Visits, trips and other decisions

Oman Sagas

Since our last blog, a more visual record than a commentary on our activities here in Oman, Joy and I have been busy hosting colleagues from Qatari Cognition days, doing a bit of touring and making decisions about our time in Oman.

The Nizwa contract has been professionally rewarding the isolation of the place has not made it an pleasant for us. Our contacts with local Omani have been rewarding and pleasant but the professional and collegial isolation has begun to tell on us both so, after much discussion and soul-searching, I decided that it was best if I resigned from the end of the semester and looked for work else-where. So, immediately after the Eid break, I tendered my resignation and prepared to complete as much to the teacher training contract as we’d planned by the end of January. The company offered me a position in Muscat but we decided that we’d be happier taking the gamble and looking for work outside of Oman.

We are now in the process of deciding what to do and where to go come the end of January. There are possibilities but they are, at present, merely possibilities than probabilities. If nothing comes up immediately we will make use of our Irish citizenship and head to the UK for a stint of relief teaching until the summer break.

In the meantime, in Oman over the UAE National day break our friends, Neville and Colin, from our time in Qatar, drove down from Abu Dhabi to explore the Dhakaliya region of Oman and, briefly, Peter and Lorraine Rocha, with their son, Johannes, from Otahuhu days dropped in on their way back from visiting Muscat and coastal Oman to Al Ain.

With Neville and Colin we explored Jabreen Castle, the Al Hoota cave complex, revisited the living museum at Al Hamra, attempted a drive up Jabel Shams and enjoyed, as you can see on the video, watching the local men perform traditional songs and dances in the Nizwa Fort courtyard.

Joy and I had attempted a visit to Jabreen Castle several weeks before only to find it closed so this time we were all greatly pleased to discover the doors wide open and the custodian ready to take our money and let us in to tour the complex.

The Castle is a fortified mansion house set in the middle of a wadi and date palms while giving the inhabitants a panoramic view of the gravel plains that make up the desert in the Bahla area. It was built by Ya’ruba Imam Bil’ arub bin Sultan in 1688 as a fortress residence for the Imam as well as a college of Islamic studies.
The castle has a second floor stable for the Imam’s favourite horse, dungeons, secret passages, false floors and escape routes as well as the Imam’s tomb.
The castle was besieged by the Imam’s brother, Saif bin Sultan, in 1692 and was largely ignored until 1822-24 when it was used as a headquarters during the civil war. It is now a popular tourist site.

Al Hoota caves were open after being closed for several months following heavy rain in February this year which meant that we were able to explore the huge limestone cavern under the Hajar mountains. The caves contain some spectacular formations along with cave adapted fish and insects - an interesting record of Oman’s geological history.

The village of Al Hamra has a semi occupied mud-brick traditional village that appears to be undergoing a planned restoration to give visitors an indication of how the village would have looked and felt like when it housed a population of over 17,000. The working museum, Bait Assfah, there is one of the high points of a visit to Oman. It is a 400 year old three storey mud brick house in which the owners have recreated the activities of traditional Omani family life with demonstrations of extracting oil from horse radish bulbs, weaving, bread making and coffee roasting, grinding and preparation well explained by an enthusiastic young guide and her school aged nephews.

From there we headed up the gorge to the Wadi Nakhr Gorge and Jebel Shams. Jebel Shams is the highest point in Oman at 3000 metres. To reach the peak entails a drive up a switchback road that winds its way up and around the mountain side and along ridges that, for an experienced driver of the route, would be a doddle but, for me, was a tense exercise in willing the van up the mountainside as my vertigo kept kicking in each time my peripheral vision picked up the drop off down the mountainside. I decided 2/3rds of the way up that I was pushing my luck driving any further so turned back to await the chance to get to the top with some one more knowledgeable of the road driving us up.
We had read of a rock covered with neolithic carvings on the outskirts of Al Hamra so, on the way home, we went looking for it.

If it hadn’t been for Neville’s sighting of a sign pointing into the scrub and across a wadi to Hasat bin Sult we would have missed finding it. We headed off in the direction the sin indicated and found the rock, identified by a sign saying it was an historic site, sitting below the cliff face. We prowled around the rock for several minutes looking for the carvings of men, women and children done by our neolithic ancestors the guide book had described. Uncertain of what we were looking for, or where-abouts on the rock they were we failed to recognise the carvings but did discover a scratched drawing of a man on a horse near the base of the rock.

Back in Nizwa we were able to watch, with Joy taking part as a drummer, the local men performing several dances complete with much sword waving and challenging in te court yard of the fort.

Neville and Colin survived the return to Abu Dhabi on the Sunday, apparently avoiding being hit by cars practising such safe driving techniques as overtaking on corners and competing for the passing the greatest number of cars and trucks on a straight competition that seems to be regarded as a necessary qualification on the road.

Joy and I heard, from a friend, that there would be a National celebration event at the Nizwa Stadium on the Tuesday night so we headed out to the stadium and discovered that the Ministry of Education was presenting a programme of tableaux by the local school children to honour the Sultan and the Sultanate. We survived the chaos of parking the van and headed into the stadium where the local school children were assembled clad in all sorts of multi-coloured costumes, traditional outfits with swords and khanjar, canes and elaborately created models of technological advances that have taken place over the past 40 years in Oman.

For us, in Oman, the Sultan declared that there would be a holiday to celebrate the Islamic New Year from Tuesday through till Sunday this week so Joy and I headed down to Muscat to explore more of the city and to take in the sights we had presumed to be either permanently closed, under restoration or that we couldn’t get to because we were under time constraints and had always missed on earlier visits.

We finally managed to visit the museums of old Muscat and get to see the Sultan Qaboos State mosque of Oman. The mosque boasts the largest chandelier in the world and magnificent examples of mosaic work from across the Islamic world set in a magnificent building of polished marble.

While we were in Muscat the Sultan also announced that Oman would celebrate the 40th year of the modern state with a holiday starting 23rd December and finishing on the 1st January so I have to restructure the planned course delivery for December in order to cope with the new holiday breaks and we are now planning, at short notice, where we could go for the nine days before getting back to work till the end of the semester and the end of the contract for me.

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.



OMAN & National Day

OMAN.

Driving into Oman was a pleasant change after driving on the flat of Qatar as we wound our was through the mountains down to the coast. Apart from the lack of snow on the mountains we could have been driving down through the Desert Road towards Wellington at the height of summer.

We stopped at Al Khaburah partly because we saw a signpost pointing to a Fort which looked interesting and the prospect of lunch in the township was high on the agenda. The Fort was a 19th century mud-brick one that is, as we came to appreciate, a common feature of Oman overlooking the seafront with line of sight to forts along the coast. I left Joy in the car and walked around the fort to take photographs when I was called over by an Omani family who were standing outside their beachfront home talking. They invited Joy & me to join them for lunch. Apparently this invitation is a basic tenent of Ibadism, the Omani sect of Islam.

I initially deferred but they insisted so I got Joy and returned to meet them. Joy was ushered into the house where she was introduced to the women of the family, including the blind 107 year old Great-great grandmother who, our host’s son said, had told them all about Hitler and W.W.II.

I was entertained in the entrance room until our host returned with a plastic cloth which he laid on the floor along with a coffee pot and cups. Soon after bowls of food arrived - rice, baked goat, foul, onions and fruit and the invitation to eat. Our hosts supplied two plates saying the Joy would be eating with me and, after I was introduced to his wife,mother and the sons, Joy was ushered into the room and encouraged to eat.

Our hosts left us as other family members arrived from Muscat and were to be welcomed in other parts of the household. Joy & I finished eating and took our leave to resume our drive to Muscat another two hours down the road.

Arriving in Muscat we drove past the Grand Mosque the Sultan had built and donated to the people of Oman.The mosque is a huge complex that can host over 20,000 worshippers and which has the largest chandelier in the world - 8 tonnes of crystal and light - we booked into Naseem’s Hotel on the waterfront at Mutrah - the old commercial centre of Muscat. The area was a bustle of activity with the souq, cruise ships and the Al-Lawatiyah mosque all close at hand. The area is picturesque with the Mutrah Fort perched high above the town on a hilltop that jutted into the park below giving a strategic coverage of the port entrance and offering protection to the township.

We prowled the souq that evening looking for bargains and watching the stall holders persuading the passing tourists to buy Omani caps, perfumes, carvings from India, local handicrafts and other nic-nacs in the time-honoured way we have gotten used to here in Doha.

The next day we walked along the corniche watching the locals fishing for the colourful fish that darted amongst the rocks of the area. We gazed up at the fort and the huge incense burner that sits on another headland opposite the fort as we walked to Riyam park. From there we ambled back to the souq,had another pry around the place before driving around the headland to old Muscat where the Sultan has his palace nestled between the two forts - Al Jazirah and AlJalali -that guard the town. We had planned on visiting the museums in the area but found them closed for Eid - inshalla!.

From there we drove along the coast, past small villages huddling in hill sheltered coves, to Al Bustan, a fishing village and the site of the Al Bustan Palace Intercontinental Hotel and the offices of the Governate of Muscat.

That night we were treated to the sight of a woman totally shrouded in her abaya selling products on a TV channel while a gecko crawled its way up the wall of our hotel room.


The next day we drove inland back to UAE. The road twisted through the mountains and desert until we turned off to the old capital of Oman, the silversmithing town of Nizwa. This proved to be a fascinating place with a goat market, silversmithing souq, pottery and handicrafts souq all huddling around the walls of the Nizwa fort and mosque.

We prowled around the stalls for a good two hours and explored the fort which had a very informative museum inside that gave us a great insight into the history of the area and the different industries that had evolved over the centuries in the township.

Leaving the town around 3.00pm we drove on through the wind eroded, twisted rocks of the interior toward the border. As we got higher into the mountains the wind became more obvious and, at times, forcing us to slow to a crawl and, at one point, stop, as the sand swirled up out of the desert and across the road obscuring the road and traffic from sight for minutes at a time.

We crossed the border and headed back to Al Ain for the evening. The next day we dropped in on Bruce and Louise Devene before heading onto Abu Dhabi for the day prior to flying back to Doha the next afternoon.

On arrival in Abu Dhabi we discovered that it was UAE National Day celebrations which meant that the streets were filled with SUVs covered in transfers of the Emirs, red, green and black hearts and slogans declaring the owner’s love and pride of being an Emirati while the skies were filled with a huge flag hauled by a giant helicopter and the corniche was awash with people draped in UAE flags, coloured clothes and caps as they walked to the accompaniment of the sound of numerous SUV horns blurting support for the UAE.

A far far different atmosphere to that which we are used to back home when Waitangi Day becomes a dark and somewhat depressing exercise in protestation rather an a celebration of nationhood and identity.

Back in Doha the State too is gearing up for its celebration of Nationhood on the 18th of December.