Vaguely Middle Eastern News Compilation Contemplation 6/30

Speaking of writing things about the Middle East, a paper of mine was selected for the Middle East Studies Association Undergraduate Research Workshop in Denver this November, so inshallah I can find a way to get funding to actually go! I've been researching Tunisian women's political involvement in the context of the Arab Spring, and will hopefully have the opportunity to clean up and revise what I've done so far.

In other news, there's a lot happening in the world, as per usual. I enjoyed this article by the Washington Post because of its graphics and humanizing of Syrian refugees, though the user interface is sort of annoying, and I feel like they could have included a little more detail and research. It stuck out to me because I followed a very similar route over winter break, when I traveled from Austria to Turkey by land. Reading this article reminded me of the privileges that I have, an American passport and a little disposable income sent me to the same places that these people went through, but I have the luxury of doing it for fun. It also reminds me that I got my passport very thoroughly checked on a train between Hungary and Austria, which normally doesn't happen because it's all Schengen - I wondered about it at the time, and I still do. Maybe they thought I was an illegal immigrant or asylum seeker too... It wouldn't be the first time. 

It has also been a sad week, with a fair few terrorist attacks all over the world. I don't even know if people in the U.S. read about these, so here's a link if you hadn't. The New York Times headlines online right now are all about gay pride and parades and marriage. I'm happy that the Supreme Court made the correct decision, but I don't think marriage is quite as important as dozens of people dying. As a side note, it was a little uncomfortable to read about gunmen killing foreigners at a beach resort before heading off to go be a tourist at a beach resort here. 

Finally, a side note related to the above but also not. Just FYI.

Week Four Updates

Ibri lifestyle

I'm now in week four of the Ibri experience, which means that it's ~midterms,~ always a fun season in the life of Katharine. I've been very busy and have been failing to update this as regularly as I had hoped (a two-month long program means that once a month doesn't work so well), but maybe I'll get better. Maybe I won't.

My host family's women's sitting room

Last weekend I stayed with my host family for a night, and got to experience Ramadan for the first time (it started on the 18th). My language partner, Noof, is a lovely Omani woman that I meet with three times a week to practice speaking Arabic and to learn more about Omani culture. I also will stay with her three times over the course of the program, and I'm looking forward to the next weekend already.

She lives with her husband's family, which means that there are always lots of people around, and it's not as gender segregated at some houses are, so we (Rachel, another CLS student, is also there) see pretty much everyone (other students do not have this luxury). There are a range of children, ranging from born in the last year to my age, as well as a large number of pet birds. The Omani lifestyle seems very relaxed, especially for women during Ramadan. We took naps, cooked food, slept a lot, walked around the neighborhood at night and visited a bunch of other women's' houses, and ate a lot at every one. I got a nose bleed for the first time in years (ever??) because the desert is slowly desiccating my body. Then we slept some more. I fasted for the day that I was with my family, but fasting all day isn't too hard if you wake up at 11 am and then take a 2 hour long midday nap. I did space out and drink some water, but apparently Allah mostly cares about intent, so I'm probably good.

There's work to be done. Also, I sometimes start writing English words backwards now, which is an interesting return to how I wrote in preschool.

Aside from that, we've done a fair few things lately, and I'm rather exhausted, but enjoying (almost) every bit of it. We visited a little castle in Ibri one evening, and explored and then broke our non-fast with falafel sandwiches; we went up to the top of a hill near the center to watch the sunset across a valley, and then had Iftar at our bus driver Mahmoud's house; and then had a calligraphy class. Helpful advice: don't bother going grocery shopping during Ramadan, there's always an Iftar somewhere that someone wants to feed you.

A glorious Muscat hotel Iftar, featuring Indian food and also a lot of other stuff.

Some hill in Ibri, plus Anthony

Finally, this weekend, four girls from the program and I went to Muscat. I think like twelve other girls also went, but we stayed in a different hotel and only ran into them briefly in the souk. We took the bus from Ibri, which was practically empty and air conditioned, so very unlike Moroccan buses, but not nearly as cheap (3.7 rials!). We stayed at the Ramee Guestline Hotel Qurum, since it was relatively cheap online and Oman doesn't appear to have hostels. Also, we have to send in travel request forms 48 hours before we go anywhere, so I can't do what I normally do and just show up and look for places too sketchy and cheap to have websites :(. It was a lovely hotel though, with a pool that we didn't manage to see, but that was ok because we were five minutes from the ocean and just went for a nice, modestly-attired (read "fully-clothed") swim there. We took the outside stairs to get back in because we didn't want the receptionist to judge us, which was a good choice because a. no judgement, and b. there were cool murals on the stair walls depicting jungles and Hindu gods that I somehow forgot to document. At night we went to the souk, because it's the only place in Oman to buy souvenirs, but I have a shockingly low tolerance (and high standards) for souks after Morocco.

Yup.

On the next day, we went snorkeling with the Oman Dive Center, which was located in the Yiti area of Muscat. It was shockingly expensive after snorkeling in Thailand, but it was beautiful, and nice to be able to wear a bikini and drink water during the day and whatnot. I saw sea turtles!

The crew: Yousef, Ahmed, Madeline, and Charlotte

After the snorkeling, we began a transit odyssey to get back to Ibri. We eventually got a cab to the place where we got another cab to Ibri, which turned out to be lots of fun. Our driver, Yousef, was kind of everything you don't want your taxi driver to be - 24 years old, on the internet on his phone, sitting with one of his legs up by the window, sleep-deprived, and hungry (fasting) - but he was very nice and didn't overcharge us, and we seem to have survived. Three of us sat in the back seat (all five of us could have gotten in, but that was unappealing to some members of our group for some reason), so the other seat was occupied by a 19 year old Pakistani guy named Ahmed who works at a barbershop with his family in Ibri. They spent a substantial portion of the ride arguing about why their respective country was better (mostly Ahmed explaining why Pakistan is great, and Yousef being like "...no"), and then Ahmed showed us all a lot of pictures on his phone. He specializes in very pointy looking haircuts, and there are apparently a lot of guns in Pakistan. Yousef stopped to buy Iftar snacks and forced us to eat dates even though he was still fasting, and then stopped again so he could actually eat, at which point we were encouraged to try Ahmed's Pakistani sweets, which we a bit too milky/buttery for me to enjoy, but I ate them anyway. Apparently in Oman it is safest to just always carry snacks with you, so when offered everyone else's, you have something to offer in return. Now I know.

Links Links Links (Vaguely Middle Eastern News Compilation Contemplation 19/6)

I try really hard not to spam Facebook with tons of links to things that are mostly relevant to my studies and not my life (because Facebook is ~all about me~), but sometimes I still want other people to read them, so here goes this week's vaguely Middle Eastern news contemplation:

Firstly, I saw these two articles right next to each other on my newsfeed, and I thought the juxtaposition was interesting. I feel like we're told so often that Israel is an oasis of acceptance in a Middle East full of hate that it's important to note these things too.

I thought the pictures in this article, though not from a particularly reputable news source, were a nice glimpse of hope from Syria, something we don't see too often.

This New York Times editorial (sorry for my future overrepresentation of this source, I have to tell myself it's worth paying for a subscription) caught my attention for the comments on the United States. We're such a large, wealthy country that it's hard to believe we take so few refugees and leave it to Europe and other countries to deal with the problem. Props to the State Department for trying though!

I enjoyed this video because it's in Arabic (woo, practice all the time!) and also because it's about women's involvement in politics in Yemen during the Arab Spring. I'm working on a paper on the same thing in Tunisia, and it's interesting to compare the two. I also recently started following Alex Potter, an American photographer in Yemen, on Instagram. I find her inspiring because she's only five or so years older than me and doing war photography in the Middle East, speaks Arabic, and is bringing attention to a situation that the American media tends to overlook. However, I also think I should try harder to find more people to follow and read that are actually from the regions in question. I speak and read (basic) Arabic, and am capable of reading local news sources, the only thing stopping me is laziness - it's so much easier (faster) to just follow Americans and Brits, and read English captions - but it's important to look beyond the Western point of view, especially since I have the capability to do so. I'm sure there are equally good Yemeni photographers, I just have to find them.

Finally, though not really ~Middle Eastern~, in the U.S. some activists are trying to do Ramadan in a more environmentally friendly way, and that makes me happy. The food waste part especially stood out to me, because in Oman it seems like tons of food goes to waste after normal meals, so I can't imagine after Ramadan meals (though I won't have to imagine in like three hours!).

Week Two Is Done!

Chillin' (Photo courtesy of Kate H.)

Another week has blown by, unlike the predicted cyclone. Another 20 hours of Arabic class, 15 hours or so of homework and studying, not enough sleep, and a little exploring.

Highlights from daily life include: looking at kittens from four floors up.

I unfortunately came down with some sort of illness earlier this week, of the variety that only sleep could fix. Fevers are uniquely awful in a place where temperatures regularly reach (and stay near) 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Arabic classes are uniquely awful when you have a fever and 6 hours of sleep. So it goes.

No one else climbed to the top, so for a moment I was blissfully alone.

Aside from that, last weekend was absolutely delightful, and I have to write about it before I go to my host family's house this afternoon and get totally distracted by Ramadan festivities (رمضان كريم y'all).

I forgot to charge my camera for the first day's adventures... Oops. Here's a Jebel Akhdar pic.

Anyway. On Friday of last week we got up at 7:30 AM, like we had for every day of the program until this morning, when I slept until a glorious 9 AM (this is shockingly early for America Katharine), and went on a trip to a wadi (a valley that fills with water occasionally) and then the family farm of our wonderful center director, Sultan.

Swimming with Sultan (Photo courtesy of Kathleen W.)

This wadi, Wadi Al Thahera (spelling is questionable), was fed by a spring, and had some water despite only one brief spell of rain in the time we've been here. We walked to it along an old aqueduct and over a beautiful Roman (also questionable) bridge, and a few of my classmates and I went for a fully-clothed swim. Luckily it's rather arid here on the edge of the Empty Quarter, so I was nearly dry by the time we got to the bus. I caught some very un-danger-conscious frogs, and generally had a grand time.

Strollin' (Photo courtesy of Kiaya S.)

The farm was fairly close by, and we began with sweets and coffee in house, followed by a tour of the rest of the farm. There were goats, sheep, chickens, and camels, of course. At this point, after a year in Morocco including Eid al Adha, I'm somewhat less entranced by goats and camels than I might have been previously. The highlight for me was the ~plants~. There were tons of date palms that some of the students climbed using an interesting rope device (I was wearing a skirt, sadly); a giant fig tree, on which I found one perfect one; some fenced off and unripe mangos (also sad), and a bunch of other things. I'm now even more determined than I was previously to get a fig tree. I wonder if they grow well in New Orleans... After the fruit tree and animal tour, we went back to... more fruit! There were giant platters with more peaches, bananas, kiwis, mangosteens (!!!), apples, grapes, and oranges than all 26 of us could ever finish. That was followed by naptime, and then... more food. We had delicious probably sheep and rice, eaten sans utensils, and then headed back to nap some more while we digested.

Abandoned village lyfe

Saturday was an all day adventure to Jebel Akhdar, part of a mountain range near Ibri, and the site of Oman's last war, in the late 1950's. The name means "The Green Mountain," but, like so many places in Oman, it was rather brown and dry. That didn't make it any less beautiful though. It was kind of an odd place, half given over to military installations and half to tourists and villages. We visited a rose water factory where they make traditional Omani rosewater, which smells like barbecue and is rather expensive, and then an abandoned village above an empty wadi. This village had apparently been abandoned at some point in the 1960's, after persuasion from the Sultan to come join the rest of the country. We then returned back to the village with the rosewater factory to visit a beautiful spring with a few too many leeches for my taste, and then ate a picnic lunch with some goats that kept trying to steal our food. Rice and meat, no utensils, as per usual. We stopped at University of Nizwa on the way back, attempting to visit some sort of exhibition on the history of Islam in the area, but it had essentially ended by the time we got there. The last group gave us a little presentation anyway, and took a lot of picture of the random Americans in their empty exhibit, which reminds me that I should try to find their Instagram.

A stepped mountainside still used for agriculture

That trip made me want to explore more of Oman's nature, and we have our first free weekend coming up, so inshallah I'll find somewhere accessible!

I <3 wadis

Ten ~Very Important~ Things to Know About Oman

This is a misleading photograph of a Western Saharan palm tree because my camera battery died earlier today :(

1. If you take a date (ثمر) seed from a certain type of date (red or yellow) and plant it somewhere else, it might be a different type when it matures. If you want it to be the same type, you have to take a baby date palm and plant it in the new place.

Nice weather for a "Woo it's the weekend!" walk.

2. After a week of 105 to 114 degrees Fahrenheit days, 98 feels cool and refreshing.

Wearing very appropriate attire in my Arabic class.

3. Long means something different here. In America, a long skirt reaches past your knees. In Morocco, it reaches to your ankles. In Oman, a long skirt drags on the ground, and this is the only truly appropriate length for such things.

Camels from the souk last weekend. ممكن غالي جدا؟

4. A well-bred and strong male camel (بعير) can cost up to 100,000 rials. The بعير at Sultan's family farm (Sultan is the director of our center) cost 16,000 rials. Unlike many places in the world, a rial is worth more than a dollar.

A rare glimpse of our local Shell station.

5. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a litre of gas costs .116 rials, or about .30 dollars. This adds up to little over a dollar a gallon. To compare, a small water bottle costs .100 rials.

It's sketch to take pics of Omani women without their abayas, so here's a pic of me in an outfit I bought on my walk yesterday.

6. Omani women wear all black outside, and men wear all white, except for little caps or turbans. If you never made Omani friends you might think it was a sad, monochromatic country. But it's not! Inside and under their abayas, the women in particular wear absurdly bright outfits, a lot of them reminiscent of the ones I saw in Western Sahara last semester.

7. In some ways, Oman is very much like America.

Just off the main road, at the end of the block our apartment building is on.

8. Once, someone described Ibri as a major town with "worldwide fame" and a "bustling centre of commerce and administration...."

"Maybe the pharmacy is opening now??"

9. Shops here are open from like 9 to 12 pm, and then from around 5 to 12 am, because mid-day napping (قيلولة) is obligatory.

I forgot to buy candles. And water.

10. We might get hit by a cyclone tonight.

So Ibri...

At a gas station at the edge of Wilaya Ibri, but an hour and a hald from Madina Ibri (Photo: Kiaya Skinner)

According to Wikipedia, Ibri used to be known for it's market and fruit. In 2003 it had a population of slightly under 100,000, and is in a state (wilaya) know for it's castles and forts. That's pretty much all of the information there.

A parking lot near the center, featuring Ibri Castle in the background

Before coming here, I tried to research Ibri. More info about castles, several people had died in car accidents since the advent of the internet, one guy got struck by lighting, it floods sometimes, and a Lulu opened (you'll hear more about Lulu later). Other than that, I read some blogs about life in Oman, and the main things I got from those were that sometimes grocery stores turn off their electricity at night so be careful about meat and ice cream, and also to wear long clothes. In other words, despite CLS's extensive prep handbook, I wasn't going in with that much.

The view from my balcony at dusk.

     
But anyway. Now I've been here for nearly a week and everything Wikipedia says is true. Temperatures in the summer do indeed range from 95 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, though it reaches shockingly low temperatures of around 80 degrees at the coolest point in the night (so far I think our high was 114). However, this isn't super relevant, because we don't go outside that much, because a. it's hot, and b. there's not that much to do, and c. there's a giant highway in front of our apartment building that'd difficult to cross because cars always have the right of way in Oman, and d. we're at the center for at least five hours every day, and then we have at least three hours of homework, and thrice weekly meetings with local language partners, and also fairly regular cultural activities.

The early morning livestock souk, featuring giant goats, bedouins, sheep, sad little cows, and two camels.

So far I've gone to a lot of Arabic class (3 hours of Modern Standard and 1 of the Omani dialect everyday), eaten a lot of food, hung out with my host family for a day, spoken a lot of Arabic, a little English, and a weird amount of Spanish, visited a livestock souk, eaten a lot of fruit, and studied. Inshallah tomorrow we'll visit the farm of our lovely center director Sultan's family, assuming we don't get hit by a cyclone. Also assuming we don't get hit by a cyclone we'll visit a mountain on Saturday, and then school starts again on Sunday. And then I do it all again (minus the goats) (maybe).

My host... relative? Hagar in a box. I don't think it's an Omani thing but you never know.

Masalaama Morocco, Hello Oman

A very accurate depiction of my life, despite being a rather unattractive photograph.

Hello! I've switched over from my previous blog, as I am no longer in Rabat, Morocco with IES Abroad, but I apologize for not updating that one either. I still owe them a post-study abroad reflection, but I'll get to it eventually, inshallah. I am now in Ibri, Oman, studying on a State Department funded program called the CLS Scholarship, at the Noor Majan Training Institute.

I live here now (the view from my apartment)

I flew to Washington D.C. via Chicago on May 31st. It was awful, but I survived, and only got to D.C four or so hours late. We spent the next day in orientation, learning about careers and how to use Arabic and what to do in Oman etc. It was kind of mind-numbing, but probably important. After another night there, we flew to Muscat, the capital of the Sultanate of Oman, via Frankfurt, another rather long process. We arrived at night, so it was probably around 90 to 100 degrees out.

D.C. was grey and rainy, but here's a glimpse.

The next day we got up early to visit the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Getting up early seems to be the general way here, as it's too hot to go outside or move during the afternoon. The women had to wear hijab and cover our ankles and wrists, but above 100 degrees, a little more clothing doesn't really change much. The mosque was beautiful, smaller than the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, but blissfully empty of other people. We also didn't have to take a guided tour and got coffee and dates at the information center.

A bit of the mosque

At the mosque, in my full hijab-ed glory

My favorite part was a section with different patterns of tile from different Islamic countries and time periods, from the ancient tribes of Arabia to modern calligraphic interpretations. This is characteristic of the Omani discourse on Islam presented to us in the information center, which definitely focusses on what all Muslims share, rather than sectarian differences, which I enjoyed, though I would like to know more about Ibadi Islam, the type practiced here.

One of the tiles, possibly a Persian inspired one, though I'm not sure..

After the mosque we went to the American Embassy to be talked at some more, and they told us to avoid accidentally going to Yemen. We then had Thai food for lunch, which scared me (and the other half Thai girl on the program), but it was better than a lot of Thai food I've had in America, so there's that. In the evening we went to a souk, but after Morocco it takes a lot to get me excited about souks. I did have a rose milkshake and some lovely snacks, and it was nice to be right next to the water, since Ibri is rather far from the coast.

Get used to the car window photos

We ended our time in Muscat with an Arabic test, and then we headed onward to Ibri, only a three hour drive, but one that definitely seemed to take us to a very distant land, probably because of the extremely dramatic rocks and mountains that lined the road. I'll write about Ibri later, going to go do five hours of Arabic homework now. Masalaama!

P.S. My Instagram is broken :(

For some reason, I thought it would be flat.