Geek1956 Project 365 - 2022

Geek1956 said:
This was Fairfield Juliana, pretty close to Saudi Arabian culture. How did you find it working there?
Click to expand...
When I worked there Saudi was still closed to tourism and women couldn’t drive. I lived in an apartment building where doctors from the hospital lived but in a normal Saudi street, not in a compound. So had to put on all the gear to go get bread.

I felt a bit stifled because it seems like Big Brother a bit. Everyone paying attention to what you’re saying, doing, wearing. Because I couldn’t drive I needed to do everything with couples, they had their marital status and partner’s name on their ID, so we couldn’t make up a fake couple because they could take us to jail. And I couldn’t be alone in a car with a man unless they were a driver (which was also stated in their ID…).

Work-wise I needed a nurse who spoke Arabic to be both a chaperone and a translator. As time went by I started to understand more and more Arabic (all deleted from my brain now) and could see my nurse wasn’t really conveying my instructions properly :alien: more so due to cultural differences on how to address a patient rather than purposefully changing the instructions. But I never got anywhere near being fluent enough to talk to the patients myself.

After a text that’s 2 days worth of reading, bottom line is it was both challenging and eye opening at the same time. I don’t regret it but wouldn’t want to do it again. Now I don’t know how things are since they opened their borders to tourists and women have more (theoretical) freedom, but I find it very hard for it to have changed enough in such a short time (I left Saudi in 2014).
 
younger said:
When I worked there Saudi was still closed to tourism and women couldn’t drive. I lived in an apartment building where doctors from the hospital lived but in a normal Saudi street, not in a compound. So had to put on all the gear to go get bread.

I felt a bit stifled because it seems like Big Brother a bit. Everyone paying attention to what you’re saying, doing, wearing. Because I couldn’t drive I needed to do everything with couples, they had their marital status and partner’s name on their ID, so we couldn’t make up a fake couple because they could take us to jail. And I couldn’t be alone in a car with a man unless they were a driver (which was also stated in their ID…).

Work-wise I needed a nurse who spoke Arabic to be both a chaperone and a translator. As time went by I started to understand more and more Arabic (all deleted from my brain now) and could see my nurse wasn’t really conveying my instructions properly :alien: more so due to cultural differences on how to address a patient rather than purposefully changing the instructions. But I never got anywhere near being fluent enough to talk to the patients myself.

After a text that’s 2 days worth of reading, bottom line is it was both challenging and eye opening at the same time. I don’t regret it but wouldn’t want to do it again. Now I don’t know how things are since they opened their borders to tourists and women have more (theoretical) freedom, but I find it very hard for it to have changed enough in such a short time (I left Saudi in 2014).
Click to expand...
Interesting, hard to believe they’re on the UN human rights board
 
Filmroll moments
DE3375C7-940E-47DC-BBBD-F62EB31752BC.jpeg
D7A009AB-62E2-47E8-93BF-CC71DDC08D81.jpeg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom