month-old infant, Chania Frost tried to pinpoint her earliest memories of Saudi Arabia: “Snorkeling in the Red Sea is one of them, and playing a made-up game called ‘Shapes' in the compound's swimming pools is another. Then we would have roller discos in one of the recreation centers, and I remember amazing parties. We used to ride our bikes through the huge puddles during and after torrential rainstorms, and I remember Sports Days at the Continental School (now known as BISJ), where we'd throw bean-bags into hoops and race around cones. It was all great fun.” Chania was born in Kenya and the family moved to Saudi Arabia in 1984 when her father was offered a job with the national airline. “I went to school in Jeddah until I was eight years old. I remember my first kindergarten, run by a lovely Indian lady called Fairy – my memories are of singing songs and playing on the floor. Then I went to the Continental School. It had fantastic facilities and an amazing multinational pupil population. Although my name is unusual among British people, it was nothing out of the ordinary there, amongst the likes of Cagri, Shadi, Jad, Rana, Hady, and many other different names. Conti used to hold an extraordinary annual event where we would dress up in our national clothes and parade around the school grounds carrying our national flags. Parents would bring in traditional dishes and we'd feast on culinary delights from countries across the world. School was good fun, but the intimidation of the ‘big kids' who sat at the back of the school bus every day never quite wore off. It was strange when I became friends with them much later and they still remembered timid little me trying to slip into one of the front rows without being seen!” Chania reminisced. She remembers the expatriate compound life very fondly: “For a young kid, it was ideal. Our parents had no major safety concerns, so they let us play with and visit other kids in the compound throughout the holidays without worrying. As a teenager, it was awesome! About forty of our friends all lived within a fifteen-minute bike ride away from each other, and we had great fun playing in the parks and hanging out at each other's houses with much later curfews than parents gave in the UK. Plus we could all head off to the beach on the weekends and we spent a lot of time at the pools during the week days.” Nonetheless, Chania did not stay in Jeddah for all of her schooling: “It was extremely valuable to have seen how other societies live and to appreciate the different values and rights other countries emphasize, but when I was eight years old, my parents sent me to boarding school in Kenya and then the UK so that I could experience a different lifestyle,” she said. “I came back to Jeddah for most of my holidays. It was a great respite from school in UK and the exotic seaside lifestyle was the envy of all my English friends. From when I was very young, we regularly went on adventurous camping trips into the desert. Visiting the Old Town (Al-Balad) was always a highlight, with the fragrance of incense drifting through the alleys between the old buildings. I loved having a completely separate ‘holiday' group of friends and time seemed to stand still between each term until we came back and saw each other again. I also came back mid-way through University. By then, I had a TESOL Certificate, and I worked as a private English Language tutor. I haven't been back for five years now, mainly because all my friends have left.” By this time, Chania had also spent a year studying Arabic at University. I didn't learn any while I was in Saudi Arabia because most Saudis spoke good English, and also because Saudis and expats did not mix that much in that time so the need for Arabic was almost non-existent. At University, I excelled at the subject, and enjoyed it, but when I arrived back in Saudi ready to test out my new language skills, my first few Arabic phrases were met with peels of laughter from a shop assistant. He then yelled to all his friends to come and listen and laugh at me speak. Humiliated, I relayed the incident to a Syrian family friend who speaks both Arabic and English fluently, and she also laughed, telling me that the Arabic I had been learning was Classical Arabic. Apparently, this has to be taught initially because the language has evolved into countless dialects. So the classical Arabic phrases I had confidently used in the shop sounded like the Arabic equivalent of Shakespearian English and was something like: ‘Wherefore art thine ice cream?'” Before her father retires, Chania would love to return to Jeddah: “I hope to come back with my brother and his wife in 2012. We hope to share with her all our wonderful childhood memories: the scuba diving, the sunset drives along the Corniche, camping in the desert, buying spices down in Al-Balad, fabulous brunch at hotels, shawarmas bought from our local shop in Khalidiya, a tour around the monuments of Jeddah, and smoking shisha by the Red Sea at night,” she said. “I wish foreign tourists were allowed to visit Saudi Arabia – there are so many things to see in the country! And I hope that the Old Town will be preserved.” Chania now lives in Kenya and works as the Manager of Community Projects on the Maasai ‘Maji Moto' Group Ranch. The ranch is a large game reserve in south-western Kenya, named after the Maasai people (the traditional inhabitants of the area) and their description of the area when looked at from afar i.e. circles of trees, scrub, savannah and cloud shadows that mark the area.
