Who goes to Saudi for vacation?

“Who goes to Saudi Arabia for vacation?” Add about 11,000 more question marks with a few choice expletives to aptly describe the incredulous look on my friends’ faces.

Well, apparently, I do. I did it not once but 3 times in 2013 – until I finally had to acquire a residency permit. What started as a vague 3-month plan turned into a year and a half. My visit visa extension fell squarely on that tumultuous period after Obama’s speech authorizing military action against Syria and before the Russian proposal to which Syria agrees to give up control of its chemical weapons.

Normal tourists went home, yet there I was, flexing my acting chops when Saudi immigration wanted to confiscate what appeared to be varied parts of an ominous metal contraption and Kevlar on coiled plastic.

I suspect it wasn’t the best time to be lugging around a dance pole and fire hoops through a restrictive country that was currently teetering on the brink of war, but at that very moment, my thoughts weren’t really about the fact that I kept insisting on returning to a land that is always teetering on the brink of war or that it’s a place where public beheadings are still very much in fashion. Nothing scared me more at that moment than the prospect of losing my toys, which loosely translated to the slow agonizing death of spirit and sanity.

When people speak of Saudi Arabia, abused OFWs automatically come to mind. However, there is a group of Filipinos like me who are on dependent visa – meaning we have daddies or husbands who scored privileged jobs granting us the comforts of an excessively overfed, massively uninspired desert lifestyle.

If you’ve been to these parts yet only lived within, say, Aramco, then check those ruffled feathers before you choke me with them. I speak strictly for those of us who are subjected to the actual Saudi Arabia, where the unrelenting landscape of sand and cloudless skies offering no end credits in sight are pretty much visual episodes of daily lives. Boredom in 72pt Bold.

Women can’t go out unescorted by their male guardians, resulting in a general lack of physical activity and gradual loss of interest in their appearance – in the rare times they do get to leave the house, they would be in a burqa.

I suppose this makes me more understanding of the way people drive here – as if they’re sorely lacking in serotonin and the only way to taste an iota of emotional brilliance is by besting the fatal game of Guess If I Really Meant To Go Right Or Left When I Signal Left.

The past decade has seen the kingdom ruled by a visionary leader. A benevolent king who paid 2.3M riyals ($610,000) in blood money to save a Filipino’s life, passed a law making domestic violence a criminal offense for the first time, allowed women athletes to compete in the Olympics, and enabled funds for any young national desiring to further his education.

Coming from a country where people sweat blood and tears to put their kids through school, getting paid to do so is as ridiculous as Miley Cyrus. Yet for all the positive intentions Saudi’s monarch has, it still remains to be a country widely populated by people too rich to bother with an education, which, to my experience, accounts for the apparent lack of social skills, such as, but not limited to, driving etiquette.

Here is where I leave this train of thought as unbidden stories of imprisoned bloggers become tongues of fear steadily licking the base of my spine.

So why even come here?

The answer is quite stark in its simplicity really: family – the driving force behind every Filipino psyche. Laborers come here for love of family, and families come here for love of the ones who labor for them.

It takes a special kind of stamina to be an OFW in Saudi Arabia. Most don’t have much choice. Apart from head-on confronting the risk of abuse, the distinctive brand of depressing isolation inherent to this place seeps into your soul unnoticed, possibly killing your breeding, wardrobe, and common sense.

My unsolicited advice is to acknowledge and accept the loneliness as a necessary tradeoff for a comfortable life, and train in a new language or dance discipline or some random musical instrument rather than engaging in neurotic gossip (a seriously annoying norm in Filipino communities here) or gorging your face needlessly. Solitude is a powerful resource for discovering skills you would not have otherwise honed if you were distracted by life.

Immersing in a restrictive culture makes it easier to forget that, though scarcity has limited our options in where to work and live, those limitations do not strip us of the freedom to choose whom to marry, or which religion to practice, or even which parasites we elect to steal our taxes.

This journey has been a glaring reminder to be grateful to be born in a country that allows the freedom of choice. Never have I valued my Filipino birthright more than I do now. – Rappler.com

 Sweet Caneos is a professional flow artist and pole dancer who founded the first hula hoop community in the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, where she is currently located. She fancies herself an “author,” though the only literary work she has done before are 1,500-word-minimum spiteful letters to ex-boyfriends.