“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” - Mahatma Gandhi

“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed.  I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible.  But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” - Mahatma Gandhi

After having been a world away from home for six months now, traveling around the middle east and southeast Asia, I’ve learned many things.  Something that has really grown in me is my awareness of the different cultures around the world and my knowledge of how important each one of them is to the people in them.  Culture creates a sense of belonging in the people throughout the world and can make an outsider or uninformed traveler feel left out or naive. Culture is about community, throughout my travels, it has become apparent that although many things can get lost in translation between people speaking different languages other than their mother tongues to communicate as well as people misinterpreting social ques specific to different cultures in interactions.  However, how is it that humans can still generally love or if not love each other, generally seem to respect one another with basic human decency.  It seems that has been taught in every culture I’ve experienced at varying levels.  

“Didn’t you know about the people in the world who have no language at all?”

I was walking along the beach in Seeb.  It was sunset and the beach and scenery was blanketed in a crimson glow from the massive red sun I’ve only had the privelege of seeing in the Middle East.  We had been driving across the beach sands for a few minutes when my friends decided to stop and watch the waves crash quietly in a spot.  I felt like venturing off.  I could see birds flying in thousands just a few hundred meters away so I headed that way, walking through the shallow waves that washed my feet.  I was hoping to get some photographs to bring home with my camera.  Just then, two trucks came towards me.  They were filled with men in the beds and they were waving.  One guy was holding what looked like some kind of pet bird with a leash on it, something similar to what I’ve seen in the states when an animal specialist holds an eagle or special bird for an exhibit but doesn’t want it to fly away.  A little nervous with the number of men in the two trucks, I kept walking towards the thousands of birds flying.  They passed me and parked but the man who had been holding the “bird” came towards me from the truck.  I stopped...unable to decide exactly what to do next, I knew my friends could see me and that it was probably okay.  As he approached me I could see his hands covered in black ink, the sandy beach floor was oozing with this black liquid and I analyzed the fishy smelling dead animal the man was proudly displaying for me.  It was a squid, but he couldn’t talk.  I assumed he was just completely fluent in Arabic, Swahili, or another language besides English as it is common to meet someone like this in this vastly foreign land.  

Just then, my friend came who is Omani and fluent in Arabic, he began talking to him, “Keif Halak”...but the man just smiled and nodded.  Without saying a word, the man dressed in an Oman soccer team uniform (popular among some groups of Omanis) bent down to scribble the Arabic word for “squid” in the sand. My friend noticed right away, “Laurel, don’t know you know about the people who don’t talk?  The ones who have no language to call their own?”.  Being someone who wears hearing aides in both ears and has had to be taught at a young age how to pronunciate certain sounds because I am completely deaf to some sounds I naturally asked, “Oh, are they deaf?”.  Thoughts immediately rushed through my head being aware of the lack of disability services that are available for people in Oman versus places such as America I realized that maybe these people are the ones that society failed because they never learned how to speak and were not taught to pronunciate like I was.  My Omani friend answered with somewhat of an unclear explanation that has left me thinking and wondering what I had seen that day.  He said “Yes, they cannot hear you and they are mute because they have a sickness and they cannot be taught to speak”.  I wouldn’t consider my hearing impairment a sickness so I was left confused despite asking numerous clarification questions as we watched the men pull the tattered fishing boat onto the sands as the night began to fill in all the areas of the beach that were once pink from the sunset.  

  Who are these people of silence?

Flooding in Oman

The other day, while venturing in Ruwi, I witnessed my first flooding in the Muscat city area.  It was one of the first days in November and an unexpected rain poured down heavily onto the city.  At first, in the car, it seemed to be just raining hard but when I arrived in Ruwi to get out of the car, within two seconds of being outside, my abaya, hair, and scarf was drenched in heavy rain drops.  It felt kind of nice actually with the dense humidity and heat in the air to have a natural shower but I quickly ran inside for fear of my hearing aides becoming wet.  My hearing aides are not waterproof.  

As I watched from the open doors of the Muscat Security Market, I observed the flooding of the street that runs through Ruwi and parallel to the canal.  As the rain poured down harder, it seemed that the roads were flooding more and more.  There was a massive amount of water filling up into many areas of the streets and overflowing onto the curbs. Perhaps if the roads are designed differently with some sort of drainage, the water would have more places to escape when falling from the sky.  As I watched many people in the traditional Indian dish-dashas yank up their peach or blue pants to tread through the growing flooding in the streets to the traffic, I began to wonder what types of problems arise that I normally wouldn’t think of when this type of flash flood happens.  Do people get electrocuted?  Does work get cancelled?  

While I was standing at the entry way of the Muscat Security Market, there were about 10 Omani men in their formal dish-dasha wear who seemed to be employed at the Market, just standing for at least an hour watching the rain and not working.  I wondered if it was a cultural thing to just enjoy rare natural occurrences together and not worry about working.  I tried to make up scenarios in my head that could be similar to what they seemed to be experiences while at work.  Perhaps American employees would possibly find it appropriate to stop work and watch out the window talking and conversing for an hour or so if we were under attack by a giant hurricane that might eat us up alive and they were trying to figure out or wait to hear on the news what to do.  Maybe this flash flood was similar in a sense (but obviously very different because no was fearful of their life...it seemed).  All I know though, is if there was the type of flooding in the streets in New York City, I don’t feel that people would react the way they did for nearly as long as the people at the MSC did so.  I liked watching them happily enjoying the natural occurrence together.  Colleagues conversing and taking in whatever seemed to come at them in the day and stopping to take it all in.  It left me wishing in a way that this type of thing would be a familiar sight when there is a rare heavy rain occur at a security market in New York City!  

Apparently, I was just naive in my observations because I did not know what possibilities lay ahead because of the floods.  I looked up the news and there were several stories about causalities, electrocution, cars that were lifted away and smashed in the water, and buildings flooded inside.  It was a lot worse than I imagined so the observing colleagues at the MSC seemed to make more sense to me afterwards.  

I read about the tragedy of an 8 year old boy who was waiting for his father and got electrocuted on the terrace by their fence at home because of the water.  There were massive traffic jams of which many turned into complete wrecks of cars that had been lifted away by the water and smashed into the cars in front of them near the Al Nahda hospital in Ruwi.  In some parts of Muscat, according to reports by BBC News, the visibility reached nearly zero and there were even “cuts in mains electricity and water supply”.  I was surprised to continue reading and find out that around 20,000 people were actually evacuated out of Oman!  The results of this flood was because of a Cyclone called Gonu that has traveled through areas of the Middle East with winds of over 150 miles per hour and it’s starting to finally mellow out, alhumdellelah.      This was a much more serious issue than it seemed to me at first as a flood at home would not be as serious it seems.  

Lulu Hypermarket=Awesome

When I first discovered Lulu Hypermarket, I was happy.  We took the besa bus up to the street across from Lulu.  We couldn’t miss the giant warehouse adourned with tacky green, red, blue, and yellow lights that looked like a combination of Christmas celebration lights and 1980‘s-movies-spaceship-style animated lights...It was night time so these lights made the start of this grocery adventure especially nice.  As I walked into the store, it looked like a regular massive market such as Walmart except the things being sold throughout this store were much more exciting.    The entrance presented a verand with several sections; the ordinary area for ATM machines and customer service area but the other sections were made up of stores with bargain prices on authentic gold jewelery (extremely popular in Oman), a stand with all kinds of beautiful smelling perfumes, and a KFC.  In the center of the entrance were three mannequins advertising the latest fashion of traditional Omani attire with huge price tags expressing their bargain prices.  “Dishdashas for 2 Rial, Women’s traditional Omani dress for 17 Rial, small girl’s traditional dress for 10 Rial...”  It reminded me of Halloween to see such sparkly and fun clothing being sold but this is really something someone would buy to wear everyday!  (One of the many reasons I love Oman).

We walked through the small entry stands to get to the main store aisles.  There were nut stands, an entire aisle of just bags and bags of all the most delicious spices, an entire section for huge bags of flours and rices.  But, my favorite part of the market was the produce section.  I felt like I was in the pictures I see of overcrowded India.  It was difficult to get around through the many aisles of oranges, baskets and baskets of all types of chiles, as many kinds of gourds one can think of, garlic, and pounds of fresh ginger roots!  We bought rambuntuns, dragon fruit, a custard apple, some different types of chilies, rocca, ginger, and many other things.  I really enjoy going to the market and looking at the produce and trying new things.  

Emirati Expressions Exhibit

Abu Dhabi was my favorite emirate based on the things I experienced of the three out of seven Emirates. In the week we were traveling, we visited Sharjah, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi in UAE.  It could have been because of the more mellow atmosphere and environment built in Abu Dhabi.  The more recently developed emirate had a more pleasant vibe than the more fast-paced seemingly more “fake” Dubai that felt overdone and too “glamorous”.  It felt like a Las Vegas of the Middle East because everywhere I seemed to go was something we had to pay extravagant amounts of money for (to eat, shop, ski, sled, or ice skate).  I’m not saying there was no Emirati culture, but Dubai is an emirate of a couple of millions of people and Emiraties make up a third or something of this population.  I wonder if most of them just hang out at home or if they are the ones in the most expensive clubs and restaurants in Dubai.  

Anyways, Abu Dhabi inspired me more because of the more apparent culture and less over-developed feeling.  It felt like the state was developing at a much more calm pace allowing for room to have the Emirati culture grow with the modernity with seemingly more ease.   I mentioned my thoughts to my Omani sister and some other Omani members of my family and I got a lot of the same comments and feelings.  If many people from Omani culture who go to these places several times a year to visit their relatives feel this way as well, that must mean something  My favorite part of the culture we experienced there was the fact that we got to visit the Saadiyat Cultural District.  It was exciting to see the designs in the museum of what the much anticipated Saadiyat Island will be like.  There will be a Louvre, a Guggenheim, a state of the art performing arts center, and many other neat attractions.  It will be interesting how these newly added additions will affect the culture and feel of the emirate when they are complete in the next couple of years.  

The best part of the Saadiyat Cultural District was the Emirati Expressions exhibition.  Upon entering the large hall, one could go left to the exhibition or go straight to the very large black and white polka-dotted cube that immediately draws your attention.  The large cube was a large installation put in by the anonymous artist “JR”.  On the brochure it says, “The fact that I stay anonymous means I can exhibit wherever I want”.  I thought this was interesting because it’s so cool that he does these large scale photographic installations and makes them public.  I like the idea of public installations that are not approved and usually illegal but that artists do them anyway.  I forget the actual term that is used for this but I love the concept of graffiti and putting something somewhere that is unexpected that can spark emotion in the public or make them think about something or simply enjoy a work of art.  

JR is a young French artist.  He likes to print humongous portraits of people or their intimate parts of their faces and post them in public places throughout the world.  I really liked the fact that it seems his art is so intrusive in the way that it could pull anyone in closer to figure out what is going on with the huge photographs of eyes or huge photographs of people in locations that are not expected.  JR in a way is doing a lot of the things I would love to be doing more of.  He travels to far off lands, makes friends, makes them models for his photographs, and makes art from these photographs while building relationships and learning more about people, cultures, and his own self in some ways with being able to really look at people’s eyes in his massive portraits.  Like they always say... “The eyes are the windows to the soul”.  And JR makes these windows larger and more accessible peer into and think about.  

The Photo booth installations was in fact a very large photo booth that allowed for visitors to use.  If you used it, a massive portrait of yourself would fall from the top of the cube for you to have posted as part of the installation that was throughout the many walls in and outside the museum.  The public became a part of this project.  “INSIDE OUT is a collaboration between the artist JR, and you”.  

The entrance to the rest of the exhibition was nice because it had a large quote up of an author I enjoy and respect.  She written some great philosophical books about photography and using the camera as a tool to investigate people.  Her name is Susan Sontag.  A quote that she is famous for was a part of the entry to the exhibit read “Essentially, the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own”.  

It was a great introduction to the exhibition of photographs created by Emirati artists and some visiting photographers.  One of my favorite genres in art and quiet possibly the world’s most popular hobby! If more and more people learn to take photographs to explore themselves and the world around them better, the more we will be able to understand each other and our cultural differences.  Photographs become ideas, realizations, explanations, and observations.  All unique to the eyes of the picture taker.  

I really enjoyed being at this center for the short time we visited and wished we could have had a little bit more time to take it all in.  I am happy we got to go!

Sharjah

Dubai2

Qatar Observations

-Many women wear the burkha.  More common to cover your entire face and leave only your eyes to see and hands are okay too and heels.  

-I saw a lot of more westernized style in the abayas the women wear in Qatar, too. I mean this in comparison to Omani style in the abaya.  The Omani women seem to wear abayas that are fashionable that are extremely loose-fitting so that there is little or no way to really see their figures underneath.  In Qatar, on the other hand, I was surprised to see many women wearing abayas that are similar to one I have purchased that button up on the top but are free flowing and have no buttons about halfway down my stomach.  This leaves space for you to show-off your sense of fashion and that is one reason why I actually chose to purchase one of the abayas I got.  I like it when I can show my favorite skirt or pants underneath with a peak at what type of shirt I’m wearing.  And I know there are many women who feel the same way.  I saw this in Qatar a lot and they seem to very interested in the real designer bags and not the knock-off ones.  I think that’s a reflection of a culture.  In many countries, the knock-off handbags seem to be extremely popular. Perhaps there appeared to be that every other woman in Qatar was walking around with their group of friends and a $2,000 handbag because the small population of Qatar of around only 2 million people are very well taken care of by the oil revenues that the government distributes to the people.  The Qatari family in this generation and the last have been set for life in terms of monetary worries.  

Something else I observed that had to do with expensive things in Doha was that after watching a wonderful film at the Doha Film Festival, we walked around to find a crowded place to smoke some shisha and have a fresh mango juice.  We found a gorgeous place that was extremely crowded.  The waitress immediately greeted us (I still have no idea where she popped out from-but she was very fast to grab our attention and be at our service), she told us that there is a 150 Qatari Rial minimum bill for the place.  That means that basically, we would be spending 15 Omani Rials which is close to 45 american dollars. Yikes.  She said the actually shisha was only 100 Qatari Rials, 26 American dollars.  Still, a huge yikes so we politely let ourselves out.  Who spends more than 5 dollars on a shisha?  Very expensive.  

-Nepal people everywhere.  Cab driver Nepalanese.  Waiters at the restaurants from Nepal. Why?  Tunday-bar! means Thank you in Tibeten. 

-Food tastes fresher but I still find myself missing Oman and my family’s homemade food.  There’s something about the warmth in it.  The food served is food in my Omani family’s home is food for the soul. 

-The skyline for the city of doha is similar to Dubai in the pictures I’ve seen and also had a Las Vegas feel to it.  The buildings are grand and beautiful but they have a certain faux feel to them.  Even the “traditional” souk in the heart of the city was recently completely renovated and the many restaurants and the long courtyard with many cafe patios lining it outside filled with customers eating, drinking juice, and smoking shisha took me back to the times I’ve spent in Europe doing the same thing.  

-The Islamic Art Museum

-Education city is so nice. The building is gorgeous.  The dining hall has great food. The people are wonderful. 

Nizwa-Homestay

My Omani family that hosted me in Nizwa was awesome.  They were so sweet and welcoming. I spent an entire day with them.  When we arrived at the home, we were greeted at the gate by the husband of one of the women who lived there while the two women (who I found later to be the women of the house) stayed in the background at the entrance to the front door of the home.  The man came all the way to the outside of the gate entrance.  The two women waited excitedly at the front door clad in their regular housewear of a brightly colored and busily-designed thaub with their matching hijab covering their hair.  

We were welcomed into their home and guided to the humble majlis.  There were a couple small loveseats on one wall, two walls lined with the bedoin style floor pillows, and the fourth wall had a modest sized boxed television set with a lonely 90‘s style vase filled with artifical plants.  The rom had no pictures hung up on the wall except for one showing the family’s loyalty and respect for the Sultan Qaboos Bin Said.  The majlis is much less grandious than my Muscat family’s special sitting room because the one in Muscat has these fancy large throne-like sofas that line all three walls of the larger rectangular room.  These sofas are lined with elaborately designed and almost gaudy textures.  It’s got a beautiful and large oriental-style rug in the center and the flat-screen television is mounted on the only wall that does not have the fancy seating.  The decorative pillows line all of the free space of the seats.  It’s pretty elegent when one first walks in.  

Back to the Nizwa family majlis.  We are motioned to sit down and we sit cross-legged on the floor.  One of the women comes leaves for a minute to come back with a round serving tray filled with gorgeous fresh fruit, an edible form of dates, and a fresh pot of coffee to pour in those tiny little middle esatern style cups.  We were given the traditional set-up when a guest in in your home in Oman.  The oldest of the house cuts up the fruti, starts pouring the coffee, and then offers the dates or halwa or whatever type of sweet date concoction they have to offer.  In this case, we had sweet and nutty homemade halwa.  My favorite treat.  She said it’s made from dates, rose water, saffron, almonds, and sugar.  The women were proud to present us with their tray of treats to greet us in their home.  We were the first Americans they invited into their home.

They knew barely any English.  But, I think they might have been shy at first. I managed to get out of them that they only lived with each other in this small home and their husbands shared the two seperate bedrooms with them.  They gladly gave us a tour of their very clean home.  The kitchen with a window in it, their bedrooms, and the “laundry room” which was just a space underneath the stairway.  The stairway I guess just went to storage.  We were not invited upstairs so I didn’t want to pry and ask.  They encouraged me to take photographs of their bedrooms and within the house.  I felt uncomfortable doing so at first, especially after being told so many times that Omani familial culture is very private within the families from the public and I’m definitely “the public” to these people.  But the photographer in me was eager to so I did.  I was able to document some of the most private areas of an Omani woman’s lifestyle by being welcomed and not only welcomed but encouraged to take these photographs.  I feel so lucky! 

Then, we went outside to the next door neighbor who live in the same house but another section of it with a seperate entrance.  They were throwing a birthday party for one of their children who was turning one-year old.  We were welcomed in and greeted by the eldest of the home with the traditional coffe set-up again.  There were many other women there sitting around.  The men were in the other room, seperated by a closed door.  The women waited on the men when they would knock on the door to call for some more food or drinks.  It was pretty busy at that house.  We brought over some sharpened slaughtering knives so the men in the other room could go out and slaughter the live goat so we could have fresh meat for our mansaf.  I’m still not sure if Omanis call mansaf mansaf; the communal spiced rice platter with slabs of meat on top.  Jordanians call it this and it’s pretty similar minus the yummy cinnamon and cardamom spices in it.  We sat and talked to an English teacher who is a young Omani.  She told me all about how most women still get married much later than the previous generation of Omanis here.  There are no moer people getting married off at age 12 and 15 years old.  Many women get married at 20-25 years and men, a little older at 26-28 are the numbers she gave me.  She didn’t plan on getting married anytime soon and was proud to say she was already 25 years old.  She then, pointed out her younger sister who was 20 years old and already married with a one year old baby.  She said “It depends on the person and what they want to do with their life.  If they are ready, then they get married, like my sister”.  

It’s interesting to note that she spoke really good English and she only studied abroad in the United Kingdom for one year while learning English mostly in school in Muscat.  I thought that was really cool.  

There were many kids running in and out of the house while the 12 or 15 women, the guardians of them, were sitting and relaxing, tending to the infants, in the very small majlis.  At one point one of the women handed a 7-year old boy a lighter to use for something.  I assume he used it to start the fire outside so they could cook up the freshly slaughtered goat for lunch.  It surprises me still, how Omani children in general seem to be much more mature in the ways they socialize and are respectful, helpful, and trusted to do things within the family that a child of the same age in the States most likely would normally not be at the same level.