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.

National Day and other celebrations 2009-10.

Celebrations of Different Kinds

It has been some time since our last entry. Since our trip to Abu Dhabi and Oman Joy and I have celebrated Qatar’s National Day - both at school and in town, been hosted to a tribal gathering, celebrated Christmas and New Year and been to the Doha Book Fair.

The Qatar National Day celebrations were enthusiastically celebrated at school, on the Wednesday, with an open day at which the boys, staff and visitors danced,sang, recited poetry, listened to speeches and paraded around the streets surrounding the school carrying a huge banner praising the country and the Emir and the Heir Apparent amid decorated cars, much hooting of horns and dancing, sword waving boys as you can see in the video I posted soon after the event.

In 40 years in the classroom I’ve never before handled swords, a falcon and a Baretta shot gun, shared in a traditional dance waving a sword over my head or driven around the streets in a highly decorated SUV with the driver deliberately dropping it out of gear in order to make the gear box scream and the vehicle back-fire or witnessed the staff, just as enthusiastically as the students, dance with their swords and canes in a ever growing circle of chanting men, in the course of a teaching day.

The Emir declared a State holiday on the Thursday so that the public could share in the events that celebrate the foundation of the State of Qatar under the Al Thani dynasty. We, along with several thousand others, headed to the Corniche to watch the National Day parade.

This was a two hour long parade of Qatar’s armed forces and civil defence groups combined with a sail past of dhows with the sailors singing traditional sea shanties as they hauled the lateen sails into the breeze to keep themselves in the long line along the waterfront.

The parade was led off, amid great cheers from the crowd, with groups of young school children, waving flags, in traditional dress as symbols of the future of Qatar. Behind them came troops of armed horsemen and camel-riders also in traditional dress. Each of the horse troops were mounted on pure-bred Arabian horses with each troop on identically coloured horses while the camel force were also in troops of similarly coloured animals.

The crowd greeted these displays with admiring applause and cheers especially as the displays provided the sense of tradition and history that the National Day emphasises in all the publicity.

Behind the horses and camels came the machinery of Qatar’s armed forces from being a British Protectorate to the present. The display of armaments and supporting materiels would have made equivalent the Australian and New Zealand displays look considerably under-equipped. The parade culminated in a fly past of the Qatari Air Force and a demonstration by the helicopter squadron as they bowed their machines to the Emir.

In the Friday evening Joy and I were invited, by Mohammed Al-Shawi and his brother, Dr.Ali, to a tribal gathering held to celebrate the National Day. This was held in a huge tent on one of the large sites around Doha that are reserved for weddings and other celebrations. Here there were 2000 men who claimed a common family connection to the 60,000 strong Al-Shawi tribal group gathered,as were many other tribal groups around the city, to talk, dance and celebrate being Qatari.

As invited western guests Joy was able to attend so that for sometime she was the only woman present until a woman professor from the University of Qatar arrived as part of a group from the Sociology Department along with representatives from the American Embassy.
We sat in ornate seats along the walls of the tent with different members of the tribe who all made us welcome and quizzed us about New Zealand and its geographic location in the world. Our use of English confuses many who immediately assume that we are part of the E.U. or a part of the U.K. because they associate English as a European language.

The evening could have been easily translated to a Maori marae situation as when a visiting group from Saudi came onto the area the immediate reaction was to welcome the new comers with a challenge, in this context a sword dance, followed by a song of welcome and a mass embrace of the newcomers who were then ushered into the tent to mix and mingle with those who had been there for sometime.

Inside the tent the dancing went on to be interrupted by the entry of two young men on horseback who rode their mounts through the crowd to the centre space where they urged them to rear and paw the air with their hooves in a display of horsemanship and daring.

From these displays the evening merged into a contest of passionate poetry recitations as the tribal poets challenged each other to recitations of poetry in praise of the tribe, of Qatar and of the Emir. We were told that this part of the evening could easily go till much, much later in the night before either a winner was declared or the guest poet provided a suitably rousing finale so decided to take our leave at the same time as those from the American Embassy and the University left.

Our Cognition celebrations for Christmas were on the Thursday evening where the “Doha Darlings”, accompanied by their newly recruited “Dudes” launched the night with a song and dance routine based on the ABBA musical -”Mamma Mia”. The high lights of this light relief are in the video posted the day after. As you can see and hear the arrival of the “Dudes” in all our finery was greeted with much laughter by our colleagues. Unfortunately, one of the “Darlings” managed to tear a muscle in her hip in her enthusiasm and ended up in hospital that evening for treatment and then was off work for five days to recuperate.

On the 22nd Joy came along to school to see what we do as consultants in the school. She arrived and, on being introduced to the Art teacher, was ushered into the art room where she was shown some of his sculptures and then given a large coffee table sized canvas and a box of oil paints and asked if she could paint a picture.

Nonplussed, she said OK and began work. Over the next three to four hours she became the centre of attention as both boys and staff dropped by to watch her paint. By the end of the day the Academic Vice Principal had become the proud possessor of a New Zealand coastal scene which is now the centre piece on his office wall.

On Christmas day we did manage to share along telephone conversation with the family who had all gathered in Wanganui to celebrate both the day and as a last farewell to Dad and the memories that we all share of similar celebrations at number 67. The distance between us made the day and the conversations even more poignant than that which had felt on our first Christmas in the Middle East.

Christmas Day was celebrated, noisily and happily, with 17 of our friends a pot-luck lunch in the Graffha apartments. We ate well, drank moderately and talked loudly till late in the afternoon before Joy and I headed home. The Graffha and Khalifa residents ended up at a barbeque on the roof of the apartment block which, apparently, didn’t finish till well into the early hours of the morning.

We celebrated two New Year’s Eves with the Islamic New Year falling on Boxing Day and the Gregorian New Year on the 31st of December. If last year is anything to go by we have a couple more New Years to celebrate before July which will make for some great entertainment. I doubt that we will get to another Kurdish New Year picnic and celebration as we did last year as we don’t have such a large number of Kurds on our staff.

In the meantime Joy and I are planning our Semester end travels - at the moment it looks like an eight day trip to Turkey and a weekend in Dubai in late February.

National Day Celebrations at Ahmed bin Hanbal School

National Day at School how to celebrate in style

Check out the celebrations on: http://www.ndqatar.com/english/index.php
http://www.ndqatar.net
http://www.youtube.com/user/NDQATAR

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.