Over the last few weeks, I've had more time to see what all the other teachers have been complaining about since August, when the company first moved everyone into these apartments. The first most obvious problem is the perpetual puddle of sewage outside the front of the building. This apartment is located in the farthest suburb of Dammam, the farthest you can go without being in the desert. The neighborhood was built without proper sanitation and draining, so every so often, a truck comes to pump all the sewage from the building out of the holding tank and into a truck to be taken... somewhere. This truck used to come once a week, which clearly wasn't enough, because it would always overflow and leak out into the street. The puddle stretched for at least 20 feet and covered about three quarters of the road. Thankfully, there was a high curb, and the parking is on a slight slant, so we never actually had to step in this puddle. Unfortunately, we did have to smell it. Some claim to have actually seen feces floating in the cesspool, but I never got close enough to confirm.
The last two weeks, the truck has been coming once every other day, and the pool has started to dry up, and some days it does disappear altogether. Strangely, the side effect seems to be that it becomes smellier inside the building. Everyone has plugs in all the sinks and drains and has to keep the lids down on the toilets, just to make it bearable in their own apartments. My room was initially smell free, but on certain days, the smell hits with a vengeance. On those days, I open the window to my chimney and lock myself in the bedroom, and put on the perfume I got from the cultural night to drown out the smell.
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| I'm pretty sure the wires are supposed to be inside... |
They have been promising a laundry room since August. The washing machine will apparently be a shared laundry room on the roof. At first, the hold up seemed to have been building the room. However, the room has now been built, plumbing added, and everything ready. They are just waiting for the company to release the funds, and have been waiting for the last 6 months. I asked my program manager if there was anything we could do to speed up the process. She laughed and said, you are welcome to try. I did try. I wrote an email to the company explaining that I was sure they wanted to hire and keep the best teachers, and to do that, they would obviously want the best for their teachers, and therefore, I was sure they were doing there best to get a washing machine for the fifty or so teachers living in the apartments, and could they please just provide us with an update on when we could expect the washing machine. He wrote back and told me to ask my program manager. I thanked him, but pointed out that I had asked my program manager, and she had suggested that I contact you. I told him I realized that he was probably not in charge of the funds, but could he please pass on my email to someone who could help me. It has been over a week, and I've had no response from him at all.
The company switched to these new apartments initially because the old accommodation required sharing. Everyone says it was a much nicer place and had bathtubs and a laundry and workout room, and a pool (a real pool, not a cesspool), and was within walking distance of a grocery store. But, that there were too many problems with stressful roommates, and people kept having to change roommates, or were quitting over the problems, so they moved to an accommodation with single apartments. We still have roommates though. Some girls have worms that look suspiciously like leeches climbing up the sides of their toilets. The boys have repeatedly caught lizards in their rooms and taken them outside, several blocks away, only to find the same one, or a new one, back the next week. My personal roommate's name is Carl. Carl the cockroach.
I met him for the first time this weekend. The bidet that is such a great substitutes for toilet paper (and they are when they work) had a small slow leak when I moved in. But every day, it's getting bigger. So now there is constantly a puddle on the bathroom floor. I asked several times for the Egyptian guy to fix it, but to no avail. Finally I thought, how stupid I've been, and now I drape the handle over the toilet bowl so the leak drains into the toilet, and now, no puddle. It's great for me, but it's also apparently perfect conditions for my new roommate. I saw him the first time when I stayed up late. I was watching a movie and sewing away, when I suddenly realized it was 2:30 am, and I needed to use the restroom. I flipped on the light and opened the bathroom door, and there he was, all two and half inches of him, standing on his barbed cockroach legs, antenna twitching, presumably guarding the toilet. I scared him into a corner, but couldn't get him to leave altogether, and couldn't bring myself to step on him. I just hate the crunching. So I did my business as fast as a I could, and shut him into the bathroom. The next morning he was gone. I was relieved. Until the next night just after midnight, when I went to the bathroom again and saw him back again. This time climbing on the extra water bottles I was told to keep in case the water cuts out (as it did once for over a week). Again, I watched him like a hawk. He calmly let me do my business and then I left him to do his business. In the morning, he was gone again. After two more days of night sightings, Carl and I have come to an understanding: he has free reign of the bathroom from midnight to 5 am, and I get it the rest of the day. So we have been cohabiting more or less happily, so long as he sticks to his hours. If he starts to come around more often, I may be forced to borrow someone's roach killer spray.
The worst part of the apartments is the location, which can't be fixed. We are next to a very busy highway and have to cross about 12 lanes of traffic just to drop off our laundry or get drinkable water. I leave my window open for whatever breezes I can get, which aren't many since my window looks out on an alley and the apartment building next door. The noise of the traffic keeps me awake at night, so I can't even have it open during the coolest hours at night. Even worse, it's a notoriously bad part of town. Teachers have witnessed men beating women in the streets. Just dropping off the empty water jugs for a refill, which is literally two buildings away on the other side of the street, is risky. We women are honked at constantly and men will try to follow us. Thank goodness there is no place to turn around for at least a mile, so we can usually disappear into a store before they get around to the right side of the street to get out of their cars. I wouldn't risk walking any further away than a block or two for that reason. Not that there is anything to walk too. Convincing taxi drivers to come this far out of town, and to this neighborhood is usually impossible, and always exorbitantly expensive. We are quite literally trapped inside this building. When we go to work, we are trapped in that building. I relish my few moments of outdoor time transferring between bus and building more and more, and I've been spend more and more time on the roof, just to get some semblance of openness and freedom in my life. Its really quite depressing.
On Saturday, we suddenly had a visit from the company, whom, after 9 months of constant complaints have finally decided to come down and see for themselves. Of course, there would be no puddle on the day they arrived. They also came on a Saturday afternoon, which is our one trip to the mall for the week, so almost everyone was not at home. They did take a tour through several apartments, and spoke to some of the teachers who have been here longer. I stood in the hallway with the half-dozen or so other teachers who were home, waiting I supposed to speak with the man. By the time he had had individual discussions with Chris and the male program manager and some of the other people, I was sure he had hear it all, so I didn't feel the need to show him my apartment or introduce him to Carl. He told us that he personally would never be satisfied with this accommodation, and that they would be back next week to begin looking for alternate housing. He said he wishes he had known sooner, but that none of the complaints had ever reached him. He was only here now because they had received 13 resignations sighting poor accommodations as the reason for not staying on in the last month alone. I asked him what they were going to do in the future to be sure that our emails, not just about housing concerns, but about everything; payment issues, vacation time, iqama processing, were reaching the right people, because it seemed to me that all our concerns were "not being seen". He did not give me an answer, instead he talked around it, making excuses for why in this case, no one had listened to us.
I'm hopeful that something may eventually come of this, and maybe we will be moved to a better location and nicer accommodations. But I'm still new and naive. The old hats aren't holding their breath for any changes. Looks like Carl and I may be in it for the long haul.
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