Another one of my favorite memories...
There was a camp move, and all our trailers were being slowly transported on large trucks to a new campsite. That means for most of the day you are in the middle of the Omani desert with no room, no bathroom, no office. Just a lot of desert, and if you are lucky, a seat in an airconditioned pickup truck.
After several hours of sitting around the campsite-to-be and doing nothing, I got inspired and took a walk with a nice thick book. A little ways away I found a random wooden crate and a cheap plastic blanket on a nice sandy incline. They looked like they had been there for a while. So, I laid myself down on the blanket and began to read. Maybe two hours later an Omani guy showed up in a truck and got out. I was embarassed, because it looked like this was his stuff.
To be honest I'm not sure how I didn't get overwhelmed with awkwardness and leave immediately, but somehow I ended up sitting and talking to the guy.
He was a tall, thin, weathered looking guy with a kind of scratchy voice. He was setting up a sheesha shack. There are always a couple of those a little ways around camp where omani guys go after work to hang out, light a camp fire, and smoke sheesha. I'm always jealous of them.
We had a rudimentary conversations with my small arabic vocabulary, and his equally small english vocabulary. With these conversations, it's a struggle communicating, but it's rewarding because every little bit you communicate feels like an accomplishment. I learned various things about him. He was a bedou from somewhere in the vicinity of Ibri. He had a problems with maggots getting in the eyes of his goats. His mother died a few years ago and he missed her because he was very close to her.
He made some tea, or some "shaayy" as they call it in arabic. So, I learned how to make Omani bedou tea. This version included a few tablespoons of loose black tea, water, a can and a half of condensed milk, a couple spoons of Nescafe, and about half a cup of sugar. All this he put into a beat up looking tin pot. Then he took one solid hunk of wood, poured something flamible over it, set it next to some large stones. He lit the wood and balanced the pot on the stones. I made myself the official stirrer while he hammered hunks of wood into the ground to make a windbreak for the future sheesha shack.
I admired the bag from which he took out his tea ingredients. It was a large ladies purse, in a purple velvet tigerskin motif. With sequins. He seemed completely oblivious to the irony. I guess to him it was just a thing that he could carry stuff in. Who knows where he got it from.
I was amazed by how he didn't in any way act wierd around me. This is Oman where it is not normal for men and women to mix. Yet he wasn't all formal and standoffish, but he wasn't sleezily overfriendly either. Maybe that is the way it is if you live in the desert and you are mostly on your own with a lot of goats? Any other human being...male, female, brown, white...you are just glad they aren't a goat.
After a cup and a half of tea I thought I should go back to camp. So got up and I took a bit of water and rinsed my cup out and wiped it clean. He smiled when I did that and said "same same bedou". And that was the best compliment I could ask for.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Arriving in Muscat
One thing I don't want to forget is what it is like arriving in Muscat after a vacation. It takes 20 hours to make it from the Philadelphia International Airport to Muscat. By the time I arrive, my feet are swollen, my hair is greasy, and my cloths have been on for 35 hours.
We walk down the stairs of the airplane to a shuttle bus. It feels a little bit like walking through an oven, even at 10pm. As soon as we step inside the airport there is a race to get a good place in the lines. But, even if I end up in the back it is okay because it is good people watching. There are always lots and lots of Indian men in khakis and plaid short sleeve dress shirts, which is a uniform for Indians the way jeans and a T-shirt is a uniform for Americans. I see tiny old Indian women wearing saris and heavy gold jewelry. They are careful about covering their legs and sometimes their hair but even an old women will show her midriff. There are Arabic men and women, wearing lots of perfume. The women are covered head to toe in black, but the hems of their cloaks are decorated with decadent gemstone designs. They usually have really fancy purses, things that look gaudy to my eye. There are also Brits scattered in the crowd and they look very tall and big. Also they usually look old and rich. Oil workers.
We go through immigration and customs and collect our luggage. The airport has a steril feel the way an airport usually does. Fluorescent lights. Muted tones. White walls. Then after the last baggage screening, you step through sliding doors and suddenly there are 100 million indian men pressed up against a velvet rope, staring at you as you walk down the "red carpet" of international arrivals. And there is noise. And the smell is a mixture of cleaning fluid, body odor, and strong perfumes.
I walk to the back of the crowd and look for Mahmood, our driver. I find him and we step out of the airport into the oven/steam bath of a Muscat night, and make our way to the car. Mahmood will patiently have a conversation with me in Arabic. It is a pretty basic conversation - How is your family? How was vacation? How long is the flight from America? Wow that is so long! My speech is always peppered with umms and errs and hand motions, but still it's a conversation. In Arabic!
Finally Mahmood drops me off at the staff house. This is in a posh residential neighborhood, full of large white houses, palm trees and fuchsia bougainvillea. I walk in, check the list of who is traveling through Muscat to see if there is anyone fun, and then I drag my stuff upstairs. If Pankitch is around he will share some dinner with me. He is a big, friendly, energetic guy from south India. He has very limited English. The last time he was explaining what's for dinner, he frowned and patted his head while searching for a word... "err.... Head! Head.. Fish head". Usually it is some form of rice and fish curry, and it is always VERY spicy.
Before I zonk out, I'll get a cup of tea and step outside or go up to the roof. I love the roof. The house has two levels of roof. I have to climb a ladder to get to the highest part, but then I can see over the tops of all the houses. I see the moon, the mountains, the ocean, and a few minarets that top the neighborhood mosques. Sometimes I see other people hanging out on their roof. I can look down on the street which is bathed in the eerie light of the street lamps. Sometimes there's a cat prowling, or a pair of Pakistani men walking, or a car driving by. Sometimes the guys working on the construction project next door are sitting around a campfire eating dinner.
It's nice, I like it.
We walk down the stairs of the airplane to a shuttle bus. It feels a little bit like walking through an oven, even at 10pm. As soon as we step inside the airport there is a race to get a good place in the lines. But, even if I end up in the back it is okay because it is good people watching. There are always lots and lots of Indian men in khakis and plaid short sleeve dress shirts, which is a uniform for Indians the way jeans and a T-shirt is a uniform for Americans. I see tiny old Indian women wearing saris and heavy gold jewelry. They are careful about covering their legs and sometimes their hair but even an old women will show her midriff. There are Arabic men and women, wearing lots of perfume. The women are covered head to toe in black, but the hems of their cloaks are decorated with decadent gemstone designs. They usually have really fancy purses, things that look gaudy to my eye. There are also Brits scattered in the crowd and they look very tall and big. Also they usually look old and rich. Oil workers.
We go through immigration and customs and collect our luggage. The airport has a steril feel the way an airport usually does. Fluorescent lights. Muted tones. White walls. Then after the last baggage screening, you step through sliding doors and suddenly there are 100 million indian men pressed up against a velvet rope, staring at you as you walk down the "red carpet" of international arrivals. And there is noise. And the smell is a mixture of cleaning fluid, body odor, and strong perfumes.
I walk to the back of the crowd and look for Mahmood, our driver. I find him and we step out of the airport into the oven/steam bath of a Muscat night, and make our way to the car. Mahmood will patiently have a conversation with me in Arabic. It is a pretty basic conversation - How is your family? How was vacation? How long is the flight from America? Wow that is so long! My speech is always peppered with umms and errs and hand motions, but still it's a conversation. In Arabic!
Finally Mahmood drops me off at the staff house. This is in a posh residential neighborhood, full of large white houses, palm trees and fuchsia bougainvillea. I walk in, check the list of who is traveling through Muscat to see if there is anyone fun, and then I drag my stuff upstairs. If Pankitch is around he will share some dinner with me. He is a big, friendly, energetic guy from south India. He has very limited English. The last time he was explaining what's for dinner, he frowned and patted his head while searching for a word... "err.... Head! Head.. Fish head". Usually it is some form of rice and fish curry, and it is always VERY spicy.
Before I zonk out, I'll get a cup of tea and step outside or go up to the roof. I love the roof. The house has two levels of roof. I have to climb a ladder to get to the highest part, but then I can see over the tops of all the houses. I see the moon, the mountains, the ocean, and a few minarets that top the neighborhood mosques. Sometimes I see other people hanging out on their roof. I can look down on the street which is bathed in the eerie light of the street lamps. Sometimes there's a cat prowling, or a pair of Pakistani men walking, or a car driving by. Sometimes the guys working on the construction project next door are sitting around a campfire eating dinner.
It's nice, I like it.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Current Blog Strategy
I deleted those nasty comments and my post about them. I feel a little guilty for being a censor, but oh well.
I think my time in Oman is nearing its finish, and for that reason I'm going to kick myself in the arse to make some more posts and thus wrap things up in a nice symmetrical way.
I think my time in Oman is nearing its finish, and for that reason I'm going to kick myself in the arse to make some more posts and thus wrap things up in a nice symmetrical way.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Smoke Break
I'm on night shift. It's 2am and there is a full moon. I took a break outside with a guy from southern India who grew up in Saudi Arabia and a guy from Algeria who was chased from his hometown by terrorists. We talked about a French guy who claims that less than four cigarettes per day doesn't affect your health. I say he's full of shit.
Good times.
Good times.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Camel Shepherd
Yesterday I met a camel shepherd living alone in a two walled plywood shack in the middle of nowhere. In the shack is a small bed, a chair, a plastic mat, a coil of hose and a thermos. Next to this shack is a fenced in space with three female camels. Next to the camels is a small melon patch which is also fenced in to keep roaming camels out. The rest of the area is just empty desert. The only break in 360 degrees of flat horizon is three flaming smokestacks from a distant oil and gas separation facility.
Alfredo, a surveyor from the Philippines took me and Agata on this field trip to see some camels. Alfredo had talked to this guy earlier, so he expected us. We got there and said hi and the guy brought over a camel and we proceeded to have a 20 minute photo shoot involving every possible combination of: me, Agata, Alfredo, and the camel -- standing or sitting -- smiling, waving, or not realizing a picture was being taken. The camel was pretty pissed off, it kept braying like a donkey and nipping at the shepherd and us. A couple of times when it got really excited, in the middle of the excitement it would regurgitate up some food and the braying would stop while it chewed and then it would start up again.
Later on the guy offered us some tea. Black tea, no milk, very sweet. I tried to talk to him a little bit but my "book and TV learned" Arabic didn't mesh too well with his "camel shepherd from Baluchistan" Arabic. I managed to eck out that he's from Baluchistan, he's worked here for 17 years, this farm has 180 camels total, and a camels worth of meat is worth 1000 Omani Rials. He didn't understand me when I tried to ask his name.
We took a walk to the melon garden and had another photo shoot while holding various watermelons and zucchinis. He also got a kite flying for us, a kite he had made out of a plastic shopping bag and some twigs from a bush.
This setting was so crazy. If somehow I could take a snapshot of me in this setting and send it back 5 years to the me of the past, before I had ever heard of Oman, I wouldn't have known what to think.
Some more photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/selah/sets/72157608592064463/
Alfredo, a surveyor from the Philippines took me and Agata on this field trip to see some camels. Alfredo had talked to this guy earlier, so he expected us. We got there and said hi and the guy brought over a camel and we proceeded to have a 20 minute photo shoot involving every possible combination of: me, Agata, Alfredo, and the camel -- standing or sitting -- smiling, waving, or not realizing a picture was being taken. The camel was pretty pissed off, it kept braying like a donkey and nipping at the shepherd and us. A couple of times when it got really excited, in the middle of the excitement it would regurgitate up some food and the braying would stop while it chewed and then it would start up again.
Later on the guy offered us some tea. Black tea, no milk, very sweet. I tried to talk to him a little bit but my "book and TV learned" Arabic didn't mesh too well with his "camel shepherd from Baluchistan" Arabic. I managed to eck out that he's from Baluchistan, he's worked here for 17 years, this farm has 180 camels total, and a camels worth of meat is worth 1000 Omani Rials. He didn't understand me when I tried to ask his name.
We took a walk to the melon garden and had another photo shoot while holding various watermelons and zucchinis. He also got a kite flying for us, a kite he had made out of a plastic shopping bag and some twigs from a bush.
This setting was so crazy. If somehow I could take a snapshot of me in this setting and send it back 5 years to the me of the past, before I had ever heard of Oman, I wouldn't have known what to think.
Some more photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/selah/sets/72157608592064463/
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Campmove
A few days ago we moved camp. This was the first time we had moved for eight months and I was dreading the packing and unpacking of the office, especially with our new cluster of computers, their complicated shutdown routine, miles of network cable and large multi screen displays. It was indeed a long day, but it ended up being okay.
In the days leading up to the move my schedule was a little off because I was switching from working nights. Because of this I easily woke up at 3:30am the morning of the move, got a shower and headed to the office where Nurul and Fabian, my respectively Bangladeshi and French coworkers were just about to begin the two page procedure for shutting down "the system". We shutdown, we unplugged, we packed, we found a tennis ball that had been lost for 6 months, threw things in drawers, threw things in trashcans. When everything was in boxes and shoved up against one wall, we went around and duck taped all the shelves and drawers shut.
As we finished packing our office, the first camp move trucks arrived and proceeded to load their cargo. Their cargo consisted of a 50 ton triple-wide trailers. The loading of these trailers is a balancing act worthy of a circus, complete with dangerous wobbling from side to side. The first truck made quite a spectacle as it tried to lift the mechanics workshop complex. Twice it got stuck with the workshop half loaded and the trucks front wheels lifted 8 feet in the air due to the weight of the load. All the while, a tiny man in blue coveralls is emphatically waving instructions to the driver. After the first failures, they had to get TWO trucks, one in front of the other like a train. They attached the miniature truck train to the workshop via 2inch thick steel cable and pulled everything 30ft forward so the origional truck could drive around to the other side and try again to lift the workshop, this time from behind. Forty five minutes later, the ordeal came to a conclusion as the workshop was finally loaded onto a truck, and then transfered to one of the larger carrier trucks. At the very moment of triumph it hit me that there were 19 remaining trailers and it was going to be a long day.
At this point I began the next phase of the day which consisted of wandering around and taking random pictures. First pictures of campmove related events... then close ups of big trucks... then mud splatters on the trucks.. then cool shapes in the sand. I made a friend with an Omani who I didn't recognize when he said "hey selah" and invited me for a cup of Omani tea. His name was Mubarak and he is a cargo truck driver. There was another guy too. Omani tea is pretty tasty, black tea mixed tasty herbs and lots of condensed milk and sugar. We chatted. One of the guys in his hometown has 48 children and four wives. Mubarak said he has seven children and then paused and corrected himself, "eight actually". He and the other guy showed me some pictures of their families as well as an ostrich and some camels. I shared a few pictures from of my fat cat Meow Meow and my friend Carolyn wearing an Oman t-shirt.
Later I crossed paths with Agata, the other girl on the crew. She's my age and from Poland. She just finished school in Poland and started working for our company just outside of London. After never having been outside of Europe, she's traveled to both Singapore and Oman in the last two weeks. She's still got the travel buzz. We proceeded to wander away from camp and spend several hours hunting shell fossils and taking pictures of plants and lizards. Its special to find someone who likes doing that as much as I do.
When we wandered back through camp, half of the skids had been loaded and left. Ten trucks, each with its 50 ton trailer, had begun a three hour journey to the new campsite at an average speed of 11 miles per hour. And as the crow flies this new campsite is actually only 9 miles away. We caught a ride to the new campsite and took a detour around the convoy, but when we arrived we lost our air conditioned truck seats to some stranded vibrator drivers who needed to start their shift. By this time it had become a hot day, so one of the water truck drivers took pity on us pale skinned females and offered us the air conditioned cab of his water truck. The cab was 10 ft off the ground. He had a cassette of Omani music, so we sat there and watched the empty desert with Bedouin tunes playing in the background.
Later in the day, we watched the loading process in reverse, as they set up our new camp. Me and Agata sat in the shadow of yet another truck and sipped orange drink juice boxes and ate omelet sandwiches. A couple younger Omanis walked by us. One stopped and pointed at my backpack and said "I am drinks"... "I am very drinks" and then looked at me. A couple seconds of silence passed before I realized what he meant. I felt real cool asking "are you thirsty" in Arabic, except I'm sure it sounded more like "it is you are turstee?" with a heavy accent. I gave him a bottle of water, and he had a drink and gave it back and continued on his way.
Unpacking the office was a workout, but it put me in a happy energized mood, the same way a long run or a soccer game does. Our nightshift QC's joined us for the unpacking and afterwards our QC posse sat outside on the boxes that had held our computers and watched the sun go down. We contemplated what we'd do if the electricity didn't come back. We wouldn't be able to go back to work so instead we'd have to go do something else fun like have a campfire in the desert. But alas, the electricity did come back on and we did have to go to work processing a 24 hour backup of data.
Once we got the computers running... we finished the night off with some beers and Ricard at the camp bar. Everyone was a little extra rowdy from the excitement of the day. Any break of routine is excitement out here.
All in all a very nice day.
In the days leading up to the move my schedule was a little off because I was switching from working nights. Because of this I easily woke up at 3:30am the morning of the move, got a shower and headed to the office where Nurul and Fabian, my respectively Bangladeshi and French coworkers were just about to begin the two page procedure for shutting down "the system". We shutdown, we unplugged, we packed, we found a tennis ball that had been lost for 6 months, threw things in drawers, threw things in trashcans. When everything was in boxes and shoved up against one wall, we went around and duck taped all the shelves and drawers shut.
As we finished packing our office, the first camp move trucks arrived and proceeded to load their cargo. Their cargo consisted of a 50 ton triple-wide trailers. The loading of these trailers is a balancing act worthy of a circus, complete with dangerous wobbling from side to side. The first truck made quite a spectacle as it tried to lift the mechanics workshop complex. Twice it got stuck with the workshop half loaded and the trucks front wheels lifted 8 feet in the air due to the weight of the load. All the while, a tiny man in blue coveralls is emphatically waving instructions to the driver. After the first failures, they had to get TWO trucks, one in front of the other like a train. They attached the miniature truck train to the workshop via 2inch thick steel cable and pulled everything 30ft forward so the origional truck could drive around to the other side and try again to lift the workshop, this time from behind. Forty five minutes later, the ordeal came to a conclusion as the workshop was finally loaded onto a truck, and then transfered to one of the larger carrier trucks. At the very moment of triumph it hit me that there were 19 remaining trailers and it was going to be a long day.
At this point I began the next phase of the day which consisted of wandering around and taking random pictures. First pictures of campmove related events... then close ups of big trucks... then mud splatters on the trucks.. then cool shapes in the sand. I made a friend with an Omani who I didn't recognize when he said "hey selah" and invited me for a cup of Omani tea. His name was Mubarak and he is a cargo truck driver. There was another guy too. Omani tea is pretty tasty, black tea mixed tasty herbs and lots of condensed milk and sugar. We chatted. One of the guys in his hometown has 48 children and four wives. Mubarak said he has seven children and then paused and corrected himself, "eight actually". He and the other guy showed me some pictures of their families as well as an ostrich and some camels. I shared a few pictures from of my fat cat Meow Meow and my friend Carolyn wearing an Oman t-shirt.
Later I crossed paths with Agata, the other girl on the crew. She's my age and from Poland. She just finished school in Poland and started working for our company just outside of London. After never having been outside of Europe, she's traveled to both Singapore and Oman in the last two weeks. She's still got the travel buzz. We proceeded to wander away from camp and spend several hours hunting shell fossils and taking pictures of plants and lizards. Its special to find someone who likes doing that as much as I do.
When we wandered back through camp, half of the skids had been loaded and left. Ten trucks, each with its 50 ton trailer, had begun a three hour journey to the new campsite at an average speed of 11 miles per hour. And as the crow flies this new campsite is actually only 9 miles away. We caught a ride to the new campsite and took a detour around the convoy, but when we arrived we lost our air conditioned truck seats to some stranded vibrator drivers who needed to start their shift. By this time it had become a hot day, so one of the water truck drivers took pity on us pale skinned females and offered us the air conditioned cab of his water truck. The cab was 10 ft off the ground. He had a cassette of Omani music, so we sat there and watched the empty desert with Bedouin tunes playing in the background.
Later in the day, we watched the loading process in reverse, as they set up our new camp. Me and Agata sat in the shadow of yet another truck and sipped orange drink juice boxes and ate omelet sandwiches. A couple younger Omanis walked by us. One stopped and pointed at my backpack and said "I am drinks"... "I am very drinks" and then looked at me. A couple seconds of silence passed before I realized what he meant. I felt real cool asking "are you thirsty" in Arabic, except I'm sure it sounded more like "it is you are turstee?" with a heavy accent. I gave him a bottle of water, and he had a drink and gave it back and continued on his way.
Unpacking the office was a workout, but it put me in a happy energized mood, the same way a long run or a soccer game does. Our nightshift QC's joined us for the unpacking and afterwards our QC posse sat outside on the boxes that had held our computers and watched the sun go down. We contemplated what we'd do if the electricity didn't come back. We wouldn't be able to go back to work so instead we'd have to go do something else fun like have a campfire in the desert. But alas, the electricity did come back on and we did have to go to work processing a 24 hour backup of data.
Once we got the computers running... we finished the night off with some beers and Ricard at the camp bar. Everyone was a little extra rowdy from the excitement of the day. Any break of routine is excitement out here.
All in all a very nice day.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Morocco Pictures
I just got back from a three week trip around Morocco with Matt, Marta, and Carolyn. I got engaged in Fez. I was offered pot 20 times on the way to Al Hoceima. I learned how to haggle in Marrakesh. I got my ass kicked climbing Jebel Toubkal. I picked a giant sea slug off of a rock in Oulidia. Take a look...
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