I have a job offer! Teaching English to young kids in Benghazi, Libya for six months (extendable on mutual agreement), accommodation and car supplied, an allowance for local expenses and salary paid in euros to the bank of my choice. I tell my friends not to be worried, Benghazi has been more peaceful than most Western cities since NATO saved it back in March. I would not go to Tripoli any more than I would to Baghdad but relatively serene Benghazi seems like a good bet in a country the Economist Intelligence Unit has pegged as the fastest growing economy in 2012.
I supported the Libyan Revolution from the beginning so it seems also like a good way of putting my self where my mouth has been. As I tell everyone who will listen (and no one has disagreed so far) Libya hit bottom and has nowhere to go but up whereas Greece is still falling over the cliff and no one can tell how far down the bottom is.
Am I anxious? Yes, of course. While I'll still be close to my friends and family in geographical terms, I will still be entering a society (and a line of work) that is radically different from any that I've lived in before. For example, booze is still prohibited in Libya from the Qadaffi era, the call to prayer will issue forth five times a day, pork will be impossible to find, Friday, not Sunday, will be the day of rest, and the people who staffed the Qadaffi regime will, for the most part, remain for a long time, until replacements can be trained, often by outsiders like myself. And, while I have taught individuals of all ages and small groups, I've never had responsibility for an entire class.
If any reader has been to Libya or has friends and family in Benghazi or has teaching advice about 6 to 12 year olds in a foreign language, I would be thrilled to hear about it.
Below the fold, I'll talk a bit about Athens and why this offer to work in Libya seems too good to pass up.
The link I am about to give you is worth several diaries. I do not have the time in this period of transition to give it even one but I hope someone will take a look and help it go viral. Greece is a special case, unique unto itself and this piece will help people understand (please read the whole thing, it is worth it):
The fourth and last party in Greek society is the one I’m most worried about: the “Party of the Hopeless”, the young Greeks who sit at their computers all day, desperately searching the Internet for a job—somewhere in the world. They’re not guest-workers like their grandparents, who left Macedonia and Thrace in the 60s and moved to Germany in search of a job. These young people have a college degree, some even a Ph.D. But they head straight from the studies into the ranks of the unemployed.
I was born in Istanbul and grew up in Athens, where I’ve been living for many years. With my daughter it’s the other way around. She is a native Athenian and now lives in Istanbul. You might call it the repatriation of the second generation. And my daughter isn’t the only one. A stream of young people migrated to Istanbul last year. They show up at the Ecumenical Patriarchate looking for a job and help in finding a place to live. Youth unemployment has overcome our age-old animosity toward Turkey.
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One thing from today's local news that seems terribly unfair and wrong is that the "troika" (IMF, European Commission and the European Central Bank) is now said to be demanding an elimination (or drastic reduction) of the minimum wage and a general decrease in the average private sector salary. WTF? Wages are already low in Greece and with the increase in direct and indirect taxation, take home pay is already approaching starvation levels. In any case, what business is it for outsiders? Aren't these things negotiated between and among business partners (Labor/Management)?
The Greek public sector has been a mess with overpaid and under-utilised employees but this has not been the case in the Greek private sector. Ever your overpaid executives in Greece would be pitied by their counterparts on the Atlantic coasts.
New jobs do not exist. If you have a job or a pension, you see it cut every month. Taxes also go up every month, without rhyme or reason, regardless of your income or that of the object or activity being taxed.
And yet, I love this country and you would too, if you knew it.
I have a feeling I am going to come to love Libya as well but Greece and the US, my twin countries of descent will always be my first loves.