Here we are in 2005 and another year begins. What it will bring us all is anyone’s guess, but I do hope that for you all, it is a good one. To my friends in Thailand, I hope that 2005 brings a chance of recovery from the disaster of the tragic tsunamis that destroyed so much and killed so many.
For myself, I have started the year in my new home, Algeria. My first week was spent in Algiers, where my school now has its head office. The school I work for, Langsols, services large oil and gas companies, teaching their staff (local and expat) English, French and Algerian Arabic.
I arrived in Algiers and was picked up and taken to the villa in which the school is housed. There I met my back to back, James, a young Scotsman from Orkney. I also met Pascal, the Irishman who would, after a week, take over in Algiers when I would go to my new home in Hassi Messaoud. Pascal had to fly to Hassi for that first week of mine to teach a management course, whilst I had three classes of students due for the week, plus a gaggle of new teachers.
I was alone in the house but for my bodyguard, Hadi. I am sure they thought that because I am a girl that I couldn’t possibly stay alone there. Of course, he didn’t speak a word of English and my French is way less than stellar, consisting only of what I remember from high school.
It was a really interesting week and what started off as total chaos was more like orderly chaos by the time I left for Hassi. Algiers works very much on rubber time. People arrive at work late and no one says anything. Students also arrive late and think nothing of it. Still for all that, they are really gorgeous people. I started off the one day before all the students were to arrive, to take an IELTS course, planning classes for all three groups since I was under the impression that the teachers probably hadn’t. I was right in that one and glad I had put in the work.
The morning that the classes started, only the kitchen staff had arrived….we get a cooked lunch at the school. No staff had arrived and no teachers either when the first students arrived. So here I was, wondering how the day was going to go. The teachers were all just there when class time started and there were about a third of the students.
With such a start, the week actually went quite well. Teachers were told that as professionals they should be there half an hour before classtime, and they made a real effort to do that. Students too were more punctual after the first two days. There were no procedures in place for anything so I took the liberty of putting in a few really necessary ones.
By the end of the week, things were running about as smoothly as one could expect for a week’s work. The country manager had been in the office for about an hour and so I just made ‘executive decisions’ most of the time. Even though I was there for a week, I can honestly say that I saw nothing of Algiers itself, in fact, until the last day, I hadn’t even seen the street. Oh well, I will get plenty of time at a later date.
Then it was time to say goodbye to them…very sad as we had all got on so well, but they will work with Pascal, who will be resident in Algiers. I, on the other hand, am now in Hassi Messaoud in the Sahara. This is a restricted area, requiring a desert pass, and full of oil and gas workers.
I work on a rotational basis like the oil workers. I work 5 weeks on and the get 4 weeks off, when my back to back, James, will take over.
Hassi is really a desert town, with no greenery to speak of, though you do see some trees on the foreign compounds, but in general the place is a soft dun colour, even the housing blends in with the background. I am teaching very few classes, two to be honest about it, and both in Baker Hughes, an American company providing services to oil and gas companies. There will be more teaching in my schedule fairly soon, but not before Eid and we do have some new contracts coming up. Basically, all the teachers are Algerian and they are charged out at a much lesser rate than an expat. I am taking French lessons myself, only half an hour a day, but it’s a start….I can’t get with the Arabic and it would be useless as each Arabic country has its own dialect anyway. Besides, French is far more beautiful; it is soft and lyrical whereas Arabic always sounds angry to me.
Each day our driver takes me out of town into the desert to my classes. The desert is beautiful, long expanses of dun coloured sand, windswept into dunes that seemingly go on forever. These are not huge dunes like you might imagine, but lovely nevertheless. The strange thing that never ceases to amaze me is that the wind sweeps them flat across the top. It looks like someone has come and sliced the tops off, the line is so straight. Smaller ones definitely have peaks and waves. There are good roads through the desert to take the trucks and other vehicles that move about between the various companies. There are also power lines and other contraptions of which I have no knowledge, but the thing I like is the changing look of the desert itself. Here and there we pass oil flares where they release pressure from a well. There are also gas flares. I can tell them apart only by the colour of the smoke that comes from them, oil being black and gas, white.
Yes, some days there is a pall of oil laden air hanging above the sands, but somehow it doesn’t distract from the stark beauty. At night, from my window I can also see the oil flares, these ones closer to town, but beautiful in the dark sky.
The town itself is totally unremarkable, although I have noticed small stalls selling typically Algerian goods, carpets and cloaks, silver jewellery and the like…..mmmm…I have managed to stay away from the carpet places to date. I don’t promise that I can for the whole time I am here….lol.
I moved into the girls’ flat next door when I got here, but will move back into the school after Eid. I have permission to buy a double bed so that I don’t fall out of this one each time I turn over. I have never seen a single bed so narrow. The rooming situation is a tricky one for me. There are two other teachers living here, one permanent so he stays in one room, but the other is on rotation like me. His rotation finishes in the middle of mine. And of course James, my b2b, but our rotations don’t match exactly so its not a simple matter of sharing the room with him. There are four rooms here and one is decidedly horrid. Tiny windows up so high that it would be impossible to open them, hence also, no light. The other room is not bad, but I need my b2b to move into it so that I can take it over when I get back. I have to leave all my things there, (PC and clothes etc) bar what I take with me, so moving into another room would just not work. The others go home on rotation, but this has to be my home and so I will come to some arrangement with the guys so that I can get into my room when I return. It will all work out in the end.
The teachers are a nice bunch and get on pretty well together for the most part. They do expect a lot from the company, and are treated pretty well I reckon. The teaching is almost all done out on site in various companies, Schlumberger and Halliburton being the main ones, but a few joint ventures as well.We have a driver working all day and they get us to work and back on some pretty tight schedules sometimes.
We get our meals as part of the package, but in the past people complained and so this is to stop. How stupid! From February there will be a food allowance and we will pay the same cook to continue shopping and cooking our meals for us. Does that sound silly? It does to me, but ah well, people are people. The food is great and I have no conception of why there would be complaints, though I’m told it had something to do with yoghurt and brekky things. We get a wonderful lunch of a cooked meal, salad and French bread and cheese, often soup as well. Couscous features a lot of course, but everything is tasty and the variety is endless.
I work pretty much all day, supposedly 12 hours and I am here, but most often I am doing admin work to try and institute procedures that just don’t exist.They all talk about it being a team, and it will be quite a good one I think, but right now everyone is a little unit working alone rather than together as part of something. So far things are going well and I don’t expect that to change really. There may be some things they don’t like as I put them in place, but in the end, the school will run better because of them, and be more profitable.
Meantime I am seeing nothing except when I go out to my classes, but slowly and surely I will take some time and get around the town a little. I cannot walk around on my own however, though I am not sure why, but it is not the done thing and I have no desire to upset the apple cart, so I follow the rules.
It has been really cold here too, something I didn’t expect, but I am managing with the clothes I brought with me and a couple of shawls I bought here. It will soon be hot as Hades and then I guess everyone complains about the heat. We have air conditioners in our rooms which are also heaters so I can get nice and toasty. The days are sunny and getting warmer now so I wont complain. However, I may find the UK a bit of a strain if the winter is still in full force there when I go on rotation.
The UK is where they pay my ticket to once I am off, so this time I will go there and perhaps do a bit of exploring, perhaps make it to the Netherlands, but nothing is yet planned or set in stone. There will be travel this year and lots of it because I cannot stay here when I am not rostered on.
Well that is about it for now. I am sure that there will be more over the month but I wanted to say hi and let you all know where I am and that I am fine. Internet access here is not great, and unreliable as hell, so my access is limited at best.
To Tess, who is still in bed, I hope you got a good report from the surgeon, Daniel and Leah, congrats on the coming new bub, and again, all my Thai friends, I hope that you and yours are safe and well and that you have not been too affected by the tragedy of the tsunamis.
Once Upon A Place 