment building. Lightbulbs were put into the hallways and now they've burned out. The light needs to be changed in my bathroom and the smell of a dead body is rising up through the drainpipes. The workmen came to fix water leaks, now all the tanks are leaking. Teri’s place is the worst. Her toilet leaks and her kitchen light makes an awful buzz. She turns on her water pump in the kitchen and water appears all over the floor and behind her sink. With enough noise from the damned thing to get Neal knocking on her door.

Brian handed in his resignation only to rescind it and Anthony was pulled off his classes and put in charge of the “writing lab.”  One morning the kids in my class were passing around a piece of paper to be signed. "We want to get rid of Anthony!" They can’t understand him and he keeps on kicking kids out of his class. No one likes him and as it turned out later, we were right not to like him. 

 

 

  

Teaching in Oman 3, Al-Buraimi

The next day Kate, Neil and I packed up to head to The University of Al-Buraimi, which had only been established and opened in 2010. I felt sick after breakfast because the orange juice was off, but I was also nervous about the drive. I immediately put the kibosh on music in the car because I didn't want to travel for four hours listening to that whiny crap. Nobody protested. I chatted with Neil beside me in the back seat. He revealed he had been a born again Christian for ten years, but also considered himself a Buddhist. He’s read a lot of Carl Jung. Another rabbit. 

The drive took us through flat barren land with bleached shrubs and rugged mountains that looked like chocolate ice cream cones. It was like Jordan and the area north of Aqaba - the rocky terrain, the desert, the various shades of sand and gravel.  

When we got to Buraimi, I still had my headache and its intensity increased when I discovered that the air conditioner in my room was not only smelly, but loud. A late night caller said “We’ll pick you up at 7:30 and you will teach tomorrow.” Will the students have books? Do the students knows any English at all? In my years of teaching I've learned to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. 

I went downstairs the next morning and waited in the car until 7:45 and Neil hadn’t arrived for the drive to the university, so I called and said “Come in a minute or we’re leaving without you.” The day was chaotic with teachers trying to find their class and students trying to find their homerooms. With no books, I had to wing it my first two-hour class. Just as I had thought, no books, no supplies and no organization. Neil, his face redder than a pimpled strawberry, ran around like a rooster with his balls cut off. The yelling, the door slamming. It was too much. 

The university was in its early chaotic days. And totally weird people worked at the school, like Daniel, who wore a filthy black shirt with white armpit stains and a money belt strapped around his torso and suspended from his shoulder. He smelled as bad as he looked. Paul, the hot-tempered African American ESL coordinator for the university, had taught in India. "There are many problems with the program and I'm doing the best I can," he shrugged. "When I was in India....."  He fell in love with Kate and I and kept beseeching us to stay. We were the only sane people he'd met in a while, he said. 

Paul showed up at my room after school one day and we talked downstairs with Kate. He seriously wants us to stay and for me to be a coordinator because the American chick with the Muslim costume who works at the school went and complained to the Dean about Paul and now Paul says for sure she’ll be fired. But after being in the school for a few days, I'm not interested in staying, particularly with the horrible accommodations. 

After school I want to relax in my room, recover from the activity chaos, but my room stank of sewage and mould. My complaints and whining got me a new one and it didn't make my nostrils recoil, but when I tried to sleep the loud buzzing and clatter from the air conditioning units on the roof kept me awake.    

New teachers arrived, Steven, from Canada, Alicia, from South Africa and Vance. Vance is from N.Z. and is just looking for enough cash to get back to Bali and surf. He told us of getting beat up at the border of Peru, the same place where I was kidnapped and escaped. Steve, a real comic, is collecting stories and writing a book.

Jackie phoned Kate and said they're headed down to Ibra and, as it's in the middle of nowhere, she’s going to buy a scooter. She'll take my stuff with her. Kate and I went out to the bar to celebrate nothing in particular and she was on her sixth beer by the time I started my third because that girl can toss it down her throat faster than a loan-shark in Ireland. We talked about everything, her mother, her younger sister, her addicted brother, my sisters, my mother, my two weekends in jail in America. We were drunk when we paid the 30R tab, but before we could leave and get in our taxi the bar manager crept over to us and whispered "You come?  Follow me. Come. We have other place for drink."   

We followed him up a narrow dark staircase that opened into to a brightly lit area the size of a small gymnasium where Omani men in coloured thobes and kumas sat drinking beer at square metal tables. In the center of the room a runway had been erected, like something you'd see at Fashion Week in New York City. The manager ushered us to a table and pulled out two white plastic chairs and summoned over a middle-aged woman wearing a full-dress abaya and hiijab who quickly ordered two beers for us, snapping her fingers at a lackey, with a beer and apple sheesha for herself. She smiled through heavy red lipstick as she sat down and joined us. What is a traditional Muslim woman doing in this place? Particularly as she drank beer and smoked sheesha and cigarettes. She took Kate by the hand and led her to the washroom where she tried to put lip liner on Kate. I roared, she looked like a clown when she came back.  

Momentarily, a PA system crackled to life blasting Arabic music at a decibel a deaf person could hear and to my astonishment, a woman wearing a brassiere and tiny skirt came out from behind a screen on the runway and walked seductively down the platform. Her dark hair hung like a curtain over one side of her face, which she kept turned towards the wall. One after another young women in short skirts and bras or night-shifts and shorts came out and did the same slow, seductive walk. A girl with hair below her butt wore a jean skirt and a large pot belly hung over her waistband. They were all shapes and sizes, the main similarity being their youth. One girl looked about 14 years old, making me wonder how old they all were. What's going on? Who are these people? They walked the runway, then disappeared behind the screen. With the show over, the Omanis stood up and milled about, but before I could go over and satisfy my curiosity about the girls, I heard Arabic music coming from a tape deck and a crowd of men gathered in one corner. When I elbowed my way through, an exotic, beautiful woman whose looks could have shamed Sophia Loren when she was 15, was belly-dancing in a floor length silk dress that clung to her hourglass figure. "Where are you from?" I asked. "Morocco." And with that she disappeared, too. The night was a dream, a peek into another side of hidden Omani life, particularly the life of men. Alcohol is unlawful for Muslims, yet in all the bars I was in, Omani men were there drinking, but more so in the city. And they're the worst drunk drivers in the world.      

Back to the uni and working for the man, Dr. Ali. I’ve got a crush on him he's so sexy. These Arab men are so damn sexy. He has asked me stay on at Al-Buraimi because he was impressed by how I organized the placement tests for Eddie and got his messy day under control. However, at a conference with the teachers, Neil piped up and said that he would stay. What a shot in the foot to Ali because he thought Kate and I would stay. We don't want to. It's hot, muggy and dusty in Buraimi, there's nothing to do and our accommodation is the shits. 

So Dr. Ali gets Neal for the university and when I asked  “Neal, do you really want to stay?" he said yes. I told him I’d send him some websites for teaching ideas and went to pack my bag.   

Teaching in Oman 2

My second day in Muskat, after a hearty breakfast at the Manaf Hotel, Kate and I were driven to the ESL center to meet the Director of the General English Program (GEP) at Al Sharkiya University, Dr. Ali Mansouri. He was jovial and appeared intelligent, an immigrant from Iraq. We discussed the university curriculum, Ibra, where we'd be living, what our jobs would be, then left for a fantastic Indian lunch. (One third of the country consists of Indians on work visas, so great Indian food is everywhere.) 

Kate and I and another 57-year-old at the meeting, Neil from Michigan, took a taxi to the souk and walked along the promenade. Neil seems a bit off. He's over six feet and he creeps alongside Kate and whispers in her ear, as if I weren't there. Later, every sentence was prefaced with “When I was in Russia...” or “When I was teaching in Russia...."  When he started speaking Russian, my eyes rolled back into my head. It wasn't just his fixation on Russia that was annoying, but each time a car honked, or a person yelled, or a kid screamed, or a door slammed, he would freeze and duck, his neck sinking down into his shoulders like a turtle, his face a mask of fear. And he didn't do it just that day, but every day for the next four months that I knew him.   

At the ESL center the following day, Kate and I met with some other teachers - Jackie, a loud, fast talker from South Africa and her husband Tom from Canada, Cynthia, and of course Neil, along with his Russian alter-ego. Sitting at the round table, we flogged the placement test with Dr. Mansouri from 10 o'clock to 3, going over and over the damned thing and we would have been there for another two hours if I had added my own two cents. Cynthia, our coordinator and evidently another authority, but on placement tests, prefaced all her sentences with "I’ve worked here before....,” or “I’ve done these before...." or "This is the way it's done.....” She’s about 42, dyed black hair, pale skin, chubby, with dark eyeliner on her bottom eye rim and I thought she was from the Middle East for the abaya, but she was from Florida. 

Of course, I love gossip and I learned later from Kate that Cynthia had worked with Jackie in Saudi Arabia. It didn't go well I suppose, because Jackie said she’d had a huge fight with Cynthia when they shared a room together in Saudi Arabia for five days and Cynthia locked Jackie in her room for 12 hours and the only way out was with the key that Cynthia had taken. Jackie cried that if she had known Cynthia was in Muskat, she would not have taken the job. 

When we finally got out of the meeting, Neil, a non-smoker, broke down and bought cigarettes because he "almost had a mental breakdown" reformatting the test. He can’t work with others in a small room talking (or shouting in Kate and Jackie’s case) and several times he turned beet red and grabbed his head as if to stop it from rolling off his shoulders, or sinking into his neck. How long will he last I wonder?

Kate, who I forgot to mention, prefaces every sentence with "When I was in Korea...."  now starts being more of a smart ass to Cynthia because she doesn't like her and the more I chuckle at Kate's antics, the more she’ll do it, just because she’s like that. She’s giving Cynthia a hard time. Just snarky little bits is all. “Don’t touch me please,” as Cynthia steers her towards the elevator and away from a man who is shouting in the lobby downstairs. When Cynthia tells her to “wait a minute, I’m not ready to go.” “Yes, I understand. We’re wa-a-a-aiting,” says Kate. How long will it be until these two clash?   

Cynthia was going to butt heads with Jackie, who had also been made a coordinator for the English program. While Jackie had been explaining something at the meeting, Cynthia cut her off saying “Well I’ve been here before" and "I’ve done this before" to the point Jackie ran off to the washroom to cry.   

Jackie, who has an enormous wobbly ass, has come to Oman from Saudia Arabia and had been there for five years, so it was another case of  “When I was in Saudia Arabia...” and “When I lived in Saudia Arabia...”  Korea, Russia, Saudia Arabia, Japan. Just for fun one day I started prefacing all my sentences with "When I was in Taiwan...," but nobody got it.

It was our final day at the ESL center in Muskat before we headed down to Ibra and the university. Another day of arguing, but more strident. Like telling Jackie to “Shut up!” as per Cynthia. Neil holding his head. Later, he complained to Cynthia that he thought we didn’t treat each other with enough respect. Kate wanted to push on, push on, "Let's go people!" to the point of accidentally erasing the text on Dr. Mansouri’s placement test paper. Jackie was angry at Mansouri because he didn't like the changes she had made to the test. She did all that work and he didn’t like it?  She ran off sobbing. Inshallah, (God willing) things will get better. 

Late that afternoon, I was chatting with Cynthia and Kate in my room about travel adventures when Neil came in, said he was feeling all “empty inside” because he missed his drinking friends in Russia. I brought up alcohol to Neil and he asked me “do you miss it”? and I turned around and said “I’m an alcoholic” and chuckled. Kate and I believe that while in Russia (whose national sport is alcoholism according to Neil) he fell into the booze and was probably here to dial his drinking down. He was already back on the cigarettes, but to buy liquor in Oman, he has to get a permit.  

The next morning, I went down for breakfast and spotted Cynthia and Neil, both of whom whined ad nauseum about their vision of the test, which I frankly didn't give a damn about anymore. Cynthia cried that it wasn't finished and then started in on Jackie's incompetence to be a coordinator. I decided Cindy was off her nut so I would steer clear of her and that even with Kate I’d keep it to a dull roar, although every day we have a good chuckle over Neil, who was by this time virtually stalking her.  

Thanks be to God it's our last day at the ESL center. The day before I had typed the final draft of the placement tests and given them to Cynthia, but Cynthia had no copies of them because she thought I was going to make the copies until I told her I didn’t make them because I thought she would. Mansouri asked Cynthia to go make copies, but Cynthia got all hot under the collar as she left for the computer room. “Just be patient!” she said to him. “You must wait!” 

After a few minutes, I went into the computer room (because Mansouri asked me to) and asked if she needed help and she snapped at me. I said "You need to settle down.”  So now Mansouri wants further changes for Version 1 and Version 2 of the placement tests. Kate was trying to tell me about the changes, but I didn’t listen, just flapped my hands and told her to do what she wanted with them. Kate and I left while Cynthia and Jackie argued in the computer room. 

During our last meeting, Mansouri had said that Neil, Kate and I may have to go up to Al-Buraimi, an oasis city in northern Oman, and teach for a week at the University of Al-Buraimi and that we would leave in two days. Relieved at being finished with the ESL Center, Kate and I went out to the Intercontinental bar to celebrate, where she ditched me for some beefy South African and his pal. I hoped that she got back safely but I didn't keep my ears open.  

Cynthia called me the next morning asking about Kate and I said I didn’t know anything. She wanted me to knock on her door, wake her up, "See if she's there. Check if she's okay" and I refused because “I’m not her mother. I’m not responsible for what she does.”  “Well, I’m not either,” she replied. And then she went on about horny Omani men and how girls wind up in the desert raped and maybe even killed if they're not careful. Now everyone knows that Kate’s been a bad girl because Cynthia has called everyone asking about her. Later I asked Kate what was up and she said she got drunk and went back to the South African’s hotel with his sidekick where they went skinny-dipping. They flopped out on a big bed together. The fellas had to get up for an 8 o’clock flight to Dubai, which is when Kate came back here and went to bed. Hungover, she was slugging back the diet coke and chain-smoking. She has a fridge full of candy and diet cokes, which is probably why her skin is so awful. I told her we were headed for Al-Buraimi tomorrow. 

Downstairs, there was another kerfuffle at the front desk between Jackie and Cynthia, our two coordinators, over drivers, getting our checks, whether we were getting cash or checks and if we'd get to the bank in time. Their poisonous relationship is now infecting everyone. I whispered to Neil that I thought Cynthia had borderline disorder because of her behavior and the ongoing chaos she creates. He agreed. And then he told me he had been married twice, once to a nurse who had borderline and then to another with two teen-aged daughters. He's starting to pull rabbits out of the hat.  

"Well, you, me and Kate are headed to Buraimi tomorrow and they aren't coming. So that's good news."      

Teaching in Oman 1

I have taught English in all its variations in a few different countries, as you can see from my blog, but the one place I wanted to go was Oman. The image of Aladdin with his white turban flying on a red carpet over towering minarets in Baghdad had stayed with me from childhood and I had longed to see strange new worlds in the east from my earliest years. Once I dreamed I was on a flying carpet soaring above the earth and it was so wonderfully real, only to wake up and discover I had wet my bed. Oh well, now here I was, on a plane to Oman. Baghdad would have to wait. 

In 2010 September I was hired to teach the General English Program at Al-Sharkiya University in Ibra, a town approximately 150 miles south of Muscat, the capital of Oman. The university was new, I was one of ten teachers hired to get the program up and running under the direction of Dr. Ali Mansouri, a refugee from Iraq. 

The flight was long from Vancouver Island. One hour from Comox to Vancouver, ten hours from Vancouver to Frankfurt, five hours from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi and then forty minutes from Abu Dhabi to Muskat. Almost everyone disembarked in Abu Dhabi and the plane was empty, except for the two pounds of vomit that the girl in front of me had left in a bag on her tray table.  

At the Muskat airport I was relieved that obtaining a visa was nothing more than paying for it - handing money to a young woman with long nails wearing a full-dress black abaya. "Welcome to my country," she smiled, handing me my passport.   

The moment the outside doors opened from the air-conditioned airport, a gust of air from what might have been a blast furnace whipped my body. It was almost 90 degrees, but it felt like 110. Nasser, a tall, bearded man wearing a dark dishdasha and beaded kuma, the long gown and hat traditional to Omani men, approached. 'You are Nancy?'  I nodded.  'Welcome to my country,' he said, the same line I was greeted with all over the Middle East by the most welcoming and friendly people in the world.  

Nasser would be our driver for Al Sharkiya University in Ibra, where I'd be working. Another teacher who had just arrived from Washington, Kate, said hello and waved from the backseat of Nasser's car and after a long day, we were driven to the Hotel Manaf in Muscat. 

I kept a diary of my experiences in Oman, as I did in Taiwan. It gives the reader an idea of the complexity dealing with new faces and places and the perpetual psychological strain that occurs. ESL schools many times hire people who aren't qualified to teach, or who have fake qualifications, or aren't dedicated to the students, but are more interested in making money, partying and moving on. Many are alcoholics. Others may be there to leave their problems behind and make a new start, not realizing the difficulty of integrating in a different culture and the stress it creates. The language barrier alone is taxing. I've seen almost everything in my time overseas, so I wasn't surprised by what transpired at Al-Sharkiya University.