The people are extremely hospitable here in Muscat. I have not been outside of the city yet except to Muttrah which is the famous port right next to Muscat. There are a few hotels and the Muttrah souk that is always crowded and filled with Frankincense for sale and fabrics and scarves and dresses. It’s a cool Middle Eastern market place to shop for souvenirs and clothing. So I am not sure if the hospitality is extended this way throughout the country although, i have heard it is so.
In the last three weeks, I’ve experienced several forms of Omani hospitality. One experience that has happened to us more than once is if we are walking down the road to attempt to find a restaurant or the beach or somewhere, Omanis seem to enjoy offering us a ride to wherever we are going. They are so hospitable that they invite us in the car before even asking where it is that we need to get to. It could be 10 minutes away by car for all they know and we could just be looking for a taxi! My theory is that Omanis know that foreigners get horrendously ripped-off by the non-meter using taxi drivers and they genuinely want us to have a good and happy experience in their beautiful and unique Gulf country so they go out of their way to help out. Some of them who have given us rides even offer to wait for us to run into the store etc. before they offer to take us back to where we need to go. I never accept but the idea is so friendly and thoughtful. All this offering of one’s time actually leaves me wondering why people would be so nice and generous with their money and/or time? Don’t they have anywhere they were on their way to before they picked us up? Don’t they have errands to run? Coming from America, a land where many people live very busy lives with fully-booked schedules and no time to do even their own errands in a day, it seems so strange and almost suspicious to me (at first) that people (and so many of them) are so ready and willing to go out of their way to help a stranger out.
Where does this hospitality behavior come from? I truly feel that this hospitality comes from a deeply rooted sense of the desire to preserve the historical culture and tradition of this beautiful nation and its people. Even just today, we went to the mall to grab a delicious lunch of gourmet hamburgers and it was acceptable to take a ride from someone at the school. On our way back from the mall as we were walking down the road near the mall, a typical thing happened that would not be socially acceptable in America and many other countries. An Arab engineer stopped on the side of the road and motioned for us to come across the street. We did not feel scared as this is a typical type of scenario we've seemed to have experienced in the past. The man barely spoke more than 15 words of English as an accumulation of his entire vocabulary in the language. He did not seem to understand fully where we needed to go but, remarkably trusted us that we would tell him a safe place to go and that we would be peaceful people. Is it because this land seems to be slower to develop in some ways that picking up the "modern-day hitchhiker (us)" is not dangerous like it was safe to do in the states in the 50s and 60s? Just a thought I guess. The man ended up dropping us off at our school which was about a 5 or 10 minute drive back. Such a nice person. But, don't these people have something better to do? Are they just trying to help us avoid being horribly ripped off by the taxis here? The taxis do not have meters so this could make sense.
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