Tutoring Joury

The day before I was supposed to tutor for the first time, I got a text telling me that the mother was with the driver looking for my place and wanted me to give them directions.  My new home is in a tiny compound which is really just a set of four 6 or 7 story apartment buildings with a pool and recreation rooms in the middle surrounded by 20 foot fences and barbed wire.  Compared to most compounds, it's a joke.  In fact, it may very well be the smallest compound in Khobar.  It also happens to be pretty new, and surrounded by older, larger compounds.  So it makes sense that she was worried she had never before heard of the compound and wanted to be sure that her driver could find it the next day.

The Giant Shopping Cart in front of HyperPanda where I live

Luckily, the compound is directly behind a famous hyperpanda and mall, which has a giant shopping cart in front of it.  I figured the giant shopping cart was a pretty obvious landmark and so it wouldn't be hard for anyone to find the place.  Apparently however, neither GPS locations, nor the giant shopping cart are good enough landmarks.  After about ten minutes the daughter called me to say the mother thought she was out front, and could I go down just to make sure she was in the right place.  So I went downstairs and I looked around, but didn't see any cars.  I called the daughter back to let her know I was outside, but didn't see her mother.  So the daughter, who was at home and not with her mother, called her mother to let her know.  In the meantime, I sent the location again by GPS and texted directions from the hyperpanda, and listed a few other shops and things that were nearby.

The daughter called back again and got directions a third time, since neither her mother or the driver spoke English, this was all having to be relayed through the daughter, and then back to me again.  I told the daughter that if they could just find the hyperpanda, I would meet them there and show them myself, but she insisted they would find it.  30 minutes and half a dozen phone calls later, they gave up.  It was agreed that I would take a taxi to the Danube by her house (which is a tricky thing in itself since Danube is a large chain and there are several) and she would pay me back for the taxi.

So the next morning, bright and early,  I walked to the panda and thumbed down a taxi.  There is a Danube close to my house and the first driver I stopped wanted to take me there.  I insisted that I needed to go to the Dammam Danube, not the Cornish Danube, but he scoffed and told me there was no Dammam Danube and drove off.  So I waited for the next one and this one seemed skeptical, but willing to give it a try.  We negotiated a price and off we went.  We were definitely going toward Dammam, but as I had never been to the Dammam Danube before I had no idea how to tell the driver where to go, so when he started asking me for directions, I called the daughter and had her explain it to him.  When we got to the Danube, I understood why none of the drivers knew where it was.  The store was brand new, so new, it hadn't even opened yet.  It was deserted.  I paid the driver and got out.  Standing uncomfortably in front of the store.  I was trying to stay in the narrow band of shade underneath the store's front doorway, but also staying a safe distance from the shady looking men who were sharing a cigarette while laying on the empty pallets that had obviously recently been unloaded.

I called the daughter again and she said, tell the driver to take you, and I told her I had already paid the driver and he left, because I thought they were going to meet me here.  She told me to wait, and sent an uncle in the car to get me.  I was frustrated that the instructions hadn't been more clear and felt bad for making them come get me.  I felt even worse when we drove down a sidestreet for less than half a block and then we arrived.  She could have just told me to walk, it was so close and straightforward.  Then I remembered that no one in this country ever walks anywhere.  Se la vie, we were here, and that was all that mattered.

I met Joury in the guest living room, which had only couches.  I thought it would be better to have a table, but Joury wanted to stay in the living room.  We did some math, and she seemed to have a handle on place value so we moved on to science where she was learning the names of lab equipment, like goggles, gloves, and microscopes.  Finally we came to reading and she was very excited to tell me all about the story they were reading called "Because of Winn-Dixie"  She liked it because there was a dog in it.  She said they had read the whole thing in school already, so I asked her to read the "about the author" section just to get a sense of her reading level.  We came across the word diversity, and she didn't know it so I tried to explain to her that it meant lots of different kinds of people working and living together.  Like you and me, I said, we are different, but we are working together.  "How are we different?", she asked.  "Well,"  I said, "you are young, and I am old.  I'm from America and you are from Saudi...."  I was preparing to go on when she interrupted, "but we are both white, so we are the same."  I was surprised and not sure what to say to that exactly, so I just asked her to keep reading.  Perhaps the first day on the job wasn't the right time to get into a discussion of race and racism.

She went on and read about how the author decided to be an author, and to check her comprehension I asked her some questions about what she wanted to be when she grew up.  She told me she wanted to be a doctor and when I asked why she just told me it was because she wanted to make a lot of money and build a house 2 no, 3 times bigger than this one and it would be on the beach.  "What about helping people?"  I asked, "Don't you want to help make people better?"  She shrugged, "That's what the nurses are for, I just get to tell them what to do."  Hmmm... I wondered where she was getting her ideas about the world.  I could see that there was a lot of work to be done here.  Joury's reading comprehension wasn't great, and maybe, if I could get her reading and understanding more, her worldview would work itself out.   One can only hope.

I said goodbye and we arranged to meet the following day.  The driver would take me home now so that he would know where to go the next day when he picked me up after work.  I could tell that tutoring Joury was going to be quite an adventure.