The seasons have changed. Our once benign, even pleasant, climate has turned convection oven on us and life without aircon has become unthinkable. Until suddenly, last week, it did become a reality. Really, though, there was no drama in the situation. The aircon in the girls' room went from their best friend to their worst enemy as it began to blow hot air instead of cold. We placed a work order with the housing department at the university and voila, a work crew came and replaced the coolant. Fixed.
The drama came in the work crew--all three of them were Omani. I will type that again for those of you who missed it--the entire work crew was Omani. For those who are not appreciating the shock value of this situation, I will place it into perspective. Imagine having your heat pump go out in the States and calling Blahblah Cooling and Heating Services. They agree to send some guys to fix it and said guys show up stark naked. Well of course you would have to look again and again to make sure that those workers were really naked. You would smile, you would giggle, you would call your friends and tell them that the guys who fixed the heat pump were naked. It would be unbelievable.
That is what it is like to have an all-Omani work crew fix your air conditioning unit. We stared and giggled and called friends to let them know that we had had a whole group of three Omanis fix our air conditioner. We acted like such absolute imbeciles because, until two months ago, there was no such thing as an all-Omani work crew; as a matter of fact, the words Omani and work very rarely went together because Indians did all the work here. That little incident you may have heard about in Sohar changed all that: we have effectively learned that burning a Lulu will get you a job. Those 9% of Americans who are now unemployed may want to consider torching a Wal-Mart to see where that gets them.
So after the Omani work crew restored the girls' air conditioning, the children and I began to speculate on the likelihood of having an all-Omani pest control unit come to our house to do something about the insects that are currently in season here. We survived fly season, mosquito season, and ant season, and now it is roach season.
Our roaches come in two flavors--large and lovely caramel, and dark but tiny chocolate--and have staged a coup and overtaken a corner of the kitchen. The dark tiny chocolate variety blends in smartly with the dappling on the granite counter top and know that if they do not move we will not see them. They are clever and still and only make a break for the trash bin when they know we are not looking.
The large and lovely caramel have a higher mortality rate as they stick out like sore thumbs and are, frankly, not very smart. They do dumb things like drop out of cupboards into our food, and crawl across cutting boards while we are cooking, making them easy targets. Additionally, the caramel roaches have recently endeavored to expand their territory by sending out tiny parties on reconnaissance missions to other areas of the house.
Last night Silas and Tehva stood still as statues staring at the tiling near the sofa. "Mom," whispered Silas. "There is a huge roach over here." When I demanded he kill it, he paused. "No, I'm watching it." I smashed it with my house slipper. Silas looked like I had crushed his science experiment.
The night before that Tian found a caramel roach crawling up the wall outside her bedroom. She was not so reverent as she screamed and jumped up and down, swatting at it with a fuzzy pink slipper and shrieking, "A roach! A roach! Ewww! Ewww!" The roach just sat there on the wall and waited for Tony to come kill it.
The count down has begun and in a mere 25 days the kids and I will head back to the US for the summer, leaving Tony to wage a solitary, six-week war with the roaches until he, too, leaves for a vacation in North America. And where does that leave the roaches? In control of the entire house for a whole month and a half. Time to start checking around for an all-Omani pesticide control unit.
Your contact was an unexpected pleasure. Hi. Nice writing as always. As you know it's antiseptic over here. We live out in the country next to apple orchards and ginseng farms but the insects seem virtually non-existent. That will change soon as Noey will go back to Aus a month before us, then I'll go back with the kids in July for 7 week desert camping trip. We just picked up a 4wd camper (called a land cruiser troopcarrier hitop) with a double bed in the top . Australia is one of the insect capitals of the world. Between flies(in droves), ants, mosquitos and sand flies Australia has a winning ticket. Your cockroaches sound like a challenge. Memories of Buyoung? Your family looks lovely. My old mate Daniel lives in Oman. Did you meet him in Yangsan, by chance? A fraction eccentric(that coming from me!!) but multilingual (fluent Spanish and Arabic, some Korean)and academic (read socially challenged). Interesting guy- confirmed bacheor. I can effect an intro if you wish. He's an old buddy and used to visit both Noey and I over a 10 year period, I'd say. He's harmless but different.... He was in Korea over 10 years. Nice to hear Omani's have 'work' in their vocabulary:-)
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