Begging and Shopping

I had to leave the compound yesterday afternoon to go do some shopping. If I’ve not said it before, let me say it now: I hate shopping in this country. Hate. It. Forget purchasing clothing in The Sandbox. There are no dressing rooms so you can’t try anything on and the malls, unless someone will take you to a broom closet, and unless you’re shopping for clothes, there’s really no sense going to the mall because they are filled with mostly clothing stores. But I wasn’t shopping for clothing. I needed a pair of silver shoes to go with this dress which I am wearing to a friend’s wedding on Valentine’s Day. And I was shopping for a wedding gift. I already know what I want and need to get for a gift, and of course, couldn’t find it.

Let’s make things difficult enough that women can’t drive in The Sandbox, so you know you have to have a driver to go anywhere. Occasionally my husband will take me shopping but he would rather crawl across shards of glass on his knees on pavement in 120 degree sun than take me to the mall. So, I had a driver for this particular outing. But to make it more fun, let’s close everything from mid-day prayer, which is at 11:54 in the morning right now, until late afternoon, when everything opens back up around 4 o’clock. So, at 3:45 I got into the car and headed downtown and did find some silver shoes, which I’m not thrilled about, but which will suffice, which I paid too much for, because I doubt I will ever wear them again, unless I wear the dress to some other function, and I guess that is always a possibility.

Not a single “wedding gift” in the entire Dhahran Mall, or that is to say, not what I was looking for. But a gazillion people milling about – hordes of women dressed head-to-toe in black, and throngs of men sitting at the Starbucks and other coffee shops all playing with their mobiles and smoking, and army upon army of little kids – armies of them, I tell ya’. And let me tell you that most of these little armies of kids were all running around, being unruly and unsupervised, and totally oblivious to shoppers trying to walk peacefully and safely through the mall areas. I saw only a few people actually purchase anything, and even then, it was more Westerner’s purchasing than locals. I don’t know how so many malls here are supported, and just like anywhere else, I guess, shops come and go without notice, but going to the malls here are actually a social event for families whereas I go there to shop and socialize elsewhere. It was a royal pain in the ass is what it was and by the time I got in and out it was prayer time again!

So I told my driver to take me to Tamimi and that I would just wait until after prayer so I could go ahead and finish shopping without having to go back out later. I knew it wouldn’t take all that long to do my grocery shopping, and it didn’t. The little guy – an imported worker from another third world country – bagged my groceries and pushed the cart out to my waiting car – I think they look for Westerners – knowing that they are going to get a small tip and I don’t mind giving a little something for this service. These little guys make nothing for monthly wages and we all know that bagging groceries or pushing a cart outside to unload into a waiting car is far beneath the local’s who wouldn’t do it even if they were paid hundreds of Riyals a day.

What really pissed me off though was that we had to wheel around the outside area of the grocery store because there were a half dozen “black figures” and a bunch of little kids all sitting directly in front of the doors as you exit holding out their hands begging. Not a single, “Please Ma’am, I am hungry, could you spare a Riyal or two,” and not any indication that the “black figures” were actually women and not men. Begging is big “business” in The Sandbox and it is common to have little children running to your car at the stoplights holding out their hands –supposedly it’s not allowed and they are “working” to curb the beggars, but whatever officials are supposed to be in charge of stopping this practice don’t seem to take much notice of it and so the begging continues.

So the little guy wheels through the maze of “black figured” obstacles to get to the car, and he’s putting my bags into the trunk and this one “black figure” who looks very, very obviously pregnant keeps thrusting her hand into my face – she won’t get out of the way – my way or the guy who is unloading my groceries – and she’s not saying anything, so for all I know it’s a man with a round beach ball under the black robe. This particular “black figure” has everything covered – the full face covering, and gloves – no skin peeking through anywhere that would maybe give someone a clue as to whether or not it really was a woman or if it was a man. Even as I got into the back seat and shut the door, she’s still right there, and as I lock the door she’s still holding her hand out. And just as the driver gets ready to back out of our parking space the woman lunges toward a toddler – maybe two or three years old – who is just about to run behind the car as we are backing out. The little girl was dressed to the nines – she had a dress on, tights, little buckle shoes, ribbons in her hair and a light pink parka with a hood.

So, wait, here’s what looks like a pregnant woman about to pop hanging out in front of the grocery store and following me to my car and not willing to get out of my face with her two or three-year old in tow begging with her and the little kid is dressed up in an impeccable, adorable, little outfit. What kind of scam is this?!? I’m all for helping those truly in need, but being harassed like this is going one step to far as far as I’m concerned. And if you are truly an unfortunate sole and in need, trust me, your child isn’t dressed up like this little girl is! By the way, where’s your husband, if you really are a pregnant woman about to give birth, that he’s not supporting you?!?

Here’s a tip for you, “black figure” holding your hand in my face! Just because you’re about to hatch another urchin, perhaps you should have married someone other than your lazy first cousin who’s decided that bagging groceries and unloading them into a car is work far below his status [in his own mind, that is] and perhaps if you can’t afford to feed that adorably dressed little toddler with you that you should have taken some sort of precaution to make sure you’re not faced with a second mouth to feed.

I’m going to be sure to complain to management next time I’m at the store about the growing number of beggars that are allowed to hover right at the doors as you are coming out making it about impossible for you and the little guy pushing the cart to get to your car. If these beggars are truly hungry and deserving of some sort of assistance there are places where they can go, but it’s not to my car with me!

Houseboy No. 14 – You’re Fired!

[Note: I wrote this on Friday, 8 February 2008.]

I am so angry I could spit nails. No. Wait. I am spitting. I’m muttering and I’m cursing. And, I’m reciting over and over what I am going to tell the houseboy when he shows up on Sunday. If Friday wasn’t his only day off, here on our compound, I’d be calling him right now, telling him to get his sorry butt over here and would probably end up saying things I’d regret later. Or, maybe not. Tomorrow he doesn’t work for me, but he is here, and we may well end up having a little “get together, I’m in your face and if you want to continue working for me you better not, ever, ever, again do things you have been told NOT to do!”

We left The Sandbox last week for a week long vacation in Petra and Amman, Jordan. And, I’ll post on that incredibly awesome experience after this post. I left specific instructions with our houseboy – in writing, no less, and yes, he does read English. The instructions included only the most basic of duties which I expected him to be responsible for and left contact numbers and emergency numbers for contacting someone here if he ran into trouble with maintenance issues. The ONLY duties he was responsible for, over and above his regular duties: bringing in both newspapers every day; opening and shutting blinds so that looked as if someone was here, and leaving different lights on; making sure that the house was completely locked up – all doors and all three outside gates. Pretty damn simple. He read my list the morning he was here prior to our leaving and said he understood. I went over it with him, item by item, and pointed out which lights to turn on and off.

The duties I assign to my houseboys are, naturally, ones I have chosen which I do not care to do. I will do them if I have to; I have done them, for the most part, for all my adult life before we had a once-a-week housekeeper in the States and before I arrived in The Sandbox where you live in the land of “houseboys.” I expect my houseboy to wash the floors – I have a machine that does this – and one houseboy sometime ago broke the first one so now, if my new one gets broken I threaten to beat whoever is responsible for breaking it. It may be a pain in the ass to use, but it does a thorough job, and this IS how I insist that my floors be cleaned. I want my bathrooms cleaned – we’ve downsized since moving from the townhouse to a house and have only two now instead of three. I have never just said “Go clean the bathroom,” but instead have taken time – many, many times – to show each houseboy that hasn’t been able to “cut the mustard” so far how I want the bathrooms cleaned. I expect my leather furniture to be cleaned with the products I provide. I want my furniture dusted with a particular polish and DO NOT let me catch you placing a can of polish on the wood furniture – you put it on the floor or on the glass table or keep it in your pocket – but DO NOT put it on my furniture. I expect the carpeted areas to be vacuumed, and yes, I expect that you will take the edger to the floors once in a while – and more often than once every three or four months. The windows need to be cleaned and even though Windex comes in a spray bottle and is easier to use with paper towels than using a bucket and some ammonia, a squeegee and old newspapers, that is how I want my windows done and this is my house and I make the rules about how I want things cleaned, so really, it’s not an option for you. There are some other relatively basic cleaning chores that are included, but the current houseboy comes four days a week from eight o’clock in the morning until one o’clock in the afternoon so I do not feel as though my expectations for accomplishing these tasks are unreasonable.

As for the rest of the household duties, I will take care of them. I do not expect you to make the bed every day – this is something I usually do and don’t mind doing. It’s done my way, which as far as I’m concerned is the ONLY way, in MY house. My current houseboy tries to get to the bedroom before I can in the morning – as my husband doesn’t get up as early as I do – and he’ll insist that he make the bed. I have had to correct him a half dozen times as to how I want my blankets pulled up, which side of the bedspread I want [it’s reversible – basic flowers on one side, stripes on the other – it’s a cheapie and you get what you pay for – so basically it’s a piece of crap and looks like one, but I have two Kids who sleep on the bed – so there’s no way I’m spending a couple hundred dollars on a bedspread that I replace every six or nine months]. I want it on the flowered side and NOT the striped side. I make this decision. Don’t make me tell you again, damn it!

With the exception of large dinner parties or parties, I do the dishes. Yes, I am fussy about how my dishes are done, and there is certain glass wear – my crystal, for example, which I do not put in the dishwasher, but do by hand, and I’ll do it myself because if something is going to get broke – I want to be the one who does it. I do not want my dishes done by hand – no one will ever be as fussy as I am about it, and I will use water hot enough to take the skin off your hands if I have to do them by hand – most of what we own can go right in the dishwasher – and yes, I am of the old school in this regard and rinse everything clean before it goes into the dishwasher. My pots and pans, I do wash by hand, as well as my Henkel knives. Sometime quite shortly after the current houseboy just started working for me I heard this noise coming from the kitchen and walked out to find that he had emptied my silver wear drawer into the sink and was hand-washing all of it. “What are you doing?!?” “I am cleaning the silver wear, Madam, so that it doesn’t smell.” “WHAT?!!” Ahh, silver wear doesn’t smell, and if it smells like anything, it smells like lemon from the dishwasher soap. So, oh no, you’re not. Put every piece of it into the dishwasher right now and don’t ever let me see you do this again. Unless I tell you to do something like this – your duties do not include making these types of decisions on your own. Good grief. What would possess someone to think they had this kind of authority in someone else’s house? Am I wrong on this? No. This is my house.

Do not ever, and let me repeat this loud and clear, DO NOT EVER touch my laundry. I do the laundry. I have a system. It may seem anal to many, it may seem like a process which could be simplified – but I don’t think so – and I am way, way, way too fussy for “you” [houseboy] to ever be able to do my laundry to my expectations. All whites with bleach get done first – in hot water, with warm water rinse. All delicate whites without bleach get done next – this prevents something with colors being put in the next load and getting bleach spots – something I have learned with experience over the years. Then the tans and light colors get done. Then the light blues and grays get done. Greens can be included with the darker blues. Jeans are done separately, inside out, in warm water. Browns and blacks can be done together – in cold water, only. My sweaters get done in special laundry bags on delicate and I lay them flat to dry on a special dryer that I have that fits over the tub. My underwear is all done in warm – with the exception, of course, of some special pieces that are colored, and I hang it to dry. I fold everything as soon as the dryer beeps at me so nothing lays in there to become a wrinkled mess. I hang things that many people probably don’t, but that’s my choice. I hang things going ONE direction only. I have heavy-duty plastic hangers for some of my DH’s shirts because they are big and bend the regular plastic hangers out of shape. My DH’s hangers are all white. My hangers are purple and lavender. ALL pants are on wooden hangers. My closets are organized by long-sleeves and all colors grouped together; short-sleeves and all colors grouped together; ditto for pants and everything else. The flimsy wire hangers that the cleaners sends back to us I immediately remove, and replace whatever clothing we’ve gotten back from the cleaners onto their respective plastic or wooden hangers going the “right” direction – the cleaner’s places all pants on those flimsy wire and cardboard bottomed hangers backwards so I take care of this. I fold tee-shirts in thirds; I fold socks in half and then in half again and the sock drawers are organized by size and colors with all of the heels lined up – I never, ever fold socks inside one another cuffing one over the next. I fold underwear in thirds. I can fold king-size fitted sheets in such perfect squares that they could be put back into the packaging that they came in – along with the flat sheet and four pillow cases. My towels are folded in thirds – always the same direction – all towels – bath towels, dish towels, etc., and they too, are organized by color. I don’t deviate. Ever.

So, as I said, last week were away and I expected that I’d come home to a dusted house, vacuumed carpets, clean tile floors and clean bathrooms, along with clean leather furniture – my living room set is leather – my Boy often naps there and moves from the chair to the couch to the loveseat – it needs to be cleaned, often. [The Baby is not allowed on the furniture. She thinks it is a play surface and is not nearly as gentle on it as The Boy.] Blah, blah, blah. I expected that the houseboy would fulfill his usual duties and take care of a couple of additional – simple – responsibilities.

The morning we were leaving while I’m going over his additional tasks with him, and as I was finishing getting ready the dryer buzzed and I said, “Do me a favor, just fold this stuff for me, and I’ll take care of it when I get home.” The Houseboy and I have already had a discussion about laundry – one day while I was out walking The Kids – the dryer had gone off and the houseboy not only folded that load, but took wet clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer and had started another wash load on his own. Suffice it to say that my conversation with him was very, very clear, and he was told in no uncertain terms that he was NEVER, EVER to touch my laundry again, and that he would be all finished here if he did. So, I probably made a grave mistake in judgment by asking him to fold ONE load of dry laundry. There was no wash in the washer that was ready to go into the dryer – I didn’t expect him to do anymore than fold what was dry so that I didn’t have a wrinkled mess – and yes, the laundry basked contained a couple of loads of darks still to be done – but which, as far as I’m concerned, could wait until we returned. At the bottom of the laundry basket was a tan pair of sweat pants and matching jacket that were covered in wine – red wine – that I needed to use special stain remover on and take care of to try to save.

Apparently I wasn’t quite clear enough with some of my “extra” instructions, and apparently I wasn’t quite clear enough with my earlier instructions that my houseboy should never ever touch my laundry. We came into a dark house – not a single light on – not over the stove, not in the hallway, no where. Imagine my surprise when I turned on the light in the dining room and saw laundry hanging all over – on hangers – wire hangers, along with plastic hangers, but in a hodgepodge fashion – my DH’s golf shirts on my lavender hangers, and my tee-shirts on heavy-duty white hangers, and sweatshirts – yes, sweatshirts – on wire hangers. I truly wish I’d have taken a picture of this because I was stunned! And I was furious. The houseboy must have been incredibly bored without us to pick up after and no Kids to clean up after because he ironed EVERYTHING we owned except socks and underwear. Every single tee-shirt I own was ironed, as well all my sweatshirts. Who irons tee-shirts and sweatshirts?!? Sitting on the table, all folded, was my tan sweat suit – which was washed – with NO pre-treatment whatsoever – and dried!!! It is permanently ruined. It might have had a chance, and I might have been able to save it. Not now. No, instead I can use a hundred dollars sweat suit – which I only wore once, by the way – as cleaning rags. And, I will have to spend several hours putting in the proper hangers to the clothing and re-hanging it in its proper place. Not only had he done this, but there were three boxes of Christmas ornaments still in the corner of the living room which I hadn’t packed up and put away because I was out of white tissue paper and wanted to get more before I finished this chore. They were gone from the living room and no where else in the house so it was easy to presume he’d taken them to the garage even though for several weeks I have told him not to touch them, that I would take care of them, and that he would just have to clean around them. The bedspread wasn’t on the bed in the bedroom – where the hell is it? Oh, that’s what in that green garbage bag sitting next to the washer. Did I tell him take the bedspread off? No.

The houseboy showed up the next morning – an hour late – and was at the house when I returned from picking The Kids up from “canine camp” [the kennel where they stay when we’re gone]. I told him that while appreciated that he had tried to help that I was not happy that he had taken care of things I had told him not to, that I wasn’t in the mood to go over everything and that he should take the next couple days off and I’d talk to him on Sunday morning. He then had the audacity to ask me why I hadn’t called him when we returned to tell him we were home and I told him that I had left the information about our returning for him and that I didn’t think that it was necessary that I have to check in with him, nor did I think it appropriate that he even ask me to and that if something had happened and if we had missed a flight we would have called him. Not enough, that I’m furious at him for doing things he’s been told not to, for making decisions about packing up the rest of the Christmas things – he said he wrapped them carefully in two “Kleenex” tissues each – and then taped the boxes for me and took them to the garage – but now he wants me to call and check in with him? Oh. No. I don’t think so. And finally, he asked me if he should take the bedspread to the cleaner’s – because he has determined that it is dirty. No. The bedspread is a cheap piece of crap that has to be washed in the washer and hung to dry or it will be ruined more than it’s already ruined. It can’t even be ironed – it’s that kind of cheap material – and it will take the print off of it. And, by the way, it looks dirty because it’s been washed a few too many times and I have two Kids who sleep on it all the time – and it’s usually covered with a sheet which I replace every other day or so. And, even if it is filthy, and covered with crap, it isn’t your decision to make whether or not it needs to be cleaned. Thanks, but I’ll decide.

My dilemma is that I want so bad to fire his ass on Sunday morning because I am so, so, so furious that he somewhere along the way – he’s only worked for me for about four months – decided that he should be the one who takes care of this household and that my decisions are questionable in his opinion and that he has some authority to override them – but I am leaving for a three week trip to the States in only eleven days and just don’t have the time or inclination right now to have to get a new houseboy and train him before I leave. My DH will be here with the Kids and although DH can take care of doing his own laundry and his own dishes and [occasionally] making the bed, I do not expect him to be dusting, cleaning the leather furniture, washing the floors or cleaning a bathroom. Already I’ve gone through numerous houseboys because they all seem to have difficulty with this being my house and my rules. Every time we get a new houseboy friends start pools to see how long he will last. And, this isn’t a topic my DH even likes to discuss with me, at this point, because it’s been ongoing for five years, now.

Alright, apologize for the rant. This isn’t over. And, I guess, I’ve made my decision now that I’ve addressed it head-on. “Houseboy No. 14, you’re fired.”

Dinnertime

We had a dinner gathering last week. The main course of the meal was roast pork – brought in across the causeway from Bahrain, of course – mashed potatoes with gravy and peas. The Kids absolutely luv pork and if I do say so myself, I make a great pork roast. The Kids also like mashed potatoes and gravy. The Kids do not like peas. We have good-sized Kids – The Boy is a Great Dane and The Baby is a standard Poodle – with good-sized mouths – and very, very healthy appetites. I thought I could get kind of sneaky when I mixed some leftovers into their dishes for them and I mixed the peas into the mashed potatoes and gravy – only a heaping spoonful of peas, each – even though I know they don’t like peas – they don’t and won’t eat them unless I’ve run them through a food processor and made them into mush and they have no way to “eat around” them. I am amazed that two Kids with mouths as big as they are, and big teeth as well, are able to eat mashed potatoes with gravy around their peas and leave this:

...just eggs, a loaf of bread and a box of tampons...

“Honey, can you pick up a few things at the supermarket on your way home from work? We have enough milk. We just need eggs, a loaf of bread and a box of tampons.”

Interesting article, here, that barely touches its topic, "Changes should be for the better." Seven paragraphs that say a great deal about a society, the one here in The Sandbox, yet still, offers very, very little in the way of substance. Typical, rhetoric. Perhaps the author was given a word limit, I don’t know, but the article itself at first, second and even third read makes minimal sense in its discombobulated format. What is most interesting, though, is the choice of “changes” the author chose to illustrate, particularly in this paragraph:

“Women nowadays wear items that used to be taboo. Traditionally, a husband would hesitate to buy female pads for his wife in an isle of a supermarket. He would be embarrassed if someone he knew would pass by and see him check a wide selection of female pads. Now, I see people walk freely in those isles, choose the brand of the pad they like, check the size and take them to the casher [sic] for the payment without any signs of reluctance.”

Yep. That’s what it says. “Women nowadays wear items that used to be taboo.” Surely, I thought, the next sentence was going to read like this: They are wearing halter tops, mini skirts, fishnet stockings and platform boots.” Nope. Instead, apparently, wearing “female pads” used to be taboo. Shocking! Who’d of guessed that pads used to be taboo?!? So, then, if wearing “female pads” used to be taboo, what, pray tell, did these poor women wear – “once a month?” We know they didn’t wear tampons, because finding them in The Sandbox is nothing short of a miracle, as I stated in my comment on this post at blonde sagacity. And, oh, by the way, what supermarket can the author possibly be referring to? I have yet to see a “wide selection” of feminine products at any of the supermarkets we have in the Eastern Province, a limited selection, yes, but not a “wide selection.” The biggest isles they have in supermarkets here are candy isles – not complete isles of “feminine products.”

Apparently, that a husband now walks “freely in those isles,” those isles that at one time must have been “verboten,” a change in this society has been made, and it is not for the better? News flash: Women have been menstruating since the beginning of time and just because in this Country where there is an overwhelming majority of women who belong to a religion where female circumcision [also know as female genital mutilation] is an acceptable practice, doesn’t mean that monthly menses stop. And, it is not just here, in The Sandbox, that a husband might be embarrassed “if someone he knew would pass by and see him.” I suspect if you did a world-wide census you’d find that a majority of men are not particularly comfortable shopping for their wives “feminine products” even though I think most husbands would do so if asked because really, a normal bodily function is nothing to be ashamed of. You buy toilet paper, don’t you? [Okay. So, that’s the wrong argument to use in this Country.] You do buy diapers for your baby, though, don’t you? What, then, is the big difference?

It is, however, just here, in The Sandbox, where women are not allowed to get in their car and drive to the supermarket on their own to shop – because women are NOT allowed to drive! That men are in this isle where “female pads” are sold can hardly be used as an argument to show that a change has been made in a society where “change should be for the better.” Let us drive to the store on our own. Now that would definitely be an example of change! Unfortunately, though, a change that likely won’t be for the better…

Frustrations Mount or “Fun in The Sandbox”

Time for a well-deserved little break from The Sandbox. Actually, probably overdue for a break. I suppose if you are a “local” then long uninterrupted periods or years of life in The Sandbox are just the norm, but if you are not a “local,” there is just only so much one can take in a country that sometimes seemingly sucks the life right out of you! My breaking point usually hits at about four months – and then it becomes time for an extended break in the real world – which is far, far, far from here.

December flew by. We were busy – mostly I was busy. We had our first “real Holidays!” and thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed them. I spent the better part of the middle of the month baking. Every year I make plates of cookies for all of the “bachelor” pilots that are here without family. [Bachelor doesn’t necessarily mean single and unmarried, here. It can mean a man that is here without his family; most of the married pilots arrive alone and are not able to bring their families until they have been here for a period of time – usually about a year and sometimes longer.] I started making these cookie plates five years ago – and that first year I probably made nine or ten plates of cookies. Since that year the count has increased, and along with the “bachelors” that are here working, I also try to include as many of the men who are here that come and work for ridiculous wages from other Third World Countries who will never get to bring their families and who are only allowed to travel home every two or three years – usually the men that others don’t think to consider, the ones who work very, very hard to make our lives as good as they are here – the street cleaners, the gardeners, the guys who wash cars in the parking lots for a living, the guys at the cleaners, the guys who bag my groceries at the Commissary and unload my cart into my car, the two newspaper delivery men, the man who cleans my pool, my houseboy, and a few others.

This year I made thirty-seven cookie plates. There were pictures. Unfortunately, something happened when I tried to get technical and there are no more pictures. I do, however, have pictures of some of the cookies before they were carefully, tediously arranged onto plates, covered with cellophane and then tied with red and green ribbons. The baking this year included seven batches of gingerbread which I rolled out and cut into Gingerbread Men and then painstakingly decorated – 280 of them! I made eight batches of Russian Teacakes and hand rolled them all in confectioner’s sugar, twice. I made three batches of Mamie Eisenhower fudge, three double batches of butterscotch pecan coconut brownies [which are more delicious than I can even describe!]. I made three double batches of lemon cookies with raspberry filling. I made three batches of Martha Stewart’s white chocolate peppermint bark. And I made three batches of triple chocolate biscotti with white chocolate chunks. Yes, to say that I was very, very busy baking is an understatement, but for the most part, this was an enjoyable and pleasant task, even though incredibly time consuming.

This was the first year since we’ve been here that we had a Christmas Tree! It was sooo exciting! I was in Bahrain, early in December, and walked into a store and saw several different sizes of trees – fake of course, for sale, and bought the very biggest one. Eight feet of plastic pine needles, made in China, for far less than what one would pay in the States – I paid 39 Bahraini Dinars for the tree, which is 390 Saudi Riyals [$104.55 U.S. Dollars]. I bought decorations at the same store. Nothing to rant and rave about – they weren’t gorgeous, but here, in the Middle East where Christmas is generally not an accepted and openly celebrated holiday – you do the best you can with what you have available. From then on, it was a mission, to shop and find ornaments and decorations for the Tree. I called my Mom in North Carolina and begged her to immediately go out and find lights for me – the lights here are all on cords are 220 volts – which is what the electricity is for everywhere here BUT for our compound which was built by Westerner’s and uses standard 110 voltage like in the States – and send them to me via overnight delivery. Bless her heart, she did, too! Mom immediately purchased eight boxes of lights for me – for a total of 800’ of little clear lights – and also included as a surprise in the box she shipped the lights in four or five boxes of icicles [long silver strands of “tinsel”] – the cost of the items she sent was about $40.00, but she paid $90.00 to ship it! I waited until the lights arrived before assembling the Tree. Thankfully, a few of the photos of our Tree made it to our computer’s hard drive before I destroyed the chip that had everything else on it. It really, truly was an almost picture-perfect gorgeous Tree. Even the Houseboy walked in one morning after I’d decorated it and said, “It is very beautiful, Madam. I have never seen anything like that except in a movie.”

Needless to say, because I was so involved with baking, and then waited for the lights to arrive before putting the Tree up and decorating it, we never got around to doing our usual family Christmas photo this year, and that truly is regretful. Next year… The Kids were so good with the Tree – it was their very first Tree, ever, too! Each time The Baby would go near the Tree the laws of physics kicked in – or something – and she created enough static that the thin strands of silver plastic tinsel attached themselves to her and she’d end up prancing through the house covered in icicles – so it was rather comical – seeing her fluffy black curls decorated with silvery strands [yes, of course we were very, very careful to make sure that we took them off of her and replaced them to the branches of the Tree – before she could attack them on her own!]. As often as the Kids had their noses in the Tree, or went to the windows behind the Tree to do their “barking chicken” thing at whatever moves on the other side of the windows – not a single ornament ended up breaking, and not once did The Boy lift his leg to mark his territory – thankfully.

At some point during the last week or so before Christmas there were a couple of people over and, as we are apt to do here, we were sitting around consuming our beverages – my beverage of choice being “grape juice,” and after I consumed several glasses of it I said, “I know, on Christmas Day we’ll have an open house and everyone that doesn’t have a place to go with friends or family can come here.” Suffice it to say that one of my two New Year’s resolutions this year includes wearing a roll of duck tape on my wrist like a bracelet so that the next time I’m enjoying several glasses of “grape juice” someone rips a piece of tape off and covers my mouth before I say something like, “Let’s have an Open House!” So now, along with the umpteen gazillion cookies I’ve committed to baking and decorating or cutting and arranging, I committed myself to a Christmas Day Open House and what was only going to be a few people ended up with something like thirty – mostly men [one of which came and brought a Saudi woman to accompany him – but I’ll save that for another post] – invited – including the Marines at the local Consulate. It really went quite well, considering I did most of the work myself and cooked a turkey and a ham, and made 200 little cocktail meatballs in grape jelly and chili sauce, a cheese and pepperoni tray, deviled eggs, chips and a couple of dips… Someone make a corn casserole and brought that, someone else brought a couple different dips to put out with chips and crackers, one of the neighbors baked two pumpkin pies, one of the flight attendants made absolutely wonderful little mincemeat tarts, and someone brought a quiche – which we put in the oven and forgot [whoops!]. A good time was had by all, and my “little” Christmas Day Open House was a pleasant success and perhaps we will make this an annual tradition here – along with the cookie plates… [As much work as all of this was – all the baking and cooking – decorating – preparing for the Open House, and the Open House itself, I have to say that I am extremely fortunate in that I do have almost daily household help – and whatever messes I make get cleaned up, like magic. Thank you, thank you, thank you Sajeed for all of your help!!!]

So, finally, the Holidays are over, the Tree has been undecorated, and is in its box, to sit in the garage wrapped in green plastic until next year when we will likely again repeat all of the above. I cannot say that I am disappointed that the Holidays have, once again, come and passed, it was wonderful for the duration, but now it is time to move forward with a New Year, 2008, and what better way to see the New Year in than with a nasty cold! Damn it, anyway. Everyone has been passing this “respiratory” crap around and I was sure – certain – that it wasn’t going to get me. Wrong. I got it. Not really the flu – the symptoms are not nearly as bad – but a nasty, annoying head / sinus / upper respiratory infection that just refuses to leave once it infects you. It starts off with a low grade fever that’s just enough to make you achy, a constant runny nose, itchy eyes and scratchy throat – not quite enough to make you “sick stay at home in bed” but just enough to make you irritable and uncomfortable. Then it progresses and by day four or six you are sick in bed because you feel absolutely lethargic, your nose is red and raw from the dozen or so boxes of Kleenexes you’ve used and still your nose just refuses to quit running – and of course at this point a nasty cough is now part and parcel of this “crud” you’ve been infected with. You had better hope and pray you were smart enough to have put cold remedies in your suitcase the last time you were in the States, because you’re NOT going to find NyQuil [contains alcohol!] or any Alka-Seltzer Plus [probably an aphrodisiac of some sort] on any of the shelves here in The Sandbox – nope – nothing like that – so you’ve been self-medicating yourself with whatever remedies you do have – I went with the Benadryl and cough syrup – a cough suppressant – knowing full well that I really needed a decongestant, not an antihistamine, and a cough expectorant rather than suppressant – but you just hope you’re doing something right to alleviate all of what it is that is ailing you.

After three solid days in bed realized that I was going to have to drag myself to the clinic, here. I should have known better – I should have gone to the clinic earlier – when the very first signs of this upper respiratory thing appeared – I know that when I get this type of “cold” it doesn’t take long for it to turn into bronchitis – and sometimes close to pneumonia – it’s happened here before – and I am quite positive that the “schmalls” we have – sand storms – are a big part of the problem with the respiratory problems that people have here – and “Kids,” as well. The Boy has terrible dust allergies – and we live in a Sandbox! So, anyway, after spending time in bed getting absolutely nothing accomplished and far from feeling better I knew I had to face the music and plan on spending a good part of the day at the clinic where I’d be surrounded by throngs of men wearing long white dresses and red and white ghoutras [thobes and head coverings] and women completely covered head-to-toe in black. I really didn’t have a choice, in my opinion, and had to do it – and of course I chose to go on a Wednesday, our “Friday” here. The clinic is closed on Thursday and Friday –our “Saturday” and “Sunday.” What a mistake – waiting like I did – so that I could go on the busiest day of the week. I’m fairly certain I’ve blogged on this before, but because women can’t drive in The Sandbox, along with the many who don’t realize they have any rights at all – like the right to be sick and get diagnosed by a medical professional without their male guardian’s permission – going to the clinic becomes a family outing. No, I am not kidding. If a woman is sick – not a Westerner, here, but a “local” – it means her husband must drive her – or her six-year-old son or twenty-four-year old brother or eighty-year-old father – whatever “man” of the house has responsibility for her, and thus the whole family loads up in the Suburban or Ford Crown Victoria and they head off to the clinic.

Think about the implication of this – if the man is taking his wife / sister / mother / daughter to the clinic – who’s going to watch their six or nine or thirteen little misbehaving, wild and unruly children?!? You couldn’t possibly leave all those children home with an untrustworthy maid, so guess what? The maid with ALL of the urchins in tow become part of the entourage accompanying the sick woman and her husband / guardian to the clinic. I am convinced there are families who schedule days to go to the clinic and do so to make it a family outing. Really. This is the only way for some women to get out of the house – so it does become something of an outing, say, like going to the mall. But the mall is only open for a few hours in the morning – and again at night – so what are you going to do with the rest of your day? After all, you don’t want to be cooped up in your house with your maid and your kids and given no chance to socialize with all the other women that belong to your particular tribe – so you “get sick.” Always on a Wednesday, though, because how else are you going to catch up with all of your friends to find out what plans they are making for the weekend? And, again, always on a Wednesday because this gives the man of the house a three-day weekend – see, it’s like a bonus!

Here's a novel idea - use your mobile! Just because the signs entering the clinic say that all mobiles must be turned off – we know that those signs do not pertain to “you!” Mobiles constantly going off with music, gongs and prayer ring-tones and mumbled conversations mostly in Arabic are being carried on all around you in the clinic – I have yet to see one of the men entrusted with security as you enter the clinic either take a mobile away from someone or actually tell someone to turn their mobile off – men and women alike flaunt their defiance to the rules by entering the clinic with their mobiles glued to their ears. But nooooo. Couldn’t possibly use that mobile to call your friends and find out what weekend plans are being made. Instead, you ALL flock to the clinic to spend your Wednesday – the day that I know I have to go because otherwise I’ll be deathly ill all weekend and then have to wait until Saturday to be seen by a doctor.

Really, going to the clinic is like aan organized sport of some sort – with a list of rules that are somewhat baffling – especially to a newcomer [which, thankfully, I am not, anymore]. First there is the hunt for a parking space – it’s a huge parking lot. Huge. But every single space is filled – and then some – because all of those pesky yellow lines which are painted to show where a vehicle should be parked only apply to everyone else. “You,” as a “local,” are entitled to park anywhere you want – double park – block an entry or exit – that’s fine for you. Park on the sidewalk – that curbing that’s been placed there is no deterrent whatsoever – just hop up on over it. So just finding a parking space becomes the first quarter of this game called “going to the clinic,” with no referee or umpire to call “safe” when you’ve got your parking place in your sights and are ready to ease your vehicle into it – when WHOOOSH – someone else overtakes you and screeches around you to get their vehicle into the spot first. Quite a game, really, and deft skill is required so that your vehicle – no matter how big it is – doesn’t get totaled in the process. So, here I am, poor little me, without my DH as my guardian to accompany me to the clinic because he is working and it would be totally unacceptable for a Westerner to call his supervisor and say, “I won’t be in to work today because I’m taking my female dependent property to seek medical attention” playing the first quarter of this game and not winning, I might add. I end up parking what seems like a good half mile or so from the clinic. Oh – forgot to add that the last part of the quarter of this little game is to try to navigate the parking lots / sidewalks and other pedestrian areas without being hit by oncoming traffic. I finally make it to the clinic… End of first quarter.

You enter into a sea of “locals” all mulling about and in no particular hurry to move out of your way as you try to make it to the reception area where you can be directed to one of several waiting areas to be seen by whatever unfortunate lowly physicians are on call for clinic duty. This duty is probably a game for the doctors, as well – they choose straws to see who has to staff the clinic and whoever gets the short straw is the winner! I can tell you that no matter how conservatively you might dress as a Westerner, you stick out like a sore thumb. “How dare you flaunt yourself by coming into the clinic without wearing your abeyah?!? You Western whore!” All eyes will be upon you. The clinic is actually on our compound – this is supposed to be a Western compound – and as so, we, as Westerner’s – us women, anyway – are not required to cover ourselves in full-length black hefty trash bags and are instructed before we even arrive in The Sandbox that while out and about on the compound we need to be dressed conservatively. I had on long black yoga style pants, “cute” black Skechers [oh, yes, shoes do matter!], a long-sleeved white tee-shirt and one of my husband’s white sweatshirts. My husband is a fairly large man – his sweatshirts are size XXLT – the “T” being necessary because he is so tall and if we don’t get the “T” then the sleeves of whatever it is we buy are too short. So I’m swimming in his sweatshirt – two or three of me can fit in one of these sweatshirts – and it comes down to my mid-thighs rendering me totally shapeless. Albeit my blonde hair does stand out – and this alone creates a stir – everyone stares. After registering at reception I head to the designated A, B or C area where I then go to the “Female Waiting” area. All of the waiting areas are segregated – you can’t have any males mixing with females in a clinical setting! And here you will sit until your ID number is called over the PA System – and good hearing is essential for this quarter of the game – because everyone – EVERYONE – around you is either on their mobiles chatting away or sitting in groups having little parties with their pastries and sodas and tea and coffee [yes, seriously, there are numerous little food kiosks where you can get full meals or snacks scattered throughout the premises of our clinic]. Thus, you are a participant in the second quarter of this game called “going to the clinic,” and you don’t advance until you are called to be seen. End of second quarter.

After spending what seemed like hours waiting, I finally got called and went to the designated little examining room where “Doogie Houser” is the unfortunate physician who drew the short straw to see patients in the clinic on this particular Wednesday. It really makes you feel old when a young man who looks as if he has just reached puberty – if – is going to examine and treat you – I am certainly old enough to be his mother, and am probably old enough to be his grandmother in this Country where it is okay to get married when you are ten years old. So, I tell the nice young man what my symptoms are and how long I’ve had them – blah, blah, blah – and tell him that I know I need antibiotics at this point, and ask him what kind of cough syrup I can take. Nope. I’m all wrong, apparently, and this young Saudi “kid” tells me that what I have is viral, that antibiotics are not going to help and that he wants me to just drink lots of water and that will help my cough. [Seriously, Doctor, you’re sure you’ve gone to medical school and that you are not just a child playing dress-up in a white lab coat? Drinking plenty of water is going to make me stop coughing!!!] So, “Doogie” doesn’t want to prescribe antibiotics for me, thinks that Claritin – an allergy medication – is going to take care of all of my problems – and of course I have to listen to him lecture me on the dangers of smoking and how that if I just didn’t smoke then I wouldn’t be having any of these problems and that I should just quit… Yeah. Okay. He tells me that he can enroll me in the smoking cessation program that starts every Tuesday and it’s in Room 361 or wherever, and then tells me that I should take the Claritin, drink water, quit smoking and come back in a couple of days if I am not better. I’ve had about enough, my patience is reaching its limit, and I tell the nice young doctor that I will never, ever enroll in a smoking cessation program here in The Sandbox, that I will not be coming back in a couple of days to repeat the fun in the clinic that I’ve had thus far, that I am not leaving his office without a prescription for antibiotics and that I will be taking cough medicine that is a suppressant instead of an expectorant because that’s all I have. This concludes the third quarter of this game and I storm out of his office with my prescription for antibiotics in hand and head for the pharmacy to play the last quarter of the game called going to the clinic.

The pharmacy at the clinic provides almost as much fun and entertainment as the waiting rooms do. This is where all the “players” congregate – their respective teams separated, of course – males on one side and females on the other – to try to make the last big play of the game. The rules are really fairly easy IF you follow them [ha!]. There is a window where you line up to give the pharmacist your prescription and in return you are given a card with a number on it. Once the prescription has been filled, your number will be displayed on the big TV screen and you go to another window where the prescription will be dispensed to you. Sounds so easy – even a child could play. Unfortunately the part where everyone lines up in an orderly fashion to give the pharmacist their prescriptions is just too complicated for the “local” women here. Line up? Do this in an orderly fashion – a first come, first served basis? Nope. “You” are entitled to go straight to the front of the line, by-pass anyone else there waiting, and give the pharmacist your prescription. It is not a gentle “excuse me, while I cut right in front of you” play, either. These “local” women ARE pushy. When I first got here I was overwhelmed that things like this even happened and would have let someone cut me off like this. Not now. I’ve since learned. “You” are NOT cutting me off – and in fact since no one else is going to educate you as to the rules of this particular part of the game, I will! So there are two women dressed head-to-toe in black in front of me in this line and a couple of women behind me – all but one other woman there in the waiting section of the pharmacy were “locals.” We are all standing there, patiently waiting our turns, when this large “local” shoves her way to the very front of the line and stretches out her arm and black-gloved “claw” to put her prescription in. I stretch out my white sweatshirt clad arm and uncovered hand and gently push her arm back and say, in no uncertain terms, “These two women are next – we are all waiting in line – and you need to go back there behind them [the other women in line behind me].” The pharmacy becomes silent. I can only see the eyes of the large black blob through her little slit and believe me when I tell you that her eyes were NOT “smiling.” She then turns and waddles her way to the back of the line with a loud “humphff,” but there is nothing she can do. All eyes in the pharmacy are on her – and then I can feel them on me – and I’m thinking to myself, “this is it – I’m done for in this – the last quarter of this game called the clinic, and I am about to get tackled and taken down.” Instead, the woman directly in front of me turns around and quietly and sweetly says, “Thank you,” and the pharmacist looks at me and smiles. Score! But only one point...

As we are all sitting in chairs in this little area whilst awaiting the posting of our numbers on the screen which come up in numerical order – kind of like at the deli at a grocery store in the States – the large black blob once again tries to best all of us and she lumbers up to the dispensing window and is pounding her black covered “claw” on the counter yelling something in Arabic at the men behind the counter. She is not pleased about something – but my Arabic is far too basic to understand what it is that she is saying. All I know is that whatever transpired during her conversation with the pharmacists was not the outcome that she expected and all of the sudden all three of the pharmacists were there huddled at the window pointing to both the screen on the wall which displays the numbers of the prescriptions and pointing at the chairs – so apparently they were ordering her to go and wait her turn and that when her number was displayed – she’d get her prescription and while she is still standing at the dispensing window – my number gets displayed on the screen and as I make my way to the counter one of the pharmacists deliberately turns his back on her completely and hands me my little container of antibiotics and tells me in nice clear English how many to take every day and to make sure that I eat something so that I don’t get an upset stomach and to call if I have any questions. Score, again! Two points for Sabra and she wins the game!!!

Of course, I couldn't possibly have just quietly walked away without muttering under my breath something that would surely get me arrested in the States as being most "politically incorrect" and racist to the core. However, since my dear Mother occasionally reads my posts here, I'll just leave it that what I said really wasn't very nice, but suddenly my "cold" didn't seem so bad after all, because I felt a whole lot better after uttering my sentiments directly to the black blob, who as far as I'm concerned, needs to go back to her tent in the desert and do all of mankind a great big favor by curling up and dying.

Oh, and by the way, I've taken a week of the antibiotics, I did get some cough medicine - expectorant - and I'm feeling much, much better!

Old News – Illegal and Runaway Maids

This is old news – old as in published in the Arab News two months ago. The issue, however, is a current and ongoing problem. I caught the article when I was looking for abused maids to publish in my last post and am compelled to share… It is telling, in so many ways, of the mindset of people here in The Sandbox.

To begin with, the complaint that “many people pay them extortionate salaries ranging from SR 1,100 to SR 1,500, instead of the standard SR 600 to SR 800 paid to legal maids working legally. [Does anyone at the Arab News bother to do any proofing and editing? “Legal maids working legally.” Can you have “illegal maids working legally?” Or “legal maids working illegally?” I digress.] SR 1,100 to SR 1,500 are hardly “extortionate” salaries. In U.S. dollars that is $294.90 to $402.14. The poor [literally] “legal maids working legally” at SR 600 to SR 800 are paid $160.85 to $214.47 in U.S. dollars for their services. Just assume for the benefit of explanation that these maids – the “legal ones” working “legally” perform services for what is, in the United States, an average, customary workweek – it isn’t like that here, of course – but just assume… That means that the average “legal maid working legally” earns somewhere between .92 cents and $1.23 AN HOUR! That’s it. But if she can find illegal work she can make the big bucks, earning between $1.70 and $2.32 and hour. I can assure you that this isn’t how it works here and but for the very and extremely rare case none of these maids would be expected to work only a five-day, forty-hour “customary work week.”

Poor Fahd Amash’s wife. She has five children and is a teacher. He complains that although their “circumstance requires…more than one maid” the authorities only allow them one. Good grief. How can this family expect to manage under such impossible conditions? [Don’t even consider feeling sorry for this family; but DO feel sorry for the one maid they had, before she ran away. She, with no doubt, had very, very good reason for running away!] Novel idea here, Fahd - just marry another wife to help out. You’re allowed four, after all. But alas, Fahd went the illegal route and hired a maid at SR 1,500 a month whom wanted ONE DAY off every TEN DAYS!!! Three days a month off?!? Unheard of! [Which, assuming the maid works only eight hours a day brings her hourly wage to approximately $1.86.]

Feel less sorry for Houaida Hassan, a Saudi “housewife,” because she had to resort to employing an illegal maid “as her friends do.” Nothing like having to keep up with the Joneses! But wait. She’s a “housewife.” And she had to “resort” to employing a maid. Merriam Webster's on-line dictionary defines “housewife” as “a married woman in charge of household.” And this islamic-world.net site breaks the definition of a housewife down even further:

A housewife is a woman, though there are some househusbands, who works at home caring for her children, maintaining her home and cooking for the family. A housewife works very hard every day and gets few vacations, holidays or weekends off as men and women who work outside the home get. And a housewife works many more hours each day than those who work outside the home.

There are so many duties performed by housewives that it's hard to list them all. Some of them are taking care of children, doing laundry, cleaning floors, walls, windows and kitchens and bathrooms, making beds, ironing clothes, making breakfast and lunch, cooking dinner and washing and drying dishes. Perhaps the most important of all of these important tasks is the care of children.

The mother who works in the home devotes a large part of her day caring for the health and safety of her children. She keeps the children clean and fed and tells them when they are bad and when they are good. This teaches children a most important lesson: the difference between right and wrong which they will use for the rest of their lives. Housewives do the most important work of any men or women though they rarely receive the recognition they deserve because others do what may seem more interesting.

So by this “Islamic” definition, why would Houaida possibly need a maid?!? Lest I get accused of being a “pot calling the kettle black,” I will admit that I have [another] “houseboy.” My [new] houseboy does assist me with housework for a few hours in the morning four days a week – he cleans my bathrooms, washes the floors, keeps the “Kids” nose prints off the windows, dusts and vacuums. I do the rest. I do all of the cooking. I do my own dishes. I make the bed. I pick up the toys. I do the grocery shopping and errands. I do all the laundry. Etc., etc., etc. I do not have a maid, per se. I pay my “houseboy” SR 20 per hour, which is $5.36 in U.S. currency. [Is that minimum wage? I have no clue what minimum wage in the States is at this point.] If, in ninety days, the new “houseboy” is still with me – provided he can work to my exacting standards, then I will give him a raise to SR 25 an hour, or $6.70. For a young man from Bangladesh, this IS the big bucks! Houaida is willing to pay SR 900 [U.S. $241.28] per month and give the poor maid ONE day off every TEN DAYS! Again, assuming a typical work week of forty hours, working twenty-seven days in a thirty-day month, this maid will earn $1.11 an hour!!! Absolutely astounding, isn’t it, that just one day later the maid complained about the work and refused to stay. Hmmph. Wonder why.

Houaida goes through the same broker to get another “illegal maid” and again, a day later, the maid complains about the work and doesn’t want to stay. [Two maids in just two days. Gotta be more to this story, something about the "work" maybe? Or perhaps the hours?] Poor, poor housewife Houaida. In the end “she decided to do without the maid instead of being taken advantage of.” Oh, for sure, someone was “taken advantage of” in this situation – and it WASN’T Houaida, you can bet on that!

Feel worse for Majed Ali, though, who acquired a maid for his sick mother during Ramadan. Here’s his story:

“The maid was to be paid a salary of SR 1,500 and the broker asked for a SR150 commission,” said Majed. “I accepted all the broker’s conditions and took the maid to my mother. On the second day of Ramadan my mother called me to come quickly and when I got to her house, I found the maid screaming and yelling. She said she didn’t want to work and wanted to be let go,” he said. “I told her to give me the SR150 that I paid the broker and that I would let her go. She screamed and threatened my mother. She wanted SR200 or she said she would cast a spell on my mother that would make her sick and bedridden for the rest of her life,” he said, adding that his mother was frightened and asked him to give the woman what she wanted and let her go."

Wait, wasn’t your mother already “sick” when you hired the maid? Was she just sick with the flu and she would recover in the short-term? Or was she one of those frail, sickly old women, bed-ridden to begin with and needing full-time care for the long-term? We are to believe that you and your mother believed the maid that she could “cast a spell” which would make your mother “sick and bedridden for the rest of her life?” What color is the sky in your world, Majed? And how is Peter Pan these days? Do you, in all honesty, really believe that maids have the ability to “cast spells” like this? Gimme a break.

An expatriate who spoke to the paper has the inside scoop: “Brokers manipulate people by planning with the maids to leave work after working for a day or two. “People then end up going back to the broker to get another maid and pay additional commission. The broker in turn gives the maid a percent of profit,” he said. No name given for this expatriate, however, so who knows if this source can be relied upon? After all, there have been “rare” instances reported on various internet sites where “sources” are thoroughly debunked after telling newspaper journalists “untruths.”

Saving the best for last, we have the head of the Passport Department in Makkah, Ayed ibn Taghalib Al-Luqmani, stating: “We have recently arrested a large number of illegal maids and the people who shelter them. It’s a wonder that people recruit them and trust them with their children in spite of everything that we know about them. Many of them have infectious diseases and are known to be thieves.” [See my previous post about the hallucinogenic effect of camel milk. It goes without saying, in my opinion, that Mr. Al-Lugmani has consumed far too much of the magic milk when he rants that “Many of them have infectious diseases and are known to be thieves.” WTF?!? How in the world can this man possibly be expected to be taken seriously with a statement such as that?!? Just a bit of explanation here, to qualify this statement, would be helpful. I happen to know for a fact through first-hand experience that one does not get a Visa to even enter this country without being tested for a myriad of diseases and illnesses! We not only gave blood and urine to get Visa’s, but stool samples as well. So how can these women, or “many of them” get their Visa’s to come to this country if they are inflicted with “infectious diseases?” Perhaps the “infectious diseases” to which Mr. Al-Lugmani is referring might be those of a venereal kind? Hmmm. Let’s think about this for just a second or two. Let me go out on a limb here and offer my hypothesis: If the men in this part of the world could keep their damn sirwals pulled up and quit humping anything that moves – and this includes their friends and buddies, their several wives, their misyar wives, their cousins and their animals – perhaps the epidemic of “infectious diseases” could be kept at bay. ‘Nuff said.]

I Need to Start My Own Damn Newspaper

…which would probably have a name that would for certain be censored! Names which come to mind that I can’t even “print” here because they would get me in too much trouble. Suffice it to say that it’s not just the newspapers in the States that are a bit biased. They are biased in the Middle East, too. Yeah. Just a bit.

One of my “A-List Favorites” of the umpteen-hundred blogs I visit – this one at least thrice-daily, Weasel Zippers, prints a shocking tidbit – Hell has indeed frozen over – that the BBC has actually printed something positive with the way things are going for Our Boys in Iraq. But, just in case someone in the Middle East might per chance be privy to something slightly “glowing,” one of our paper’s here is able to immediately counteract with this:

And, not in “small print,” either, but print that is at least twice the size as normal!

And, this is the picture that is sooooo disturbing:

Starting from the beginning… “It shows the insensitivity of the US soldiers towards Iraquis.” Hmmm. How fuck!ng insensitive were the Iraqis when they planted explosives in the auto yard next to her home?!? Never mind. That point is, apparently, inconsequential.

Moving on… “Firstly the soldiers entered the house without taking their shoes off, thus bringing in the outside impurities of soil, mud, and unknown germs.” Yeah. This, from someone in a country where it is customary to take a crap and then instead of using Charmin to clean up, you use your hand to wipe yourself. No “impurities” or “unknown germs” garnered from this thoroughly unhygienic measure, for sure! But because “the woman was barefoot…this was obviously a home where shoes were not allowed.” Those Soldier’s didn’t “respect the sanctity of her home, her castle, as she is its queen.” Perhaps if the woman had asked her husband, her sons, her uncles and her cousins NOT to plant bombs next door NONE of this would have ever happened so forget even going with an argument as lame as that.

Okay and then we have, “The woman seems to be at the invader’s mercy, as is obvious by her posture. There is also the potential for more US abuse if she is left too long in this position.” WTF?!? Is there some sort of drug in camel milk that causes hallucinations? If so, the writer of this letter needs to drink a little less of it, I think. Standing for a few minutes with one’s arms in the air is abusive? No. THIS IS ABUSE:

And these abuses happen all too frequently here in The Sandbox. Perhaps the letter writer ought to take a quick glimpse in her own mirror before hurling accusations at others [just an idea, you ignorant Pot calling the Kettle black!]. Continuing along, with the sheer audacity of the letter writer to say, “Where is the considerate treatment…?” Yes. Indeed. Where IS the considerate treatment?!?

And to say that “It would have been quite sufficient and most probably much more effective if they had simply asked her to swear in front of Allah that her word was true.” Pluhheeezze! This confirms my suspicion about camel milk. For sure.

The letter writer’s last line is almost too much to fathom: “Our hearts go out to the victims of abuse under all circumstances, especially when the occupiers are unjustly brutal, as both America and Israel have been behaving.” Again, I refer her to her own mirror – that is, if her reflection doesn’t shatter it into a million teeny tiny little shards of glass first!

Cheap Labor

The problem with cheap labor is that although it is inexpensive initially, it comes at a much heftier price later on down the road. Here in Saudi, ALL of the labor is imported from other Third World Countries because “locals,” as I refer to them, believe it is beneath them to do anything considered in anyway remotely a menial task. [See this article: Proof.] So, the labor force we must deal with, although probably skilled to a degree – albeit much of it on-the-job training – is not skilled to the degree that is usually and actually required to solve a problem.

We have an outdoor faucet that is broken for the fourth time. Each time I simply dial the three-digit number for maintenance, "202", and someone schedules the necessary electrical-plumber-air conditioning-carpenter maintenance man or men to come to our house and we pay nothing, monetarily, that is. This is a service that is included in our housing on the compound provided by the company my husband works for. Yesterday, when the faucet quit turning off, for the fourth time, I called and specifically requested that a plumber be sent to fix our problem and tried to be quite clear that the reason we need a plumber is because the irrigation team they keep sending to fix the same problem obviously isn’t fixing it. My conversation went something like this:

Me: Yes. Hello. I need you to send a plumber to our house. The outdoor faucet is broken, for the fourth time, and it will not shut off.

Person answering “202”: Yes, Madam, we will send irrigation.

Me: I don’t want irrigation to come – you’ve already sent them – several times, now – they aren’t taking care of the problem and all that is going to happen is that the same thing is going to happen all over again and I am going to have to call you for a fifth time.

Person answering “202”: Yes, Madam. It is no problem. We will send irrigation. They will be there at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

Me: No. I need a plumber. And you want me to wait until tomorrow morning? So it is okay with you, then, if my water runs all afternoon and all night and floods my yard and the street.

Person answering “202”: Yes, Madam. It is no problem. That is the ‘on-lee ap-point-mant a-veil-abble.’

Me: Aarrrggggghhh!

The rest of the world is having near-drought conditions – the southeastern United States desperately need water – California has out-of-control wild fires destroying entire towns because it is so dry – and people living in this country in Jeddah are going without – but because there is only “cheap labor” here, my outside faucet will be left running until “irrigation” comes to fix it because I can’t get a plumber. In the meantime, my back yard is turned into one big mud-hole which makes it impossible for me or my kids to enjoy. Perfect.

So, at nine o’clock this morning the irrigation guys – two of them – showed up, right on time, to fix my outdoor faucet. This, as I earlier mentioned, has been an on-going problem – they’ve been here four times now to fix the same thing. And each time they come they fix it the same way: I get a new faucet put on. It would seem to me, and I am not a skilled plumber so this is just a guess on my part, that the problem requires a solution just a tad more complex than simply replacing a faucet. This morning was no exception. As the young man turned all our water off – and likely other neighbors as well as the water main in the street has to be turned off – he showed me that he was going to replace the faucet. My conversation with one of the young men went something like this:

Me: You’ve got to be kidding!

Him: Yes, Madam. New faucet.

Me: But that obviously ISN’T the problem – this is my fifth faucet. You’ll be back in two weeks to fix it again. And each time it quits shutting off I have to go through this – as well as deal with a flooded back yard – and this is not acceptable.

Him: Yes, Madam. No problem.

Me: Good God, at least send someone who speaks and understands English!

And I stormed into the house and called “202” and demanded to speak to a supervisor when the person at “202” answered, “What is the problem, Madam?” to which I responded, “No. I don’t want to keep going through this, just get me a supervisor on the phone, and one who speaks and understands English.” But of course speaking to a supervisor is an impossibility – the supervisor being “a local” and thus he is no where near his office quite this early in the morning. Duh… “The supervisor is out of the office, Madam. What is the problem?” [I’m pretty sure that all of our calls are going through some call center in India; probably the same call center that Microsoft and Verizon are using.] So I rambled on about my problem and how it’s been happening every two weeks and how the wrong people are being sent to fix it and that even though they fix it temporarily they are not fixing it properly because it keeps happening and what I really need is a plumber – not irrigation – and that I need to discuss this with a supervisor and one who understands and speaks English, clearly. Meanwhile, all I can think of is that Farside cartoon where the man is talking to his dog and the dog is hearing “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…” and I know I am getting nowhere but getting more and more frustrated by the minute. Finally, the “202” person promises to send a plumber to me this afternoon at three o’clock.

So, at two forty-five, I lock the Kids in the house and am right there to open the back gate when the “plumbers” arrive at three o’clock. [It’s always more than one person – never less than two – often an entire group – all depends on what type of problem you are experiencing.] I open the gate and there are two young men holding their tool bags in their hands and guess what else they’re holding – a NEW FUCK!NG FAUCET!!!

I give up. Have to. Too much time and energy has already been wasted on the fact that water is running freely from my back yard – which floods – in to the street, cooling the pavement for no good reason – every couple of weeks when the faucet stops shutting off – and I don’t think I’m describing this correctly, because in actuality the faucet does turn – it just doesn’t seem to be able to shut the water off to prevent it from running. When this place dries up in a few years – after we’ve left – I’m just going to smile. Hey, not my fault that gallons upon gallons of one of your precious valuable resources was routinely squandered because you refuse to recruit and hire help at the cost required to accurately diagnose and resolve some maintenance issue.

There will be not a single tear shed by me when old men, women and children, and especially the TITS are shriveling up and dying off from dehydration!!! Perhaps if the gazillion dollars this country reaps from the wealth of its oil were put to better use – such as teaching its citizens actual trades and skills instead of allowing them to become dependent on labor from other third world countries because doing some laborious task is so beneath them – I could muster up a bit of sympathy. As long as this country refuses to recognize that there are so many reasons why cheap labor isn’t cost-effective, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to worry about the amount of water that the sand in my back yard consumes.