Anything you want you can find in Muscat, except for fresh cranberries on the eve of Thanksgiving. Generally, though, if you have the riyals to pay for it, you can buy it. I have even run across canned corned beef hash several times, which should jar you into the realization that my previous statement is absolutely true, for the law of item acquisition overseas is, "If one can readily find corned beef hash in stores rather than on the black market, then one is in a place where ANYTHING can be had."
A second guideline of living overseas is "Find the box". That is, when you meet another expat you immediately converse upon a finite number of topics in order to discover which box that person fits into. Nationality is the most obvious first box one seeks out, followed quickly by how long one has been here, and previous overseas experience (always seek out common passport stamps). If the personality checks out thus far, the next box to explore is occupation.
Muscat houses an astonishing variety of jobs filled by an astounding array of personalities from countries all over the world. I have met communications people, international school teachers, botanists, biologists, tour guides, and engineers. Hand any of these individuals the homeschool bomb, though, and they balk. "Ooooh, homeschooling are you? (no, this was not Yoda that I met recently, although being British set him not too far from the mark--and he has big ears, this Brit) That must be amazingly difficult!"
From an older, childless British woman: "Ah yes, homeschooling. I didn't realize that anyone here was doing that. And what are you doing for your children's socialization?"
From an Indian mother of five whose youngest is 7 and oldest is 32(!) "Yes, I have heard that homeschooling causes immense stress for the person who is acting as the instructor. Is that so? Do you find this to be the case?"
And the best one was from an American man: "Well I have heard that your children are really doing well with the homeschooling and are literate, but that your son is a little bit lazy. It sounds like you are doing a great job! He will probably grow up to be a politician!"
Once we have run through the boxing exercise, I usually find that the conversation ends after I have revealed that I am homeschooling, and subsequent conversations revolve around that topic in a polite, removed sort of way. The homeschool box is a tough one to be in as everyone believes they know what it looks like on the inside yet no one has actually explored it. Nor do they much care to.
Lately, the box looks...well, you be the judge. Having recently taken on a colleague's child, who is also a No Child Left Behind refugee, our little school has grown to four instead of the three that I had started with.
The biggest change is that Silas no longer spends his mornings under the table. Eleven weeks into the school year, the genius finally comprehended that, once he has finished his material for the day, he is done whether it takes him an hour or ten hours. Now he views the underside of the table as a waste of his time and chooses instead to study. When he does go into hiding, it is in places that are far more sophisticated than a table. The roof offers corners and compressors to hide behind, there are five bathrooms to choose from, our furniture sits at odd angles to deaden the echos (and consequently offer rich hiding opportunities), and his bedroom has its own nooks and crannies.
Tian has become an academic workhorse. She most recently penned a five paragraph essay on the plausibility of Marco Polo's writings in his book, A Description of the World. Today she and Silas were spontaneously evolving lines to poems about dragon eggs, and correcting one another as they recited snatches of a speech by Abraham Lincoln. She has mastered long division, read extensively on the center of the earth, and is constructing a clay map of Eurasia. She is the homeschooled child I always want to make fun of. While she and Silas follow the same curriculum, Tian follows it with so much more finesse and abandon. She is something of a dweeb.
As for Tehva, we have shipped her off to a morning preschool program at the university. She was simply becoming too much of a distraction with her non-stop frittering and random abuse of her brother and sister. Once we took on the fourth child for daily schooling, Tehva's screeching rants drove poor Catherine to distraction and set her rocking, fingers jammed in her ears, in order to calm herself. An eight by twelve room is not big enough to hold Tehva and a special needs child and a boy who cannot figure out the concept of a to-do list and a hopeless over achiever and the homeschool mother whom everyone assumes is one beer short of a six pack for even considering schooling her own children in the first place.
A reread tells me why no one asks about much beyond the fact that I homeschool. TMI.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Nots of Eid
So we just finished our first Eid holiday. I was perhaps expecting a little ornament, made in China and stamped with, "Foreigner's First Eid," you know, to put on our Eid palm. However, that is not what one does at Eid. To be truthful, we are still not quite straight on this particular Eid. However, we do know what there is NOT during Eid.
1.) No Traffic
On the morning of Day One we awoke to find our neighborhood looking fairly apocalyptic. No drivers out "washing cars" with dry rags, no maids out sweeping, no school buses shooting by blaring their horns, and, most shocking of all, NO GOAT HERD POOPING IN MY DRIVEWAY!
We packed our car and drove straight through Muscat without a single slowdown , passing through the golden horse gates at the south end of town, singing to the club music of 95.9 FM, and suspiciously eyeing every turn for the traffic jam that must be hiding around the corner. We made it to Seifa Beach in record time, pitched our tent, and sat gasping in the white sand, not from exhaustion but from the feeling that we neatly escaped the gridlock that plagues Muscat nearly 24/7.
1.) No Traffic
On the morning of Day One we awoke to find our neighborhood looking fairly apocalyptic. No drivers out "washing cars" with dry rags, no maids out sweeping, no school buses shooting by blaring their horns, and, most shocking of all, NO GOAT HERD POOPING IN MY DRIVEWAY!
We packed our car and drove straight through Muscat without a single slowdown , passing through the golden horse gates at the south end of town, singing to the club music of 95.9 FM, and suspiciously eyeing every turn for the traffic jam that must be hiding around the corner. We made it to Seifa Beach in record time, pitched our tent, and sat gasping in the white sand, not from exhaustion but from the feeling that we neatly escaped the gridlock that plagues Muscat nearly 24/7.
Seifa Beach
2.) No Shortage of Good Help
We went camping with two other families and one maid. Really, who would even consider camping without at least one domestic along? As I crawled from the tent on Tuesday morning she cheerily chirped, "Cuppa tea, Mum?" Duh. Yes.
3.) No Goats
"Mom, the goats are gone," Tian stage whispered upon our return from our beach camping. The bleating that we had heard for days from over the neighbors' walls suddenly and inexplicably ended during Eid. Well, not so inexplicably. The neighbors brought us marinated, skewered, grilled goat meat on Thursday.
4.) No Clean Pavement
Benjamin and Laura called on Tuesday night and asking us to Misfat, an old town built into a canyon. We packed a picnic and drove two hours into the inland, to the Western Al Hajar mountains, unloaded our rowdy and generally unmanageable children, and began to hike into the canyon.
This is where the goats who survived Eid had been hiding, I suspect. We ran into them in shallow limestone caves, hanging out of neem trees while tearing leaves from the branches, and scrambling up and down piles of loose scree. Tehva, unimpressed by the goats, angled for bigger prey as a boy on a donkey slowly lumbered past, heading high into the hills. She bummed a ride for a ways until Tony made her disembark.
Back in the village we were impressed by the intricate canal system designed ages ago to allow equal irrigation access to all families. Every 10 meters or so there was a downspout dammed with a melon-sized rock and a pair of underwear to hold back the leaks. Star towers across the canyon mark where the stars have to "move to" in order for the next rock-underwear combo to be undammed and the current one plugged up again.
Also in the village we found evidence of what had become of the goats who had not been smart enough to take to the hills before Eid. Dark blood had soaked into the gravel and pavement througout Misfat and, as we walked past the remains of each puddle, shooing away the flies, Laura announced, "Ooooo, there's another Halal slaughter for Eid."
5.) No Rest for the Wicked
We ended the Eid hoilday with a Hindi Moviethon at Laura and Benjamin's place that lasted until 4 a.m. We brushed our teeth with our fingers and slept on their floor, only to have Tehva waken us all at 8 a.m. She bounced through their apartment as if she had slept 14 hours the previous night, forcing me to once again weigh up the relative merits of Ridalin.
We get to do another Eid after Ramadaan (next August), which is fortunate as we all are exhausted after this one. Pictures coming soon.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Kids' Games
In our first weeks in Oman I attended church regularly. It was a cross cultural experience, perhaps the cross-culturist experience I have ever had, and involved lots of people dressed in colorful clothing, speaking a Babel tower of languages. We had the Western women dressed in pumps and skirts, chatting in refined English, rubbing elbows with the women wrapped in saris, speaking a multitude of Indian languages and dialects. Next to them were the men wearing khakis and going on in German, jostling into the men wearing long African style shirts over loose, billowing pants, speaking French.
The first Friday church service I went to (Friday being our Sunday here) involved flags and dancing. The second was fairly straightforward. The third was a service of raised arms and hallelujias. All quite different from what I am used to without a doubt, but we went nonetheless (sans Tony after the flags, as he suspected that sacrifices might be on the agenda for the next week).
In the second week there was a call for volunteers to help run an event called Kids' Games. Billed as an event to help rid the world of heathens through sports and fun for kids, I jumped right on board. I wasn't so concerned about the heathen hoardes as I was about getting a day of socialization in for my poor homeschooled children. I was assigned a job as game facilitator, given a whistle, and asked to attend an organizational meeting the following Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening I rolled into the parking lot 15 minutes late as traffic toward Muscat had been especially heavy. No worries, though, as the meeting had not even begun yet. However, twenty others were sitting in neat rows in front of Aaron the Coordinator, who was calling off names of the volunteers who had not bothered to show to be organized at this meeting. As I walked in he checked my name off the list. "Now we will not have to call Rachel's name again." And then he giggled. The other twenty tittered.
This did not bode well.
After ten minutes more we moved into what I believed was to be the meat of the meeting--job assignments. I had arrived thinking that my whistle had made me a game facilitator automatically but not so--at this meeting women were turning in their whistles left and right in exchange for jobs either working registration or first aid. By the time I left an hour and a half later we had a room full of registrars and ad hoc nurses surrounding three game facilitators--me and two other suckers.
Oh no.
Aaron went on to reveal the things about which we should be most concerned as volunteers: that we would be working with over 200 kids, that we should pray especially hard for the 30 of them who were Muslims or Hindu, and that we had to let them all know that, if they lost a game, Jesus would still love them. My American brain really really wanted to hear about a schedule of events, arrangements for parking for the 200 parents who would be dropping off kids, how the three toilets in the church would accomodate the potty needs of so many, and how the kids would be organized.
Instead I got to play a practice round of the game I would be facilitating: Touch the Tail. In spite of the suggestive name, the game involved nothing more that forming two congo lines, tying a silk tail to the person in the back of the line, and then keeping the two lines intact long enough for one team to manage to touch the other team's tail without letting go of one another. My team lost in that practice round. I hoped Jesus was loving me.
Predictably enough, on the day of the event, organization was an issue. Lunch came late, no one knew where to go, kids wandred aimlessly between the game venues, and the martial arts exhibition was a disaster (who would have thought that a bunch of Christians would be so ticked about someone teaching them how to maim someone with a fountain pen?).
Silas contracted a rash from the iron-on decal on the event t-shirt, Tian complained that the kids on her team were rude and disrespectful, and the friend I had invited was roped into volunteering while her kids played the games. I fumed at the amount of standing around I was doing and swore I would never volunteer for this kind of poorly organized foolishness again.
But then the kids got to me. Most of the attendees were either Indian or Fillipino and began to call me "Auntie", as in, "Please, Auntie, will you help me get my hat adjusted?" or "Auntie, where should I go for my next game?" Silas cried and was comforted by a woman who said very gently, "Come, come, let Auntie help you. May I know your good name?" They walked off into the distance with Silas curled lovingly into her side. Tian, who was on the Ghana team, learned that, if pronounced with a British accent, "Ghana" rhymes with "banana", and spent the day cheering for her team, the "Ghana bananas".
And a good time was had by all. Especially the bananas.
The first Friday church service I went to (Friday being our Sunday here) involved flags and dancing. The second was fairly straightforward. The third was a service of raised arms and hallelujias. All quite different from what I am used to without a doubt, but we went nonetheless (sans Tony after the flags, as he suspected that sacrifices might be on the agenda for the next week).
In the second week there was a call for volunteers to help run an event called Kids' Games. Billed as an event to help rid the world of heathens through sports and fun for kids, I jumped right on board. I wasn't so concerned about the heathen hoardes as I was about getting a day of socialization in for my poor homeschooled children. I was assigned a job as game facilitator, given a whistle, and asked to attend an organizational meeting the following Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening I rolled into the parking lot 15 minutes late as traffic toward Muscat had been especially heavy. No worries, though, as the meeting had not even begun yet. However, twenty others were sitting in neat rows in front of Aaron the Coordinator, who was calling off names of the volunteers who had not bothered to show to be organized at this meeting. As I walked in he checked my name off the list. "Now we will not have to call Rachel's name again." And then he giggled. The other twenty tittered.
This did not bode well.
After ten minutes more we moved into what I believed was to be the meat of the meeting--job assignments. I had arrived thinking that my whistle had made me a game facilitator automatically but not so--at this meeting women were turning in their whistles left and right in exchange for jobs either working registration or first aid. By the time I left an hour and a half later we had a room full of registrars and ad hoc nurses surrounding three game facilitators--me and two other suckers.
Oh no.
Aaron went on to reveal the things about which we should be most concerned as volunteers: that we would be working with over 200 kids, that we should pray especially hard for the 30 of them who were Muslims or Hindu, and that we had to let them all know that, if they lost a game, Jesus would still love them. My American brain really really wanted to hear about a schedule of events, arrangements for parking for the 200 parents who would be dropping off kids, how the three toilets in the church would accomodate the potty needs of so many, and how the kids would be organized.
Instead I got to play a practice round of the game I would be facilitating: Touch the Tail. In spite of the suggestive name, the game involved nothing more that forming two congo lines, tying a silk tail to the person in the back of the line, and then keeping the two lines intact long enough for one team to manage to touch the other team's tail without letting go of one another. My team lost in that practice round. I hoped Jesus was loving me.
Predictably enough, on the day of the event, organization was an issue. Lunch came late, no one knew where to go, kids wandred aimlessly between the game venues, and the martial arts exhibition was a disaster (who would have thought that a bunch of Christians would be so ticked about someone teaching them how to maim someone with a fountain pen?).
Silas contracted a rash from the iron-on decal on the event t-shirt, Tian complained that the kids on her team were rude and disrespectful, and the friend I had invited was roped into volunteering while her kids played the games. I fumed at the amount of standing around I was doing and swore I would never volunteer for this kind of poorly organized foolishness again.
But then the kids got to me. Most of the attendees were either Indian or Fillipino and began to call me "Auntie", as in, "Please, Auntie, will you help me get my hat adjusted?" or "Auntie, where should I go for my next game?" Silas cried and was comforted by a woman who said very gently, "Come, come, let Auntie help you. May I know your good name?" They walked off into the distance with Silas curled lovingly into her side. Tian, who was on the Ghana team, learned that, if pronounced with a British accent, "Ghana" rhymes with "banana", and spent the day cheering for her team, the "Ghana bananas".
And a good time was had by all. Especially the bananas.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Being Hosted
We opened sheets of newspaper and lay them overlapping to cover Mr. Achir's carpet. He apologized profusely as we did so, not about eating at a table made of newspaper but about us having to endure his housekeeper's cooking for this impromptu meal. "My wife is not here to cook for the children tonight and the housekeeper's cooking? Well, I don't know."
I had watched the housekeeper earlier dig balls of dough from a steel bowl and roll chippatis, an Indian flatbread. She had looked competent enough to me, simultaneously drizzling ghee (clarified butter) around the dough as it bubbled and rose in the cast iron skillet, monitoring the pressure of the ghosh (mutton curry), and setting up a pot of rice.
Mr. Achir bustled back and forth from the kitchen with bottles of water and big bowls of fluffy white rice. Then he followed with a bowl of ghosh, thick with brown gravy, and a heaping bowl of sauteed and spiced and shredded cabbage. Finally he set a smaller bowl down on the newspapers and, full of pride, announced, "My wife made that one. Green chile curry. It is a little spicy so maybe it is not fit for the children. Come let's eat!" I could make out some small green chiles and peanuts swimming in a dangerous looking red sauce, topped with more of the melted ghee.
We filled the dishes for the children while Achir chastised us for being so stingy with the size of our servings. He piled buttery chippati after chippati on our plates. His own children began to eat, left hands tucked neatly in their laps, right hands fully engaged in the art of mixing rice with sauces and gravies.
Tian dantily ate from her spoon, but Tehva stopped short. "Chinja is eating with his hands." The only thing missing from her observation was an, "Oooooooo! He's in trouble!" but her tone definitely suggested that she was expecting a spanking to follow shortly for seven-year-old Chinja.
As Tehva watched Chinja's deft one-handed eating, she dropped her spoon. Truth be told, the dishes looked even more delicious as Chinja mixed and pinched, and then neatly shoveled his food into his mouth. "Can I do that, too?" And before I could even respond Tehva was mixing and shoveling, too.
Silas silently eyed Tehva, Chinja, and Chinja's sister, Ruksana, and then put aside his fork. "Mom, I'm going to use my hands," he stage whispered, as if preparing to dive off of a cliff or wrestle a crocodile. If it is possible for a seven-year-old boy to look awkward eating with his fingers, Silas fulfilled that possibility. He gradually doubled himself over, all the while shoveling rice into his mouth, until his chest rest solidly on his criss-crossed legs. Then he folded tighter, his face just a few inches off his plate. Finally he decided to lay on his stomach and close that precarious inch between his plate and his mouth. Bad manners? Probably.
We wiped up the last of the gravy with the chippatis only to have Achir throw more chippatis at us. "No, no," I protested. "You're making me fat!" As fast as I could eat those buttery flatbreads I was finding more food on my plate. Then I remembered. Stop eating--leave things uneaten. As painful as it was to American sensibilities, I took a bit of mutton and a bit of cabbage, played with it, and let it be. No more chippatis came flying in my direction.
As we walked out the door later in the evening, the kids were astonished. "Wow! That was the best day ever and we didn't even know them at the start!" It was true. All three kids had been there since early afternoon and had been entertained, fed, entertained, fed, entertained and fed again. "The only thing better than lunch was dinner! That was amazing! And we had such a good time! We did they do that for us? In the United States that would never happen!"
I tried to explain cultural differences to Tian and Silas. I tried to explain the concept of karma and how some believe that good deeds come back to revisit those who lay a path of kindness. I talked and talked but in the end they set their own conclusions.
They decided that Mr. Achir and his family are good people and no longer strangers to us. And boy can they lay out a mean dinner spread.
Human nature leads us to make generalizations--sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. and I let them generalize away on this one. This is what they now believe--people from India are so nice--that equals out to more than 1/5 of the world's population being full of kindness!
What a nice mindset to have achieved in the course of just two meals and an afternoon of play.
I had watched the housekeeper earlier dig balls of dough from a steel bowl and roll chippatis, an Indian flatbread. She had looked competent enough to me, simultaneously drizzling ghee (clarified butter) around the dough as it bubbled and rose in the cast iron skillet, monitoring the pressure of the ghosh (mutton curry), and setting up a pot of rice.
Mr. Achir bustled back and forth from the kitchen with bottles of water and big bowls of fluffy white rice. Then he followed with a bowl of ghosh, thick with brown gravy, and a heaping bowl of sauteed and spiced and shredded cabbage. Finally he set a smaller bowl down on the newspapers and, full of pride, announced, "My wife made that one. Green chile curry. It is a little spicy so maybe it is not fit for the children. Come let's eat!" I could make out some small green chiles and peanuts swimming in a dangerous looking red sauce, topped with more of the melted ghee.
We filled the dishes for the children while Achir chastised us for being so stingy with the size of our servings. He piled buttery chippati after chippati on our plates. His own children began to eat, left hands tucked neatly in their laps, right hands fully engaged in the art of mixing rice with sauces and gravies.
Tian dantily ate from her spoon, but Tehva stopped short. "Chinja is eating with his hands." The only thing missing from her observation was an, "Oooooooo! He's in trouble!" but her tone definitely suggested that she was expecting a spanking to follow shortly for seven-year-old Chinja.
As Tehva watched Chinja's deft one-handed eating, she dropped her spoon. Truth be told, the dishes looked even more delicious as Chinja mixed and pinched, and then neatly shoveled his food into his mouth. "Can I do that, too?" And before I could even respond Tehva was mixing and shoveling, too.
Silas silently eyed Tehva, Chinja, and Chinja's sister, Ruksana, and then put aside his fork. "Mom, I'm going to use my hands," he stage whispered, as if preparing to dive off of a cliff or wrestle a crocodile. If it is possible for a seven-year-old boy to look awkward eating with his fingers, Silas fulfilled that possibility. He gradually doubled himself over, all the while shoveling rice into his mouth, until his chest rest solidly on his criss-crossed legs. Then he folded tighter, his face just a few inches off his plate. Finally he decided to lay on his stomach and close that precarious inch between his plate and his mouth. Bad manners? Probably.
We wiped up the last of the gravy with the chippatis only to have Achir throw more chippatis at us. "No, no," I protested. "You're making me fat!" As fast as I could eat those buttery flatbreads I was finding more food on my plate. Then I remembered. Stop eating--leave things uneaten. As painful as it was to American sensibilities, I took a bit of mutton and a bit of cabbage, played with it, and let it be. No more chippatis came flying in my direction.
As we walked out the door later in the evening, the kids were astonished. "Wow! That was the best day ever and we didn't even know them at the start!" It was true. All three kids had been there since early afternoon and had been entertained, fed, entertained, fed, entertained and fed again. "The only thing better than lunch was dinner! That was amazing! And we had such a good time! We did they do that for us? In the United States that would never happen!"
I tried to explain cultural differences to Tian and Silas. I tried to explain the concept of karma and how some believe that good deeds come back to revisit those who lay a path of kindness. I talked and talked but in the end they set their own conclusions.
They decided that Mr. Achir and his family are good people and no longer strangers to us. And boy can they lay out a mean dinner spread.
Human nature leads us to make generalizations--sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. and I let them generalize away on this one. This is what they now believe--people from India are so nice--that equals out to more than 1/5 of the world's population being full of kindness!
What a nice mindset to have achieved in the course of just two meals and an afternoon of play.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Camels on Wheels and Other Charming Anomalies
For today's post we have something special--a song! I know, we all love songs, especially Tehva who has recently demonstrated a new love for recitations, turning all odd twists of phrase into song. "Star Wars Star Wars Lego Car Wars" is one that we all have come to despise. "Ahummmdulah praise Allah.... a hum banana praise Allah" comes shooting out at the oddest moments, which can be nerve wracking when we are in a public place surrounded by people who probably do not use "Allah" and "banana" together very often.
The song to be featured today is much more mundane. Sung to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes", it is catchy enough to dance to and ALL TOTALLY TRUE. Here we go. First verse:
Have you ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Have you ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Have you ever seen a dromedary, looking fairly ordinary,
Ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Apparently camels only drive after dark in order to avoid pesky Westerners and their cameras because if it had been daylight, I would have shot a photo of this one, as would have any other English speaker who happened to chance across the driving dromedary.
The vehicle of choice? A Toyota Hilux (for those of you who lack male genetalia, that is a mini pick up). And, all right, the camel wasn't actually driving. But somehow the driver had folded the camel into the bed of the pickup and perhaps given it some camel-downers so that the beast actually looked like it was smiling and enjoying the ride. Additionally, it was festooned with a little camel cap and a hump cover, plus a little camel seatbelt to keep it from abandoning its joyride before reaching its destination.
Second verse:
Have you ever found a goat outside your door? (Have you?)
Have you ever found a goat outside your door? (Have you?)
Have you ever found a goat herd, dropping little goat turds?
Have you ever found a goat outside your door?
Yes, so we live in the big city here, just a block from a hypermarket (that would be a mall in the USA), yet we are apparently surrounded by enough scrub and brush to sustain a herd of goats. Right outside our house. And goats poop. A lot. In our driveway. Yet another reason to hire a maid.
Third verse:
Have you ever seen your children freaking out, (Eghad)
Have you ever seen your children freaking out, (Eghad)
Have you ever seen them freaking,
Whining crying screaming,
Have you ever seen your children freaking out?
We discovered this week that the shells the kids have been picking up are killers. Literally killers. They have been collecting delicate, white cone shells and have been clutching them in their hands, walking down the beaches. The beaches here go seemingly forever with no one and nothing on them but rocks, shells, and the very occasional fishermen.
A new found friend, who has extensive experience diving, was examining the shell collection, which lines one of our window sills. Frantically he cried, "You let them pick those up? They shoot poisonous barbs at fish and they can, frankly, kill a child. Don't let them put them in their swimmers."
So even though these shells had been sitting on our marble stoop for days and were anything but sustaining life, the kids danced and screamed and generally had a freak out.
Try not to get that little ditty stuck in your head. And tune in for another blog from the Land of Sand in a few days.
The song to be featured today is much more mundane. Sung to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes", it is catchy enough to dance to and ALL TOTALLY TRUE. Here we go. First verse:
Have you ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Have you ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Have you ever seen a dromedary, looking fairly ordinary,
Ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Apparently camels only drive after dark in order to avoid pesky Westerners and their cameras because if it had been daylight, I would have shot a photo of this one, as would have any other English speaker who happened to chance across the driving dromedary.
The vehicle of choice? A Toyota Hilux (for those of you who lack male genetalia, that is a mini pick up). And, all right, the camel wasn't actually driving. But somehow the driver had folded the camel into the bed of the pickup and perhaps given it some camel-downers so that the beast actually looked like it was smiling and enjoying the ride. Additionally, it was festooned with a little camel cap and a hump cover, plus a little camel seatbelt to keep it from abandoning its joyride before reaching its destination.
Second verse:
Have you ever found a goat outside your door? (Have you?)
Have you ever found a goat outside your door? (Have you?)
Have you ever found a goat herd, dropping little goat turds?
Have you ever found a goat outside your door?
Yes, so we live in the big city here, just a block from a hypermarket (that would be a mall in the USA), yet we are apparently surrounded by enough scrub and brush to sustain a herd of goats. Right outside our house. And goats poop. A lot. In our driveway. Yet another reason to hire a maid.
Third verse:
Have you ever seen your children freaking out, (Eghad)
Have you ever seen your children freaking out, (Eghad)
Have you ever seen them freaking,
Whining crying screaming,
Have you ever seen your children freaking out?
We discovered this week that the shells the kids have been picking up are killers. Literally killers. They have been collecting delicate, white cone shells and have been clutching them in their hands, walking down the beaches. The beaches here go seemingly forever with no one and nothing on them but rocks, shells, and the very occasional fishermen.
A new found friend, who has extensive experience diving, was examining the shell collection, which lines one of our window sills. Frantically he cried, "You let them pick those up? They shoot poisonous barbs at fish and they can, frankly, kill a child. Don't let them put them in their swimmers."
So even though these shells had been sitting on our marble stoop for days and were anything but sustaining life, the kids danced and screamed and generally had a freak out.
Try not to get that little ditty stuck in your head. And tune in for another blog from the Land of Sand in a few days.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
The Morning Run
4:40 a.m. comes early in Oman. We are surrounded by mosques in our neighborhood and the five-times daily drone of the call to prayer first comes at 4:40 a.m. I am up early enough to hear the shuffle of sandals and flip flops of the men making their ways to the mosques for the morning ritual--cleanse, pray, chat, and then shuffle home to begin the day.
If I really hustle and get my running clothes on, I can be at the door early enough to surreptitiously watch the prayers inside the walls of the open-air prayer platforms and mosques. However, now that I have adjusted to the noises of Oman, I usually sleep right through the moan of "Allaaaaaaaaah akbaaaaaaaaar..." and I stumble outside just as the sky is lightening--right around 5:45 every morning.
This morning the smells are overpowering. The odor of rotten eggs lingers in swirling dust clouds and as I walk I imagined myself enshrouded by a cloak of stench. But three steps later a cool breeze whips in off of the ocean, whisking away the reek and replacing it with a chill. Three steps later the chill has been beaten by the heat of the rising sun. It is a daily battle between the heat and the hint of a chill.
The sun here does not rise lazily like it does in Virginia. Instead it jumps off the horizon and rises impossibly quickly. As I turn to the east, I watch it rise behind the dome of the green-topped mosque. The sun looks friendly, like a giant orange eclipsed by a jaden ball, but it is a nasty orange--the temperature is already heading toward steamy.
The migrant labor population, mostly Indians, is up early, too, squatting in the ubiquitous pebble strewn lots, brushing teeth and hawking to spit into piles of broken bricks, scuffing at the dust with calloused feet and cracked shower shoes. They stare openly at my passing, not like the Omani men who nonchalantly avert their gaze, reminding me of falsely modest Baptist boys under the scrutiny of God and their elders.
As the sun rises higher over the mosque, the school children trickle into the street. The boys all wear the starched white dishdasha--a robe that extends from neck to ankle--and qimb--an embroidered cap. The girls wear tight white cotton pants and a white shirt overlain with a blue tunic. They also sport white head scarves that cover their necks and hair but leave all of their faces open to the world. They glance quickly as I run by but do not waiver in their intent bus waiting ritual. The hired help sits with the children, there to make sure that their charges make it onto the bus.
Now sun has risen enough that the workers have covered their heads with towels to keep off the sun. I start to hustle home, sticking to the shady spots cast by the date palms scattered about the neighborhood and the high walls that ring every house here. In just 45 minutes the heat has gathered enough strength to make me sweat through a t-shirt. The wind that delivered the ocean breeze is perceptible only in the shade so I linger for a minute in the covered walkway to our house, knocking the dust from my shoes.
Tomorrow I will follow a different route, trying to beat the sun's climb.
If I really hustle and get my running clothes on, I can be at the door early enough to surreptitiously watch the prayers inside the walls of the open-air prayer platforms and mosques. However, now that I have adjusted to the noises of Oman, I usually sleep right through the moan of "Allaaaaaaaaah akbaaaaaaaaar..." and I stumble outside just as the sky is lightening--right around 5:45 every morning.
This morning the smells are overpowering. The odor of rotten eggs lingers in swirling dust clouds and as I walk I imagined myself enshrouded by a cloak of stench. But three steps later a cool breeze whips in off of the ocean, whisking away the reek and replacing it with a chill. Three steps later the chill has been beaten by the heat of the rising sun. It is a daily battle between the heat and the hint of a chill.
The sun here does not rise lazily like it does in Virginia. Instead it jumps off the horizon and rises impossibly quickly. As I turn to the east, I watch it rise behind the dome of the green-topped mosque. The sun looks friendly, like a giant orange eclipsed by a jaden ball, but it is a nasty orange--the temperature is already heading toward steamy.
The migrant labor population, mostly Indians, is up early, too, squatting in the ubiquitous pebble strewn lots, brushing teeth and hawking to spit into piles of broken bricks, scuffing at the dust with calloused feet and cracked shower shoes. They stare openly at my passing, not like the Omani men who nonchalantly avert their gaze, reminding me of falsely modest Baptist boys under the scrutiny of God and their elders.
As the sun rises higher over the mosque, the school children trickle into the street. The boys all wear the starched white dishdasha--a robe that extends from neck to ankle--and qimb--an embroidered cap. The girls wear tight white cotton pants and a white shirt overlain with a blue tunic. They also sport white head scarves that cover their necks and hair but leave all of their faces open to the world. They glance quickly as I run by but do not waiver in their intent bus waiting ritual. The hired help sits with the children, there to make sure that their charges make it onto the bus.
Now sun has risen enough that the workers have covered their heads with towels to keep off the sun. I start to hustle home, sticking to the shady spots cast by the date palms scattered about the neighborhood and the high walls that ring every house here. In just 45 minutes the heat has gathered enough strength to make me sweat through a t-shirt. The wind that delivered the ocean breeze is perceptible only in the shade so I linger for a minute in the covered walkway to our house, knocking the dust from my shoes.
Tomorrow I will follow a different route, trying to beat the sun's climb.
September 26--Learnings
Tomorrow is Saturday, which is to say that tomorrow is Monday. The weekends running on a Thursday-Friday schedule has put us into a tailspin of confusion, per this recent conversation with Tian:
Me: "Okay, so tomorrow you are getting up early because it is a school day."
Tian: "But it's Saturday! We don't do school on Saturdays!"
Me: "Yes, we do because it is really more like a Monday."
Tian: "But I thought you said it was Saturday! That would make it the weekend!"
Me: "No, Thursday and Friday are the weekend."
Tian: "No, Saturday-Sunday is!"
Me: "Where are you living right now?"
Tian: "Oh, yeah."
After taking a break from school for a week that spanned three continents, two oceans, two hotels, five visas, and thousands of miles, is it any wonder that Tian is baffled by the new schedule for the weekend, or has forgotten how to spell "story" or "happy"? (Neither one ends with "ie" for those who are wondering).
If these things have been forgotten, many more have been learned in their place. Instead of an automatic garage door opener we have a fancy iron gate that slides open and closed with the press of a button. We have learned to leave our gate open if we are hoping for visitors and to close it if we are not. We were desperate for company today so left it open all day and garnered the spoils--a jar of Omani honey, a bottle of cologne, two smiling boys, and two giggly little girls looking for a play date.
We learned all about the necessity of owning a car in Muscat. It is not a walker-friendly city so we have not been able to venture too far from our neighborhood, which is hemmed in by two causeways. However, today a kind American took pity on us, drove us about, and showed us what we have been missing: stunning beaches strewn with shells and colored rocks, marketplaces loaded with fresh produce and live poultry, and juice bars that sit anticipating beach goers.
We have learned the ins and outs of living in an enormous home. With three floors (tiled throughout), five bathrooms, four bedrooms, an HGTV kitchen with granite counter tops, and a marble staircase, we are all learning to mop and sweep, and then to scream to hear the echo bounce throughout the empty space.
We are learning but tomorrow begins the formal schooling upstairs in the maid's quarters turned school room. There are reportedly a handful of families who are homeschooling throughout the city. The next thing to learn will be their phone numbers.
Me: "Okay, so tomorrow you are getting up early because it is a school day."
Tian: "But it's Saturday! We don't do school on Saturdays!"
Me: "Yes, we do because it is really more like a Monday."
Tian: "But I thought you said it was Saturday! That would make it the weekend!"
Me: "No, Thursday and Friday are the weekend."
Tian: "No, Saturday-Sunday is!"
Me: "Where are you living right now?"
Tian: "Oh, yeah."
After taking a break from school for a week that spanned three continents, two oceans, two hotels, five visas, and thousands of miles, is it any wonder that Tian is baffled by the new schedule for the weekend, or has forgotten how to spell "story" or "happy"? (Neither one ends with "ie" for those who are wondering).
If these things have been forgotten, many more have been learned in their place. Instead of an automatic garage door opener we have a fancy iron gate that slides open and closed with the press of a button. We have learned to leave our gate open if we are hoping for visitors and to close it if we are not. We were desperate for company today so left it open all day and garnered the spoils--a jar of Omani honey, a bottle of cologne, two smiling boys, and two giggly little girls looking for a play date.
We learned all about the necessity of owning a car in Muscat. It is not a walker-friendly city so we have not been able to venture too far from our neighborhood, which is hemmed in by two causeways. However, today a kind American took pity on us, drove us about, and showed us what we have been missing: stunning beaches strewn with shells and colored rocks, marketplaces loaded with fresh produce and live poultry, and juice bars that sit anticipating beach goers.
We have learned the ins and outs of living in an enormous home. With three floors (tiled throughout), five bathrooms, four bedrooms, an HGTV kitchen with granite counter tops, and a marble staircase, we are all learning to mop and sweep, and then to scream to hear the echo bounce throughout the empty space.
We are learning but tomorrow begins the formal schooling upstairs in the maid's quarters turned school room. There are reportedly a handful of families who are homeschooling throughout the city. The next thing to learn will be their phone numbers.
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