Why we put up with Vinnell

Much as I hate to say it, I will be teaching in Vinnell as long as I am draggin' on this.

great security

The military hardware here to the right can be seen as merely decoration. Seldom does one find someone behind the gun. There are few people in between you the teacher, and Ahmed the terrorist. There is a token force of Americans, but only a few since that affects the bottom line. The security people, who check for bombs under vehicles, are Bengali. Bengalis get paid a lot less, and this affects the bottom line. Bengalis are not Christians, nor are they Hindus. Hmmm. Food for thought.

Heaven/Hell

I live somewhere in this picture. I have been here for too long as my friend often tells me by email. I would like to leave, but the money is too easy. I am getting damned tired of seeing my roomate walk around the place without clothes on! I often dream of maybe a hut on a Thai beach and I had better leave soon. One of Vinnell's most faithful teachers actually flew to Thailand for a three week vacation. He got back onto the plane after a couple of days because he couldn't stand life outside the prison of his own making. This kind of life will change you from something you were before into a damned canary desperately needing its cage. It is a very sure thing knowing it is too late for some of us to adjust to life outside these walls. This begs the question; is it too late for me?

Prayer

I respectfully think learning how to pray in the Muslim fashion would be a very prudent thing to do for an outsider like myself. I practice this form of prayer in my room on a daily basis. It clears my head, and it may protect me from potential gunmen who may use this as a test to see if I am a good Muslim or not.

Follow the correct standing position on the top of this paper and you should have no trouble.

Under fire

Not yet, but it could happen. Do you see this very straight road we drive into and out of the compound on? It would be child's play for Ahmed to shoot the sitting ducks posing as teachers in the packed vans as they travel to and from work. This is a very vulnerable stretch of road.

driving in the kingdom

We are promised a comp day if we can break the record days without vehicle accident. This is quite difficult. Accidents ,and jail time, are common here in the Kingdom. That comp day is promised by the Big man because all accidents must somehow be repaired, and that takes away from the bottom line. The Big man must have worked in Vegas because he knows a good bet when he sees one.

Vacation?

Vacations are significantly less than 30 days per calendar year if time can be found to use them. Real managers get 60. Half of these days, for the managers are vacation time and the remaining half are (comp time). Funds aren't such an issue to them. Almost all of the big managers are ex military and this tells me how our military is ran.

Money? NO

NO is the usual answer when it comes to money that teachers ask for anything, like repairing a van seat, wheel alignments, or just a good set of brakes that might just save your life while carreening through the city. NO is the answer except if you are the Big man. They get vehicles like this one in the picture. He drives it alone and it stays mostly parked. There is another great perk for the biggies; big managers, and nearly big managers, get to fly in their wives and put them into the villas set aside for visitors. I think there are at least three such villas that remain empty most of the time. Meanwhile lower ranking Vinnellis are crammed three to a villa.

Here is a typical villa. The right side of the villa are where the bedrooms are located. Three grown men have to sleep in the same house. Upper management people get a villa to themselves. No one is complaining because we have been chosen for this ability to (deal with it).

The old sleeping quarters, how could I forget?

All of the windows have been blasted out years ago. Here is an across the compound shot of where the violence took place.

Here is the green square as seen from the Mosque tower. Murder would be child's play from up here(or any other minaret nearby) to anyone with a decent rifle.

Sleeping well at night

Here is what you will drive past on the way to work and on the way back. Who protects you? The Saudi National Guard. Where are they? Hmm.

restful images of Vinnell

More images to rest your mind on. These pictures are not years old. They were taken quite recently.

Dangerously useless

This beautiful truck is used by the second in command of English Language Training. Mr. Jekyl and Dr. Hyde has to drive it to work and back. The brakes are dangerously useless. This truck is driven in one of the most accident prone cities in the world and does not warrant new brakes because that would affect THE BOTTOM LINE.

Getting ahead

This shack above the compound wall and several others like it, are all that stand between us and those who would behead us.

The actual school where you will teach

Here is the beautiful campus school where you will be used as a file to sharpen the minds of all those eager students who file into your class.

Take note of the carefully manicured shrubbery right below the barred windows.

The swimming pool

This is the very same pool that the hitmen threw the dead children into. It hasn't been fixed, filled in, or in any way used since then.

Teachers wanted

We are always hiring. We need teachers who can teach out of a language book written in the fifties which was outdated the day it left the press. We offer free housing, uniforms, significantly less pay than your military buddies get, and an opportunity to experience life without dignity. The new teacher must be a backstabber who would rat on his fellow teachers on a DAILY BASIS. We have found out through long experience that the teacher must be an eccentric, yet able to fit in and contribute to the general atmosphere of petty squabbling that pervades the place. If you think you fit in then we have a place for you. The place you will be teaching with us in is drab, and disheveled, dusty and dismal.

Your housing

Here is where you will live. There are three people living in each villa. The highest grade is in the room behind the photographer. His room includes a bathroom inside it. It can be compared to a small apartment in a large city such as New York. The room at the end of this hall houses someone who has a higher paygrade than you, and his bathroom is located next to your room. As a bottom feeder on the lowest end of the ladder, you will have the room to the left. Your bathroom is located on the other side of the house.

You have a choice of cafeterias. This one is on the older compound. It serves decent food.

What they drive

The higher paygrade people get their own vehicle which they have to share with no one.

Vinnell inherits broken Army vehicles. The top brass gets the best ones. They wear them out and pass them down to the smaller people. The HR guy wears his out and passes it downward. Those who get the vehicles somehow must make them drivable, so they can get to the other posts and teach the Saudi recruits. The least paid people with the most education get large vans and small trucks like this Jimmy truck. All of our vehicles repeatedly break down mainly because they have passed through so many hands. None of the vehicles that carry these highly educated teachers in uniform have working air conditioners in them. No Air conditioners! Imagine driving, or riding in a vehicle with no AC throughout your contract. The city is very hot. The vans are even hotter because they have been parked on the pavement all day in 130 Fahrenheit, but you don't complain because this maltreatment somehow fulfills your deep seated need to be abused. These vans, that are sometimes driveable, carry western teachers in military uniforms from one end of the city to the other so they can teach. Vinnell vans are exposed to any sort of attack, but we teachers are OK with this because we have been chosen by Vinnell to endure in silence. Get this, teachers are the only Vinnellis who use vans at all. We should be grateful because for some time now we have been threatened by a medium manager to be herded into a bus. This would be extremely dangerous to attack, yet we are automatons who question nothing at all. Vinnell really doesn't care that we are doubly hated by the locals. We are Americans and we work for Vinnell.

entertainment at Vinnell

There is little entertainment at Vinnell. There is bowling (How exciting). There is a library. There is the nightly walk around the compound. There is a poker game always going on somewhere on the compound. Some prefer to congregate near the pool to drink doctored up Saudi beer. There is nothing else to do and you are driven mad until you have reached the point of being institutionalised. If you safely reach that point, and most of us have before we got here, you can make a lot of cash. Your bank account perversely reflects your total lack of human soul because the more money you make the less you want of real life. It could be worse, you are simply in a prison of your own making and thus, you have had some choice in the matter.

Pay grade

We have spent years getting a decent college education. We enhance that with an M.A. in education. Some of us have gotten a doctorate in ESL or TEFL and we teach here. We spent years of our lives, and years of our pay from some other god-forsaken teaching job getting this education, yet we make less money than anyone else on the camp because our paygrade has newly been invented below the bottom paygrade that existed before. We like being shafted over and over again. It was Vinnell Arabia that was bombed in 2003 and not the other para-military contractors, yet Vinnell Arabia pays the least amount of money out for teacher salaries.
If you like being neglected, you will love Vinnell Arabia.

You are a teacher. You stare into the mirror of your private bathroom on the other side of the house and realise that you have wasted years of your life in the wrong direction. You were chosen by Vinnell because you have the neccesary educational background and you have been retained on camp precisely because you have demonstrated the ability to take huge, heaping piles of abuse.

Safety and security

Vinnell carefully shows itself to the world as a competent military company able to perform a multitude of tasks. It goes to extreme lengths to make sure the world sees a perfect machine able to deliver the goods that the consumer needs, yet anyone inside Vinnell can see this is not true. This back door and all of the other back doors on the compound would be child's play to kick in. After that its knives, elbows and pistol shots throughout the compound. Were this to happen, it would definitely affect how the world sees Vinnell. Notice how carefully the lock plate has been screwed into the door. Not that the lock matters because this outside door really is a closet door placed on the outside BECAUSE OF THE BOTTOM LINE.

Vinnell for automatons

Vinnell is a great place to work if you like being completely controlled in every aspect of your existence in Arabia. Vinnell cares little about you, or your security. The Bombing on the Vinnell Compound in 2003 has left the place a shambles. They aren't repairing it. They will not repair anything because it costs money which will ultimately take from the bottom line. The great unspoken rule of Vinnell is DO NOT DISTURB THE BOTTOM LINE. A good bottom line means extra money at the end of the year to the upper managers of Vinnell Arabia.