When the going gets tough…
It was yet another annoying relative, asking me for the umpteenth time what I wanted to do with my life. I hadn’t got the memo that by the time I was 10 yrs old, I was supposed to have it all figured out. I remember thinking to myself, “I am going to have a career”. I had no idea what that word actually meant. We had no internet, social media or cable network at that time and I came from an avg middle class family in India. My parents had very humble beginnings, with literally nothing to their name — even the pots and pans they started their married life with were donated by a couple of close friends. They both worked full time in govt jobs in hopes for a brighter future which mainly translated to whatever is best for their kids who were not that bad at school. So where I got these crazy ideas, your guess is as good as mine
Fast forward 12 yrs, I got the coveted call from SLB’s recruiting team and after 3 days of gruelling interviews — I had the job. I was absolutely thrilled !!! I called my parents and before the call was over, I had already made mental plans for that MBA outside India 2yrs down the road.
The induction was in Kuala Lumpur. I joined a group of enthusiastic 20 somethings from all over the globe, fresh out of university, enjoying corporate hospitality at a luxurious 5 star hotel. The hotel was known for its football field sized breakfast buffet. It was my first time in KL. I had a room on forty something floor overlooking the city skyline. If there was a right way to start anything great and exciting, this was surely it.
Towards the end of the 2 week program, we were all eager to know the locations we were going to start our professional lives in. There was palpable excitement in the conference room. Abu Dhabi…Texas…Indonesia…Canada…. Australia…excitement turned to cheers. And then came Camp 101, followed by a stunned silence. Camp 101 was a desert camp in the middle of nowhere in Libya. I looked around the room and then at the HR instructor. She gave me the side head nod, and said “oh honey, it can’t be that bad”.
After the program concluded, I bid adieu to the corporate honeymoon and flew from Tripoli to the camp. I was anxious but excited to start my new job — this was the first step on the ladder to that career I had always dreamt about. As I looked down from my plane window, I was terrified. I couldn’t see any landing structures you would typically expect from an airport. There was just a vast expanse of sand, as far as eyes could see. You could barely notice the sandy hued landing strip. We were 1000 miles from Tripoli, inside the desert.
As I drove away from the airport (read — a sandy coloured strip buried in between, you know, all the sand), I could see a camp materialise in the distance. Rows of tin containers of different sizes stacked against each other, with a large bright blue board standing in stark contrast against the backdrop of endless gigantic sand dunes.
From a 5 star hotel in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world to a tin camp in the middle of desert in Libya — talk about fattening the goose !!!
I had always wanted to travel but never in my wildest dreams had I expected my first significant trip to be to Camp 101 in Libya. I don’t think it appears on many people’s travel bucket list.
At the camp — I was assigned a residential container of another girl who was away — modest lodgings consisting of a single bed, a small desk, a chair and a small washroom area. I didn’t think it got any worse than the accommodations of an engineering school dorm in India, this should teach me to always count my blessings. There were 3 female engineers assigned to the camp of about 100+. At that time, I was the only one physically present. I had just wrapped up 5 yrs at an engineering school where diversity meant 27 girls in a class of 500+. Didn’t realise it wouldn’t quite end there.
The next few days were a blur. I didn’t understand a single word for the first couple of weeks i think. My colleagues basically spoke in 3 letter acronyms. Oil industry has a language of its own. Even within that SLB decided to have a proprietary one, just in case industry lingo was too easy. One of the senior engineers, was told to be my coach to help me get ready for the training school — he practically looked offended. He spent the next few days ignoring me, probably in the hope I would come to my senses and quit. When it wasn’t the 3 letter acronym laden English, it was Arabic — basically I couldn’t catch a break.
Food was another big challenge. I had been a vegetarian for last 15yrs which limited my options to potatoes and different varieties of leaves while I found my way around Libyan cuisine where sometimes fish and other weird items made their way into vegetarian category.
Keeping in touch with civilisation was no mean task either. There was a satellite phone we could use to reach the outside world and we were told it was expensive and only meant to reach the crews out in the field. But it was my only way to stay connected with my family. There was no queue and maximum privacy at 5:30am, the phone operator must have loved me.
There were no weekends, there are no weekends in the oil industry PERIOD.
So here I was…in the middle of nowhere, isolated from the civilization, with no access to usual support structures of family and friends, living in a tin camp, clueless, lonely and starved.
My mother told me to quit and come back home. She is a strong woman, as strong as they can get. I was expecting some pearls of wisdom telling me to hang in there, take it one day at time — but that’s not what I got. I was utterly offended.
“How could she tell me to quit?”
“What does she think, am I not cut out for this?”
I had never quit anything in my life. When I struggled with stage fright during my first public speaking experience in middle school, I took up debating. When I didn’t make it to my dream engineering school in my first attempt, I worked twice as hard to try again next year. When I finally made it, but bombed my first year — I rolled up my sleeves again, and worked day and night for the next 3yrs to dig myself out of the bottom pile of grade point average. And I didn’t want to start now, even if it was just to prove my mother wrong (parents can be very motivating that ways).
And the good thing about starting in the dumps is, the only way is up.
Over the next few weeks, the days at the camp started to blend into one another with a familiar pattern.
Given the lack of any kind of life or friends — I started my days at 5:30am. I completed 6–8 wks of theoretical training material in 2 wks. My coach was visibly surprised, as if he realised I might actually have some brains after all. One of the other engineers in the camp was kind enough to allow me to accompany him to his tool tests and preparations. I shadowed him from 8am to ‘whenever he will finish’ pm every day. If he was out in the field, I was there. He worked through the lunch break, I ran back and forth under the blazing Libyan sun with him. He gave me all sorts of equipment to clean, oil, fill with silicone (most disgusting thing I have ever come across in my 4 yrs in the field…not only is it slimy and yuck, guess what — it doesn’t come off easily), take apart and put back and put them back I did. I needed to witness 3 live jobs to qualify for the training school, he let me accompany him on 5.
The training material helped me understand the fundamentals of the job, which meant I wasn’t as clueless during the meetings and conversations. The lab technicians and crew chiefs got used to annoying but inquisitive new engineer and didn’t mind letting me hang around. I still didn’t understand most of the conversations — but it all just became white noise. I had always been inquisitive by nature, and there was no dearth of tools and techniques to read up on to kill time. The chef was kind enough to add some non-potato options to the spread. And I started to find my way around foul madammas, falafel, and shakshouka without backing up the cafeteria line.
The camp was still the same, but I got comfortable with being uncomfortable.
The desert, with its majestic vast expanse of nothingness sometimes felt never ending. It was strikingly beautiful and viciously brutal at the same time. The silence, especially at night was deafening — I could scream my heart out but it would have just been swallowed into oblivion.
That emptiness stripped away all the worldly distractions and destroyed the notion of ‘normal’ as I knew it. There was no family, friends, hobbies, social media, alcohol or <insert your distraction of choice> to drown myself with. There was no one else, but me, myself and I who had to find a way to deal with it.
Yes it wasn’t quite the career and corporate life I had imagined. But it forced me to dig deep. It helped me discover what was truly important to me, what made me get me out of bed in the morning and take crazy decisions like taking a job that lands me in the middle of a desert in Africa. It forced me to find my controllables, and learn how to make peace with the rest.
It wouldn’t have made a difference to SLB, Camp 101 or the team to lose a junior engr. I would have just proven some stereotypes of how girls don’t belong in the field. But it would have mattered to me, I would have always wondered ‘what if’. What if, I gave it a chance…gave it all I had for a few weeks despite all the challenges? And I couldn’t prove my mother right, could I.
And I am glad that I did.
Whatever situations I found myself in over the next few years — working around the clock on rigs in remote villages, 2 day trips turning into 2 weeks, stuck in the desert during a sandstorm, losing both my main and backup tools at 2am after having worked straight for 48hrs, dealing with annoying witnesses and company men who didn’t want a female engr on the rig…I was always grounded in the knowledge and confidence that I was capable, capable of more than sometimes I gave myself credit for. I was capable because I have done this/even worse before — I just need to find my controllables.
When I finally decided to return to civilisation permanently and set my eyes on business school 2yrs later — this experience helped set my application apart from the usual incoming class and was fundamental in my success in the process.
So today, whatever is your version of Camp 101 and leaving the situation isn’t an option — remember, your dreams are on the other side of your grit. One step at a time, start with your controllables !!!
