See, There IS an Omani Christmas

Some of our well-meaning but more neurotic friends get extra neurotic at this time of year because it is Christmas and, well, this is not considered by many as a Christmas kind of place. And, although we do have Christmas church services and masses that run through the season at the Church of Oman, it seemingly does not exactly meet the Christmas criteria laid out by Bing Crosby et al. many a moon ago. We are missing the snow, the mistletoe, folks wrapped up like Eskimos, blazing fireplaces, the pink cheeks, and the fresh pine trees that shed needles all over the living room.

However, take heart! What we do have is the other stuff that goes with Christmas.

We have the Christmas displays in the hyper malls which feature an international assortment of chocolates, advent calendars, made-in-China ornaments, plastic Christmas trees, and tinsel galore.

Okay, so the color scheme is a bit off--pink Christmas anyone?--and last I checked, Frosted Flakes were not really considered Christmas fare, but we must fill in the gaps with something, and why shouldn't that be a tooth-rotter?

What the stores do very well is start up with this Christmas thing well ahead of the event. Tony was outraged this year when the Christmas stuff came rolling out before the Thanksgiving turkeys even had finished flying out of the Al Fair deep freezers. “What is the world coming to?” he complained, “When Christmas starts before Thanksgiving is over?” 

Really? What is the world coming to when people thousands of miles from the US and not even of the US know that Thanksgiving is even happening?

I swear.

We have the pop-up Christmas bazaars that have been surfacing with increasing frequency in the expat enclaves of Muscat. This year, Tehva’s Girl Guides troop swore to honor and protect the Queen even at Christmas and then carted their loads of crafts to sell poolside in a bazaar at a gated community which houses primarily British military families. The Brownies walked away with nearly 160 Omani riyal (about $400 US), all grossed through the sale of clothes pin reindeer ornaments and flip notebooks.   

Durn.

The church cranked the A/C to the max this year, putting everyone in the Christmas spirit, and  threw their own bazaar complete with choral music, orchestral pieces, overpriced coffee and snacks, and a stunning raffle away from which we walked with...nothing. 

The church bazaar

Christmas concerting for the church bazaar. None of these belong to me. As a matter of fact I have no pictures of my children performing that day because this seems to be my lot in life. Missing the big stuff is the name of my game lately.

We also know it is Christmas because every organization and high-end hotel here on God’s brown earth hosts a Christmas dinner, Christmas party, Christmas concert, Christmas play, or Christmas event of some sort.

Check this out and keep in mind that the exchange rate is $2.50 = 1 OR. Don't let the sticker shock bowl you over.

Even our own three children have been swept away in the Christmas madness, participating in Christmas caroling, Jesus birthday parties, Advent-themed beach barbecues, Christmas movies, and gift swaps.

Because we are too poor to attend those Christmas dinners at the swank hotels (and because we spent all of our money on that church bazaar raffle), we instead threw our annual cookie exchange, which was much more fun than hanging at the Hyatt. Except at the Hyatt they have a chocolate fountain, which is pretty fun.

 Nancy, Katrina, Claude, Lasandika, and Heather, clearly swept away by Christmas!

And we also know it is Christmas because it is the season in which we trek out into the desert with 70 of our closest friends and attend the Hash House Harriers Christmas feast, which includes a table decorating contest, a festive Ho-Ho run, and meal complete with a Yule log, professionally catered by Oman Air.

No, this is not our table, although that might be our car in the background

This is not our table, either...we actually forgot to bring a table this year and so had a very Bedouin Christmas by sitting on a borrowed mat adorned with a half dozen also-borrowed votive candles

So see, we do have Christmas in the desert! Be not afraid.

       

Social Opps

I know, it seems as though our existence here has lately been peppered with hazards left and right--the police, the snakes, the scary Egyptian men on the beach. Things continued somewhat along that vein this week, although not enough to make a blog entry.

However, thanks to the fact that Muscat absolutely crawls with expats desperate for SOMETHING to do with their every waking moment, compounded by the fact that liquor is, in comparison to, say, EVERY OTHER COUNTRY I HAVE EVER LIVED IN, very difficult to come by, Greater Muscat seems to have more than its fair share of things to do for expats.

To preface this entry, I must admit that I find it very touching that so many friends and family firmly believe that we are suffering here. During our time in the States this summer, I even bore witness to one woman who was nearly moved to tears by her supposition that we are doing mission work in the Middle East and that I make great sacrifices in regards to my personal safety and appearence in order to carry on said work. This particular blog will reassure you that we are not suffering at all. Part of me is sorry to prove these assumptions false but my consceince will be lighter having unburdened my soul.

As the days of the week roll past here, one generally finds the social calendar filling until Wednesday hits and the tidal wave that is Muscat Expat Society comes crashing down. Things creep along for us as the week begins. Saturday is the Hash, which ordinarily spawns a second activity--perhaps a playdate or dinner. This week, the Hash turned into a dinner party as a couple of folks pulled grills, dogs, burgers, and fried onions from their cars at the end of the run. The desert was a solid mass of black, punctuated by two trays of glowing coals and dozens of hungry hashers guzzling beers and scarfing down processed meats.

Sunday is the Mountain Walk, which attracts such an eclectic mix that the social opportunities that grow from this can be as varied as a longer walk on the weekend, a boat trip, or a date to go to a show at Muscat's new opera house. This week the Walk ended with discussions of water management in arid climates, climate change in Oman, who would be attending the Friday opera house performance of Don Quixote, and strategies that work best when teaching English to Arabic-speaking boys aged 13-14. One of the regular walkers approached me about having the kids act as flower-givers at the end of November's classical music concert at the university. Add another to the social calendar.

Monday normally is the day that we pack ourselves off to the American School for a game of ultimate frisbee with the under-30s of Muscat. However, this week we elected to stay home and watch a movie, which we had acquired semi-legally. And we never divulge our sources so don't ask.

Tian has a piano lesson on Tuesdays from her Japanese piano teacher who lives down the street in a true marble mansion. Our Tuesday afternoons used to be fairly monochromatic but now we are afforded options. There is a running club in Muscat that meets on Tuesdays and runs distances that vary, spanning lengths which begin at sane-and-totally-manageable and end at whoa-that's-really-far. There is also a group that explores the wadis in and around Muscat, and a third group that explores the ridges of those wadis.

Tuesday's ridge walking group is not a chatty group and so social opps rarely arise on Tuesday walks. We merely walk up and then come down, huffing and puffing as we traverse the ridges. If I watch carefully as I walk, I can see where the people in front of me have left drips of sweat on the dusty beige rocks. The quiet, chatterless afternoon segues into evening and then sundown. Tuesday walks get my head set for the weekend.

Wednesdays we go to Irish dance in order to bounce around in synch with a dozen others, and then the weekend truly begins. This Wednesday evening we attended a potluck during which we met the new minister for Muscat's Protestant church and his wife. The hostess very graciously opened her home and wedged fifty people into a space designed to fit eight comfortably but in spite of that, introductions were jovial. "I am from Ghana...I have been here 22 years...my husband and I are here from Taiwan...I teach mathematics...I am from Germany...I am in Oman for two months...we are from the Philippines...my daughter is here from India; she is a software engineer..." Tehva decided the men from Ghana must be kings due to the beautiful embroidery on their shirts, and told them so. Tian and Silas floated around the room offering snacks to people while they made introductions.

Thursday began with a 7 a.m. biathlon during which blue and purple jellyfish tried to eat the participants. I survived, did NOT finish last, and was treated to an English breakfast of eggs, beans, sausage, and toast, enjoyed outdoors under a thatched roof restaurant on the beach. The biathlon spawned talk of competing in the triathlon next month. Yet another social opp to place on the calendar. The biathlon was followed by a playdate for the kids, a book club meeting (add another date to the calendar for next week's meeting), and a baby shower, plus poker with the boys for Tony in the evening.

As we discussed the weekend, Tony said, "You know, I have come to the point where I no longer hear people's accents--I only hear what they are saying." I thought about this in reference to the week behind us and the week ahead which is, admittedly, not promising to be anywhere near as busy as this one was, and had to agree. Initially I protested: "No, no, I ALWAYS hear the accents." But that is not true, and nationality is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the people with whom we share social opps here.

We spent our week, as we always do, in the company of people from Russia, Ghana, Egypt, England, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Armenia, America, Lebannon, Oman, Ireland, India, Pakistan, and the list goes on. Our lives here are full of social opps of the type that are difficult to explain to someone who is not living the expat lifestyle. Our interactions are those of ordinary everyday events, not generally colored by political tensions, but supported and developed in part by the commonality of living in a foreign country. These types of interactions have become so ordinary that it no longer seems notable to socialize with a Cambodian woman who grew up in absolute poverty or a man who spent his childhood memorizing the Quaran and now travels throughout the world as an engineering consultant.

We share much here with people from all over the world, including the commonality of being exhausted at the end of a week full of social opps.

Doing the Hash

On Friday morning, we all piled into the car to meet the Hash Daddy, Ahmad. As we tootled along behind a Toyota Hilax (what is it with this place and large livestock in the back of a teeny tiny truck?), watching the pair of cattle periodically drop paddies, I considered the momentous nature of this occasion, our First Hash Lay. Maybe the pair of crapping cattle was a sign of...what? Maybe we were taking on too much responsibility too early in our Hashing Career and we would fail miserably and crap out. Maybe we were bound to encounter all sorts of uncomfortableness during the Hash Lay.

Our Hash Daddy, Ahmad, found us waiting for him at the airport round about, listening to a podcast on parasitic infections. Tony hit the eject button on the CD player, in the middle of a sentence about hook worms and MS sufferers, as Ahmad bounced from his car, which was stamped brightly with the Oman Air logo. "Ah, I did not see you! I was on the other side of the round about! How are you? Children? How are you?" He jammed his meaty hand through the back window and shook hands with the closest kid he could grab. "All right," he announced, smoothing his black dress pants and giving a tug at his crisp white shirt. "We will head that way. Follow me!"

He led us down a dusty road, parked at the crest of a rocky hill, and then leapt from his car once again to help unload the 25 pound bag of flour in our trunk. "Yes, this is a great place for a Hash. Yes, perfect. And...no, no, no, let me carry a bucket of flour. My pants? No, no, they are old. I have to go to my mother's this afternoon for lunch. No, no, it will be fine. Please, let me take a bucket." And with that he shoved a ladel into the grey, flour filled bucket, and strode off toward a downward slope.

Okay, so I am sensing that some of you have no clue what this Hash stuff is all about seeing as you have assumed that this would be either about A.) some sort of illicit drug trade operation out of the Middle East, or B.) a meat and potato dish served with eggs. In fact this is about a running event that happens on a weekly basis all over the world. The tradition began in Malaysia many a year ago and was originally called a Paper Chase. One person would go out and lay a trail of crumpled papers on the ground; others would follow later in the day and try to find the Lay-er based on the trail formed by the little slips of paper.

These days, a Hash begins the day before the great event, when "hares" (that's us) go out and dump little piles of flour periodically to create a trail. Every now and then the hares create a false trail off of the true trail, or drop the trail entirely for a distance. The hares can also split the trail so that those who are running (keenies) can continue on a longer route and those who are walking the trail (weenies) can head back to the party at the end.

We followed Ahmad through the scrub and rock that form the Omani landscape around Muscat. Every ten feet or so the kids dumped a ladelful of flour on the ground. At the end of two hours we had finished marking a circuit in the desert, with a number of false trails leading people off toward empty corridors. As we walked and dumped, Ahmad had filled us in on the multiple countries he had lived in since his childhood in Muscat, his job working for Oman Air as an engineer, his children who were nearly all grown and living all over the world, and his love of Hashing.

When we arrived at the actual Hash the next day, Ahmad was already there, wearing his trademark skimpy shorts and Hash Shirt. He walked from group to group, kissing each person on each cheek once and then once on the lips. He joked and shook hands and promised "the Second Best Hash ever." ("Why the second best?" he posited. "Well, the best is not so possible...but the second best? You can always argue for the second best no matter what you do.") We six who had laid the trail the day before were "smocked" with red bibs sporting the word, "Hare" and were promised a post-run beer. Then suddenly someone called "On-On" and we were off, wrapped in an enormous group of individuals from all over the world who had come to run through the desert following our flour trail.

The bugler rallied everyone by bugling every 5 minutes and crying, "On on!" The runners yelped, "On on!" everytime a new flour pile was discovered. The front runners yelled, "Are you?" every time they lost the trail, and then slowed their gaits to a walk, searching for the next flour pile. They chirped, "On on!" once they found the trail again. A well-laid Hash will find the keenies and weenies finishing at the same time because, in theory, the keenies will lose the trail and spend all their time and energy finding it again while the weenies will catch up to them just in time to continue onward upon the recently discovered trail.

An hour after we had started the Hash, we all finished back at the car park, dripping sweat. In the west, the sun was setting, shrouding the mountains around Muscat in a red glow. The Gulf of Oman to the north looked as flat and calm as a swimming pool. The Hashers all gathered round us in the rapidly falling darkness and sang the Hash Song while we guzzled a beer and poured a bit on our heads to show the true Hash Spirit.

One of the regular Hashers was getting ready to leave Oman after more than ten years in the country so had hired a catering truck to drive out into the middle of the desert and set up a meal for all of us. After we had drunk our beers, we huddled around the bonfire clutching our catered suppers, enjoying shots of liquer and plastic glasses of wine. The Little Hashers ran around trying to slip ice down one anothers' backs. There was talk of development within Oman, goats and the challenges of laying a Hash without the goats eating the flour, Afghanistan and its human rights issues, accents as they differ across the UK, and how to best obtain a liquor license in Muscat.

The Hash is the one day a week when we swim in incongruities. We, both Omanis and non-Omanis, are in a Muslim country drinking in a public place. The women wear wraps to the Hash and then, in the impromptu car park, strip them off to reveal bare legs underneath. Beer and wine sit out in the open. And although we are less than a kilometer from main roads, no one bothers us, questions us, or even looks our way. We spend an evening sweating, teasing, drinking, and chatting.

That is the Hash.