The Accommodation (Part I)

It was another 30-minute ride to get to my accommodation, my home for the next year, or two years if I feel like finishing my contract (up until this point I am still having thoughts). If you have been following this blog, you would have agreed with me in saying “Alas! Sleep!” Well, I did finally get some minutes’ rest (not sleep sadly), but a displeasing dilemma would be facing me once I get to the camp, and it would go on for at least two weeks.

We got to a building situated in a fairly new strip of Jubail City. I was told that the land where our accommodation now stood was once part of the sea. They just covered it with earth, much like what the Arab Emirates did with their exclusive Palm Islands or The World, albeit this pales in comparison. Because the area is fairly new, there were numerous vacant lots that littered the place and those that happened to be occupied had ongoing construction on them. This is a problem that I see up until this day because we have difficulty buying foodstuff and other things we need on a daily basis. God, how you just miss the luxury you have with the sari-sari stores back home. The location of our accommodation is as yet unheard of that taxis do not even ply the area. But this is not the "displeasing dilemma" I was talking about.

I was brought to my room, on the second level, only to find the door locked. What a way to welcome me to my first day in the Middle East, huh? The security guard did not even have a spare key so they just left me staring blankly at the door. I was to share this room with two nurses, one assigned in the hospital’s ER department and another subcontracted by those massive oil refinery plants as a company nurse. These roommates were currently in their respective shifts so there was nothing to do but wait. Good thing another nurse had the heart to offer his room for the time being so I could have my lunch, change my now sweat-dried clothes, and take a few minutes of rest. The next shift would be starting at 4:00pm with the coaster leaving for the hospital at 3:30pm. So even if I wanted to sleep, I was pressed for time. I laid down on his bed, had the thought of finally working in a foreign country sink in, looked back at my experiences so far, and tried closing my eyes. After a few minutes, it would be off to the hospital to meet new colleagues (who would soon become friends) in the PT department and the I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you roommate whom I would be seeing in the days to come.

To be continued…

The Hospital

I have been to hospitals before, medical institutions where I once had my clinical internship and ones where I volunteered my services as a physical therapist after getting my license to practice the same. I am familiar with the everyday hustle and bustle that makes up the hospital framework and the usual his and hellos one gives to other allied medical professionals. However, in some baffling way, the hospital that situated itself before me was poles apart; it would be a baptism of fire once the thick steel doors were opened for me.


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The first thing I noticed were the natives, Saudis garbed in their traditional national dresses, with the men all in white and their headdress punctiliously put in place. The women were the exact opposite--all black with only their eyes seen by the outside world. Some of the Saudi women who work for the hospital were clad in their uniforms--blue, maroon, or beige, depending on the department they belong to--and they too had their head covers on. Then there were the Indians who make a sizeable hospital populace, from nurses to office employees to transport services (the foreign-looking person who actually picked me up at the airport was an Indian national). There were also expatriates of different races: Egyptians, who are mostly doctors, Jordanians, Syrians, Sudanese, Burmese, Nepalis, and not surprisingly the Filipinos. A hospital in the Middle East is half a hospital without Filipinos as health staff.

There was no difficulty singling out a Filipino from the other expatriates. It is as if we have internal sensors of our own that are once activated, with the resultant customary nod, when we see or meet a kababayan. Surely enough, I would befriend some of them as the days progressed, but just when you thought a countryman of your own would be there to lend a hand, sadly there would be some who simply don’t give a shit about you (a particular roommate would prove this case in a future entry). After two months of work here, I came to know that the Filipinos make up most of the workforce behind the hospital’s various departments--nursing, radtech, medtech, NAs, and even physical therapy, the department I proudly belong to (in fact, all of the PT staff are Filipinos).

Hastily ambling the hospital hallways because my usher was walking in the same manner, we then reached Employee Services where I was welcomed with a quick new-hire orientation. It was a relief that the Saudis there spoke good English so I did not have a problem communicating with them. While inside, they also issued a temporary Iqama for me, a residential permit that a foreign national should bring with him/her wherever s/he goes. The Iqama is an important document that in instances where you will be asked by a police officer to reproduce it and you cannot, it usually ends up you being in jail. And boy, you will never know when and where those checkpoints will be.

After everything was checked and in place, I was told that I could now go to my accommodation. I pondered where we would be heading and how long to get there. Remember that I have not slept yet for more than 24 hours. Even if my mind was on a roll of its own, my body was just dog-tired that I had never wanted rest so bad. Clutching my bag and a plastic full of free meal a new hire customarily gets for the next three days, we came out the same thick steel doors and I left the hospital with the baptismal fire still ablaze even as the doors were slowly closing behind me.

The Hospital: Prologue

We got off the van and headed to a building situated adjacent to the hospital. Walking under the high-noon heat, I was mulling over what was and whom I would be meeting inside. Could it be a physical therapist who will be orienting me on what to expect on my first day at work? Could this building be the rehabilitation department that would mold a better health professional out of me? Well, it turned out to be one of the admin personnel, from Support Services, who belatedly welcomed me and asked for an apology as to why they made it to the airport at such late a time. He also tweaked with his computer and typed something, which turned out to be instructions to my accommodation (a problem that I will talk about in a separate entry), and had somebody escorted me to Employee Services, an extension of the Admin offices found inside the hospital.

We would come in by way of the employee entrance at the leftmost part of the 3-storey edifice that house a 90-bed capacity tertiary medical institution. Somehow I felt that I was ready for the experience that awaited me as soon as I get to set my foot on the hospital’s premises. Having been an office employee for the last three years would have made me feel otherwise, but I guess this insatiable craving to work my profession has overshadowed the disquiet a newcomer often feels in an unchartered territory. Clutching a bag with personal belongings that I just could not leave on the van, the foreign-looking person who met me at the airport opened the thick steel doors for me, ushering me to an experience I was hankering over for years.

To be continued...