Omanization

This country is going through the sometimes painful process of Omanization, and I have realized this because our toilets stink.

Now that the temperature of our tap water hovers at a steady 120 degrees F, the bacteria have taken over and the stink seems here to stay. On top of that, one of the pipes that connects the toilet to the wall (and ostensibly the plumbing system behind the wall) has begun leaking, leaving a sludgy puddle on the floor, and the shower plunger no longer works on the garden tub in the master suite.

As we are merely squatters here, we do not have to deal with these problems directly. Instead we can call the landlord, who is actually a very attentive guy, but who is not so talented with plumbing.

The landlord's solution to the toilet leak and chronic puddling was to come up, pinch the pipe a few times, and advise that we begin to turn off the water supply to the toilet tank when it is not needed, which means that the toilet doesn't get flushed as regularly as it used to, and that leads to more stink.

More stink led us to our friendly neighborhood Carrefour for more toilet cleaner, which we go through at a frightening pace. In the States in our little three bedroom rancher with one bathroom, we went through one bottle a year. Here we have gone through approximately 143 bottles since our arrival in Oman nearly two years ago.

So we were prowling through the aisles of Carrefour, sniffing the different toilet cleaner flavors when we drifted around the corner to the sugar aisle and found ourselves face-to-face with what looked a heck of a lot like a fellow American. "Are you British?" she asked in a lovely Mid-Western accent. "Because I just heard you say the word 'sugar' and you sound like you are British (can you really tell that from just the word 'sugar'?--apparently not) and I really need someone to tell me about all these different British sugars..."

We then stood for ten minutes, as one will, chatting about sugar crystals; however, eventually the conversation ambled, as it will in countries where a certain percentage of the population makes way too much money, to hiring a reliable driver here. She recounted her trials with her current-but-soon-to-be-fired Omani driver who spent the majority of his time fiddling with the automatic locks in the car, and his absolute inability to open the door for her or to accept the wages she offers. She finally threw her hands up and swore that she would next hire an Indian. They, after all, will open the door for an employer and happily accept those wages. And I guess they can keep their fingers off of the auto-lock button.

This begs the question, how much should one pay a driver who is on duty just until 2 p.m. and is only accountable for driving one expat oil worker's wife to the gym, social engagements, and the mall each day? Apparently not as much as the Omanis are asking.

Back to the house and fast forward four weeks, which brings us to today. A person who knows about plumbing is in the bathroom fiddling with the pipes and apparently having some success. He is not Omani, naturally. I have just returned from another ordeal at the grocery store, where the executives in charge of decision-making cannot decide whether they want to employ Omanis who are generally nightmarish at the registers but are, in the end, Omani, or they want to employ Filipinos, who are lovely and efficient at the registers but are decidedly NOT Omani.

Last week my checkout girl was Filipino. She did all the things we Americans like: she smiled and greeted me before she started scanning everything. She didn't stop to examine her nails half way through the job. She   didn't stop at any point to chat amicably with her BFF who just happened to wander up. She very ably scanned everything on the belt and did not bark at me to slide my own bag of flour/6-pack of sodas/insert- any-item-weighing-over-2-pounds here.

Today my checkout girl was Omani. It pained me to watch her scan my order, mostly because, before she scanned anything, she first asked me in Arabic, "Is this yours?" Then, in spite of my answer to the affirmative regarding the case of water, she refused to scan it as it was too big and heavy for her to move along the belt. Instead she told the man standing behind me to pick it up and hand it to me. I frankly am not sure if it ever got scanned. Such is the price of Omanization.

This is such a trigger topic and everyone here has an opinion. Of course it is necessary to have a population that is trained to take care of itself, even in the most rudimentary ways. The gas money will not last forever and, when it is gone, it will be up to the Omanis to fix their own toilets, scan their own groceries, sweep their own streets, flip their own burgers, repair their own cars, do their own ironing, clean their own houses, and raise their own children.

And yet, as we are witnessing here, these jobs make for dirty dishdashas and broken fingernails and as of right now no one in a white dishdasha or with a nice manicure seems to want to do them, which makes for lots of jobs for the rest of us. But only until the petroleum money is gone or until there is another political swing and it is decided once again to strictly enforce the employment of Omanis in jobs which they clearly don't want to do.

Long live Omanization. It makes for good entertainment at the very least.