Ma'asalama Saudi Arabia Jan 14th 2010

This is my last entry about Saudi Arabia. I guess it is time to write it as I sent an email this morning to my boss in the ER at the hospital to tell her I did not intend to return. The hospital sees it as absconding, however I see it as giving 3 weeks' notice which is less than the contract requires. But what the heck, I can at least break one contractual requirement. Well apart from the time I had 5 people of mixed company in my bed in the bachelor building.

I did actually learn from the experience. I learnt that I liked health care in Australia. I learned how to cannulate children without using any local pain relief and have them pinned down by other staff.

But you need to take the good with the bad. So here goes for the good:

1) The shopping is great and cheap I will never have the opportunity to buy the things I did on a nurse's income.

2) Dammam in central to interesting places like Bahrain, Oman and the UAE and travel there after getting a visa is relatively easy.

3) There was some really nice staff at the hospital that I shall miss, along with some wonderful people I met who left before me. I shall miss them as well and they are always welcome in my home where ever it is.

Sadly that is it for good things. Saudi Arabia is basically a dismal place. The culture is challenging and they give Islam and other Arab nations a bad name. I guess we in the west tend to judge the entire Arab world by Iraq, Saudi and Iran. But this is unfair as I had some wonderful experiences in Oman, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain. I look forward to one day going to Jordan and Egypt too.

As for the really bad things:

1) The clinical work at the hospital is third world

2) I hate the phrase 'En shala' it is an excuse to be apathetic and lazy and is thrown around every time a Saudi does not want to do something, which seems to be all the time.

3) The prejudice against people who are non Saudi is extreme, causing unnecessary distress. The attitude is that all Expats are here to do the s**ty jobs that are beneath them. However, if all the Expats left Saudi there would be no hospitals, no taxis, no hotels, no restaurants and most of all, no oil wells. Perhaps this message should be put on bill boards around the country and wallpapered to the customs counters at all boarder crossings. This would maybe give Expats a better experience of this country.

Overall I would only recommend living and working in Saudi Arabia if you are in a Western run company like BAE or SaudiAramco. You need to live in their luxury compounds and work with their Western ethics.

The majority of Arabs of Saudi Arabia are just plain nasty people. They do not even care for each other. I could at the end of 7 months count the number of nice Saudis on one hand. This is the tragic part for those few trapped in such an ugly world. I left Australia with a really open mind and looking forward to the experience. I became bitter and twisted and only felt happy on the few trips out of the country. As I am now in the UK and on the second part of this adventure and able to share it with Pippa, I will soon be as happy as I was before I left Australia.

Thank you to everyone who kept in contact with me while I was in Saudi, it meant a huge amount. Stay tuned to this site as I shall keep adding to it while Pippa and I are travelling and looking for jobs and houses.