Bull fights and Driving

Nizwa- Daris & Beyond.

This last few weeks have been busy ones in Nizwa.

The courses have begun in earnest which has meant that I’ve had four weeks of delivering five five hour seminars - workshops with only a couple of hours to prepare for them. Thank goodness there have been outlines and files available to read through and expand on before delivery!! Though there have been times when I have wondered if I would be able to have the resources altogether before meeting up with the course members.

Combined with a weekly trip to Ibra, a round trip of 320 km, to deliver a workshop and plan for other alternative ones, the weeks have begun to race by. There is the possibility that I may have to do a second trip each week - this time to Samail, a 120km round trip, which will add to the demands of the job. However, until that moment arrives, I’ll be thankful that I have only one long drive a week to consider.

In the weekends Joy & I have expanded our exploration of the interior of Oman as well as doing a couple of day trips to Muscat to shop for supplies and reading material that we can’t get easily in Nizwa. The trip to Muscat takes two hours which means an early morning start if we are to maximise our opportunities to shop for anything while there as the shops open at 9.00 to shut at 1.30pm and don’t open again until 4.30pm.

One week end we drove up to the Falaj Daris, a small town behind Nizwa, which supplies the water for the local irrigation systems that support the date palms and farms that run along the wadis in the area. The falaj was full of local families swimming and picnicking.

We have explored the village of Tanuf about 30 km up the road on the road to Bahla and driven the side roads around it. Tanuf is now the centre for a bottled water industry but the old mud-brick village was a centre of resistance during one of the civil wars that consumed Oman in the 1950s and, as result, was bombed by the air force.

The ruins of the old town are perched along a ridge over looking a narrow gorge that leads to a pleasant wadi crouched under the grey folds of the local mountain range.

Further up the road is the Al Hoota cave complex which we have driven up to despite that signs that advertise the caves are “temporary closed”. The caves have been closed for cleaning for a while but the complex’s museum and restaurant were open for business. The museum has a series of displays that show the geological history of Oman over the aeons and explains how the mountain ranges that dominate the country were formed from the clash of the tectonic plates millions of years ago. As well, there are displays of the fauna that inhabit the caves including an “albino” blind fish that has adapted to life in the blackness of the underground lake.

We have marked the Jabreen Castle as a must go to on a week day trip as it looks to be a lot more interesting than those we have seen in other places. Once we’ve managed to visit it during opening hours I’ll write more fully about it.

We have also driven down to Sohar, a 600km round trip, a couple of times to visit the other ex-pat trainer, Donald. This trip takes us up to Ibri then across country and through the mountains to the coast and Sohar.

The road from Ibri to Sohar is a narrow two lane one that reminds us of some of the more remote ones at home. However, it is driven by locals who often believe that to get anywhere you need to drive at 140kph and pass any other vehicle whenever it suits even if one is approaching a blind corner and one has seen that there could be a car hitting the corner as soon as one has begun the passing manouvre. It all makes for exciting driving!!!

The first time we went to Sohar we did a drive around the city to check out the local tourist sites - the Fort and Souq in particular. Unfortunately, the Fort was closed for repairs so there was no way that we could explore the site. The souq, on the other hand, was in action with countless plastic toy salesmen, jewellry stores with gold dropping from the displays in preparation for the Diwali celebrations.

This last weekend we drove to Sohar for their music festival. This visit proved to be quite exciting as we headed off to explore a fortified house / castle in a tiny village called Fazah. The fort was well restored, complete with a couple of portuguese cannon sticking out of the windows on the tower to suggest a defensive capability.

On the way back we saw a crowd and a mass of cars and trucks on an empty lot beside the road. At first we thought it was a local soccer match attracting the attention but the sight of several bulls tied to trees and the bumpers of the utes gave the lie to that belief. We promptly turned around at the first convenient round-about and headed back to what was obviously a bull fight.

The ring was formed by a ridge of sand on one side and the spectators on the other three sides. The spectators were squatting, sitting and standing listening to the master of ceremonies yelling a commentary on the qualities of the two bulls which were being led from the ring. The ring of spectators parted and a new bull, a large brown & white animal, was paraded into the ring to the praise of the master of ceremonies. A few minutes later a second bull, a squat, heavily muscled friesian, was led in from the opposite side of the ring.

The two animals were placed so they faced each other and urged to challenge each other. The first bull stood, with with its handlers beside it, pawing the ground while the second bull pulled against its handlers, reluctant to square off. After a few seconds both bulls lowered their heads and locked horns pushing against each other. As the crowd of men began cheering on their favourite bull it quickly became obvious that the friesian was matched against a far stronger animal for it began backing away while their horns were locked. The speed of the backward movement increased as the bigger bull got purchase in the sand which became a signal for the crowd to split and run to allow the bulls an escape route between the trucks and cars that bordered the ring of men.

Once the bulls had broken out of the ring their handlers rushed forwards and grabbed their tethers to hold them back from the battle and lead them to separate parts of the lot. This was also the signal that the fights were over for trucks and cars began jockeying for positions to head back to the city and labour camps and the bulls’ owners loaded their charges onto the trays of their utilities to drive back to their farmlets.

That evening we went to a concert as part of the Sohar music festival at the Sohar Beach Hotel. This was an opportunity for the mainly ex-pat community to show their musical talents to a wider audience while enjoying the early evening breezes blowing in from the sea.

While were there one of Donald’s colleagues arrived in the company of a young Omani who invited us to a family wedding celebration. It didn’t take too much persuasion to accept the invitation so we ended up in the centre of a local village where several hundred men were sitting on mats around a sandy square filled with young men celebrating the wedding with two days of dance and music before the bride and groom would be introduced to each other.

We were pulled into the swirling mass of men who were dancing a local variation of an Arabian - Indian wedding dance accompanied by drums, bagpipes, clapping and enthusiastic shouts from the dancers.

We stood and talked to our host for a couple of hours watching the dancing and the constant swirl of men coming and going from the houses around the celebration while several youths on 50cc scooters buzzed between the talkers and watchers.

The next day Joy and I headed back through the mountains back to Nizwa and the preparation for the coming week. For Joy that means preparation for her tutor group of five young Omani who want to improve their English who come twice a week to practice their spoken English and review their reading skills. She has also been approached to teach conversational English to a group of women who work at the Training Centre so she may have another couple of evenings where she is engaging with the local community.



September Fades into October in Nizwa

September becomes October

The past few weeks have been devoted to getting established with the job of Teacher-Trainer / Adviser. The first week was one of gaining a sketchy insight into the position without being aware of the level I should be pitching any training and advice at.
While the school text books and Teachers’ manuals indicated the language competence expected of the students the training modules did not prepare me for where the teachers were.

The Eid break meant that my initial local colleague left for a year’s training in England so, in the weeks following the break I was on my own until the first presentation scheduled for the last week of the month.

However, the MoE consultant asked me to drive up to Ibra on Monday to meet the trainers there and observe them presenting a workshop introducing the Integrated Curriculum courses that are being phased into local schools. There are three schools involved in the immediate Nizwa area and a similar number in the Ibra area that I will have to monitor and present workshops to.

The drive to Ibra took Joy and me three hours as I took the long route which took me from Nizwa to BidBid then across country, along a road the was, apart from the desert scenery, as twisty as the Paraparas. As the person who’d told me the route had described the road as climbing up an escarpment I had pictured a more torturous route that would have tested my driving I was prepared to take a lot longer getting to Ibra. As it was I got caught behind a series of heavy trucks crawling through the blind corners which tended to slow me down any way.

The journey home was, however and much to Joy’s relief, a lot faster as the local trainers gave me directions to a shorter, more direct route across the tops that only took an hour and a half!! This route took us through scattered villages, past wandering herds of goats grazing the bonsai like scrub that dotted the wadis and plain, past occasional pairs of camels stalking across the gravel and up and down wadi valleys until we reached intersection that looped us onto the highway and back to Nizwa. As I will be driving this route every Monday for this semester I’m sure I’ll become even more familiar with the sights and sounds of the interior of Oman.

The Ibra training session gave me a good insight into where I will need to pitch my presentations and additional workshops once I launch into my own programmes here at the Training Centre. I will, also, have, at least for a couple of months, a colleague working with me from the beginning of October when the other Omani trainer stationed in Nizwa returns from her year of training in the UK.

The first week, post Eid, was an opportunity for me to translate the training modules into a series of units that I would be more comfortable with as well as beginning to plan out a series of workshops to complement the training modules at Ibra. It was also a chance for Joy to finish off re-shelving the English language texts in the Library... a job that took her five days as they had been placed on the shelves in a totally random mass.

Joy and I met a fellow expat in one of the “super-markets” over Eid. We were checking out where we could buy reasonable meat and vegetables other than resorting to the butcheries in the souq so struck up a conversation with her. It turned out that she was an American who had been living and working in Nizwa for the past nine years. She has been teaching at one of the schools that form part of the University of Nizwa and, obviously, enjoys working in Oman. She invited us around to her apartment on the Bahla Road side of the Wadi where we spent a very pleasant afternoon swapping travel stories and learning more about life in Nizwa.

We were also invited to lunch and a chance to view a new home that one of the staff had just moved into and, the next day, to another lunch to celebrate one of the staff’s son being admitted to university to study medicine. On both occasions the hosts were most concerned that I was, apparently, not eating enough even though, by the end of the meal, I felt as though I had eaten enough to last me for two meals. I think having to eat with one’s hand makes it look as though I’m a slow eater compared to those for whom such dining is second nature!!

We have also taken to going for a walk every night after tea as the temperature has dropped to a more pleasant level than the regular high 30s we have been getting during the day. As a result we see more of the rhythms of village life than we have seen if we had ended up in Muscat. Most days the evening air is redolent with smoke from burning grass and weeds and occasional date palm that some one has decided has passed its productive period. The ash from these fires is then scoured into the soil prior to the planting of new palms and whatever crops the farmer chooses to plant.

The date are being harvested throughout the area which means that we often see little groups of men and boys knocking the dates off the fronds thrown down from the palm by the tree-climber who has rappelled his way up the trunk using a woven rope harness that he heaves and leans himself against as he swarms up into the spear tipped fronds to hacksaw the bunches of dates from the tree.

The dates are then washed then spread out on the plastic sheeting to dry in the sun for one or two days when they are ready to pack down into buckets for storage over the winter.

As well as the date harvest there is the constant cutting and pulling , by hand, of young maize plants, alf-alfa and grass by the local farmers for sale at the souq each day. There is always a huddle of men, crouching in the shade, under the bridge selling piles of grass and maize leaves to those who need the feed for their goats or calves further up the wadi. The fields around our compound are a mix of sugar cane, date palms and grasses which are irrigated from the maze of falag that weave around the roadsides, through peoples’ compounds and across the fields.

The falag also become places to bathe and to wash clothes. Several times on our walks we have come across men crouched down in the falag busy soaping themselves off while around the corner, huddled in the shade, a woman is scrubbing clothes.

If we are walking when the call for evening prayer echoes across the wadi we will often pass groups of men hurrying to one of the many small mosques scattered through the palms. Some evenings we get followed by giggling clumps of small children who clamour to be noticed and who will, full of bravado, sometimes run up to us to shake hands and ask “Hello, How are you?” and run away back behind a wall until we have turned a corner and disappeared from view. In recent evenings we have come across groups of women chattering outside their homes who Joy always greets with a cheery “Salam Alaykum” as we wander past.

It all makes for an different sort of evening than we had in Doha where we’d end up either in the Souq Waqif or the air conditioned comfort of the shopping mall.

Last weekend we drove through the mountains and down to Sohar to meet up with one of the other ex-pat Teacher Trainer/ Advisers who is stationed there. The three hour drive took us up to Ibri and then across the tops to Yanqul and down, through the mountains, to the coast. A good test of my driving especially as the road was a narrow two lane with a 100kph speed limit... even my own experience driving under NZ conditions on a two lane motorway did not equip me for being passed at 120kph with oncoming traffic and no real room to move unless one went off road into the gravel of the desert at speed.
We had a very pleasant weekend there exploring the historical features of the town. Well, we were able to look at the outside of the Fort and associated museum for, like many of the forts in Qatar, it was closed for renovation.

On our return trip we were stopped at a heavily armed police & army checkpoint in the middle of the desert and asked to show our driver’s licences then waved on up the mountain towards Ibri. We hit the town of Yanqul just after the noon call for prayer which was interesting as we drove alongside a queue of cars that ran for a good two kilometres from the large mosque on the outskirts of town back into the township as the men all headed back to their homes.

We got back to Nizwa late afternoon to find that someone had done a clean up of the compound and had disposed of the rubbish simply by burning it so there were two or three piles of fire scattered around the place along with several other fires along the street in front of the compound.

This week I’m joined by Khalsa, the second Omani trainer at the Training Centre so I might be able to some of the paperwork translated, completed and sent to the right persons.

EID Nizwa

EID IN NIZWA

After getting ourselves settled into our apartment and solving some of the problems the week was spent getting familiarised with the Nizwa Training Centre and the expectations of the job.

From the material on the Centre computer the job entails delivering a series of training modules to the local teachers of the region in three centres- Nizwa, Samail and Ibri over the course of the year. The modules are designed to equip the teachers with strategies to encourage a communicative approach to teaching English from entry level to year five as well as up-dating the Senior Teachers on the processes required to run their Departments. There is another programme to be delivered later in the year to improve the teachers’ own English language skills that I will need to get to grips with.

Once I have worked through the delivery of the modules with the other trainer, an Omani who has presented the modules before, I should have a better handle on what is expected of both me and the teachers involved.

I have been introduced to the local English Teaching Supervisors whose job it is is to visit the local schools on a fortnightly basis and check on the delivery of the curriculum and the running of the Departments. I gather that during the year I will have to work quite closely with them especially when delivering the Subject Administrator’s course.

My next task is to visit four of the local schools to get an idea about the way English is being taught, the student readiness and the way the local schools are run. So next week I will be picked up in the morning by one of the male English Supervisors and taken to the selected Nizwa schools, introduced to the staff and then observe a couple of lessons but, as it is the first week of the new school year it is highly probable that a great deal of what I see will be administration and classroom introductions rather than full on teaching. But then I could be pleasantly surprised.

Joy has been along to the Training Centre with me during the week where she has been helping out in the Library sorting out and re-shelving the English language books as they had been simply placed on the shelves as they had been returned or taken from storage boxes and as the texts will be of value to the teachers on their training programme as well as those who are looking to improve their qualifications getting them into a logical order is important. Joy soon discovered that what looked like a day’s job soon became a week long exercise as she found other texts for other subjects hiding amongst the English Language programme texts so it looks as though she will have an opportunity to be out of the apartment and be able to meet people for a while especially as we’ve been told of an English Training Library associated with my role in another room within the Centre that also needs resorting and organisation.

Apart from getting sorted at the Training Centre Joy & I have spent time settling in and getting orientated with Nizwa and its roading system. For the tourist the system is easy... you drive in from the highway, spin off the Kharaj round-about and park outside the souq amongst the trucks laden with either goats or cows or bales of hay, tour the souq and castle then drive out through the town centre past the Book Round-About onto the road to Bahla and Ibri heading to the North of the country but for us the routes can take us through the date wadis on a meandering tour of rural village Nizwa.

These roads are essentially one way with little passing bays built so cars can move in both directions given that one of the vehicles can squeeze into the bay and idle rather than having to back up along the track to find a passing point. Our route from the apartment to the Training Centre takes us along faluj (irrigation channels) and walled in date wadis, past a couple of tiny mosques and peoples’ house walls, the doors opening onto the track, a building site and several small shops selling cosmetics, coffee and odd grocery items until we open out into an area with several large entrances to what looks like an office area, a possible school and the Training Centre. This is a 10 minute journey in our 4x4 which is punctuated by having to back up, pull over or wait at intersections for trucks laden with sugar cane, grass or cardboard to get past as they head out to either the souq or processing plant.

On the Thursday before Eid Joy & I headed down to Muscat for the day to pick up our final suitcase and do a basic explore of the capital before getting into LuLu’s and stocking up on food items we can’t, as yet, find in Nizwa. We picked up several books, and grocery items along with some turps for Joy’s painting then, after beginning our familiarisation with Muscat’s road system, we headed back into the interior and Nizwa.

On Friday the In-Country Managers for the company came up to Nizwa to get an idea of the reality of accommodation in Nizwa and the maintenance of the complexes their staff live in. As a result we have been assured that the air con in the lounge will be repaired and other issues will be addressed rapidly and efficiently.

We now have all our gear and can settle ourselves into the rhythms of Nizwa. Once Joy has built up a supply of photos of scenes and activities around our apartment and the Fort Joy can begin painting so that she will have an activity other than filing books on the Library shelves.

We were planning to head down to Sohar on the Saturday to meet up with the other ex-pat Trainer-Adviser on the team when we got a call from Hamed, one of the staff at the Training Centre, inviting us to his family home in Adam to celebrate Eid with them. A rapid readjustment of our planning and we were set to head into the desert.

Joy with her hostesses and children.

Being hennaed and the final product

Adam is some 60 kms from Nizwa along one of the straightest roads I’ve driven on outside of Australia. The distance between settlements grew longer and longer without any indication we were getting closer to the settlement which lead us to believe we were heading into the big empty and that we should have turned off the road some distance back. Fortunately Hamed texted and assured us we were heading in the right direction so we pressed on and 15 minutes later arrived at the turn off for Adam where we were met and guided into the maze of winding lanes that made up the village and to Hamed’s home.

Saif & Hamed outside the ruins of the family home. The family last lived in the mud-brick home in the mid 1970s.

There we were introduced to his 90 year old father and a bewildering succession of family members. As the old man had 19 children, 8 sons and 11 daughters, there were a large number of nieces and nephews of all ages drifting past us throughout the day.

Once we had been offered food and drink and completed the initial introductions Joy was taken off to be hosted by the women while I was escorted to the neighbour’s majalis to meet others in the community. Joy was given the full treatment with her hands and arms being hennaed in a series of intricate decorations before being driven around the village to see the historic sights of the township.

In Nasser's majalis. The place of honour among the oldest men present.

For me the neighbour’s majalis was like being back on a marae at home. All the men there lined up to welcome us and to wish us Eid Murbarak as we shook hands and hongi’ed our way to our nominated seats along the majalis wall. I was seated between some of the oldest men in the room. My immediate neighbour having a long white beard and a face that looked as though he’d experienced so much sun and wind that his skin was more leather than anything else. He spoke no English but made sure that I knew I was welcome with constant smiling and offering of succulent morsels of meat from the communal pot.
My other neighbour turned out to be the Walid of the town. The Walid is a government appointed official who acts as a combination Mayor and community trouble-shooter who hears and resolves local disputes and problems on behalf of the government. He had also a prominent business presence in Nizwa.

Nasser, the local MP, & me outside Nasser's majalis.

Our host, Nasser, was the local Member of Parliament so I was given a rapid introduction into Omani governance and the roles of the MPs in the country. Being able to make comparisons to the political system in New Zealand made for an interesting conversation over the constant flow of food, coffee and sweet milky tea.

Once my hosts had decided we’d stayed long enough I was taken on a tour of Adam.

Adam, I was told, had not known a motor vehicle on its streets until the mid 1970s. Until then the community was dependent on camels and donkeys for transport. Saif, Hamed’s elder brother, said that, as a young man, he’d ridden by camel for 21 days to travel 200 kms to another, larger township and marveled that, now such a journey would take about 2 hours!!

The family home of the Sultan's Grandfather under restoration
Joy outside the small mosque being built by two competing families in Adam
Painted walls in Sultan's grandfather's house

The centre of the township was a fort, court, prison, mosque, souq, madrassa and the restored family home of the Sultan’s Grand-father all built around the complex of falaj or irrigation channels that fed the date palms, sugar cane and banana plantations that sustained the village. I was shown the sundial system that the villagers had used to regulate the flows of water to their individual plantations up until it had been replaced by the mechanical clock.

Sundial system for regulating falaj flow

With our tour complete we headed back to the family majalis for lunch and conversation.

On Sunday Joy and I went for a drive to Bahla to check out the fort and city walls that circled the town renowned for its pottery. We’d stuck a New Zealand sticker on the bumper of the 4x4 as an indentifier both as a vehicle marker and of ourselves and were wondering how long it would take before we met other Kiwis driving around the interior of Oman when the answer came.... almost immediately.

We pulled into the car park in front of the Bahla fort where four other Europeans, the men wearing All Black T shirts, were standing contemplating the obviously closed site who immediately greeted us with “Kia Ora” and big grins and a palpable demonstration that the six degrees of separation scenario doesn’t work when it comes to Kiwis as the party were Angela Sellwood, with whom I’d worked at Rotorua Girls High, and other Cognition consultants from Al Ain.

It remains to be seen who else we meet as a result of the New Zealand sticker.