What is of value?

Extracts from an email sent home just before we left Saudi Aramco for good - 

Well, I am delighted that so many of you do read the, admittedly rather long, emails. But when else do I ever document what is going on in our lives? N-ever. So yes to all the queries, Fem has resigned from Saudi Aramco and we are embarking upon another new adventure. As to why? Well, there are the push factors and the pull factors, on both sides. Decisions are always multi-variate, particularly when you have now to take into account the needs of six people (including Doris), rather than those of the two who embarked upon the initial foray into the foreign territory of Saudi Arabia.

We always came to Saudi Aramco with a five-year plan in mind. After five years Fem’s end-of-service benefits and amount we get to ship home change significantly – for the better – and it seemed like a reasonable time-line in terms of saving for the future and then getting out of here while the kids were still young enough for it to be easier rather than harder and before we became addicted to the money, money, money.

Also, before we took the job with Aramco, i.e., while Fem was still contracting in Saudi Arabia, I was also in Saudi, as you mostly know, living at Al Yamamas compound (where I initiated the foodies channel), and heavily pregnant with Faran – who has turned six, so the incident I am about to describe happened close to 7 years ago now. We were invited to a farewell party at Saudi Aramco (which is like Paradise on earth  

- Kristen's contribution:

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compared to the rest of the compounds on Saudi Arabia), since Fem was being sub-contracted to Aramco and had worked with the wife of the man retiring. The woman with whom he worked was  originally from Turkey and was a younger, second wife of an American who was retiring from Aramco after 18 or 20 years in Aramco; having come from a security background. Back in the days, particularly if you were American, you end up in the parlance of the day, absolutely loaded (now you end up merely loaded – but everything is always relative, after all, so for the rest of the world the term absolutely loaded still applies). Anyhow, she bounces up to me, she’s only 42 (my age now) and says how much she loves Fem and how wonderful he is and how, thanks to all his help, she now has her MCSE exam, since when she goes back to America, she will “have to work”, she tells me, big-eyed. So I think, sure, you’re young, feisty, dynamic – you love working – why not? But she goes on to tell me, unprompted, that for them it is a financial imperative, that they will “really need the money”. I am stunned and stammer, “But, but ... surely – Fem said you’d showed him pictures of your house (and Fem said it was an absolute mansion, you know, the Greek style pillars and huge, absolutely huge) in Washington, D.C. – surely that’s paid off?” Oh yes, she blithely informs me, that is fully paid, their daughter – and his sons from the previous marriage – are all graduates, no student loans there, all working, their holiday home in Bodrum, Turkey, is also paid off, and they have ... she wasn’t sure how many – somewhere between twenty and thirty homes also all paid for – but you know, she went on to tell me, they were all small, starter-homes – only two- or three-bedroomed, with a garage, mostly in the Houston, Texas area – and these she said are all rented out, but all the rental income is diverted directly into their investments, so, you know ... when they go back to America, she is going to “have to work.” And all of this didn’t even take into account the 401(k) plan that the company would have paid into – I mean, her husband on that basis alone was worth literally millions of American dollars (my friend, Cynthia, has been here long enough and is clever enough mathematically that she can do these calculations in her head ... mmm American payroll, grade code 18, been here 20 years – at least so many million US – usually between 3 and 5 - and that’s just the company retirement benefit, excluding whatever they may have personally saved). Crazy stuff!

So in the car going home with Fem from the party, I reported the above and said, “Before we come here (since he was being offered the job at that stage though it took another 16 months for all the out-of-policy procedures to be enacted before we arrived, since he wasn’t Saudi, wasn’t a graduate, only would come if he had family status, refused the first house offered ... ), IF we do come here, we really do need to work out, in advance, How much is ENOUGH?” Since if we don’t, it appears, you will NEVER have enough. And particularly not if you start to compare yourself with those on the American pay-roll, since the company set up, in 1947, apartheid-style pay-rolls (i.e., very unequal pay scales and benefits for equal work) and has never updated them since. Or, of course, if you compare yourself to those who’ve been here more than 10 years, i.e., while the company was still American, before it became a Saudi company and before Saudization became the policy that is aggressively applied. The pay-roll in particular has created massive systemic issues, particularly since they seriously underpay their Saudi workers and even though they offer retirement and other benefits to those on the Saudi pay-scale, it all just doesn’t add up. At all. Even sometimes if you multiply as opposed to add. There are obviously even more massive inequalities with regard to female employees, especially Saudi female employees, etc. But we long ago accepted that there were inequities, that life in Saudi is very unfair, and counted our blessings instead (that we are not Bangladeshi and that, in their wisdom, the company decided to put South Africans onto the Pound Sterling (British) pay-roll – which means we earn more, per category, than Canadians or Australians, though less, of course, by far, than the Americans ... such inequities give spice to the life of a company wife in a company town. Think military – but currently without much possibility of promotion. It’s extremely funny, particularly when you don’t live here.)

But given that, within Aramco, money is not the sub-text that occurs, it is the text itself (I have never enjoyed reading Jane Austen more), it kindof is important to think through what you truly value and cherish and hold onto that throughout the process. Without doubt, the most massive challenge I faced as President of the Women’s Group here was persuading people to part with their money, through fun activities (I kept on talking about putting the fun back into fund-raising), in order that we could refurbish the facility and take very necessary upgrades to our community facility – they wanted to sit back and let the company just do it for them. And years of that kind of attitude meant the facility was absolutely awful, like a run-down hospital – think broken blinds and rotting curtains. And I am not kidding or being in any way facetious. As I took the curtains down from the playroom, they disintegrated in my hands, they were that old. And sure, we have a multi-million dollar golf course – green, of course – around which the company straddles, simply because it is sexy for the Saudis to bring over and impress visiting businessmen, but a facility for “Dependent Expatriate Wives” does not in any way merit anything like the same attention. But since that is the case, then being stupid about it and actually caring about the fact that everything in this town is unfair simply slaps you right back in your own face, since it means the facility ended up looking absolutely hideous – once you remembered to look ... and care. But once the faults are pointed out, it was sortof easy to make people care. Now it’s looking like a small bouquet hotel, absolutely warm and welcoming, and people actually grew to relish the fund-raising – well, it took them out of themselves and out of hiding in their homes to coming out and participating, but, week after week, in the beginning, I was sending out all these positive emails of encouragement and togetherness while some days I was actually crying with frustration and disappointment - but it was a massive mind-set to change. And the important thing was – it worked! And we have a marvellously vibrant, multi-cultural, colourful community as a result. And a very beautiful facility – I’ll send out before and after pictures soon – since that was my major project here (in stress levels it compares, easily, with other jobs I had, in terms of reward – non-monetary obviously, it’s amongst the best ... a happy community is – well, a happy community. As I kept on saying, email after email – this is our only community, for good or ill – so we may as well make it a wonderful one in which to live). At least, two years later, it’s all being finished. I love it when a plan comes together.

Anyhow, also at the farewell party previously mentioned, a Turkish man came and sat next to me, and poured out his heart. He was reminiscing about when he and his wife came here, brought their children. Obviously this was all prompted by my protruding tummy. He said to me, that he and his wife came here to provide a better future for their children, and that financially they certainly did that ... but in other, significant ways, he is not sure. At all. And then told me the story that a lady told him who had sat next to his son on a plane coming back from boarding school in America to Saudi Arabia (among other benefits, the company pays for all education, including top private schools anywhere in the world – the handcuffs aren’t golden, they are platinum with diamond chunks thereon). Anyhow, she had asked his son the seemingly trivial question as to where he is from, and his answer was, “I don’t know. I am a lost boy.” And the son went on to say that he was born in Turkey, to Turkish parents, but he was not brought up there and he doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t consider himself Turkish. That he has lived in Saudi Arabia most of his life, but is not Saudi, or Arab, and does not speak Arabic and does not consider himself Saudi. He said that he goes to boarding school in America, and has an American passport, but does not feel American. He said that what he does consider himself is an Aramcon, which is this tiny little community in Saudi Arabia that hardly anyone else has heard of, but he is not allowed to live there anymore (the company had an explicit policy at the time, which has subsequently relaxed but which was determined by the Saudi government, that all teenage children of expatriate workers were obliged to go to school outside the country) and that, all other things considered, he felt he was a lost boy.

One assumes the young man was probably in the early days of his boarding school experience, and very young. While I have heard many parents argue that they’d never ship their kids out, but would resign before then, later on, as the years creep up, they too choose the path of least resistance and then wax lyrical about the lovely schools the kids go to, how they’d never afford them otherwise ... and, of course, it is 'normal' in that world, and hence everyone, sooner or later, habituates themselves to that particular reality. Anyhow, the Turkish father went on to tell me that his son, after graduating from college, actually got a job at Saudi Aramco, but that when his parents found that out, instead of being delighted, as the son thought they would be, they were horrified and forbade him to come. The father said, I never thought that what I considered a life of deprivation, living away from my country and community, family and friends, environment ... my son would grow to consider just life – and his life at that. And he asked me really, to consider all the implications of being here long-term, before we ever made a long-term decision – all for the ostensible good of our kids and their future. He was actually very melancholy, and it was frankly, extremely disturbing as well as thought-provoking.

So these things affected us very strongly, especially in the initial days. At least it did help us focus our minds on not simply living it up and spending all this lovely lolly on amazing overseas holidays and counting on the final end-of-service benefit to get us by. Plus, of course, the horrific Oasis terrorist incident (which has so many horrible parallels in the recent Mumbai terrorism) made us focus on the short- rather than the long-term. But, of course, things change, you become embedded in a community, you grow to love the lifestyle, the school here is wonderful (it’s all free and the company just POURS money and creativity into the school, as a way of attracting and retaining staff with children – pity that attitude doesn’t spill over into the workplace), and, of course, between being able to do stained glass and fused glass at the art group, and swimming and our amazing piano teacher (petroleum engineer turned creator of her own methodology and publisher of piano books) and the kids’ fantastic art teachers – you do get amazingly diverse and talented people from all over the world here and what you miss in terms of environment and family are kindof made up in terms of a wonderful diversity of fascinating and multi-talented individuals. (Who all leave in the end, some sooner and some later – that’s the downside).

The things that absolutely tilted the balance were:

In January of this year, Faran broke his arm – a friend of his mistakenly jumped on top of it (it was hidden under a cushion) from the wooden chest Fem made – the kids always jump on top of our stuffed saddle bags in the carpet room (bearing in mind we are obliged to be an indoors society here. My mother is horrified that my children jump on our Wetherly couches, but what else can I do when it’s way in the 43C or even more outside (we tend to be out of the country when the temperatures head toward 50)?

Kris’s addition: ),,,,,,,......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................../////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////vgfguhhk

On the way to the hospital, Faran was rocking back and forth and moaning, “the pain, the pain, the pain ...” and then suddenly he stopped, looked up at me and said, “Mummy, I want to go back to South Africa, to live, with grandma and the cat.”

In March and April we visited dear friends who had emigrated to Australia and New Zealand. Not that our primary purpose was not just to visit very dear friends, but at the back of your mind, especially when you have been out of the country for so long already, 8 years, you figure – well, maybe the grass really is just that much greener on the other side and I’m not going to avert my eyes if it is. Well, certainly in NZ the grass is exceptionally green, though the soil is black. But no, we found we honestly did not have it in our hearts to emigrate at all. The reverse, actually. We’ve suffered the being without family and community and friends, to start it all over again – why, we figured may as well hang out longer at Saudi Aramco, within the community we have striven hard to make, and enjoy an enviable lifestyle to boot. And it wasn’t that we hated the countries or anything, which some people mistakenly think, since we said we wouldn’t want to emigrate there ... I mean, we loved our visit to Petra and I also don’t want to emigrate to Jordan and no-one thinks that peculiar. It’s very strange, many South Africans react as if I’ve rejected a bride with one tooth chipped in favour of one with three legs, a single eye (and that in the middle of her forehead) ... 

Anyhow, the more important thing that happened with that month’s leave is that Fem became again his happy and laughing and relatively care-free (he remains Über-protective of the kids in particular) self, and I realised how truly, desperately unhappy and stressed he is at the workplace. The longer he’s been here, the worse it gets. We had a lot of other things that we focused upon during our time here, he’s been finishing his degree – and that is now a fait accompli (Congratulations, Fem. And me – for never complaining, once, about any of the time he needed to take – that was our deal. That he either shut up, for ever, about not having a degree, or I would support him completely, and never complain about the hours it would take, the money it would absorb, nothing - but he was to decide then in the early days of our marriage what to do about it and get on with it, either way.) So that’s a major goal we have achieved. We have also set our minds to saving well, had some lovely holidays and bought a lot of Persian and Eastern carpets – which were fortunately heavily subsidized by our ongoing carpet shows at our house, and at least we took the advice of the first guy who assessed our carpets, Moshe Katz from Israel, and concentrated almost exclusively on Persians – which we now simply couldn’t afford, even with all our hard work on the carpet shows.  

However, in the five years he’s been here, he’s never been sent on training – they actually failed the internal audit on the basis of lack of training for non-Saudi nationals. When you’re in as fast-moving a field as IT, and expected to implement the new technologies to boot, and keep the system going while your colleagues are fast-tracked and sent on overseas assignments ... well, I guess finally it becomes too much. Or when at a meeting, with 15 people in the division, and 18 action points are generated of which 17 have been assigned to Fem to accomplish but when he points it out, to clarify the situation they look at him blankly and say: Yes. That’s correct. What was your point? And there does get a point when being technically on call 24/7 (as second-tier support) and having too much of a workload and never, ever being thanked, formally or informally, for anything, and knowing that you are forever in a dead-end job just – becomes too much.

When we first arrived, Fem was very happy (this was before allegations of fraud and the VP of IT was summarily booted out and IT reported to Finance and thus began three years of retrenching and restructuring and the multiple bosses in few months, and integration of divisions – which restructuring is ongoing to this day ... ) and I was very unhappy – too many international relocations – five in three years; too many children in too few years – two in fifteen months, though a choice, is still hard ... pregnancies are really difficult for me, especially the back-pain they generate, but the end results are more than worth it. And now, well, I’m so happy in this community and integrated and have so much to do and it’s a lovely lifestyle and so on ... but Fem is unhappy. Not that there aren’t many pull factors for me too – and living in a beautiful environment and being close to family are right up there as far as priorities go, and it’s time the kids became the outdoor children they are meant to be and it will be very nice just to have roots again. Which is why we figured we’d forgo a Johannesburg lifestyle.

So that was the final thing that happened; I was speaking to Sylvia, my aunt, on the phone and saying that I just couldn’t visualise me living in Johannesburg, with three kids, and she said, why not settle back in Kloof? And I asked Fem and he said, Yes, just like that, in a real heart-beat. And from then on we’ve been planning it, and now the plans have come to fruition.

Some people are a bit in shock here, but I long ago realised that if you are a company wife in a company town, the only way no-one knows anything is to say nothing. Which is slightly oppressive in itself. Anyhow, with all things in life, you either have to accept them, change your attitude towards them or change the situation. No point whinging, it just drags everyone down, particularly, again, in a company town. They always say that, when you arrive in Aramco, you are given a bucket of gold in the one hand and a bucket of unmentionable stuff in the other, and whichever is heaviest dictates whether you stay or go. I guess for Fem in particular, that bucket of unmentionables is over-flowing. And as Dr Phil always says, in a relationship it takes two to say yes and one to say no. So whether we hang out here another year or two or leave now – well, sooner is always better when a decision is made.

This is my farewell letter to the Women’s Group, but it has all the information you should need about our move.

From: Dhahran Womens Group [mailto:dhahranwomensgroup@gmail.com]
Sent: 30 November 2008 07:05
To: dhahranwomensgroup@gmail.com
Subject: Farewells
Morning all,
Today is doubly poignant for me, it's the last email I'll be sending to you all, after two years of so doing. However, I am also bidding farewell to you all, not only within the Women's Group, but also to this entire community. Our family are relocating back to South Africa, to live in this home:

The house is in Kloof, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kloof, where I grew up, though I spent twenty-five years out of the area, in America for a year, University in Pietermaritzburg, 10 years in Johannesburg and the last 8 in Saudi Arabia, so it is going to be exciting and scary for me to relocate back to the area. The house looks directly onto the 532 hectare Krantzkloof Nature Conservancy http://kknr.2m.org.za/ which has a rivine (gorge) and a river running through it. Our house, at 100 Krantzview Road, is at about the highest point in Kloof, so it's very quiet and serene and looks directly down and at the gorge. My husband (and kids) love rock-climbing and the Kloof Gorge offers some of the premier rock-climbing in the country as well as mountain-biking, his other sport. It is subtropical, 42 inches of rain a year, summer temperatures 18C to 30C, winter 12C to 20C - the picture above was taken in the middle of winter, which you can tell by the fact that the flamboyant tree has lost its leaves. Kloof is a gardener's paradise, and we already have plans to convert the swimming pool into a wetland pool, http://www.wetlandpools.co.za/whatis.html.
We will also be surrounded by family – there are 18 cousins under the age of ten for my children to play with in the area – and thanks to Pam's genealogy programme I now know how to trace the family lineage properly – we've all been living in the Natal area, going back to the 1840s, 50s, 70s ... and I have an extended web of relations, all of whom keep in touch with one another, so that will be wonderful. Bethany and Conall are enrolled at Kloof Pre-Primary http://kpp.2m.org.za/, and Faran will start Class 1 at Kloof Junior Primary http://kjp.2m.org.za/, my alma mater, in January (Southern Hemisphere, the schools year begins in January). Fem will be working for an online gaming company: www.derivco.com. I will be staying home since the kids go straight through and come home at about midday. Doris, our South African maid, is delighted to be retiring and staying with her family in Vosloorus, near Johannesburg, where we have bought her a house, so she will be able to look after her grandchild while her daughter goes to work.
The house is large and will accommodate visitors from Saudi Arabia.
Other pictures of the house (obviously with the previous owner's furniture):
The dining room with the original wooden floors – the inital structure was built in 1948, but two massive extensions and renovations have taken place since then. It will be a wonderful house for  accommodating our carpets, with more neutral wall colours. We have a final carpet show at our house here this weekend, 596 Tarut, 4^th and 5^th December, from 9am to 5pm – 878 2465.
The formal dining room:

The lounge:
                        Lounge to entertainment area:

I know that when it comes to leaving, people start to think of gifts. I'm a great believer in labours of love, and, anyway, what I will, without doubt, treasure most will be my wonderful memories of this amazing community. So what I really, really would love is a scrapbook of these last two years at the DWG. I have a lot of photos already that I have put together for tomorrow, and Ali has from this year ... so I am shamelessly asking for volunteers to help with a Memories Book. It used to be something that was always done, one for the President and one for the office, but it has not happened for the last few years. But that gift, more than anything else, I will truly treasure.
Of course I am sad to leave this wonderful community and this amazing group, but I know you are in the best of hands with your new Board and it has been an honour, a privilege and a delight to work with you, one and all.
With much love,
Kathryn