Final Days in Abu Dhabi

The End of the Middle East Adventure.

What was originally going to be a seven month adventure in Qatar at the end of 2008 has ended up with us completing our work in Abu Dhabi on the 12th July 2012.

During this time I worked in two schools in Qatar, in a Teachers Training Centre in Oman and in a Boys Preparatory school in Abu Dhabi while Joy immersed herself with her painting, producing musical shows for the Qatar end of year dinners and “mall trawling” with, initially, The Doha Darlings and, in Abu Dhabi, with her friend from Doha, Priscilla Ellis.

Now Joy has been busy packing, bubble wrapping everything, including me, as we prepare to exit the UAE and return to New Zealand carrying with us souvenirs, photographs, friendships and many memories of an adventure we have no regrets embarking on.

Mind you , returning to New Zealand and rain, wind, earthquakes and temperatures in single digits is not something to contemplate with pleasure!

Immediate Plans:

Joy and I leave Abu Dhabi on the 13th July to head off on a tour of Eire, England and Northern Italy that will bring us back to Abu Dhabi around the 13th August and then the long haul home.

Our Eire and UK trip will take us to visit the Irish relatives and give me a chance to add more information on the Bates family tree, perhaps answer questions about personal names, gather photographs of ancestors and present relations and the places, villages and towns Mum’s family came from so, when we are back in New Zealand, and the Bates family meets for a reunion in January next year we can share memories, information and add to our shared histories. I’m praying that I’ll get fewer rain greyed photographs of places than I did 15 years ago when Joy and I last visited Ireland.

The Tuscany trip should, with luck, give Joy the chance to collect a file of photographs that will provide inspiration for her painting once we’re resettled at home. I can already see that I’ll be kept busy at every stop on our tour as we pass from one photogenic village to the next.

Reviewing the past 18 months in Abu Dhabi

The Team 2011-12.

Colin, Saeed, Self, Shane, Lynne, Dave, Gavin

I have spent the lat 18 months working with the teachers of English in a Boys Preparatory school in central Abu Dhabi guiding them through the demands of the Australian English curriculum as adapted to the UAE.

The entrance to the school

The first six months were with nine teachers who had already gone through one trial with an American provider, using an American scheme and syllabus, only to be told that the American trial was over and they were to revert to the old MoE curriculum then, a trimester or so into the year, to change to the new adapted Australian curriculum. Needless to say there was some opposition to the arrival of a new team of advisors coming into the school to demonstrate and advise on yet another curriculum change.

Once we got over the teething troubles we got down to work attempting to develop an understanding of the pedagogy behind the curriculum, design unit and lesson plans around the very limited resources available in the school, create assessment tasks that were both understandable to the teachers and able to be completed by the students and also resource the Inquiry Based Learning modules that make up over 80% of the course. This would not be a major task in a NZ or Australian English Department as one could easily draw on readily accessible resource banks and a ready supply of reading texts that would support the thematic units of work supported by colleagues who have a good idea about Unit and Lesson planning that addresses both the needs of the students and directs the learning according to the demands of the curriculum. However, here it was not so easy  as the resource base at the school was non-existent, the data on student readiness to cope with the curriculum was sketchy, coloured by teacher beliefs and often artificially inflated to meet parental expectations of continuous success. Add in the limited experience with inquiry based learning - summed up in the often heard statement from teachers “ I know what a research is.” - and a paucity of familiarity with rubric based assessment processes and one can see that our advisory role was to be an on going challenge.

We spent much of the first six months coming to terms with the curriculum and attempting to build up a basic resource base on which to build the unit and lesson plans only to lose six of the teachers at the end of the year as the Education Council moved its supply of English speaking Arab teachers from the secondary schools into the preparatory schools as they replaced the Arab teachers with native English speakers imported from the USA, UK, Australasia, South Africa and Canada.

So this academic year started with four new teachers appearing in the English Department, all from the secondary schools and with different levels of understanding of the curriculum. It was not quite start again but it did mean that much of the first trimester was one of reviewing where teachers were in terms of understanding and, because I had, over the last half of the last trimester, reworked the curriculum to provide a clear school syllabus reworking the the few resources we had access to into reasonable units of work.

This exercise was going well until I realised that one of the teachers, whose name translated to Mr. Right, had not understood the work we’d been doing or that there actually was a curriculum that he had to engage with and prepare units and lessons to address. Every time I tried working with him, tried to explain the terminology and the pedagogy that the curriculum demanded of him he began to cry and then revert to screaming that he knew how to teach but he couldn’t teach unless he was given a proper curriculum textbook .  His final attempt to dodge any PD, to dodge out of coping with the curriculum changes and planning, which resulted in him being given a severe dressing down by the Principal, was to refuse to teach his classes if I was observing and advising in his classroom. 

The other teachers (the English translations of their names being ) , Mr’s: Winner, Selected, Builder, Double Maturity, Algebra, Opening, in the department shrugged and got on with the jobs of preparation and making do with limited resources as they worked their way to coming to solid grips with the curriculum. An attitude for which I was eternally grateful for they would be the ones who would ensure that all our work was going to be sustained and developed once we headed for different jobs in different parts of the world at the end of the contract.

After my experiences in Qatar where we succeeded in developing and cementing in inter school debating and using class newspapers / magazines as part of the English language development programme in the school I was working in I embarked on a programme, aided by Mr Jabr, that would demonstrate to the teachers that the boys were capable of doing a lot more than they were often given credit for so we set up an English Club which was able to produce a school newspaper each trimester, engage in an inter-school debate and finally write, produce and edit a 10 minute film on how to succeed at school.

The film makers in action

When I look over the  records of the newspapers, the debates and the film and compare the work with that I’d seen at home from Years 9 & 10 the boys exceeded themselves as their work was of high quality in presentation and language use. Our plan, using Mr Mustaffa's contacts in a neighbouring school to run another debate got stymed when the dates of the external exams got moved forward by a little over a week thus cutting down the time for preparation, organisation and delivery during the trimester to an impossible time frame. 

The hope is that the boys will take their experiences on to the next grade level at the school or will take their skills to the secondary school and, in both cases, persuade their teachers that they can use them in the classroom and, perhaps, the teacher will plan for and include the skills in their lessons and thus develop their language acquisition.

At the Grade 6 level we introduced a guided reading programme based on the New Zealand produced Rainbow Readers which proved to be just as interesting as the Newspapers, debating and film making programmes as the boys responded with the sort of enthusiasm I see and hear regularly from our grandchildren whose exposure to books and reading for pleasure is well developed. My argument for the introduction of the programme was based on a conversation I had had with a young Omani who had proudly informed me that she was “reading English” but who, on being asked what book, story, novel, was she reading looked blankly at me and then simply replied that she was “reading the grammar textbook.” She was surprised to discover that there was more to reading than simply “reading” the textbook and that she could improve her knowledge of English and get some pleasure from it.

There is, I think, nothing more pleasurable than going into a classroom to be greeted with a chorus of “Are we reading today
 Mr Alan? “ and then having a queue of boys, with varying degrees of reading confidence, all waiting to have their turn to read a page or two of their book to the class.

For their teacher, Mr. Ammar, the reaction to the reading programme was evidence that the boys would read and could read. That what was needed was a greater supply of reading material in the classrooms and, ultimately, the exposure to reading benefitted the boys in their acquisition of English as a means of communication and not just a language whose rules needed to be learnt as an exercise.

As well one feels rewarded when a teacher from Qatar emails and says:

 How are you Mr.Alan? i hope you are fine . Thank very much for the treasure you sent me from Radio New Zeland . I downloaded some stories especially the Mountain who wanted to live in a house.It is fantastic. I will make use of all of them in the next school year. I'm travelling to Egypt on 18th July and I will be back on 2nd Sept as the school year for teachers starts on 5 th Sept and on 9th for students. I'm looking forward to drinking more of your knowledge and experience river.
It’s then that you know that you have made and are making a difference.

Now, with the end of the contract in sight, many of my colleagues are looking for work elsewhere in the world. For some the steppes of Khazakstan look promising while for others the lights of Singapore, Australia and the UK have more appeal as they find employment and chance to continue the work we’ve been doing in the ME.

For Joy and I it is a return home to regroup and catch up with family again while I look to finding a job somewhere around Auckland or, perhaps, some short term contracts somewhere around the world.

Final Days in Lebanon

Lebanon Final Days

On Day 4 of our tour we opted out of driving through to the Valley of the Saints and the Cedars to take our guide’s invitation to spend the day exploring the area of the skifields of Faraya and Faqra where the remains of a Greek temple, tombs and columns dedicated to Adonis and later Roman ruins stood deep in the snow drifts.

The views were spectacular as we drove through 15 metre snowdrifts, sheer cliffs and bluffs with waterfalls and a natural 38 metre arched stone bridge spanning between two rocky bluffs.

The ski fields were doing brisk business with several thousand people riding the six chair lifts up to the different fields around the township. We rode a lift up to the 2450 metre summit for views over the valleys then headed back down the mountain to sit, snow burnt and relaxed to watch the passing parade of skiers and tourists and drink coffee at the Austria cafe and ski shop.

Walid then drove us into town where we visited his parents in their home nestled amid  huddle of houses amid the maples and remains of snow drifts of Faraya. We were treated to home made cider, coffee, home-baked biscuits and orchard stored apples as we chatted, through Walid, about families and their different lives before heading down through Faqra to Jouneih.

With Walid's family

The next day we headed back to Beirut for three days of self directed tourism - museum visiting, checking out the shops of the rebuilt “Beirut Souq” which is a high end shopping complex created in the central town from the ruins left from the Civil War. We discovered that on a Sunday the locals spend the day strolling the Corniche or dallying over a long lunch at the numerous restaurants that line the St George Marina. With the soft warmth of the Mediterranean washing over us and the sheen of the snow covered Lebanon mountains in the distance made this choice of life style very, very attractive!

 

 

The museum and the area around it bears testament to the ravages of the Civil War which had had its 15km long front line running down the Green Line - now the main road to Damascus. The area is dotted with buildings with their frontages bullet chipped and shell stripped some of which are, apparently, being retained as a reminder of the horrors and futility of war.

The museum has some of the best artifacts from the different civilisations that have passed through Lebanon over the millennia. The displays of sarcophagii, votive offerings and jewelry demonstrated the ways people had adapted and intertwined their beliefs and arts to make their own idiosyncratic culture. The most striking were two sacrophogii made of marble modelled on Egyptian ones but with the faces carved in realistic Hellenic style.
  

We tried to make sense of the Civil War but gave up after wading through several pages of Wikipedia describing the machinations of the different sides along with the activities of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the Israelis as they manipulated the factions to suit their different agendas. Instead we marvelled at the way the Lebanese have worked to heal the rifts and damage of the war and rebuild Beirut.

We left Lebanon promising ourselves that we would return as our all too brief a visit had offered us the promise of other places to see and explore.

Lebanon March- April 2012. Day 3

Lebanon - Day 3: Dog River, Harissa and Byblos.

Byblos Souq - Lebanon

Lebanon Day 3

After the impressive ruins of Baalbeck our visit to Dog River, Harissa and Byblos could have been anti-climatic but, like so much of Lebanon, this was yet another great day.

Pigeon Rocks - Beirut

We started the day with a tour of Beirut from the Pigeon Rocks, which are the icons for the city, to the central square- Place d'Etoile and the newly rebuilt area of the city. Here we visited the Greek Orthodox church of St George, the Maronite Church with its tall bell tower standing beside the new Mohammed Al-Amin mosque. All of the churches are close to the "Green Line" that marked the killing zone and boundary between the warring Christian and Muslim factions during the civil war (1975-96) which leads down past the tomb of the assissinated prime minister, Rafiq Hariri,  to the Martyrs' Square and the much shot up statue of the Lebanese martyrs executed there by the Turks in 1916.

The Martyrs' statue

The Dog River, Nahr el Kalb, has been a natural barrier to the different invaders entering the country. The Egyptians, in the 14th century, had declared the river to be the boundary between the Egyptian empire and the Hittites while, in later centuries, the river gorge was the point where different conquerers left their marks, carving monuments and stele along the gorge to commemorate their presence and victories. There are markers left by Rameses II, Nebuchadnezzar, Marcus Aurelius and modern French, Australian and British forces in the 20th century.

Stele marking the Roman invasion

Roman Bridge on Dog River

A narrow Roman bridge a little way up the gorge is the reminder of the only way invaders had managed to cross the river and continue their invasions.

The Lady of Lebanon

Across the river the city of Jouneih marks the point to visit Harissa and the statue of the Lady of Lebanon and the Maronite cathedral of Lebanon which towers over the city. We opted not to ride the cable car up the 650 metre hillside and drove up the hill to the summit. After enjoying the view over the bay we headed off to explore Byblos.


Byblos was once a Crusader harbour and is now a quiet fishing harbour. Historically the city is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Apparently it has been inhabited for over 7 millenia and has been the centre for pottery and trade since Phoenecian times and gave the world the alphabetic script we use, in varying forms, even now.


Like Baalbeck, Byblos has seen its far share of invaders - Greek, Roman, Byzantine, arab, Crusaders and Ottoman - and is dominated by the Crusader Castle built in the 12th century using stones stripped from the earlier Roman and Byzantine buildings that dot the site.


Around the castle the ruins of a Roman theatre, Phoenecian tombs and the remains of neolithic and chalcolithic housing provide ample grounds for speculation about the history of the area.

The Byblos souq is yet another place which would reward the avid bargain hunter with its numerous shops including the interesting Memoire du Temps which specialises in fossils of ancient fish preserved in the limestone of the local hillsides.

Temple to Jupiter - Byblos

We lunched at a local sea food restaurant, Ode Mer, where we enjoyed a magnificent meal that left us feeling full and extremely well satisfied before spending the rest of the afternoon exploring the old town of Jouneih.

Lebanon March-April 2012 Day 2

Lebanon Day 2 - Beiteddene, Beeka Valley and Baalbeck

Today we headed off to the Beeka Valley to explore the temples of Baalbeck. We were picked up at 9.00 and headed off across the Mt Lebanon range through Beiteddin where the Presidential Summer Palace sits high on the hillside just outside the township of Deir Al Qamar.

Deir Al Qamar

The township is dominated by a large central square, the Midan, which was once the jousting area during the 15th century - now it is the Dany Chamoun Square in memory of a local politician who was assassinated in 1990.

The town justified a longer time for exploration and wandering but constant drizzle, a cold wind and the promise of a long day of driving and sight seeing meant our visit was all too brief.

Just outside the town bus loads of children were being off loaded at “Castle Moussa” - a fantasy concoction that is a glorious mixture of one man’s idea of medieval castles, fairy tales, adventure stories and generous addition of Walt Disney perched on the hillside - we ignored the possibility of joining them and headed off to the Beiteddine Palace.

Courtyard Beiteddine Palace

Beiteddine was built between 1788 and 1810 on the crest of the mountainside. It is a mix of Italian and Arab architecture that combine to make a beautiful building - especially with the ornate carved and inlaid ceilings and walls that dominate the main rooms - we were the only tourists in the sprawling building which meant we could wander easily through the rooms and grounds.

From here we headed over Mt Lebanon down towards the Beeka Valley and Baalbeck.

The drizzle stopped as we drove into the vast plain that is the Beeka Valley. The valley is the centre of Lebanon’s wine industry which made a visit to the Ksara Winery obligatory. Like the Mission Vineyard in Hawkes Bay the Ksara winery was established by Jesuits in the mid 19th century. Unlike Mission, Ksara was reviving a centuries old tradition of making wine in the region as wine had been produced in the valley for over 5000 years. Ksara is one of the biggest producers of wine and boasts a 2 km underground wine cellar originally built by the Romans.

Part of a 2 km underground wine cellar

After an all too short tour, visit and sampling of some very pleasant red wines we headed off to Baalbeck and its complex of temples.

The main gateway to the Temple of Jupiter

Entering the Grand Courtyard

Baalbeck is one of the biggest Roman archeological sites we’ve been to in all our travels but then the hills there have been the site of the worship of various gods since Phoenician times when it was the temple to the sun god - Baal. The Greeks then took the temple over and rededicated it to Helios (along with renaming the town Heliopolis). The Romans then turned it into a complex of temples dedicated to Jupiter, Venus and Baachus. Later the Byzantines converted the temple into a church then the Arabs made it into a fortified citadel.

 
All through the construction and reconstruction the 22 metre high columns that framed the temple of Jupiter stood on their 1000 ton foundation stones, cut from the local quarry, to declare the might of Rome.

Beside the Jupiter complex a large, perfectly preserved temple, bigger than the Parthenon on Athens, to Bacchus stands thanks to the centuries build up of silt that had protected the building from the predations of different rebuilders. Graffiti dated 1880-85 two thirds of the way up the massive columns testifies how deep the silt build up was before the archeologists began the herculean task of digging the temple out.

grafitti 2/3rds way up a massive column in the Temple to Bacchus

After a great lunch at a restaurant run by a local farming enterprise we headed back to Beirut to prepare for our next day of touring.