Sex and Sidiki 111: Surviving 11 More Years Of Saudi

By Asil Lladnar

Book 111 of the Saudi trilogy takes place from 1992 in the Eastern Province city of Dammam on the Persian Gulf and then back to the escarpment in Baha city, Baha Province the tribal home of 9/11 terrorists. This follows on from my years at the Jeddah military hospital in book 1 and the Abha years in Book 11. After three years in Baha, I got kicked out and travelled Asia, South Africa and Australia licking my wounds with a small DON job in Lahore Pakistan. I finally got back to Riyadh during the wild party years of the late nineties and then went off to Aramco, the crème de la crème of nursing jobs Alas, I didn’t stay and ended up in three more DON jobs in Saudi including the pigeon hell hole in the Desert. I finally left Saudi for good in 2003 on my sixtieth birthday throwing my black abaya in the departure lounge garbage can and saluting the last immigration guy with a double middle finger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asil Lladnar
• Release date: May 1, 2018

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Sex and Sidiki 111

Surviving eleven more years of Saudi

Lisa Randall

Writing as Asil Lladnar

Chapter 1

What Demons possessed me to return to Saudi?

In 1992, International Development Group, (known by me as International Disaster Group) won the hospital management contract for King Fahd hospital in Al-Baha. Al-Baha is a small city in Baha province and the hospital is a four hundred bed referral hospital providing specialty medical services to the two main tribes of Zaharani and Ghamdi. The hospital was smaller and less specialized than my old hospital in Abha, but had a long history of Western management and was known as a fun place, nearer the Red Sea beaches, nearer to Jeddah by road or air and where the rules of Sharia law in the housing compound were more relaxed for western expats, ha and double ha as I found out. IDG won the contract from GAMA, an American group who managed the hospital for ten years.

Not all Saudi hospitals could afford to contract with an outside management company, just the prestigious hospitals like the eleven Ministry of Defence and Aviation hospitals., four national guard hospitals, a few ministry of health hospitals, Security forces hospital and of course, the jewel in the crown, the King Faisal Specialist and Research center in Riyadh. Aramco in Dhahran, the nursing job prize was in a class of its own and had a long history of its own western management.

Western hospital management groups had contract goldmines in the early eighties, often cost plus contracts that paid for any folly. Saudi companies were not slow to mine those seams of gold and started to form hospital management companies often with secondary western partners, mainly British or American to bid on the big hospitals three year contracts. If they did good and found lots of nuggets for their Saudi uppers, they might get another three year contract so making six years of big profits. Saudi companies always had princely owners who had close ties with a HRH Prince Daddy or Uncle who ran the big Saudi ministries so they started winning contracts. I always thought Saudi companies and Saudi administrators the way to go but it wasn’t comfortable like working for a western management company who had your back. Western companies had fat contracts in the early eighties so some perks rolled down to the lowly expat like beach villas and good leisure community centers. The Saudi companies had fat contracts but the perks went to the princely top, not the peons like me.

My company, IDG was a new Saudi hospital management company, part of the new Saudi groups that were starting to take over health care management from the big American and British companies that controlled the business in the early eighties when I came to Saudi. In some cases, Saudis just bought the big western companies installed Saudi’s at the head and hired western talent to keep the companies with a western presence. In other cases, a consortium of Saudis with an influential HRH Prince would start a company, low bid on contracts, get the contract through Royal influence and install Middle Eastern guys to run them with a Saudi in all the head positions of course. They were awarded contracts because they were cheaper, recruited fewer western expats and relied heavily on Filipino and Indian first time nurses with poor experience and physicians with dodgy western qualifications. They would have a few titular western expats like the DON, an assistant Hospital Administrator and maybe a few western heads of departments. Never any western worker bees; they were all Indian, Filipino and middle eastern

In 1992, IDG won contracts for 10 hospitals and the best were with the big referral hospitals in Baha and Abha, but had much less contract fat than the Witikar Asir Central hospital and Gama Baha contracts of yore so much less budget for western staff and perks and the need to squeeze the contract to produce big profits for the princely owners. The old western contracts provided a quality management service but had one huge problem that the Saudis started plugging in the eighties. All the management company staff brought into Saudi belonged to the company and had the right to go with them if they lost the contract. In 1984, hundreds of staff left my Military hospital in Jeddah when American Whittiker lost the contract for hospitals in Jeddah, Khamis Mushayt and Tobuk. I still remember with a pang my friends leaving me the end of May, 1884. Big yellow school busses were drawn up in the parking lot of the hospital and staff came from the housing and jumped on the buses for the trip to the airport. They were boisterous and in high spirits. Those of us staying were glum and sad. I remember going home that night to my Sharbotly housing compound, finishing the Sidiki moonshine my friend Carol left and sobbing. It was an end of the safe and comfortable time in Saudi when money was no object.

A downturn in oil prices and a 1982 worldwide recession changed the carefree money gushing years and made working in Saudi harder when they slashed budgets for health and hospitals. The Saudi military hated all the staff leaving. In the way of the Arab culture, they developed work friendships with the expats and didn’t want a huge changeover in their hospital. Saudis are good at weeding out early malcontent expats and those who offend and get to like the rest who stay. Soon, expat staff recruited by the management company came in on a work visa belonging to the Military or National Guard hospitals so expats couldn’t leave until the end of their signed contract even if the company got canned and left. If staff decided to break their contract and take the chicken run, i.e.: go on vacation and not return, they didn’t get an NOC, (letter of no objection) which they needed if they wanted to return to the kingdom.

This wasn’t the case in Baha. GAMA managed the King Fahd Ministry of Health hospital for 10 long years and still had the right to take all their staff. And they did. That year, GAMA won a military contract in Dhahran and a good Ministry of Health hospital contract in Jeddah and they took every staff member who wanted to go. All the western staff wanted to leave as they heard IDG would cut salaries and introduce conservative Islamic rules and they knew their comfortable Sidiki laced lives were about to change drastically. They were right. Baha has a perpetual spring time climate perched up on the mountains at 7000 feet and it was pretty relaxed but it was a ten hours’ drive to Jeddah and had only two fights a day to Jeddah or Riyadh from the small regional airport which was about an hour away from the hospital. Baha was smaller them Abha, more conservative and seemed more Brigadoonish because it wasn’t a tourist hub like Abha.

I managed the 1984 contract changeover in Jeddah Military and recruited in 1987 during another changeover there so I was starting to become familiar with the process of 500 nurses leaving the hospital in one day and managing a nursing service with new, untried and untested nurses who arrived yesterday. Baha would be another changeover with hundreds of people all leaving on the same day in buses for the airport or to drive the highway to Jeddah.

I worked for American management companies since 1982. They recruited western staff widely in America, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Sweden, Denmark and Finland and later South Africa so the atmosphere was cosmopolitan and relatively sophisticated. The British hospital management fiefdoms recruited mainly out of the UK and Ireland so their western expats were more homogenous and you needed to know their tribal customs to get along. Companies like IDG were often in the management game for the short haul; get the money and run. My last year in Abha, was spent with IDG management and was a total disaster so why on earth was I returning to Al-Baha with them? Why was I returning to Saudi at all? I left Saudi in May 1992 swearing never to return after severing all ties with my lover Omar.

Stinky housing

I arrived at the airport which was an hour from the hospital and the small city of Al-Baha. I was picked up by a hospital driver and driven to the hospital and through the gates to the housing compound. I was given a smelly apartment in the Filipina housing by an ass of an American support service manager who got deported quickly. That tell you how bad he was because no one ever got sent home from Al Baha. We were too short staffed. I never fired a nurse in the three years I was there. And I practice the 90-10 principal of management. 90% of my nurses will work fine. 10 % will give trouble. 8 of them will listen to reason or punishment and 2 out of the 100 should be fired the first time you see the whites of their eyes. This housing was the worst place I was to live in Saudi. A small bed sitter with a cot for a bed, smelling of fish and shrimp that the Filipina nurse love to cook with grey tattered sheets and lumpy pillows. It was not suitable for the future DON although I am a backpacker and hosteller and can manage anywhere. It was a big insult to a new incoming DON from the American support manager who was an EMT by trade and met a Saudi in Chicago and wrangled a job in the Baha project. The Filipina nurses in the building were sweet and horrified that the future DON would be put in the same building as them in a small dingy room with a two burner hotplate and a mini frig. I was surprised but decide to wait. I thought the American guy who assigned me to the Filipina housing did it on purpose. He and his practical nurse wife lived in a luxurious townhouse villa and he struggled to find his feet in a job he wasn’t qualified for. He met one of our owner Princes in American and got the support service job through Royal favour. I didn’t show my hurt at being assigned non-western housing. Perception is important in Saudi and Asia. Some of the leaving Filipina staff who were bitter about GAMA losing the contract thought my housing was a big joke and just what I deserved working for a company like IDG. I got my first idea that big tensions and strong negative feelings from the old GAMA staff would make this contract changeover different from the civilized and polite changeover in Jeddah Military.

I lasted a week in the apartment only because I was working 14 hours a day. I then told my bosses "move me or I’m moving to Canada. The wonderful interim Pakistani company hospital Director was shocked and horrified I had been placed in the Filipina housing and moved me immediately into a big, sunny, spacious well-furnished three bedroom apartment in the Western block until GAMA left end of October and then I moved into the two bedroom garden townhouse villa of the previous DON where I lived happily for three years. The ass of a support manager did give me a supply of Sidiki the first day so I went to bed in my smelly room feeling mellow or I would have demanded a change of housing the first day

I was right to think King Fahd would be a monstrous changeover. Western and Asian expats developed a carefree open lifestyle during the ten years GAMA managed the hospital. The hospital was built on a high hill about 30 minutes from the small city of Baha. The housing adjoined the hospital complex guarded by GAMA security and no Saudis lived in the housing. The only Muslims living in the compound were GAMA staff so the lifestyle was thoroughly western. Sidiki flowed freely. Thursday night was party central with staff roaming drunk around the housing compound from party to party. Western ladies had their Boyfriends overnight for pyjama parties. The married couple Filipina housing invited their single mates to party and stay the night. Raucous and drunken camping trips to deserted beaches on the Red Sea were a weekend highlight. Even up in Abha, we heard stories about the wonderful life to be had in the Baha King Fahd housing. Step outside the housing though and one was back in the mind set of the prophet Mohammed. This free lifestyle I heard about influenced me to take the job in Baha although I knew better. My company, IDG took over Asir hospital the last year I worked there and slashed all the perks and benefits while introducing a Muslim conservative ethos to both work and play. In other words, break the Sharia laws and you land in jail. Now IDG was to manage this hospital, life was about to change hugely for the GAMA staff and they were upset, mad and vengeful at losing their almost western way of life.

Kissing and Cooing to get nurses to stay

GAMA did not leave until midnight on October 31 so the current nursing management was still running the hospital for another three weeks and I finally met with them to plan the transition. It took me four days to get my first appointment with the DON, a lovely lady called Anne who came out of the Irish hospital management system and had worked in Iraq. Her stories of working and playing there before the war with Iran made me envious. Somehow, I always get to a place just when it is changing and the wonderful life I hear about is always in the past. Except for a short time in Aramco and Jubail, I never lived the off duty free as a bird life in western compounds like Christine in Dammam or other of my DON colleagues in Jeddah and Riyadh. I always lived check by jowl with Moslems and Saudis and was always looking over my shoulder to see which Muslim or expat was spying on me. The DON breaking rules is always big news and good currency for a spy to tell the Saudis, so I always had to behave myself, especially in Abha and Baha, two small conservative cities on the tribal escarpment. I always had way more freedom and perks than the other expats and certainly 100% more freedom than my Indian and Filipino nurses, but there was always a rubber band stretching my freedoms often pulled tight by my Saudi bosses. The old Asil, you are an example to all the ladies in the hospital, behave or else. I guess strictures and hardship made me stronger and it certainly led to experiences with the culture and Saudis others didn’t have. Anyway I was getting older and my wild child days of Jeddah were long past and I had just turned fifty so it wasn’t too hard to behave. I was definitely segueing into the wise old women of the tribe. However, there was always weekends in Riyadh with my Saudi family where I definitely misbehaved.

I was given a small office down the administration corridor. My secretary was in the same room and my assistant Linda in a desk across from mine. My secretary Gina didn’t want to work for a women. She transferred from an IDG, G100 hospital in Asir province where she was the secretary of the Western Hospital Director. Her husband Rene, an audio visual technician came in every day at 12pm, glowered at me and took her for lunch. Over the years, Gina and Rene became devoted supporters and I am Godmother to their son Rengie.

Until I came, GAMA staff were hoping that IDG could not mobilize the hospital before the Oct 31 deadline when the contract expired and hoped they would get a one year extension. Anne paid me a nice compliment during our first meeting saying After I arrived, she knew IDG would succeed at midnight on October 31. We started bi-weekly meetings to plan the transition and introduce our new nurses into the nursing units as they arrived. Our new nurses would buddy with a GAMA nurse and learn the ropes. Surgery would stop the week before the move. I would close some nursing units and we would discharge every patient possible before the witching hour of midnight on Oct 31, when the handover would take place.

Many of my new nurses had not arrived yet so I spent the next week pleading and begging the GAMA nurses to reconsider staying with IDG. It was not easy for an assertive, type A Virgo to be humble but needs must. All of the staff, western and TWN, (third world nationals) were full of themselves, entitled, playing mind games with me and quite horrible. Most of the Western nurses had already planned to leave for the new GAMA hospitals in Damam and Jeddah. They were glad to get out of this mountain fastness and back to the bright lights of the big cities. A few, like the OR supervisor decided to stay for awhile. Jilly, the wonderful English Head Nurse from labour and delivery came in early on and told me Asil, I’m staying, Baha is my life and my home. Jilly was totally exceptional and birthed a generation of Baha babies. She became an icon in the community, my friend and three years later, just before I got kicked out of Baha, I submitted an application to the British government to honour her with an OBE. The new IDG Chief of Medical Staff was doing the same with the Doctors and some stayed on if they didn’t have a better offer elsewhere.

Most of the staff including the Filipina’s were borderline insolent and cheeky asking what will you give me to stay, then sneering when I made my pitch which was way lower than their salary. There were no Indian nurses working in the hospital, but we were bringing them in by the boatload so that was another big change for everyone planning to stay in Baha to get used to. I needed to keep some of the senior Filipino’s in the specialty units. The senior GAMA Filipinos knew the nursing units and even more important had the support of the few Saudi Physicians in the hospital. I desperately needed to keep these nurses and win some points with my new group of Saudi Doctors. The Docs supported my idea to promote Filipinos into Head Nurse Positions. I now could offer them better salaries than a staff nurse and keep some. During GAMA, all Head Nurses were western but a new, cheaper day was dawning. I supported Indian and Filipino nurses in management positions since my Abha days and had no qualms they would do a fine job.

By the middle of October, I succeeded in persuading wonderful Edwin in ICU, snotty Kathy in NICU, Sweet Sara in the operating room and two other Filipina’s in Pediatric ICU and Emergency Room to stay as Head Nurses. Many of the senior GAMA Filipino staff that stayed were couples with married housing, some with children. Many didn’t have good offers to transfer with GAMA and decided in typical Asian fashion that they could handle the new company and adjust to the new order as Filipino’s always do. The free married housing and having their children with them is a very large perk for TWN’s in Saudi and they weren’t sure the GAMA hospitals in Jeddah and Damam would provide this.

A group of Head Nurses on the general wards were from Nigeria, some newly arrived and some transferred from other IDG hospital in Asir province and they didn’t know Baha. Now, at least critical care services in Baha were covered by strong, old GAMA staff and I had my wonderful but old and slow Nigerian Head Nurses in the medical and surgical units. Nigerian nurses come to Saudi as western qualified staff after twenty five years in Government service in the cities of Lagos, Ibadan and Benin. They had western qualifications because they went to the United Kingdom in the fifties and sixties after their Nursing training and got their RGN, (Registered General Nurse), like our Canadian RN. The nurse in Nigeria no longer go to the UK for specialty training to get their RGN so my Nigerians were all over fifty years of age, plump, slow moving and tired; but they worked like demons for me in Baha.

King Fahd hospital and the Doctor’s

The hospital was a seven story edifice built on a hill about 30 minutes from Baha city. It was 10 years old and both the hospital and housing compound was shabby. Things worked but only with tremendous maintenance effort. The housing compound in particular had not been renovated or updated in 10 years of hard living by the Western and Asian expats and little would be done to either hospital or housing during my three years there. It was a big comedown from commissioning the brand new Asir Central hospital and I dubbed King Fahd, poor man’s Abha, but only under my breath. During the next three years, Baha and King Fahd would always be a second best to my beloved Abha experience as Baha was even more conservative and rural than Abha which had the sophistication of summer Royalty and tourists to keep me on my toes. Baha was still a rural farming city with little influence or power unlike Abha whose Governor was one of King Faisal’s son’s. Baha’s Governor was a son of King Saud, but not a prominent HRH and I never saw him while I was in Baha unlike Abha where HRH’s (His or Her Royal Highness) were around all the time. There are more than ten thousand HRH in Saudi so take all this royalty with a grain of salt even though they are disgustingly rich. Asir province also had Khamis Mushayt city and the huge Saudi Military base with a small American presence about thirty kilos down the road from Abha city so there was always plenty of activity between the two cities.

I liked the seven stories in the hospital as I could climb to the top several times a day when making rounds and get some exercise. The specialty areas were still high functioning. Baha had the biggest NICU, (neonatal intensive care unit) I ever managed with a total of 45 beds and a Pediatric ICU of 12 beds next door. After my Indian nurses came they called the NICU SCBU, (special care baby unit), the Brit term for NICU . Babies were a bigger growth industry in Baha than Abha where there were things to do after work. In Baha, there was little to do, so early to bed and the babies kept coming. A NICU catastrophe in my third year help the anti Lisa cabal that unceremoniously kicked me out of Baha in July 1995. I must admit, I gave them plenty of ammunition. Baha started, continued and ended in trouble for me. The Chinese say you have three years of bad luck and six years of good. I had good years in Jeddah and Abha and was now starting my three years of Merde.

There were Saudi Doctors in King Fahd. Their degree of conservatism was in direct ratio to the amount of time spent training abroad. The Abha Saudi doctors were mostly just returned from six to eight years of training in Canada or America and accepted teaching positions in the King Khalid University to pay back their obligations to the government who paid for their training abroad. They admitted patients in Asir Central Ministry of Health hospital as they hadn’t built their own university hospital yet. They were still in the Canadian mode but more important, most came from the big cities in Saudi so they had a level of sophistication and western know how. The King Fahd Doctors were mostly Al Ghamdi’s from the smart aggressive tribe in Baha province. My favourite was Abdulhamid, the handsome chief of Surgery. We always got along and I admired his skills and humanity. Another Ghamdi was an ENT guy who ran a private clinic in Baha city in addition to his practice in King Fahd. My least favourite was the head of Paediatrics and the eventual Supervisor General of the area who became my nemesis. He hated me and the feeling was reciprocated. He was an enormously fat Ghamdi with a beard like Ali Baba. I would sit in meetings and dream about putting matches on the ends of his long stringy beard and setting his beard on fire. He was ultra conservative, therefore extremely religious but his pig eyes would sometimes flicker over me and I knew he was a womanizer when he got married again during my second year to a North African doctor. I pitied the poor women who had to suffer that fatty in bed. He was a Wahhabi/ Salafi fundamentalist and a Sharia law adherent, a hang them high and stone em dead guy. More about all of them later.

Chapter 2

Prayer is big in Saudi: Islam, Moslems, Sharia Law, Sunni Shia Schism, Wahhabi Salafi ideology

Islam, the religion of a Moslem controls every aspect of life in Saudi. Moslem’s believe their holy book, the Koran is the literal word of Allah, the Arabic word for God and God help the person who questions or makes fun of Allah, the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) or the Koran. Same with Sharia law, the punitive religious laws that govern every aspect of Saudi culture. Think the Babylonian Hammurabi code, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If an expat offence against Sharia is minor, you might just go to jail, be flogged then deported. For major offences like murder, rape, adultery, sodomy, apostasy and drug dealing, you could have your head chopped off by a big man with a shiny sword in the courtyard of a Mosque with a pile of sand nearby to soak up the blood. Depending on the area, the stoning of a women for adultery can occur in front of a male audience of thousands like the one in Al-Baha when I was working there.

Mess with Sharia and the Koran at your peril. An Imam with a 7th century mindset can issue a Fatwa on your life like the one on Salman Rushdie. Howling mobs of Moslem’s may come after you with guns and knives to hack you dead or acid to scar your face, all in the name of Allah or Jihad holy war. Murder most foul made legal by a religious ruling. Very convenient to have a religion that legitimizes killing. Of course, that is the extreme fundamentalist position. Moderate Moslem’s condone fundamentalist terrorist attacks, suicide bombers and killing in the name of Jihad; at least they do eventually and very tepidly in earlier days. All Fundamentalist and even some moderates I knew believe the West deserves to be punished for our wicked ways, although they thought 9/11 was a little extreme.

Chop Chop Square near the central mosque in Riyadh used to do a fine theatre of the barbaric every Friday noon, beheading the odd murderer with a big shiny sword. In the early eighties, expatriates liked to go