Middle Eastern Construction

So now that it is winter break and we have the ability to sleep in, these assholes next door take that ability and smash it to pieces with their makeshift sledgehammers. Every morning around 6:30 AM Josh and I are rudely awaken with the blaring sound of sledgehammers smashing concrete. They are building a new apartment building directly behind our building, and it just so happens to be on the other side of our bedroom walls. The buildings are attached, so every swing of that sledge is heard loud and clear in our rooms. Talk about fucking annoying. Well, the other day Josh and I decided that since we can't sleep because of them working we might as well go WATCH them work. So we climbed up to the roof of our building and had a look-see. Josh, as you can tell in the picture, got adventurous and climbed over to the new build next door. The second picture is of one of the workers here. 99.9% of all construction workers here are either Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi, although the vast majority are Indian, like this guy. They work for under 100 dinars a month (yep--that's less than $265 dollars), so these construction companies fly them over here and essentially make them their slaves. The company will hold their passports and force them to live in deplorable labor camps that are usually nothing more than sheet metal walls and roofs held together with some rope. Sooner or later I'll get some pictures of a labor camp here so you can see what I mean. If the worker wants to quit before the contract is fulfilled, they generally have to buy back their passport AND purchase a ticket home, which can reach in the hundreds of dinars. So these guys are in a no-win situation. If they quit, they are basically fugitives working odd jobs with no papers (like Shamsu) until the Bahraini government finds out and deports them. Why then would these guys EVER want to come here? To send money back home. To them, 90 dinars a month is WAY more then they would make in India, and so they end up sending back half of their paycheck to their families. I saw a writeup in the Gulf Daily News about one Indian camp where they live off of 35 dinars (92.75 dollars) a month. Their salary is 90 dinars but they send all but 35 back home. Truly amazing, really.

The second picture shows the gap between our building and the new one. When it rained last week that gap filled with water and started seeping through Josh's wall in our flat. Obviously concrete is a porous material, and when you leave it exposed like this water seepage is inevitable. It's also why I've seen reports in the newspapers the last few weeks about houses collapsing. A wood structure is a rarity here, and some of these concrete buildings are in baaaad shape. Add a little water, and what do you get? A collapsed building. AND get this. I read that building companies only are accountable for a span of one year on a new build. Yes, that's right. You too can build your very own apartment building in this country and give it a warranty for a whopping ONE year!

Accountability is something this country has never heard of. I'm convinced of it.