Righting My Wrongs and Learning to Live

When I visited home, there were quite a few questions that most everyone asked. In my very first blog post of 2016, I’m going to answer some of the most commonly asked questions and I’m also going to address a few of the misconceptions that people have. If you have any issues with someone telling you the truth exactly as it is, do not read this post.
So to begin with, I’ll get through some basics. Bahrain is a small island off the coast of Saudi Arabia with one very long bridge that connects the two countries. Bahrain is approximately 34 miles long and 11 miles wide-which makes it about 3.5 times as big as Washington D.C. The island is a desert, so therefore it is all sand and that is what the 1 mountain in Bahrain is made of, though most of us don’t even count it as a mountain because it’s pretty small. Along with knowing that the island is a desert, you understand that it is hot; and it is-in the summer. My calendar year is the same time as the U.S.’s so while it is winter there it is also winter here. My winter, however, is much warmer. Today it is 70 degrees outside and it’s actually raining a little bit which is odd. When I left Bahrain to go home it was about 50 like it was in Iowa, which was, I was told, the coldest it had been in Bahrain in years. When it gets to be the middle of summer, it can get upwards of 120 degrees and you won’t see anyone outside unless they have to be. The air conditioning here is better even than the United States so I am very thankful for that.
Bahrain is also a kingdom and a Muslim country. My school year calendar runs on the Muslim religion holidays and celebrations. This is why my school year is about an extra month longer than most of the schools in the U.S. because there are many more things that school is given off for. For example, Thanksgiving obviously does not exist in Bahrain, but I did get a week off in September for a holiday called Eid and we were already off school for Bahrain’s Independence Day-December 16. In 1971, Bahrain declared independence and signed a new treaty of friendship with the United Kingdom. To make things even more different, Bahrain was not always ruled by a king. Between 1783 and 1971 the Bahraini monarch held the title of Hakim, then from 1971 until 2002 the title of Emir. On February 14, 2002, the then-Emir of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, declared Bahrain a constitutional monarchy and proclaimed himself the first king.
The ‘official’ religion of Bahrain is Islam and most citizens here are Muslim. The Muslim religion is divided into two sets of people, the Shia and the Sunni. Most here are Shia. Even with most people here being Muslim, 55% of the population in Bahrain are immigrants. You have many people here from the United States because of the air force base but other common countries of origins, according to my students, are Jordan, occupied Palestine/Israel, Pakistan, Egypt, England, Saudi Arabia and Korea.
The school I work for provided an apartment for every first year teacher moving into Bahrain. These apartments have a living/dining room, kitchen, 2 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. They also provide the basic furniture and some food for us when we moved in, and there is a supermarket just around the corner from the apartment building. I did not have to pay for any of this as it is part of the package deal for the job. I have a roommate who also happens to be from Iowa. For the most part, there haven’t been many issues with any roommates as most were paired with someone with a similar taste and/or lifestyle. This building hosts mostly American teachers as that is the majority of hires but there are a few exceptions. There is always a security guard on duty at the front desk that checks the IDs of people who do not live here and we all know one another. We are put off the main roads but in a central part of our area so it is easy to get from one place to another. School is only about a mile away from where we live and so is the American Naval Base which leads me to my next point.
Most people asked me about what they eat here. Truth is, they eat a lot of American food. To get to the base, there is a street you must walk down that has been dubbed American Alley. Here you can find many of the American restaurants that you crave. There is Dairy Queen, Burger King, Papa Johns, McDonalds, MooYah, Chili’s, Subway, Starbucks, etc. There are also some places there that aren’t a brand name but are still delicious. This culture is also about convenience, so there is an app to download on your phone or a website you can visit where you put in what type of food you want, where you live, and it’ll give you a list of restaurants in your menu that you can order from off the internet and will be delivered right to your door. For some this is awesome and for others this is terrible, but I usually order dinner off of it if I’m short on time from working and will sometimes get enough for a school lunch or two. Generally I tend to order from somewhere kind of cheap so it would cost about the same than if I were to buy the food and make it myself so I can’t complain all that much. It makes me a little lazier but also makes me work a little harder. I've had quite a few meals that are Arab, most commonly the shwarma which you can find in some places in the U.S., but the one truly Arabic meal I had was at Mohamed Noor's. That was one where we sat on the floor with our shoes off and ate with our hands. With 4 of us, we had two whole chickens and two huge plates of rice. We tried to keep it close to something we had before.
This culture is very much like the U.S., in fact, sometimes I forget I’m not in America. Appearances are one of the only differences. If you look at the people, yes, there is a change from America. But you learn to make it your new norm and continue with life and forget about it. It’s the same with buildings, for the most part everything is the same basic structure just without the color. It’s only when you see the skyscrapers here and some of the big businesses that you notice a huge dissimilarity. In the U.S., everything is pretty much a square or rectangle with a flat or slanted roof on it and painted. Here, the apartment buildings and such are the same shape but without many different colors as they are all made of the same things; but once you look at the big ones, you see a difference. Especially in Dubai, it seems like a competition over who can build the most bizarre building and still make it look cool. However, even with all these appearances, it’s become part of the daily life for me here and I’ve forgotten so many times how far away from America I am because it seems the same. In fact, going home for Christmas was quite challenging because I was so used to it here.
In the classroom, things are a little different than in the United States. I teach Speech/Debate and Theatre classes here like I have in the past. Here, however, it is harder and easier at the same time. Most students here don’t really know what theatre is because performing arts are not big in the Middle East. However, my classes are all electives meaning that the kids choose if they want to take them or not which is quite different than any in the U.S. I’ve been in because it was both an elective but also a placement for some students. I do teach in English as this is an English curriculum school and all my students speak fluently in English. As far as I know, I only teach one American student and one British student. Most other students are Bahraini or immigrants from the previously mentioned countries. What makes teaching difficult in this school, however, is that it relies a lot on you. Coming in I found out that there were no set rules really anywhere in the school-you made your own rules, there are books but I only had one student buy one, there are little to no resources for a teacher-you will probably get the previous teacher’s unit plans for the year the week before school starts and there are no school computers or teacher versions of the books (at least not for me).
Living as an immigrant in Bahrain, I am fairly lucky. My lifestyle has not changed much from this move to the Middle East. Here’s where I’m going to be completely honest-most Americans are judgmental and the way we teach history, geography and culture is completely wrong. Coming here, I had a few low expectations from everything I’ve learned and they’re almost all wrong. The only things that were right were that the Middle East was a desert and that there was sand-but that’s not even necessarily true across all of the Middle Eastern countries.
One of the biggest questions I got was this: Do I feel safe in Bahrain? And here’s my first response to that: Stop stereotyping.
We are taught and we are told in school to believe that anyone who wears a ‘towel’ on their head is a terrorist and that they are evil. After 9/11 it only got worse. Yes, I understand we are afraid; but we are afraid of something different than our own lifestyle, not who someone is. Now you might be saying, “No, I’m not afraid of something different, I’m afraid of who they are.” Oh really? Then you would know that people in this country admire and respect Americans. You would know that most are very kind and very humble people. You would know that they think so highly of America and Americans that they strive to be like us. You would know that they struggle to understand why Americans hate them so much. And you would know how hard it is to tell them that it’s because we judge, we blame, we hold grudges and we are misinformed.
When you think of American history, you remember the fight African Americans had to face in order to be considered an equal to their fellow Americans. Today they are still fighting for that equality much like women in America. It’s going to be many years before there is total fairness between everyone. But I hope from our history that you do realize that there is a privilege in the color of your skin, your gender, your sexual preference, your education, your career, your income, your background, etc. and like in the United States, there is a privilege here: where you come from. As I mentioned earlier, here in Bahrain they think highly of Americans so I have the American privilege. On some levels, it’s an awesome thing to have. Generally I get to skip long lines and get pushed ahead without so much as a second look; but this also hurts me. Why? Because that means there is still so much inequality around me. It means that I get to go ahead of someone who might have been waiting for hours. It means that I went ahead of someone who might need help more than I do. It means that I can get away with more and only get a slap on the wrist when someone might do something so much less incorrect and get terribly injured or ruined for it.
The basic rules that apply in any city in the U.S. applies here. Be aware of your surroundings. Don't drink too much. Be careful what you're eating and how you make it. Ignore people you don't want to get involved with. Follow these same sort of rules in almost any country and you will be fine. There are going to be those people in any country who are bad and who will try to hurt you, but you cannot blame the entire country for the that. If we did, the U.S. would be at the top of everyone's shit list. Understanding and learning everything about a new culture is what will bring us all together, and I hope I am helping with this. 
People around me only look different if I look at them through the eyes of a typical American. Knowing a person as someone besides their first appearance or as someone I was taught to see is not knowing them at all. It’s only realizing how wrong you are about everything that you can really start to live.