Robin Usher, British Education Council (BEC), National Diploma (ND) in Business Studies, Hull College of Further Education, 1978, West Clayton High School, Graduation Diploma (GPA 2.66), Arlington, Texas, 1982, B.A. (Hons), Combined Studies (2: 1 English literature and Socio-History), Hull College of Higher Education, 1986, wrote `Jungian Archetypes: Robert A. Heinlein`, PhD by thesis (English), Hull University, England, 1992; Trinity College, London, TESOL Certificate, 1995. Has taught English language in more than 14 countries, and written many ELT articles, including for HLTmag, as well as science fiction and reviews.

 

North Africa is mainly the sterile Sahara Desert, apart from fertile coastal regions; Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania (see fig. 1), with Libya’s cities, such as capital Tripoli; Sirte, Tripolitania district, and nearby town, Ar’s Anuf’s ARSCO gas generating power station. Murderously hot, average 38-40° C, cloudless, but with nighttime temperatures freezing, deep into the heart of Africa’s continent, Sahara encompasses large parts of Chad, Mali, and Niger. The warm, deep, blue sea coastline is captivating, even in winter, and even warmer in summer, although journeying on foot to Ar’s Anuf’s souk from the Excelsior motel (see fig. 2), chosen by the English language teaching purveyor, SQIRAL, for a self-paid box of staples, and a sheaf of A4 copy paper, as stapling together photocopied test papers was a large part of the daily routine, and sometimes stapes or sheaves weren’t brought in; or take his browned underwear for washing, was a chore. Barely ameliorated by the local laundry’s amenability in agreeing to collect soiled items on certain evenings that were invariably returned at midnight the following day, the teacher, bedraggled by the day’s incitements, had to waddle in their thob, worn in lieu of righteously eschewed sensible pyjamas, to recover everything. Including the apparently obligatory odd grey sock, which was never yorn, in the earliest hours of the morning, conveniently imaginable to the delivery van, so as not to arrive at the training center later (but not by over much) that morning in that old green T-shirt, with a collar that did with a tie; if all else failed.

Fig. 1 North Africa

Criticized for wearing that same old black suit, after his other green was mislaid in January 2015 by Turkish Airlines, subsequent to their failing to put a ticket on the luggage, as it sailed off on the conveyor belt at check-in at Dammam’s King Fahd airport, Saudi Arabia, it’d finally arrived weeks later at Budapest’s Ferenc Liszt, only to be snaffled by local yokels (jó, kell). Purchasing a suit mail order from the US, that’d arrived much too large, the Hungarian tailors had periodically vowed their inability, or capacity, to alter to fit, thereby maintaining their sartorial critique upon his elegance.

Eloquence unfuddled, with six weeks on, and four more weeks, but paid off, and six weeks on again, and three square meals a day at the cafeteria, there was only the local bussing about, after the madness at Turkey’s Istanbul airport, Amavutköy, stumbling about with trousers foolishly around the ankles, as belts and shoes were relinquished, before the plane to Libya, and a back-breaking cross nation bus ride from Mitiga airport, Tripoli. 7 hours non-stop (a few hours more in a sandstorm, and if you want to eat at a diner and take a pee), and 653. 4 km to Ar’s Anuf, there and back (x4 per contract, or 1/4 of the way to Jo’burg, S.A., the usual joys of training the trainees remained to be diplomatically negotiated. Given the degree of politesse required by North Africans, whose belief it is that everyone else deems them cannibal slavers, or slaves, it’s well nigh impossible.

Fig. 2 El Fadeel

Aside from looking at the menu and wondering who was on it, it bubbled and squeaked inside the heavily lidded bacofoil lined urns at mealtimes. Knifing it, forking it, and spooning it in, within the time limit set for eating (5 min), was a significant task in itself, and worthy of some descriptive script from the scribbler. Breakfast was fairly simple, apart from the cornflakes, requiring milk from a churn with a spigot; situated alongside tea and coffee churns, making it difficult to determine where the white stuff would be: although the bowled sugar was a no-brainer with plazzy spoons provided (see fig. 3), and what appeared to be lollipop sticks to remind us it was stir. Usually left to see whether there’d be time, before the tray was abandoned to the kitchen sink personnel, the bowled cornflakes remained provisionally edible, until either milk was obtained, or the chain gang, chin egged, though grateful it wasn’t yet porridge, were called to assembly by their co-ord.

The plazzy pots of honey and jam could be pocketed, and used instead of scarce sugar, for the coffee and tea at the training center; which only left the individually wrapped in see-thru plazzy processed cheese slices; eggs to peel to eat with rolls, and a plate of tuna and beans, for the gastronome to demolish, before each armed with a free bottle of water to deposit into the kettle, the gang embarked, on the bus that took them jouncing, and flouncing along, after a tanker shown by the sea to the horizon,  danke schön, at break back velocity to their inland destination.

Although at end of each six weeks, it was almost impossible to walk, and during, experience taught the language purv to obtain needed vitamins, herbs, fruits, vegetables, and unguents, to maintain the bod’, and ensure the delivery per paid hour of chat abating satisfaction. The task began with relative equanimity; Cambridge’s Preliminary English Test (PET), requiring the inculcation of the four skills; reading, writing, speaking, and listening. There’d be a mock examination at the end of each week; adjusted to the level of capability of the students, with the objective of achieving B1 level of competence, i.e., Intermediate level, on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), while the teaching staff entered the arena armed only with the textbook, English File, and the knowledge there’d be one-to-one ‘Speaking’ tests for the students to negotiate, as well as audio sessions in the computer lab, with headsets for them to wear, while completing answer sheets, based on what they heard.

Fig. 3 Well used plazzy spoon in Arabic

For teachers, it’s useful, as students are convinced the educator is there to correct what they write, and then they’re educated, because that’s how slavers think, so it comes as somewhat of a shock to discover the teacher can’t speak and listen for them too, which is 50% of the students’ goal, whereas for the teacher the objective is to be remunerated politely.

Bussed back to the cafeteria for a very late lunch at around 2.00 pm, the meal was a free can; Pepsi, Shirley, or Mirinda, etc., rice, meat, beans, spaghetti, savory pastry, bowled soup, bread rolls, and some fruit; banana, orange, apple, etc., as well as a dessert of some shape or form. Then back to the motel with the mandatory bottle of water to prepare for the bus afforded outside the motel at 7.00 pm in the evening for a further meal; much the same as lunch, and with hopefully equal emphasis on antiseptic wet wipes sealed in foil, which cognoscenti use to disinfect their ass, rather than use the water hose to perform their ablutions, as is de rigeur amongst the Moslem nations of Islam, but appears unhygienic to people of the Western hemisphere, brought up to prevent AIDS, rather than shrug resignedly, as who wouldn’t with the recommended toilet facilities?

Popular with other members of the chain gang, because of a functioning stapler, bought in Syria’s city of Deir Ezzor, at or around Christmas, 2002, before the Civil war there (2012-19), with ISIS, and the putative Caliph of Islam in the Levant, Iraq’s Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, possessing the city from 2014, it was stolen on the last day of the four months, although the scissors bought at the local souk, since the airlines frown on such dangerous items in luggage, didn’t last so long in my possession. My other apparent usefulness consisted in relinquishing an 8GB Sandisk thumb drive for the co-ord to put the mock PET ‘Listening’ exam onto at the end of each week, as an MP3 file to play by remote control at the portable audio console in the fully equipped classroom, with smart board, and overhead projector (OHP), if they’d been on, which they weren’t.

 

Fig. 4 Who do you suppose these people are trying to annoy?

Otherwise, it was the wipe board and elbow grease allied to a marker pen, and another bored rubber, as is normative in those countries, where access to the word processing facilities of PCs are denied, as if proximity to the internet were a threat to the hub of a national intelligence network’s preoccupations with maintaining its state’s secrecy. Libya, of course, had its own Civil war; Ar’s Anuf captured and recaptured by government and rebel forces throughout 2011, before the deposing of dictator, Col. Gadaffi (d. October 20^th, 2011), apparently bayoneted in the ass, as there wasn’t anyone to prolong his misery with AIDS. There in Tripoli, as a teacher with Bell, when the conflict began, the British were ordered to pull out. Upon my return, after the war, a brief spell at Globals, Tripoli, culminated in my being held up at gunpoint, waved away impatiently, after pulling pockets inside out to indicate nothing was wanted between the buttocks.

 

Fig. 5 Tram stop

Nothing in comparison to Budapest; a knife wielding maniac stabbed through the top of my head, while girlfriend giggled, as blood fountained up at Csóka utca to splash the painted metal roof of the # 49 yellow and white tram, on its way to a buffered terminus at Kelenföld district, close by the northern railway station, with its train to the city of Zagreb, capital of Croatia, itself torn by Civil war (1991-2) with Serbs, subsequent to its declaration of independence from the artificially constructed communist ‘superstate’, Yugoslavia, after World War Two’s (1939-45) defeat of German ambitions of slavery, along with those of the other ‘Axis powers’; Italy, Japan, and Iraq, and its concomitant, Eastern Europe’s occupation by communism, as Russia’s ‘Red Army’ refused to relinquish its hold, ‘liberating’ German occupied Eastern Europe’s nations after capturing Germany’s capital city, Berlin.

 Assisting Bosnia against its Serbs in the Bosnian war (1992-5), Croatia facilitated the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 70, 000 Moslem women, incarcerated in ‘rape camps’, built for that purpose, were raped by Serb Christian militia, e.g., in the village of Viŝegradska Banja, resting at the confluence of the Drina and Rzav rivers, as a part of the anathema known as ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Photographs, available through the internet, showing the damage shellfire did to the Excelsior motel, were a further salutary reminder to the teacher, made complacent by only apparently tight security measures, of safety’s precariousness. Terrorism comes in many guises, and the students used each week’s Speaking test to accuse the teacher of peeking at their penis, which it’s useful for naïve young EFL teachers to know, as it’s a practice widespread amongst slavers, who’re taught castration through vilification, as a matter of course, in the process of ensuring compliance and obedience; especially amongst the Moslems of the nations of Islam, where the teachers are expected to be eunuchs, as they aren’t permitted any active sexual activity, which helps the community to have them serve it.

Fig. 6 Together's discus

Jesus, the founder of Christianity, to take but one example, was killed by the apparent homosexual, Judas, for being with a woman, despite his pleading, ‘Leave her alone.’ (Mk: 14. 6) That Judas’ appeal to the Jewish religious police, the Pharisees, and the Empire of Rome, then occupying Palestine, in the name of their Emperor, Tiberius Caesar Augustus (14-37 C.E.), succeeded in having the teacher executed, should be sufficient to persuade any Christian not to undertake a speaking test in the naïve understanding that you’re at liberty to feel anything at all: ever.

With some variations, Part One of the Speaking test consists of a two-minute introductory assessment of the student’s basic identity. e.g., ‘What is your name?’ And, ‘Where do you live?’ Obviously, the response can be longer, or shorter, depending on the student’s command of English language, but the actual information elicited is rather meager. However, when asked, ‘Are you a student, or do you work?’ the respondent is likely to appear nonplussed and offended at the very idea of being asked to give away state or military secrets likely to threaten the internal security of their nation, which is useful for new teachers; to recognize that they’re dealing with psychopathic values inculcated at the level of the local mosque.

When a student invites you for coffee, and you find yourself drinking it from a tray in a corridor outside his apartment, as he doesn’t want you to see his wife, you’ve been wallied in Islam. Take a deep breath, and back away; if you insist on meeting the family of Walid, you’ll find yourself back on the doorstep at some distant point in the future, because the family didn’t want to see you, Wally, the first time they were made to - and you weren’t permitted sex either.

Fig. 7 B1 descriptors

Although the format of the formal Cambridge Speaking examination is to have an interlocutor, and an assessor, who only assesses the paired students being examined, without peeking, it’s common in short-staffed training centers for a teacher to perform both roles, as a forced necessity. Part Two of the peeking test consists of a few themed questions about media, travel, environmental ecology, etc., before Part Three’s comparison of pictures and some questions about them (see fig. 4), which are supplemented by the student’s paired partner asking a question; e.g., when the pictures are about entertainment, ‘Do you like concerts?’ Parts Two, Three, and Four, last approximately four minutes each, with Part Four mainly consisting of a topic at the center of a diagram (see fig. 5); e.g., learning English language, and the paired students discuss the topic, based on suggestions for the discussion arrayed balloon-like around the central subject inside its own balloon. The test ends with the examiner asking questions related to the theme, other than the rather transparent issue of the penis’ desired functionality.

That’s it for the students, of course, who naturally believe that’s it for the teacher too, who probably has to test 3 classes at 16 pairs of students per class at 14 minutes each week (4 hours x3, without accounting for time traveling, absences, and unforeseeable delays), and invariably with an odd one out for each group, who has to go it alone, but with help perforce from a volunteer amongst his peers, sitting in as a makeweight, they each consider themselves the focus of ‘the eyes of Allah’, while the Cambridge descriptors have to be applied by the examiner.

To assess proficiency at A2 level, it’s to be borne in air that, for the military, A2s are leather flight jackets, which mnemonic is also used as a designator by air force HQ intelligence; for itself and its security staff. While at Cambridge A2 level, Vocabulary and Grammar aren’t conflated, but separate, Discourse Management descriptors are reserved for B2 level (see fig. 6), as Key English Test (KET), is the novice level prior to PET’s B1, ‘BOne’, level competence assessment for those who want to live and work in an English speaking country, or FCE (First Certificate in English) at B2 level, which as it’s also the name of the US’ stealth ‘Spirit’ bomber, and above, seems a lot to struggle with, even without considering ‘Beef if dey does,’ i.e., The B-52’s, and their contribution to the listening test theme of environmental protection, ‘Love Shack’ (1979), which of course is where it shat:

‘Bang, bang, bang, on the door, baby

I can’t hear you.’(1)

Awarding 5 marks, or below, for Vocabulary and Grammar (speak slowly and selectively, and use only the words you’re able to), Discourse Management (don’t hog), Pronunciation (articulate like a steel trap), and Interactive Communication (know when to shut it), with an overall application of Global descriptors, amounts to x5 from whatever score the student has amassed out of 20. If the assessor determines the student has 17 marks. e.g., the average is 4. 25, which is routinely added (21. 25) to arrive at 25% of the exam total. Although the rubric can be applied more strictly, and training centers do vary in their rigorousness in terms of descriptor application, it’s recommended that teacher and students, when preparing for the KET, PET, or FCE, refer to examples of the Cambridge exam proper, as the relatively unchanging format is an industry standard.

As the lyric to, ‘In The Evening’, from the Led Zep album, In Through The Out Door (1979), goes, as an’ I grant you, at first seeming non sequitur here, ‘when the day is done’(2), the educator ensconced themselves in a comfortably pillowed position at the motel to correct, and/or grade, until 2.00-3.00 am, whatever largely meaningless drivel the students were able to compose on paper for the mock ‘Reading and Writing’ and ‘Listening’ examinations, in the course of their pursuit of adequacy, which required rubrics; a red pen, utilized with swift, implacable, unerring determination and ruthlessness; determining scores, percentages, compiling the statistics, and awarding the laurels to the champions; or belaboring the duffers with the inflated pig’s bladder on a stick; metaphorically, or physically, as the teacher deemed themselves safe enough to think about their own penis, which of course is what the mock combat exercises were designed to prevent, as solid yeah’s; saving each other’s holiness.

Collapsing inexplicably prone onto the floor, during an audio practice session, while the students were going through the pockets of an ostensibly dead teacher, perhaps for signs of a medical  insurance policy, I awoke, to be informed by the nearest that I’d been shot by another close to him; an idea I belayed by careful examination of the supposed corpse for evident injury; although it’s useful for those new to the profession to be aware that collapsed teachers are more likely to attract pickpockets than First Aid proponents which, b’Jove, this teacher felt important enough to add to his CV.

Generally speaking, working at high security installations requires a degree of tolerance not ordinarily available to younger professionals, where workers are expected to at least look and behave as if they’re unfeeling automata to fit in with the requirements of a regimented system; e.g., if the laundry is taken from the motel, as the facilities are perhaps still kaput from grenade rocketry, before being returned there, after being laundered, walking to the souk to take your clothes to the laundry yourself is probably either a security issue, or a gangster issue, i.e., it isn’t advisable. That the room has a view of the sea at the back of the motel, but the lock of the outer door to the veranda is broken, while the inner door can be jury rigged to lock sufficiently to deter the casual browser, has a similar meaning. Cheery bus drivers are ten-a-penny, but not as cheap as a corpse for a pickpocket. That you don’t speak Arabic is no protection against aspersion. Looks, glances, suggestive behavior, things being implied, are lethal weapons used with perfunctory disdain by professional killers, who want the ‘phone in your room, or as little even as the 5GB Libyana ‘phone top up voucher code on your dressing table, which hasn’t yet had the strip scratched off with a pencil to reveal the magic number giving access to the internet. Whatsapp, and email, are necessary for the uploading, and downloading, of supplementary teaching materials to print at the pig (P@tP) from the stroll in bones’  ‘jumpin’ Jack’ USB flash drives, i.e., by means of the bus to the office photocopier; in order properly to complete the tasks of a contractually obligated employee.

 

References

1Pierson, Kate, Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, and Cindy Wilson, ‘Love Shack’, The B-52’s, Cosmic Thing, Reprise, 1979.

2 Jones, John Paul, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant, ‘In The Evening’, Led Zeppelin, In Through The Out Door, Swan Song, 1979.