Ketchup

Nizwa was a fun, hot day. It was easily the longest any of us had spent outside and while it was drier than Muscat the temperature was, somehow, higher. We arose for a 6:30 busride which made the week a 6-dayer. Somebody commented to me recently that the last time these quantities of hours were required of us was in high school!

The first stop in Nizwa was an old fort / souq. One of the nicest things about Oman is that it’s not so touristy, so we enjoyed local prices and real goods. Had some testosteronal fun playing with real swords, rifles, and khanajir. We (a handful of friends I was wandering with)  spent a little too long in the silver shops and didn’t make it to the fort itself. That was ok because the next stop on the trip was another old fort, in perfect condition. We had a fosha-ed tour which was interesting enough to keep me from actively bemoaning my exhaustion and heat stroke. Drama queen. At the conclusion of the tour we had a nice lunch of chicken and beef on rice. At this point we were all ready to return to the hotel and wallow in our air-conditioned refrigerators. But the final stop remained, a trip to a Wadi (canyon) allegedly green and full of water. It wasn’t.
All in all it was really great to get out of Muscat and see a rural side of Oman. The rural populations of Egypt live in the Nile valley, except for pockets of oasis communities. Rural Omanis are in the mountains and the DESERT. I couldn’t believe how barren this place can be, and it somehow felt more like a desert than the deepest depths of the Siwan expanse (where I left part of my heart). Nizwa and the experience of the day weren’t particularly memorable for better or for worse.

The second day of that “weekend” (Thursday-Friday) I studied in the suite all day. I’m doing a lot of independent stuff – the book we’re reading in Fosha class is very difficult and so I literally circle all the words and experiences I don’t know and write them onto flash cards and study them, in repeated stages. Fortunately I don’t have a lot of homework, mostly reading or very simple and redundant verb charts for Amiyyah. No more useless Al Kitaab drills. It means as long as I’m disciplined my vocabulary will explode this summer inshallah. Also watching lots of Aljazeera, so hopefully I’ll get a little better at listening.

Today a bunch of the male students and PFs will play football on the beach after we get out of the center around 4. Sgonna be ridiculously hot. Tonight I’m going to the Intercontinental Hotel for salsa dancing and to watch the Spain-Portugal game. Watched the US disappointment outside and it was the sweatiest I’ve been not moving in my whole life.

This Thursday my suite is throwing an Independence Day celebration: acquiring booze through suspect means and grilling up some burgers and dogs. With some ketchup. AMERICA.

Boats and style.

It’s Wednesday night, which means it’s Friday night! What a week, one that won’t withstand words, whether wonderful or woeful. The PFs (beer facilitators) organized a boat ride for us yesterday after school, leaving from the port in Muscat. Remember that I don’t live in Muscat, I live in a burb and go to school in a farther-out burb. It’s always fun to go into the city!

What we see of the Muscati coast through the thickest air I’ve ever breathed, the city is epic and old. Seventeenth century Portuguese forts are impossibly wedged onto crag-toothed promontories over the cleanest port water imaginable. The sun is where the sun is at 7:00p, and it’s taken on that mood.

Sunset over the coast of Muscat, Gulf of Oman

I had some great conversations with a few comrades and enjoyed the sometimes breeze while my shirt steadily saturated.

After the two hour ride, I went to the souq in Matrah with some friends and their PF who had invited me to a wedding the next day (today). Matrah is the old town, tiny-alleyed area of Muscat. We bought dishadeesh, the plural of dishdasha, which is the long usually white Omani robe. Here’s how the outfit works:

First, one wraps the wizaar around his waist like a towel, nice and tight. This is the underwear. He then dawns a Fruit of the Loom white undershirt. Next, from over the head, comes the dishdasha, hanging loosely to the wrists and ankles. A button clasps the neck pretty cozily and a decorative tassel flaps around on the collar bone. This is the equivalent of wearing a suit / nice casual, so all of our professors and PFs wear these daily and most Omani men wear them all the time. The hat is a kima, a beautifully patterned cap generally not too boldly colored. For occasions, many men wear a masar, what might be confused with a turban, around their kima. For really special occasions a man will whip out his khanjar, the Omani traditional knife depicted on the flag and selling for a pretty price in the souq. We’ll see about buying one of those later. Unlike knock-off Bedouin / Mamluk weapons in Egyptian souqs, khanjars are sharpen-able and sharp! Other accessories of the male digs include the bisht, a sweet cape-ish affair. The alternative to the bisht is a shali, a long cloth wrapped around the waist. Top it off with a pimpin’ 3sa (thin cane). I elected to only go dishdasha-kima because I feel poor all the time here, and it was good enough. Just some light khakis rolled up a little underneath the dishdasha are unknowable.

I mention the digs in depth because tonight I went with this PF, one of my suitemates, and another friend to the PF’s friends wedding. There were no women, including the bride, in attendance. My understanding is that, like in Egypt, the wedding process has a few installments and this was more akin to a bachelor’s party. We drove about an hour and grabbed juice at a qahua on the side of the road with some of the PF’s friends, and I felt for the first time in Muscat that I had found my ezbat saad, a genuine interaction with Omanis. We had a great time chatting. We made it to the wedding late, which really didn’t matter. I hadn’t really known what to expect, for sure it wouldn’t be like the raucous Egyptian affair I’d been to. It wasn’t. There were hundreds of men sitting on mats on a soccer field in several parallel rows facing each other. We greeted people, careful to shift the cane from the right hand to the left and shake with the right, and then switch back. Kicked off the sandals, sat down, chatted. A guy came around with coffee. Take with the right hand. “Abe, I think he’s waiting for you to finish right now, he only has like three cups…” Chug the coffee. A box of dark goo gets pushed in front of me. It’s called helwa, my PF explains, which is more than I need to hear to be reminded I’m still in Arabia and this stuff is gonna be SWEET. It was great – a gelatinous sweet goo with some nuts in it. Eat with the right hand. Don’t wipe your greasy hand off on your white dishdasha. Here’s a platter of beef on rice for four of us to share. Squeeze balls of rice and beef together between your palm and fingers and scoop it into your mouth with the back of your thumb. Never acknowledge the existence of your left hand. These were all skills I’d actually acquired at the center, from lunch with a teacher on day one to cultural lessons in amiyyah class, so I was surprised how practical education can be sometimes!

Rinse of your hand at the water pump, don’t step in the puddle. Ready to leave? Let’s nusalim 3la al m3rsa, say hi to the groom. Good idea. Ah yes, he must be the one with the shali and the khanjar. Holding a rifle. I asked him for a picture with me, stupid tourist. He was thrilled to!

Omani men often greet by kissing on the cheeks four times and then pushing their noses together and making kissing sounds with their mouths a few more times, which from all but a small number of angles looks like their kissing on the mouth. It was really funny to stand in line to greet the groom.

We peaced out eventually and I’m back in the hotel. The week had its ups and downs. The last couple days have been lovely improvements on how I’m viewing my time here. Really getting into it now. Tomorrow the program is going to Nizwa, inland about 1.5 hours and allegedly hotter and less humid and more beautiful. We’ll tour a castle and see some natural beauty. After leaving the hotel at 6:30. This week is ridiculous. More to come soon.

First round of premature conclusions

It’s been about a week since we arrived and woke up. I stopped going on and on in Arabic and instantly became happier, alhamdilulah, and have accordingly gotten closer with some of the other students. Our weekend was Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday we all slept late. I learned a bunch of new vocabulary I picked out for myself from the maid’s one-legged daughter story, and it’s nice not being married to Al-Kitaab anymore. Eventually I made to a cafe to watch some world cup with a few friends. The cafe was in City Center, a huge modern (AC’ed) mall. After the match we made our way to the beach and had a lovely walk up and down as the sun set. Unfortunately there is so much humidity here that the sun is always hazy, and it had set like an hour before it really set. We ended up at a cafe by the water eating sammiches. Each table had an air conditioner set up blasting slightly cooler at it, which I found humorous coming from the New England tradition of out-door heaters by restaurant tables for similar reasons. We watched another match there, I can’t remember who, and eventually returned home.

On Friday my roommate and I started exploring a little, further to the east. We made it to “al-Wadi al-Kabir” (big valley) for the “souq al-juma3″ or “Friday Market.” It was lots of junk, like used, uncleaned waffle irons, but there was some cool Omani stuff like majmar, an incense burning ceramic thing. I bought a kimma, the traditional Omani hat, and considered buying a dishdasha, traditional Omani robe, but for whatever reason put it off till next time. The souq was outside under a large tent and if one walked out of the shade it was like walking into the bathroom while your sister has been in the shower and for a second you can’t breathe for the heat and humidity. A little later my roommate’s friend from his time at AMIDEAST, who is now working in Muscat, swung by and picked us up. She gave us a great driving (air conditioned) tour of the city. We went all the way out to the eastern-most point, I think, via some sweet mountain roads, but the only thing out there is three very chic hotels. We saw the palace, the “old city” and its souq, and ended up at a very tel avivan cafe looking over the sea to watch the US – Slovenia game.

That was the weekend. It’s very difficult, otherwise, to explore the city. We live way the far out from anything interesting and it requires a taxi, not Egyptianly priced, to get in to anything worth seeing. There are a handful of restaurants around us, but mostly the businesses are tile and kitchen appliance stores. This seems to be a general complaint of the students. It’s very hard to really submerge ourselves in Muscat when 5 days of the week we’re in class until 4:30 and otherwise we’re in our isolated refrigerated hotel and the alternative to sitting inside is practically dying if we walk around or losing all our money if we taxi-around. Conundrum. This weekend I’m planning on astaghling (taking advantage of – nice to see some Arabic still comes out before english!) the program’s lonely planet and doing the 4-5 hour walking tour of Muscat.

Omani Arabic is in limited supply. We have an hour of colloquial class a day, in which the professor speaks fosha. Besides that most of the locals we’d interact with – store owners and waiters – are not Omani but actually from further east like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc, and speak broken Arabic. All the taxi drivers are Omani by some nationalization law, but that’s an expensive way to immerse. I’m generally understood with my half Egyptian-half Fosha hack and I can understand Omani pretty well so I’m not so disappointed about not learning tons of the dialect. I’m definitely focusing on beefing up my formal this summer, from giving myself tons of vocab lists to watching Al-Jazeera. It’s so far extremely beneficial. However, it doesn’t feel like it’s contingent on me being in Oman, which is a sad feeling. I am the AUC student in a bubble, and I don’t have enough time or resources to pop it, usually. The weekends will be big opportunities inshallah.

This Thursday there’s a program trip inwards to “Nizwa.” That, and we’re getting up at 6a for it, is literally all I know about that. It is tiring making it to the 7:30 bus every day and not getting home until 5. Sunday night I took a nap from 5p-8p and felt like a bum. Should have been out exploring or something!!! This is frustrating, but hopefully I can find a way to break out. Yesterday, Monday, I went out with some friends to buy a book we’ll start reading in Fosha class and we grabbed some dinner, too. Nice to get out.

Didn’t get much sleep last night, so hopefully today isn’t like zombie Sunday. After school we’re going with out PF’s out on a boat into the Arabian Sea! Woot. I’ll try to update more frequently.

Taking off and landing,

then taking off again, landing, taking off another time, and finally hitting the ground running in Muscat.

I’ve finished two full days of Muscati life with zero reprieve after the looong weekend and flights. I’m situated in a seriously swanky apartment with two others – two of us in a double, one in a way-too-large single. Aldunia kida. Yesterday we went to class on our usual schedule and had “orientation” for the entire afternoon. Here’s our usual schedule.

I start every morning with a 7:30a busride to the center with everyone. The first thing on the docket is two hours of “fosha” class. Mine comprises 5 students who have theoretically graduated from Al Kitaab series, although I think for just about all of us it piddled away without any of us really ever finishing it. There are five of these fosha classes with a total of 27 students on the program. After a 30 minute break, my class and another combine for an hour of “Media Arabic.” There’s then a 15 minute break and our final class of the day, Omani Colloquial Arabic (OCA), which I take with the same section as my media class. Then we reach lunch! Yesterday we ate goat on rice, provided by Uncle Sam at the center, but it was an occasion. Saturdays (first day of the week) and Wednesdays (last day of the week)  we’ll eat in the center, I guess lunch brought from home or occasionally provided for us. The rest of the days, we’re shuttled together to a place “in the community” but today it was, unfortunately, a mall food court. I had a cheeseburger meal and justified my choice with the thought “a cheeseburger and cream cheese lebneh available at the Lebanese booth are equally distant from Omani cuisine, and this is the cheapest…” We were all very underwhelmed and agreed to emphasize a need for going to the street or the souq rather than the mall.

After the goat lunch yesterday we had like five hours of orientation, during which I may have caught up on some sleep. It’s been pretty bag jet leg for me this time, for whatever reason. The orientation was lots of redundant information from DC orientation mixed with over-information about singular experiences we’ll have and what to expect in all permutations of the Muscati universe. And entirely in English. The administration seems adept and enthusiastic and interested in speaking Arabic with us.

The program director, David, is an American with years of experience in Oman since his peace corps assignment years ago. He works for World Learning, which is the institution Hillary picked for her program in Oman. His Khalid is Gregg, a professor of Arabic at Princeton and another Oman peace corps veteran. There is also a student affairs coordinator, whose role probably resembles Lizz’s (the beloved). Eventually we got back to the apartments. I walked a mile to the hypermarket “Lulu,” an Omani Carrefour. I bought some kitchen stuff with one of my suite mates, of course neglecting some key things like salt, pepper, plastic baggies, stuff n things. I’m trying to put off going back because I don’t want to pay for a cab or be outside ever at all in any capacity. For dinner last night I went with three friends to what Lonely Planet recommends as an Omani classic serving classic Omani fare which is surprisingly limited in Muscat due to the high percentage of sub-continent immigrants. We were underwhelmed by the food but I saw a lot of potential in it, so I’m blaming the restaurant and not the Omani culinary tradition. Tonight I cooked pasta with an olive oil / garlic / tomato sauce, a papa legacy, with an un-dressed salad (because I forgot to buy anything with which to dress it) and a glass of milk. Oman has real milk, unlike Egypt, which is a nice perk.

This afternoon after classes we had what will be our normal schedule, which is two hours of time with a “Peer Facilitator,” or as David reports it in Arabic English, “Beer Facilitator.” Two others and I meet with Intisar, which is her name but also means “victory!” She’s a yesterday-graduate of Jamiya3at Sultan Qaboos in English education and very friendly.

So far the themes of my week are the following:

1. Rather warm out, wouldn’t you say? Right now it’s around 9:00p and according to weather.com it’s 90˚F outside. The worst isn’t the heat but the humidity which has been around “only” (David) 80%. Everything inside is way over-air conditioned, of course, but the prospect of opening a window is probably more punishable than swearing at someone. FYI verbal assault in Oman is treated the same under law as physical assault, and it’s not a neglected law, as a previous program participant found out the hard way. The worser worst part of the weather is the direct impact it has on our interest in (or even our ability to) getting down and dirty with the Muscati world. On top of that, we’re predisposed until 4:30 every day, a huge change from the sparse Alexandrian schedule that allowed for hours of exploration daily. But I couldn’t imagine exploring for very long here. It’s a desert. The sky is gray, the air is so thick. Muscat is hugely developing but the areas we’ve been so far have a very suburban feel. Sometime this weekend I’m hoping to make it to Old Oman, the eastern-most area housing Sultan Qaboos in the palace. The city is 45k long west-east and about 4k deep from the Arabian Sea. Makes taxis requisite for getting anywhere, really, because otherwise you will literally die.

2. Not enough Arabic, says Hima the Arabic geek. As much as I’d hate to be “that guy,” it’s dangerously close to official. I’d been hyping this and preaching the good words “language pledge” in DC and everybody seemed pretty zealous. The orientors explained that there is no language pledge because they “trust the students” not to speak in English, which is terribly noble, I guess. It doesn’t work. Without a moment of change like signing a pledge, and with the administration addressing us in English, there is zero culture of “English is uncool,” as we found this spring in Alex. In fact, I’m afraid it leans in the opposite direction, where I’m having trouble connecting with as many people as I’d like because of inclinations to speak English. I obsessed over this point last fall because of pervasive obstinacy against the idea of speaking Arabic or liking the Middle East at all, but at least I had the pledge on my side then. I’ve decided to compromise for the sake of solidarity, but fortunately it doesn’t seem necessary to compromise too much, so far. My peers are all really nice and enthusiastic and will tend to respond to me in Arabic and carry on full conversations if prompted. I really don’t like responding in Arabic when people talk to me in English, because I end up feeling like a condescending douche.

Another annoying part of this “poverty of the stimulus” is that so far all the Omanis we work with in the center will not speak colloquial to us. This is fine in our Fosha and Media classes, but kind of peculiar in OCA class and our two hours with our PF. I’ve probed a little and it sounds like a few of the other students are also a little dismayed, so we’ll bring that up. On the bright side, David and Gregg speak Omani great! The students who do humor my obsession with a language pledge often face the challenge of having to communicate in the ugliest hybrid of Arabics, from Moroccan to Egyptian to Formal to hack attempts and guesswork at Omani all in the same sentence sometimes. That certainly makes it tough for us zealots…

3. What badass peers have I! I think I’m among the youngest on the program, and many of the students are what I’m considering much older: married, pregnant, pursuing MAs and Phds, peace corps veterans, state veterans, not to mention the visa collection we all have. I think we represent previous residencies in all the counties of “MENA” (the industry term for Middle East and North Africa) except Algeria, Libya, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and perhaps Qatar and Bahrein although obviously I haven’t spoken with everyone. Everyone’s backgrounds make for some really sweet conversations and insights.

After a two-hour nap this evening I may be finally over my fatigue and back to the [certifiable] levels of zeal I felt this year in Alex. Reading what I’ve written today I’m surprised at the relatively high occurrence of negative or critical descriptions, because I’m actually quite happy and stoked, if you factor out the jet lag. I also expect that piggy-back riding Uncle Sam (at middlebury it’s called “Riding the panther”) makes for a hugely different, perhaps more sheltered experience of life in a new country than what I found with Midd in Alex, so to get under the surface of Muscat will take some extra effort. In particular I’m thinking about my experience being shuttled to a mall food court and ordering a cheeseburger in English because neither of the immigrant workers want to speak Arabic with us, if they can.

It’s a rigorous lifestyle, 5 days a week, 8a-4p every day, and I can feel in my bones how fast this summer will pass. We read a super challenging short story in Fosha class this morning (something about a one-legged maid’s daughter?) and I haven’t really been assigned any work but given that I understood about 40% of the language I’m going to write out all the words I’d never seen, learn them, and thereby kick my Arabic learning into the high gear I want for these 8 weeks. Yalla.

DC and the necessity of abrev’s.

Suddenly Washington, D.C. has become a regular haunt for me. I don’t come here so frequently, but very consistently. Two or three times a year I find myself back either for an environmental summit, family visit, or, you know, presidential inauguration.

I landed at National mid-day yesterday and made my way to the hotel where CLS is putting us up in. Up in which CLS is putting us. (Part of earning the CLS grant is making one’s way through a lot of paperwork, part of which addresses the etiquette of blogging while on a state department program. Blogging is encouraged, but I’m similarly encouraged to remember that I’m representing a government agency. Migt as well repersent them with talking gramer good.)

After leaving my larger baggage at the hotel, I reached WT, an old high school bro, and got lunch with him and JP, an old high school sis. I wandered around for a while, stumbling upon the Tajik and Egyptian embassies, as one tends to in the District of Columbia. I eventually reached the Middle East Institute to rendezvous with some friends, a friend from the Middlebury in Alexandria program (spring), and a friend from Midd in Alex (fall). We had a lovely steak dinner in the burbs which couldn’t have been more perfect as a sort of “last supper.” Spent the evening bonding with another friend over shisha and tea – I love shisha and tea.

This morning I rode back into the city and met with a guy working at the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, associated with MEI, and got some new recommendations, insights, and stories re: Oman. He was great and helpful and gave me some glossies which I’m grateful for, but I have a hard time imagining CLS won’t bury us in more paperwork and glossies of their own. Then I took off for the hotel, where I’m currently typing and waiting for WT to catch up with me because he promised to buy me a beer and with God as my witness I will pursue free beer to the ends of the earth. And I value WT’s company, too, I guess.

These exceedingly distracting abbreviations are also part of my attempt to more closely follow proper blog etiquette or “netiquette” and respect third parties’ privacy. It’s also sort of a like a puzzle for you readers to decode – An interactive blog!