Orientation Week Catch Up

I apologize; this entry will try to catch up all the back-ground information and a bit about the first week. But I will be jumping all over the place. Bear with me and please post questions if something does not make sense. Even if it does make sense, post questions anyway.

I arrived in Muscat, Oman on the evening of September 1st. The rest of the group arrived two hours later. Our Academic Director, Dr. Elizabeth Langston, had arranged for drivers to take us to our hotel in Mutrah, an area near the old city of Muscat, on the far eastern edge of Muscat’s current borders.

For the few days of our Orientation Week we had a few drop-offs, visited the Grand Mosque, and Sultan Qaboos University. For the first drop-off we explored Mutrah Souk, a traditional souk or market of covered stalls to find, buy, and bring back articles we thought the rest of the SIT students would not recognize. I found teeth-cleaning sticks to be chewed on, and a flat round comb, (this has come in handy for my hair, which has a tendency to escape from under my headscarf, as it is too short to be pinned back). I think the best mystery item was a small bottle of liquid that featured a camel. We had all decided it was camel juice, or perhaps bottled camel spit, when we learned it was a cure-all; the camel was just the icon. Our second drop-off sent us to grocery stores to learn the Arabic words for foods and to compare prices at the various major supermarkets. Our reward upon returning (we had to figure out how to do this on our own, either by taxi or minibus) was halwa, a traditional Omani sweet. Sultan, the intermediate Arabic teacher, tried to explain what ingredients go into it: ghee (clarified butter, sugar, and flavoring) create a gelatinous greasy blob that comes in various shades of brown. Delicious despite the dubious description, but without parallel. Brown jello on steroids doesn’t really cut it.
The next morning we went to the Grand Mosque, constructed by “the Majesty”, as my sisters refer to him, Sultan Qaboos, to honor Oman. The photographs cannot do justice to the size, the colors, the sheer expense. We have been unable to locate a figure, but a few clues: the spouts for washing before prayer turn on automatically; the women’s section is equipped with a full TV system that allows them to see the imam leading the prayer in the men’s section; (this was the first time that the women’s room in a mosque did not disappoint me, though I had not yet seen the men’s room); the chandelier has something like 50,000 German crystals, the ceiling is made of Cabrera marble, the carpet was the largest in the world until they made a bigger one last summer for Abu Dhabi…I will stop trying to recreate the list that the mosque guide gave us. Suffice to say, it initially felt very fake. In terms of an “authentic” Omani construction, it seemed to be far more concerned with ostentatious imports and displays of wealth than faith. But then again, any grand construction, Notre Dame, the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, reflects a display of wealth and power, and only becomes a part of the “authentic” experience of a place or a faith after sufficient time has passed for the structure to become part of religious or national identity. We learned from Elizabeth that few people actually pray there; they have their local mesjid (small mosque); my siblings had been taken there on school trips, as is every visiting dignitary and tourist. Note: in June a historically unprecedented hurricane smashed into Oman, flooding Muscat, killing still un-recorded numbers, destroying hundreds of homes and roads. The Grand Mosque was flooded; although it was drained and cleaned within days in a display of the country’s ability to rebound, now three months later people are still living in temporary housing. However, it does seem that people bonded and helped each other; I do not know, but I think that this was one of the few national disasters that has befallen the country since its “Blessed Renaissance”, the term given to the thirty-eight year reign of Sultan Qaboos. Some people worried that the hurricane was a sign from God; I think it is the first of a series of storms induced by global warming. I hope I am wrong, as the construction and rebuilding has not tried to protect against future storms: roads still sit in wadis, houses are set up on their destroyed foundations. As a post-Katrina American I do not have the right to criticize any country’s hurricane policies, but I hope that Oman can learn to do a better job in preventing the circumstances for damage.
We also visited the Sultan Qaboos University, the first university in Oman founded 1986 and attended by the best and the brightest on full scholarship. Men and women take classes together, though they sit in separate sections in the library.
I want to avoid always ranking any situation or location on a “gender fairness scale”, but it is hard to avoid being aware of this. And it is often pointed out to us; for example, at the university the walkways between buildings had two stories: the top for women, the bottom for men. Today both are co-ed, and this fact was repeatedly pointed out to us by our guide, a P.R. man for the university. I found the lecture from the dean and the following tour tiringly upbeat; they seemed bent on convincing us of the quality of their media technologies and the gender fairness of their policies. The university itself was beautifully laid out and the facilities surpassed many American equivalents, but I got the same sense as in the Grand Mosque: we are only shown the shiniest newest places. These places seem to belong more to the spectators of Oman than the Omanis themselves. Though I cannot generalize about the entire country from only these two examples, it seemed that Oman is performing itself according to the lines dictated by the West, namely by foreign investors.