Abu Dhabi (3) 2009 Madinat Zayed (2)

Part 3


So, the next day I did exactly the opposite of what I resolved and waded through the files.

What a load of crap!

This was the business model gone stark, staring, crazy in an educational setting.

It was full of corporate Orwellian new millenium f**kspeak” (C.O.N.M. F.K.) for short). Riddled with words and phrases such as ‘benchmarks’, 'performance indicators’ and, ‘measurable targets’

( ‘Marks?” maybe, but I thought benches had been thrown out of schools in the early twentieth century.)

‘Outcomes’ and ‘Skills”. All this CONMF is designed to persuade the unsuspecting reader that the author knows what he is talking about when quite clearly he does not. We simply cannot know the unknowable by measuring the unmeasurable and designing the undesignable : “Instruments”, “Tools” and “Levers.” with which to “impact” outcomes. No matter how hard we try we cannot practically quantify or measure these things. I am prepared to concede that CONMF may be relevant in in an engineering context, or in sex therapy sessions. Both are indeed concerned with short term concrete, tangible products such as making spanners or orgasms-but not in an educational setting PLEASE!

In the educational world we are concerned with noble, abstract, long–term, undefinable and unmeasurable entities such as ‘critical thinking’, ‘problem solving’ and ‘values’. I say these are ‘entities’-not skills. A ‘skill’, like welding or masturbation is something that can be taught by demonstration and repetition. A beetle could learn to weld if it had the correct genitalia. I am mixing my metaphors but critical thinking and problem solving are clearly not ‘skills’;. If so, I would have solved all the world’s problems by the time I was fifteen.

By the end of the first day I was ready to throw up. The sheer arrogance of the claims of “the provider’ ( CFBT-the company I worked for) was staggering. They claimed that within eighteen months of starting the “New Curriculum” Arab Egyptian, Syrian , Palestinnian teachers in High schools who knew virtually little or no English would be teaching fifty percent of their classes through English!!

It was brilliant! In the U.S. this would be like asking an English–speaking American teacher to TEACH English speaking kids (with no Spanish) math and science THROUGH SPANISH after the teacher had taken eighteen months of learning Spanish say two times a week.

One good thing seemed to happen on that day. Ali , a quite charming accomodation officer from Sudan phoned me to say that there had been no progress on the accommodation front.

“Oh!” I said, hiding my disappointment, “Thanks for telling me that anyway. Where are you?”

“I’m in MZ,” he said

“In MZ!” I said , astonished.

“Yes, I am getting ID cards for CfBT company drivers”

I thought to myself “No wonder there has been ‘no progress’ on the accomodation front”

Seizing the opportunity I said “I come meet you now?”

I insisted. I was going to brook no resistance.

An hour later Ali had told me he had a ‘Villa” available and that I could have it if I liked it.

I didn’t realise it at the time but it was actually a pigeon loft. Close inspection of the windowsills, balconies and doorsteps would reveal vast quantities of eggs and pigeon dung.

Otherwise, it was very nice. It was a huge, recently renovated, empty villa with nothing in it except the pigeons –not so much as a stove..

I looked at it and made yet another brilliant decision: I decided . “Yes, this is better than upsetting Mr Ed by overstaying in his home as an unwanted guest.”

“This good one, I taking” I mouthed enthusiastically to Ali.

The deal was done.

Why Ali had never mentioned this villa to me in the phone call earlier in the morning is a mystery which may remain unsolved forever.

Anyway, I was later to be told directly by many in MZ, that I had been allocated the pigeon loft ‘out of turn’ –as it had been promised to a kiwi teacher (Jo), who was in fact in New Zealand for the holiday. (which is of course precisely the reason she was not allocated it). In a third world context if you are out of sight –you are often out of mind. I was also told that Stevie ‘wonderboy’ from ‘ull’ or some such place north of the Watford Gap , Ali’s boss, was furious when he came back form his holiday and heard that I had been allocated it!

Later on I would apologise to Jo and offered her the house. She declined and blamed wonderboy-not me.
I was also told that on my arrival, nobody had volunteered to share with me when Mr. Ed suggested it in an e-mail. He was thus obliged to put me up himself.

What a burden that must have been for Mr. Ed. I was beginning to get the vibes.

Anyway, this was all in the future. For the moment I was happy. I had an enormous, partially renovated, entirely empty, villa. I didn’t realise at the time but it was actually a pigeon loft.

I do remember Ali briefly pointing out the five centimeter layer of Pigeon guana on the windowsills with a dismissive wave of the hand.

‘This problem everywhere MZ’ he said nonchalantly.

As Ali was undeniably a knowledgeable person in this area (Pigeon droppings) and I was a newbie, who was I to challenge him?

It turned out that the other teachers in the street had ordered netting from the US to cover the entire house to stop the bloody pigeons from laying their eggs and Guarana on the windowsills.

They were like something out of a Hitchcock movie.

I netted the house with a green netting until it looked like a British Army outpost in Northern Ireland –or a fortress on the Gaza frontier.

They kept coming back to the sills. Teachers killed the pigeons with sticks and compared ‘kill counts’ at work in the mornings.

Anyway, first things first, I had other things on my mind. I determined to delay my battle with the pigeons , rather than exterminate them.

A couple of days later I went up to Abu Dhabi, bought a bicycle, and did the IKEA thing. Something I had never before done in my life. I purchased everything from knives and forks to beds and fridges. The whole deal.

I felt sweaty and nervous afterwards. I had never spent as much money in one day in my life.

But I was determined to make the pigeon loft comfortable and get out of Mr.Ed’s way –and his house - and then get on with my job.

Back in MZ , pigeons aside, life was quiet –to put it mildly. Everyone had in fact vanished!

I pedalled up and down the mainstreet of MZ on my orange bicycle looking for people or something to do.

There was one supermarket and three tiny street restaurants. The rest appeared to be mobile phone shops, hairdressers, grocery shops, or mosques.

There were Mosques everywhere-wired up with loudspeakers to make sure you got up and prayed five times a day-even at 5.30 in the morning.

No women on the streets until dusk-then they appeared like wraiths black and masked from head to toe, following their ‘Masters’ apparently docile. But their gait was not without menace.

I walked the one main street, with my bicycle, and entered each little hardware shop or Barbers shop and introduced myself personally.

‘Nice to meet you .I coming live MZ long time” I would say shaking their hands.

In the next two months no-one subsequently ever showed any sign of remembering me.

Eamon and I saw each other from time to time but he felt guilty (as indeed he should have) about having manoeuvered me out of the apartment into Mr Ed’s place–and ultimately the pigeon loft. This was all so he could pocket his housing allowance. So I think he was avoiding me a bit. But this was hard to do as we were the only two westerners in MZ for those two weeks.

In Adelaide, Maria says of some friends....

‘Its ok for them they have roots here –they have a life’.

Meaning of course that she doesn’t have a life.

And she’s right.

She sounds resentful. Wouldn’t you be? Was it not having a home or was it the unhappy teenagers-or was it just me? Probably all three.

She certainly blames me. In a way she is right, I am to blame. I’ve lead her a merry dance all these years and she has followed me loyally and what has she got in return?

The teenagers are depressed and take advantage of her: they won’t even wash their own dishes, let alone clean the house, cook or buy food. They just seem to sleep, eat, and get sick.

Whose fault is it? Well …I don’t really like to say –but it is at least partially hers aswell. Why?

She runs around cleaning up after them and feeding them until they’re ready either to sleep, crap or vomit.

When they ask for a lift she stops what she’s doing and takes them in the car to a place they could easily go to by bus –or bicycle.

So, she has created a rod for her own back and become exhausted.

But when I try to intervene to help her she takes their side!

That’s why I’m better off over here with my Taiwanese landlady, two Chinese girls, two Aussie lesbian cricket fanatics, and the two desexed dogs. There’s not much sex in our house but it’s still more fun than being in my own family house.

My Taiwanese landlady has a rota of domestic duties for us-and I’ve showed it to my wife so that she can see what can be done with a bit of Anglo-Celtic organization.

By the way , have you heard?

The following are the new rules for job interviews in the educational sector in South Australia:

The following words or phrases must no longer be used by an interviewer:

Should any of these words or phrases be used by an interviewer for a Government job, a buzzer sounds and the interviewee has three choices: He or she can decide to exit the interview and claim the job without any further questions, activate an electrical prod which he or she can place on any part the anatomy of the interviewer. Or, he or she can decide to tell the interviewer to go and stuff their job up their…a**es

An xxxx indicates there is no appropriate term in CONMFK, has become redundant in CONMFK or that there is no alternative acceptable form

I have put many CONMFK words and phrases with their acceptable forms in a table below for clarity.

Corporate Orwellian New Millenium F**kspeak (CONMFK) Alternative acceptable form
Goal aim
Target aim
Objective aim
Benchmark level
Performance indicator Test result /observation
evaluate measure
assess measure
lever change
impact change
driver cause
accountability responsibility
empower help
enhance improve
specifications details
Build capacity strengthen
Will have…… xxxxx
Will be able to… xxxxx
flexibile reasonable
What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are you good at?
xxxx What do you like doing?
What can you offer that others can’t Any special talents?
Why should we offer you this job Can I thank you for taking the time to make an application and coming to speak with us?


The Commissioner has deemed that the following phraseology or something similar is appropriate for terminating the interview.

“ If we are fortunate enough to receive an offer of your services, we hope we will be able to offer you here a stimulating and supportive professional environment where you will be given the autonomy to enjoy your work”

Signed,

Dr Don Nixon

CEO Educational Warcrimes and Truth Commissioner

Adelaide.

Fourth of April 2009

Employers and interviewers who continue to use CONMFK or do not admit to having done so in the past can not be granted amnesty by the Educational Truth Commissioner.

They will run the risk of being used as target practice by the Special Air Forces-or secretly rendered to the U.S. and placed in school yards so they can be randomly murdered by sad and lonely gunmen.

CONMFK started in the Thatcher years in the corporate business world of the UK. Reagan copied it in the U.S. . Howard finally brought it to Australia,

The cancerous CONMFK has spread like a melanoma form the business world into the educational world and even now the world of medical health. (Sorry, the ‘Health Industry”) Even politicians are infected now.

“I’d lack to see Barack Obama have some benchmarks for our strategy in Afghanistan” drawls the Republican Rotweiler on CNN.




Back in MZ, for my IKEA trip, I decided to take a punt and call the CEO in Abu Dhabi.

The CEO was a personable chap who had in fact been my boss in Brunei.

I liked him. In my nine years in Brunei we had had one or two brief encounters and overall I had come away with the impression that he was unusual in that he tried to be fair, gave considered responses to queries, and remained personable in a difficult environment where a lot of his employees were under stress.

CfBT Brunei had a very difficult job keeping the Ministry of Education happy as a client. I got the impression that CfBT were often asked to do the dirty work for the Ministry. Some expatriates positively enjoyed that role-in fact that is why some of them became expatriates. They loved the power and would have been nobody in Australia or UK.

But my CEO was not one of these people.

I admired the way he remained calm and considered in difficult circumstances and didn’t allow his code of personal and professional ethics to desert him as so many CEO’s do in such circumstances.

Not that I agreed with all his strategies at all. I didn’t . But the core of the man himself was sound.

His wife was a charming lady who had met my wife in Brunei on a transatlantic flight quite by chance and I think they both came away with a favourable impression of each other, although we never socialized with them in Brunei.

Let’s face it. I was bored and lonely in MZ. I was getting worried about my family: I was receiving alarming messages on my mobile from my wife in Adelaide.

Moreover, I was concerned about my own physical health. My bloody legs kept hurting with attacks of phlebitis every few days which although not debilitating were, nevertheless a cause for concern.

I needed to see a familiar face badly.

For the IKEA trip, I had no wheels and nowhere to stay in Abu Dhabi, so I called my CEO.

Maybe he would rather now that I hadn’t. I haven’t dared ask him.

‘Sure come and stay with us’ he said. Typical of him.

And I did, and they were most helpful and hospitable and understanding about my situation. I think if it hadn’t been for my CEO and his wife I would have gone back to Australia within a couple of weeks of my arrival.

Over the next few weeks I was to stay with them several times. They were very kind to me without having the slightest ulterior motive for doing so. That impressed me.

Back in MZ school started again and I started to get stuck in to the job.

M, my American predecessor began to open up a bit. I began to like him in spite of his abrasiveness.

Rid was still a pain in the ass and he had to be put in his place quite rightly by Mr.Ed after writing a couple of blunt letters to the accommodation office. But he was going to be manageable. I was confident I could reel him in slowly

The others on the team were all a pleasure to work with. N and Y from England, and R from South Africa. All had their beefs and moans about their employer but it never prevented them being professional and hardworking in my opinion.

I saw my job as building a relationship with the Principal (J) and slowly gaining his confidence. I also had to get to know my team. And, I had to get to know my local teachers.

Then there were the ringbinders full of files.

Unfortunately –none of this really got off the ground.

In the holidays, I was told of a new arrival for my team from Holland called Roe___. He had no experience overseas and I was worried he would be lonely on his arrival in MZ during the holidays. In fact Roe____ adapted easily, I needn’t have worried. He was happy to be in the Liwa hotel which was thirty minutes away form MZ. I had never been given this option as it was ‘full’.

It would greatly have assisted me if Mr. Ed (Do you keep thinking of a horse when you read his name? I do, and I don’t know why. Maybe it was the oblong face?) He had not taken the time to sit down with me and explain the basic structure of the progam and what the f**k we were doing. Instead of that he chose to throw me in at the deep end with a bunch of papers and sit back and watch me struggle so he could take my measure. It is the oldest trick in the book used by anyone who has power over someone else. I continued to tip-toe around his house walking on eggshells. My intuition told me not to upset him..

After the second week of the new school year facing another weekend in MZ on my bicycle eating at the same restaurants and hobbling around on my gammy legs I realised that I didn’t even know if I was covered by medical insurance –or if there was a reputable doctor in town!


Because I was Co- Principal of the school I had to maintain a certain distance from my own team. This was hard to do as they had their own pigeon lofts in the very same street. The other twenty expats all knew each other and didn’t visit me. I spent a lot of time looking for an excuse to visit them and establish relationships-but I inevitably felt I was imposing by ending up asking for a ride somewhere as I had no car. I even had to get to and from school with the help of colleagues. I could not stay on late after school because I had no ride home.

On Thursdsay afternoon at the end of week two I had a panic attack.

I looked at the four walls.

Roe____, the affable Dutchman, had just left in his hired car for the Liwa hotel.

I faced another weekend on my own.

The pigeons circled the house attempting to breach the netting . They flapped and wretched in the background. It sounded like they were trying to throw up but couldn’t.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore” Maria had messaged me.

What did that mean? What was she doing now?

I felt the panic rise and reached for the phone to my friend D C in Ireland.

“DC, This is MZ. I think we have a problem”

“O.K, Go ahead M.Z.”

“I don’t think I can do this anymore”

Oh…No?

“No” I said.

A long pause…..

I explained.

‘Well, you can’t continue to do what you are doing if you are so unhappy.”

Later he called back to suggest I go to Ireland for a while until I decided what to do.

I picked up my phone to my CEO and Mr. Ed to explain that my mother in Ireland was ill and I was requesting leave to go back to Ireland to visit her.


The next day, I went to Abu Dhabi and stayed with the CEO.

That night I flew from Abu Dhabi to London.

It was the probably the end of the beginning, and definitely the beginning of the end.