Covering in Saudi Arabia

We only have 3 more weeks of teaching, then training until July 7^th, and then we are heading back to Cali!! We are getting excited to come home and see everyone, but we know we will miss our new friends from Saudi. We love our students and really enjoy being with them. We have learned so much about the Saudi culture by teaching our students. One thing that I have learned while teaching the girls is that they are so careful not to have their face exposed. When you walk into the University you have to have your hair covered and the Saudi girls always, always have their face covered too. Right when you walk past the walls and enter the University everyone has to uncover though. So the whole day at work the students and the teachers just wear regular clothes for the most part. All the teachers have to wear skirts down to their ankle and shirts that go to their elbow. Anyways, the students love to take pictures of anything and everything. While they love doing this, it is carefully done so that their face and hair are never in the picture. The most common thing to do is to give the peace sign and just have your hand in the picture. For example, my students and I randomly planted a tree one day and they all wanted to take a picture by it. So they all stuck their hand by the tree and they took the picture! So funny! This is one example but I usually see this every day at work. I’ve also seen umbrellas and books blocking my girl’s faces in pictures too.

Last week one of my students came in and asked me to step outside the class for a second. I stepped outside my door and she began to cry and tell me that she had lost her phone. I thought for a second “this is why you are not in my class right now?!” But then she began to tell me that her phone had a picture of her on it. She said, “Teacher, pictures of my face our on my phone.” She was so upset and then I began to realize how serious this was for her. Saudi woman have never shown their face to anyone but their family and other females. So the fact that she had a picture of her exposed face on her phone was pretty risky; now that the phone was in the hands of another person made her terrified. The good news is that by the end of the day she had found her phone and she made sure I knew. She ran towards me and starting screaming in excitement for like 2 minutes straight haha. In the end it was a funny story but this is just one example of how important it is for women to cover here.

I have asked my students multiple times if they like wearing the full burka and they always say yes. They told me that they feel safe and protected by wearing this. This is all they have ever known so it is completely normal to them. I’m sure there our women here who might not want to wear the abaya, headscarf, and face covering but I have not met them. My students love their culture and they don’t look at the burka as a negative thing at all. Everything is so different than what you would think, but being here you see how fascinating this culture is. Hopefully we can share more with all of you when we come home in a month or so! Love you all!