Yanbu Daily

Halloween is an unusual affair here, mainly because the only people who do it are the ones who live on the compound. For some strange reason, this evening of ghouls, goblins, and candy isn't a part of the Saudi culture. You might think that with its history of tribal incursions ending in frightening thievery and scary nighttime raids, all of it before oil was discovered here in 1932, Halloween would be a natural. But, alas, it ain't so. Thus, the profound lack of pumpkins at all the local shops and supermarkets. You can get any number of what appear to be Alladin type lamps or badly carved wooden camels, but not a pumpkin. The locals will boast about the Baskin-Robbins, the McDonalds, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, but ask about a pumpkin and the stares are all blank.

So I bought the next best thing: a large cantaloupe which is why my first picture for this blog is of our Halloween Cantaloupe (and isn't that a clever use of brain coral? Yes, that's really what it's called: brain coral.).

Before all the kids did the compound tour for sugar, there was a party for the kids and their parents. I was given the responsibility of managing the gourd bowling event at which the ghouls, princesses, and super-heroes got a chance to try their skills at rolling a hubbard squash at an array of butternut squash so as to knock as many down as possible. It was almost as big a success as the apple bobbing taking place next to me. Gourd bowling may well be the next rage. Not having a photo to prove my ability to reset toppled gourds, I offer instead this photo of the parade of urchins, pre sugar infusion.

Someone was asking about our daily routine at work, what lunches are like, assemblies, and so on. Well, Rose and I get our lunch brought in each day, as do a few other couples, and for less than peanuts we get to have a salad and a main usually consisting of a shawarma or two: chicken, veggie, or lamb. ONe day is rice and chicken instead of the shawarma. At the risk of appearing to be a guy who is far too interested in his food, I've included a picture of a typical lunch. This is by Rose's insistence, it must be said. I'm more of a camel racing guy, but I haven't seen any recently, so lunch will have to do.

Recently our senior boys volleyball brought home the bronze medal from the ISG tournament, the only official games our team got to play because all the other schools are on the east coast and it's too much to ask parents to pay for more than one flight across the kingdom per team. So these guys are at a real disadvantage when it comes to competing. But they did very well and we recently had a short assembly to introduce all the volley ball teams, of which there are four, two girls and two boys. The guys were very proud and wore their medals all day. Sadly, the volleyball season last only three weeks.

Banking is quite an experience here. Each pay day, because we do not yet have an account, the principal takes time out of his day to take me to the bank to deposit our cheques into his account and then transfer the money over to Canada. Two forms get filled out, taken to the teller, and the processing is done. It sounds like this might take 15 minutes tops. At the end of September, it took 1 and 3/4 hours to do the transactions.

This time, at the end of October we hurtled through in just under an hour.

And speaking of men trying to horn into a line-up at airports is a not uncommon sight. The school teaching staff flew back on Thursday morning from the east coast of the country where we'd all been engaged in two days of PD and while waiting in line, about four away from a very slow moving counter (was he the brother of our bank clerk?) and with at least another eight or ten behind me, a fellow walked around us all right up to the counter waving his ticket. I caught his eye, sort of snarled and sneered in that real threatening way I have, and then jerked my head back as if to say "Get to the back of the line!" Shaking in his boots, he turned instead back to the clerk and waved his ticket one more time but with that extra vigour I imagine my fearsome behaviour created in him. Luckily for the rest of us, the clerk looked at him with a sneer similar to mine, pointed at all of us, and waved him to the back of the line. Some moments later when I was about to step up to the counter, guess who appears over my left shoulder: old sly boots, more subtly showing instead of waving his ticket. Wearing my rather full back pack, I swung vigorously around to speak to Rose, thus blocking him out of the way of the clerk. It was the sort of move that makes or beaks a guy trying out for the Ottawa Rough Riders or the Alouettes, and a moment in this line-jumper's sensitivity training of which I am rightfully proud.

I've seen this happen in grocery store line-ups, restaurants, at my desk at school, you name it. If there's a line-up, it seems, then there's an opportunity to butt in. It happens in fast moving traffic with alarming frequencies and at rates of speed that make my heart race.

Most Saudi drivers have an impressive streak of kindness not to be found with such frequency at home. At least three times now, I've been involved in a car-trouble situation and have been very touched by drivers stopping immediately to help. The latest involved our bus from the airport. The spare tire in a rack under the bus somehow came loose and fell off, but we didn't feel anything. We only were alerted to it by drivers, invariably Saudi men, who tried to get our attention so we'd stop. Finally, one fellow pulled in front of the bus, slowed right down, and then waved us over to the side of the road. Without knowing any English, he managed to tell us what happened and offered to drive back a few kilometres, pick up the tire, return it to us, and then go on his way. When he arrived back in about ten minutes, he and the bus driver and another passing motorist, lifted this huge tire up into the back of the bus with some internal help coming from yours truly and another of the male teachers. In the meantime, some teenage boys appeared from nowhere to assist too. The odd one may be a line-jumper, but by far and away, more of them are gracious and generous assistants whenever road trouble happens. Maybe they're all driving as scared as we passengers are passengering so sympathy is the first order of business in the event of road problems.

Let me close with another short note about food. We had dinner out one night while at the conference in Dhahran, across the Kingdom on the Persian Gulf. We went to a sushi place and, without a Japanese person in sight, were fed some excellent sushi in a gorgeous room with very good waiters who managed to be completely unobtrusive while remaining almost perfectly attentive. I managed to not order a non-alcoholic Budweiser and went instead for the green tea, pots and pots of it. See how many types of sushi style treats you can recognize on this plate.