Hiking With the ROP

"Hello. Are you busy today?" At 8:40 a.m. the phone had rung, which is bizarre since nearly everyone I know texts instead of calls. Calls are pricey but texts are practically free. In the name of looking like I am not a lazy bum I was trying my best to make it sound like I had been wide awake when the call came through.

"A little." Not really but the lazy bum thing once again...I have an image to maintain.

"All right, well the police are here and they want to go out and find that grenade. I cannot remember the way exactly to find it. So you need to come. I will see you in 20 minutes." **click**

I have such nice friends here, and when we go out walking together we tend to find things like shell fragments and hand grenades. The finding is not such a problem, but when my friend reports those explosives to the police and the police want to go out and recover the explosives early on the days that I am on school holidays, well, that sucks.

Joy was still around when this all went down and she is organized enough to dump the pictures from her camera's disc every night. Her camera with plentiful memory instantly qualified her as the trip photographer. Srey met the two of us at the university's administrative building and guided us into the perfumed depths of the vice-something-or-other's wing where we were greeted by three very wise-looking, portly Omani administrators dressed in immaculate white dishdashas, and two policemen wearing tan jumpsuits, black woolen berets, and shoes with absolutely no tread on them.

Greetings were exchanged all around, hands were tentatively offered (Joy, Srey, and I ARE women after all--*danger*danger*) for limp-wristed shaking, and the police indicated that they were ready to go after that grenade. I couldn't help it...I had to do it...Honestly, how many times in your life can you look at a man and say, "Those are some beautiful shoes. But can you walk in them well enough?" The police were dismissive, as if they wandered into mountains everyday in suede camel boots with no tread.

We arrived at the trailhead, marked by a monolith, a washed-out dirt road, and a fossilized oyster bed. The police hopped from their tan Land Rover. "Okay, where is the grenade?" they asked, and looked a bit disappointed when we three women responded with, "That way. Up." Immediately one of the coppers volunteered to stay with the car lest a group of marauding camels come through and try to eat the mirrors, while the other cop started up the trail behind us.

He huffed and puffed, chugged and snorted up the first rise, smiled when we reached the top and asked, "Where is the grenade?" He asked twice more as we walked and then resigned himself to a long hike through the hills of greater Muscat. He chatted about his family, his bomb squad trainings abroad, his travels overseas, and the universality of the middle finger. He sweated through his tan jumper and declared that this was a very fast walk.

After 30 minutes we came to the valley of the grenade at which point he phoned his partner and explained that he was taking so long because this bomb was a LOOOOOONG way from the cars, like 5 or 6 kilometers! (As if) And then the moment we had been awaiting all morning--we spotted the grenade. It was lime green and laying on its side surrounded by dirt and stones; on its side "Grenade" and "CCC" had been clearly stenciled.

Being the local bomb expert he strode right over to the thing, nudged it with his toe, and picked it up. Then he started shaking it. Srey threw her arms up and we three women backed away (actually I think Joy snapped photos while Srey and I backed away). When a former Cambodian refugee throws her arms up and backs away from an explosive, one tends to follow suit.

Instead of exploding and throwing bits everywhere, the bottom of the canister dropped its plug of stone and dust poured out its bottom end. "Yes! It's dead this one! Yes. It is just an old grenade. See?" As Joy busily snapped photos, he explained the mechanism of the pin you pull and how you arch your arm to throw it. He showed where the smoke pours out and how the smoke's color is different according to the canister's color, and...

"Hold the phone. This is not an exploding grenade?"

Our expert laughed. "No, no, this is a signaling grenade, like for the army if they want their friends to come find them after an exercise and pick them up."

And with that our expert started out of the valley with the grenade in hand, tan jumpsuit sticking to his back, smooth suede shoes carrying him smoothly down the goat trails and up and over the rocky cliffs back to his car. So it wasn't an exploding grenade, but it was worth getting up for--how often do you get to hike with a bomb-laden Omani man in smooth-bottomed camel suede shoes?

Danger! Danger!

The new in thing here in the Muscat Mansion is the Thursday morning swim. All the cool kids in Muscat, apparently, are going in on the biathlon/triathlon scene and, well, I just hate to get left behind, so I have signed up for a biathlon. However, before one can actually attempt such a rigorous event, one must train, so train I will.

In actuality, training began last month with a 2 kilometer sea swim outside a much-too-Western compoundy area called "The Wave". You drive into The Wave and enter a state of cultural confusion, beginning with the enormous billboard of Greg Norman, which greets you at the front gates, and not ending until one has completed a circuit of the cobble stoned streets lined with grass, trees, immaculate homes, and Western shops.

Fortunately I am not required to drive through The Wave to get to the training venue. Instead, we meet at a car park just next to The Wave, where a clutch of Indians play cricket every Thursday next to an enormous family of Omanis who visit the beach without fail at the start of each weekend. Although our group of "trainees" meet, zombie-like, at 7 a.m., this family looks perky and bushy-tailed at 7, as if they have been frolicking on the beach since 5:30 a.m. and are ready to get on with lunch by the time we show up.

The water at the beach is clear, and calm enough to observe our toes as we wade in to our waists; the salinity of the Arabian Sea wants to pick me up and float me. The visibility is convenient for doing a critter check. The first time we did this swim, a black and yellow sea snake slithered past along the sandy bottom (DANGER--but only if they bite, which it didn't). Another time a ray glided past (DANGER--but only if you step on them, which I didn't do). Last week a school of fish flew out of the water (DANGER possibly, but only if you hear music). Today I see a starfish. Hardly the dangerous creature to which I have grown accustomed.

We swim a kilometer down the beach and then turn around to come back to our starting point and I find (DANGER) that my swimming partner, Greta, has disappeared. Finally I spy her sitting way down the beach, near Tian, who has been babysitting Greta's two year old. Bizarre. Greta is hard core when it comes to swimming. As a matter of fact, after her stroke revelation last week she has become a torpedo in the water, burying the rest of us inferiors with wake that issues behind her like a speed boat. However, she is not bionic and there is no way she could have already finished the swim.

"Sorry," she says matter of factly when I reach her. "The police came and got me out of the water."

Apparently two Egyptian beach goers had had a bit of a fright when they saw Tian and Hux playing on the beach. They had misinterpreted Tian as an abandoned four year old who had been left in charge of her younger sibling. (DANGER) They then made a further jump and presumed that Greta and I had either A.) drowned or B.) gone on a luxury cruise, leaving the two alone for good. Then they called the Royal Omani Police, reported that these two ruffians, aged 4 and 2, had been playing on the beach, alone, for several hours, and needed to be taken somewhere in the company of responsible adults, possibly to an orphanage.

When the police came, they were very apologetic at dragging Greta out of the water and left just after the Egyptians, who, realizing their error, exited the beach scene rather quickly.

So now you see why it has been nearly six weeks since I have last blogged. I have been so busy training for the biathlon (no, really, I have...kind of...okay, not really too much but sometimes!), endangering my four-year-old child (okay, really she is ten, nearly eleven, but four year old sounds more dramatic), and recreating myself as an irresponsible beach bum that I have not had time for blogs!

But I promise to try harder from now on, rather than living on the dangerous side of life, to toe the line and get some serious writing done. Seriously.