A Few More Days in Bahla

My trips to Bahla are a tad strange. I give Soleman a call on the GSM and he invites me with enthusiasm to come see his family... always saying "come sooner", "stay longer", "we can't wait to see you". But its Shehar his second wife who actually takes care of me, and I have no idea how Shehar feels about it.

But I go anyway hoping I'm not being too rude or too much trouble... because what a chance! To spend a few days living with a conservative arab muslim family. Here is a culture that is as different from mine as is possible to find on this planet.

Something I've found out is learning a second language is ridiculously hard. I severely underestimated the difficulty. Its so frusterating for me because what I really want from these visits is to make a connection and a friendship with someone there, but instead my interactions more like that of a 3 year old in a awkward 25 year old body. I can barely speak. I can't do much except get in the way. After a "salaam alaykum" most people just ignore me, or maybe stare at me a little bit.


Oh well, maybe I've failed doing much in the way of making personal connections. Being an observer is still very cool.

I got to observe a small marriage cerimony. It was the signing of the marriage contract, not the wedding itself. Maybe 120 people attended. The men and women sat separated by 50 yards. We sat outside at night on a mat surrounded by date palms and ate a dinner of fruit and rice and tasty hunks of beef.

I got to see the daily routine. Always warm sweet chai in the morning along with some fried bread and other goodies. Meals are laid out on the floor on top of a plastic table cloth. Everybody shares the same plate and eats with their hands. A couple water glasses get passed around and shared. The food is always good and served on a humongous mound of rice. The baby, Harif, is always trying to get attention by knocking over water glasses or grabbing handfulls of food, and everyone helps deter him, and otherwise taking care of him. I'm really impressed by how good the kids are at helping out with babies and other household chores. I was never that good.

I got to see the comfortable afternoon routine of walking around and going for visits to the houses of neighbors and friends, where you are served your classic Omani "kahwa" and dates. And usually a big plate of bananas and oranges and mellons to go with it. Your host will sit and cut up oranges and feed you slices until you say "bas!", "enough!". I saw how every house I visit is filled with moms and grandmoms and daughters and aunts and kids of all ages. You are never lonely in these houses in Bahla.

I listened while Mubarak, Soleman's 18 year old son from his first wife, played a collection Eminem and other American rap as he drove me to the airport. It was full of lyrics concerning "taking sexy babes to the backseat of cars" and "telling white america to fuck off". I'm pretty sure he didn't understand the lyrics. And then it was a little bizzare to watch him piously pause this music when the evening call to prayer began.

I got to watch 15 year old Lubna, Shehar's neice, reciting the Qur'an while Shehar held the Qur'an and corrected her where she forgot a word, or said the word wrong. Shehar told me in watered down arabic that "Lubna is very good in school, she memorizes the Qur'an. These other two nieces are no good they don't memorize the Qur'an." Lubna told me shes still working on it, shes only got about 30 pages memorized so far.

I spent a whole lot of time watching Shehar. I wonder what her life is like. I wonder what goes on in her head. What makes her happy, what makes her sad. I wonder what she thinks about having a strange and scandalously dressed American dropped off at her house. I wish I could talk to her. She seems like the perfect Omani mom. She's about 5 years older than me, could be my older sister. Her life is sooo different from mine.

Let me make it clear, although this family is not too sure what to do with me, they are very kind to me. They give me the best bed, the best food, the front car seat. They take me to the salon where Huda spends an hour and a half drawing beautiful henna patterns on my hands. They take me for walks and visits to neighbors and always pour me lots of kahwa and chai. I wish I could figure out how to give something back.

Well... shukran my Omani family. Shukran.

Hitch from Hell - Positive Update

Since I last wrote a couple things happened...

Number one:
Out of the blue, I was served an absolutely delicious bowl of tomato soup. For the two weeks leading up to this, every day the soup consisted of flour, salt, and hot water. Stir in a few shreds of carrot and call it carrot soup. Add a couple mashed peas, call it vegetable. But then, suddenly, this delicious bowl of tomato soup with perfectly crisped croutons and a hint of rosemary. I exclaimed out loud when I tasted it and Mark said "oh yeah, Tak is back". Tak has been a cook here for more than 10 years. He's an older guy from somewhere near Nepal. He's missing a lot of teeth, and doesn't speak much english, but he's got enough to smile and have a conversation when he sees you. "Hi... how are you?... good good... night shift? yeah night shift.... very good [smile, nod, laugh]... have good night". He works way too much as do all of our kitchen staff, but for some reason he makes effort to make us exceptionally good soup. And he likes doing it. I'm touched.

Number two:
In our office we finally got it together and asked our boss about getting another person or two and he was great about it. He says he gets a lot of resumes from local people and he'll send us some. I'd be happy to actually have an Omani in the office. I'm happy to have my job, but part of me thinks its dumb that I get flown halfway around the world to do it. Its not like its THAT hard. I'm convinced you could take a reasonably bright person, who never stepped foot in a university, and make them a perfectly good QC after not too long. Especially in this part of the world. Hell, I'd say the same thing for a lot of jobs.

Hitch from Hell

This has been the hitch from hell.

I've gone from sort of liking my job to hating it.

The workload and the complications in this office have multiplied out of control due to a complicated prospect, an unneccesarily complicated new hardware system, a messy buggy new software system, and our crew starting 24 hour operations. And nobody, clients or bosses, cares or aknowledges our difficulties and it feels like there is little hope of improving the situation.

And on top of that the food has gotten absolutely terrible. The cost of food has been skyrocketing in Oman, and it shows.

And even worse, I'm an ass for complaining about anything, cause every day I see several indians working 16 hour days doing menial jobs for a fraction of what the rest of us get paid. They see their family for one month out of the year and will probably be stuck in this situation rest of their life. And they choose to do this, so obviously the alternatives are worse.

God the world sucks.

Well I guess I'm learning lessons about life. Sometimes things just aren't the way they "should be" and you don't have the power to change them, and oh well - get used to it. You do what you can. Keep things from completely falling apart. Try to fix something small. You get paid. And if you get the chance you get the fuck out.

Argh...

Oh well, in five days I go on vacation. I'll spend a few days visiting the family I know in small-town Oman. And then I'm off to meet Matt and Carolyn and Smarta for three weeks in Morocco. Hooray.

And at least there are lots of friendly/hungry camels around during nightshift. That is a good thing.