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/
