The Oman Episode

Things have gotten busy at work, so I hardly noticed that this last week was one of the biggest holidays in the Islamic calendar, Al Eid. I saw that we got a five day weekend, so I looked into flights to Turkey or Lebanon, but it seemed pretty expensive considering two of those days would be travel. Then, last Thursday, we got an email saying classes were canceled for the other two days of the week, creating a ten day holiday- enough time to go almost anywhere in the world. But, with one day's notice, plane tickets were now extremely high. After a bit of research, I realized that Gulf Air works like a bus- you always pay the same price as long as a seat is available in that class. Since I was flexible, I booked a cheap flight to Oman, a country I never really thought twice about before. It turns out that since the Islamic calendar is linked to the lunar cycle, it's impossible to know the exact dates of some festivals until they get officially declared.
The Lonely Planet website seemed disappointed in the changes since Oman had been discovered. This was news to me, but briefly looking at the map, I realized the huge expat community in the United Arab Emirates would be able to drive directly into Oman, bringing globalization with them. I flew into the capital, Muscat, which would be an unnecessarily long drive from the border, so I ran into relatively few Westerners. Like Bahrain, however, most people on the street and working were actually Indian, who provide most of the service economy's labor in the Gulf States. I assume most of the Omani people were celebrating Eid with their family, not in tourist areas.
Lonely Planet did have another great suggestion, which was to camp there. By Bedouin tradition, you can camp anywhere that is not clearly marked as private land, including most beaches and roadsides. So I went to Carrefour (that's French for Wal-mart)and bought a tent and sleeping bag for the cost of one night in a hostel.
When I landed, I asked the rent-a-car guy where the nearest place to camp was. He had never heard of such a thing, so he asked the guys next to him, and they suggested getting a hotel. So, I just picked up the free map, saw where the mountains were and started driving. I turned onto secondary and then tertiary roads where the streetlights ended, and just set up roadside. I woke up to the sound of goats. A herder was working them towards me, so I broke camp and headed back into town. After a day of sight seeing, I tried to head out in the opposite direction, but got repeatedly turned around. It turns out that all roads do, in fact, lead to Muscat. Eventually I found my way into the mountains and set up at a very lonely campsite, only to be woken up by a very large animal roaming the field. It sounded like a bull, but I decided to sleep in the car for the rest of the night just to be safe.
On the way back into town, I turned into a small village by the sea and came upon a guy butchering a cow right on the street. There were at least ten children watching the bloody mess (American, not British sense). An hour later, I came upon people butchering goats in a park. I only found out later that Eid is traditionally celebrated by slaughtering an animal and sharing the meat with the rest of the community. Muslims, like Jews and Christians, trace their heritage back to Abraham, so Eid is actually the celebration of his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac to God. It's celebrated by Suni, Shiite, and Sufi alike, and is thought to be the best time to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, so pretty much everything shuts down for a week or so.
I spent the last night on a public beach on the outskirts of town. It was so crowded when I arrived that I had to backpack my gear in about a kilometer. It was nice to camp near other people, and the sand was a lot softer than rocky desert, but there was something quite magical about the empty back country of Oman. I'll certainly try and go back before my time here is over.

Taking Care of Business

In the last two weeks, my job has gone from a means to an ends to the highlight of being here. After five schedule changes (a personal record), I now only teach one and a half undergraduate classes. Because of my low course load, I got assigned to observe my students teaching in the local primary school, as well as developing a professional development class on Globalization and the Classroom.

Getting off campus has been great. The university is very comfortable for me, since it's officially bilingual English- Arabic. This helps since my department has faculty from Turkey, Eritrea, Singapore, Egypt, Bahrain, and your lonely American. The elementary school is in a town fifteen minutes away, but is a completely Arabic environment, although they begin to take English classes in fourth grade.

The schools are strictly separated by sex, so they needed a male professor to supervise in the boys school. I've been very impressed by my student teachers- much better than my first year at Mission High! They can all do classic lecture- worksheet style classes very well, but it's harder to do group work or introduce technology, because the students aren't as familiar with it. In any case, there are far fewer discipline issues, and the elementary students seem to be interested in math at a level I have never seen in the US.

I'd like to claim I got to teach about globalization because of my experience with Thinking Beyond Borders. Actually, I needed to teach two more classes to be full time, and my supervisor said that this class was the only one with two unclaimed sections. The students are all full time teachers taking extra courses at the Ministry of Education to become master teachers. They could potentially be a tough audience, but so far they seem very interested and pretty energetic considering the time slot. The major issue is that I need to teach in English and their professional life is almost completely in Arabic. Sometimes the English teachers translate, and I try to use a lot of visuals and activities, but it's not always smooth. The other issue is that they teach all different grades and subjects, so my class is not always applicable to their job.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the level of responsibility and discretion I've been given. There are, of course, the usual weird things, like we need to use Power point in all classes, but mostly they trust my opinion. I suppose the years of adjunct work at three or four jobs was a good preparation. I'm physically in three locations for the next six weeks, spending a lot of time in my rental car listening to the BBC, but getting lost on the backstreets less and less frequently.

First impressions of Bahrain: Hot and Muggy

My first impressions of Bahrain were a little foggy. This was in part due to the 32 hour journey from San Francisco, but perhaps more because my glasses fogged up immediately upon leaving the airport. As they say back in DC, it's not the heat, it's the humiture.
My second impression of life here was that there seemed to be no actual Bahrainis. I was put up in a hotel for the first week while I confirmed my apartment. It was staffed almost exclusively by Filipinos and Indians. Everywhere I went, stores, cafes, and restaurants all seemed to be staffed by Filipinos and Indians. There are a lot of Americans near the Naval base, and almost every nationality in the diplomatic area, but very few Bahrainis.
Part of this had to do with arriving during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. Since eating and drinking is allowed at night, many Bahranis stay up all night and sleep most of the day during Ramadan. Almost every place has shorten hours, and no restaurant or cafe is open during the day, as I found out the hard way. It's also forbidden to wear shorts and smoke in public during Ramadan-I'm still not sure why. I was surprised when my Human Resources person couldn't tell me the end of Ramadan. Because it's linked to the lunar calendar, they all wait for an official announcement over the TV that leads to four days of feasting to make up for lost time. A bit like snow days, I suppose.
I later heard that somewhere between a third and a half of all the people in the country are expats, and most of the Bahrainis stay out of the port area. This goes back to the early twentieth century, before the oil era, when Bahrain was a major pearl exporter. It became a critical link between British India and the rest of the Middle East, particularly Persia. As part of what was euphemistically called the informal empire, Bahrain's port of Manama became flooded with foreigners, and English was the easiest means of communication between communities. To this day, I use English with almost everyone I deal with, including the gas station attendent and janitors. While this makes life a lot easier day to day, it has frustrated my attempts to learn Arabic. The only Bahrainis I actually know are my students, who are always excited by any attempt on my part to speak Arabic. They don't think much of the Syrian speaker I imitate from Pimsleur, though.
The port area where I live has a certain Las Vegas feel about it: There are a lot of super modern tall box buildings, surrounded by empty desert areas. I ended up near the Navy base, so there are also a lot of American chain restaurants, including some I had forgotten about, such as Bennigan's, Benihana's, and TGIFriday's (weekend starts on Thursday here, though). And don't worry Dad, I spotted an Applebee's the other day, too. Despite eating good in my neighborhood, I have already lost about ten pounds. Probably water weight...

Bahrain: the next phase

After finishing my round the world trip with Thinking Beyond Borders, I took a few months off to relax in San Francisco. I accepted a job working in a teacher's college in Bahrain, an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf. I've never been to the Middle East, don't speak Arabic, and only have a vague idea about Islam, so it seemed like a great second adventure. I have a two year contract and expect to visit the US again next summer between academic years (also to avoid the 120 degree summer days in Bahrain). I will fly to Bahrain tomorrow afternoon.

My preparations this time around have been relatively light. I had to take a physical, but no vaccines this time. There was a small amount of paperwork for my visa and job, but nothing compared to eight countries worth last year. I've been listening to a number of CDs from the library: a history of the Middle East, a history of Islam, and Pimsleur Arabic lessons, which I am downloading as I type. I'm a big believer in Pimsleur's method, no writing and all conversation, which is what I want when I travel. However, I am getting some interference from studying Chinese last year, since it's the same phrases.

I also had my second annual good bye to SF party, combined with my 39th birthday this time. It was nice to see everyone one last time, but suspect they may attend next year if the timing works out! Through the magic of the Internet, I'm already looking at apartments, and have it down to four potentials. They all have gyms, pool, and maid service included. I may be able to get used to this lifestyle, after living with roommates most of my life.

My friend Loic told me he had heard of recent Suni and Shiite unrest in Bahrain. The king and most high government officials are Suni, while the majority of citizens are Shiites. This means that the government has close relations to Saudi Arabia (it's even connected by a fifteen mile causeway). However, many citizens have relatives and friends in Iran. While Bahrain is considered politically and socially moderate, there has

been a recent crack down on freedom of speech and political dissent. The US Navy's fifth fleet is based there, due to close political alliance with the United States. I am unsure how the average Bahraini feels about Americans.

The Ostrich Capital of the World

This was a three-day weekend to celebrate Freedom Day-the anniversary of Nelson Mendela’s release. I decided to head out to Oudtshoorn, about four hours away into the desert interior, which you may now by it’s other name: The Ostrich Capital of the World. When I arrived, the guy at the hostel convinced me to rent a mountain bike and do a 54 kilometer tour. The next morning I started at a high mountain pass, then dropped down multiple dirt road switchbacks for about 10 km.
I stopped in at the Cango Caves, which claim the largest stalagmite formations in the world. The tour was pretty challenging physically, often involving climbing up and down tight passages. The crawling was a little worrisome, mostly because my sunglasses and camera were in still in my pockets. Why I would bring sunglasses into a cave is any one’s guess.
Then the highlight: the ostrich farm. Inspired by avatar, I got the chance to ride the big bird. To mount, they blindfold it in a pen, so it won’t bite. Then you get on top, grabbing it by the wings. The ostrich has a hump for storing water, like a camel, so it’s comfortable enough to sit on. Then they open the pen, and it’s a bit like rodeo. I’d estimate I lasted eight seconds- not bad. The key is to not get kicked while

Putting the Z in ZA

I'm not sure why, but South Africans abbreviate their country ZA. I suspect Slovenia was quicker on the draw...

When we landed in South Africa from India, we ran into a bit of culture shock, The highway was smooth with little noise or dust and traffic staying on its side of the road. The group went to Rocky Road, a rural backpacker hostel, for our country orientation. After a few days of seminars, we visited the local townships where the students would work. The service project here is to follow hospice workers in the townships. Many of the patients are HIV positive, but with the new class of highly active anti-retrovirals treatments (HAART) it can be difficult to tell.

South Africa has the highest incidence of AIDS in the world, although India will probably pass it in gross numbers soon. There are a number of causes: extreme poverty, poor women’s rights, the legacy of Apartheid leading to slow public policy initiatives, and the strength of the economy regionally, which encourages a large number of men to migrate. One of the more powerful images of the epidemic for me was seeing a century old church graveyard doubled in size and nearly filled over the last ten years.

For the remainder of our time, we’re staying in Plett, a white beach town on the Indian Ocean that feels a lot like southern California. However, the students go everyday into the townships only a few miles away. There the living conditions range from lower working class to impoverished, sometimes euphemistically called informal housing. Most students seem to emotionally bond with the care worker they shadow. While they might complain about the slow pace of the work, they all seem to recognize how these women are able to make an important difference in someone’s life, often with very few resources of their own.

Delhi

Our enrichment week was to visit Delhi and the Taj Mahal. We arrived late at night in the backpackers section of town. The next morning we were awoken by the pandemonium that is city life in India: lots of mixed pedestrian/motorcycle/car traffic in every direction, noise, and dust.
We visited the Red Fort and the outside of the Jama Masjid Mosque (it was closed for mid-day prayer). I was surprised by the extent of Islamic influence in the capital city. Before the British, it had been the capital of the Moghuls and some of the architecture remains. The British tried to create a more ordered capital, hence the contiguous New Delhi.
We went out to Agra later in the week to see the Taj Mahal. It was incredible, the only difficulty being we could not visit it for sunrise, since it is closed on Fridays. By the end of our visit, the students and myself were all eagerly awaiting our arrival in South Africa, and the chance to eat beef.

The Village People

We moved out of A'Bad and into a small rural community about two hours away to begin work on our project. The students are doing home stays in three local villages. They're all pretty much celebrities: The main entertainment in town seems to be to take them to different houses to have chai and be stared at by as many as thirty people. Apparently, there was a Peace Corps worker in one village about twenty-five years ago, and people still talk about it. For many of the locals, our students are the first Westerners they've ever met. While this was funny for the first few days, some of the students are badly in need of private time and space. This is particularly difficult for female students trying to read for our seminar. There is a lot of sexism in the village culture, and so some families are incredulous that our students actually need to prepare for class.

The other major hiccup has to do with actually doing sustainable agriculture. The host families are all Brahman, the highest caste. The honor of having foreign guests would naturally fall on these families, and they've been extremely hospitable. However, their wealth means they hire workers for the fields, and don't engage in a lot of the actual practice of farming. Again, the female students get to do a lot of choirs, but mainly around the kitchen, since girls don't typically farm. The boys, well, they play a lot of cricket. We've tried a work around, having the students due interviews on farming practices for a local government outreach center. At the end of this visit, the students will have had once in a lifetime home stays, but probably not too much practical knowledge of sustainable farming techniques.

My bad? No, A'bad

We left Cambodia for India the day after Christmas. We had a brutal six-hour lay over in Mumbai from midnight to 6 AM. Many of the students slept directly on the tile floor. When we arrived in Ahmadabad, there were a few hundred people in traditional Islamic clothing on their way to Mecca for the Haj. It was very foreign, unexpected, and rather dream like after the long hours of travel. When we stepped outside there were a few hundred more people pushed together, shouting for attention, basically a realistic introduction to India.

Ahmadabad (or A’bad, as the kids say) is in Gujarat, which is in the northeast of India, bordering Pakistan. It’s a monsoon climate, so I was surprised to see camels pulling carts in the traffic. I guess we’re here during the dry winter months, so it works. Although it is majority Hindu state, there is a significant Muslim minority. It’s a dry state, which goes well with our program’s no drinking for students policy. Our food has been almost exclusively vegetarian (a few students found McDonald's- it’s a sixth sense with teenagers). While the veggie diet has lead some students to talk about being tired all the time, this combination means I’m losing some of my baby fat.

Our partner organization planned a pack week for orientation, including unexpected language classes. Our Gujarati teacher, Mr. Shukla is straight out of a Seinfeld episode. I can't tell if it's his English, or a cultural thing, but there is definitely a lot of back and forth to get anything across. For example, he asked what do we want to know how to say in Gujarati. I said "Where is the bathroom?" He says...well, it's down the hall. We asked him how to say "Can you show me?" So he puts up "can you show me the hillside?" Who, you might ask, is asking about the hillside? Well, Mr. Shukla is asking, and don't try to stop him- it'll just take another ten minutes. One student asked how do you say "Why?", so he taught us "Why are you screaming at me?" Actually,that might be a useful phrase based on his personal experience. Last one- someone asked how do you say "Is it far?" He pauses, then asks, "You want me to teach you...in Gujarati?" In any case, it seems like the students learned enough to say a few things to their host families, it's all charades from there.

Holiday in Cambodia

For the enrichment week between China and India, our group went to Cambodia. This meant that we would be having Christmas in a country none of us had ever visited, which was a little daunting considering the level of homesickness some of the students already exhibited.

We landed in Phenom Phen and the next day went to the killing fields. We felt like it would be impossible to visit Cambodia and not talk about the genocide, but we also wanted to give as much distance as possible with the visit and Christmas. When you walk into the site, there is a seven story building for all of the bones taken from mass graves. The bottom two levels are filled with skulls, which helped to give a visceral sense of the magnitude of the killing. Many of the skulls showed where a bullet had penetrated. Perhaps more disturbing was the clothing come up from shallow graves the victims were forced to dig themselves.

The entire process was very sobering, and my co-leader Jess did a great job of debriefing. It seems like the genocide falls into the gray area between current news and history classes, so many of the students hadn't even heard of it.

The next few days were spent at Angkor Wat and surrounding temples, which was a welcome relief. Like Machu Pichu, it was spectacular, but perhaps loved to death by tourists. It was hard to feel any spiritual connection surrounded by a thousand clicking cameras. We did visit one outlying temple in disrepair that the students nicknamed the Indian Jones temple. There were far fewer tourists and it felt much more like what the entire complex must have looked like a hundred years.

The end of the Tea and Horse caravan

The last week in China we went out to Shaxi, a rural community in the north of Yunnan, close to the Tibetan plateau. On the way to we stopped in Dali, a well touristed town originally famous for marble production.

Shaxi existed as a town because of it's location near a river on the Tea and Horse caravan, a less well known parallel to the Silk Road. It ran to the south, through Burma and on into India. Because of it's climate, it was snow free through the winter, providing an attractive alternative, especially during the winter.

Previous to being incorporated, this part of Yunnan was an independent kingdom. The Tang dynasty had attempted an alliance to prevent Tibetan hegemony of the area, but eventually this kingdom became more of a threat than the Tibetans.

Most people of Shaxi are of the Bai ethnicity (see pictures). They are one of the many non-Han people in the southwest of China. While they tend to be financially less well off, you can feel a real sense of community in Shaxi, which seems to be more important for them.

Our students seemed to enjoy their home stays here more than in the city of Kunming, mostly because the pace of rural life allowed for more interaction and the natural beauty of the area. Two students seemed to have stepped into a family feud. They were housed on opposite sides of a large mansion, owned jointly by feuding brothers. The mansion was in a state of disrepair due to an inability to reach an agreement on how to maintain it. This gave it a Scooby Doo feel to it, including secret compartments in the wall that boarding traders would use to hide their valuables.

Our local host and partner, Sam Mitchel commented frequently that Shaxi was a lot like Dali had been fifteen years ago, so the question of what increased tourism will do to this town remains an open one.

Little Trouble in Big China

To get from Cuzco, Peru to Kunming, China only required about 54 hours of travel and five airplanes. Being a little sleepy, one of the students left a computer on board the airplane. I quickly realized that my basic Chinese was not really up to the situation. Fortunately, the airport had a translator and we got the computer back in lost and found. I'm not sure we'd have been so lucky in most countries.
Our first few days were in Tonghai, a small town outside of Kunming. We used this time for orientation, a few seminars and Chinese classes. We also visited a local temple, which seemed to double as a senior center. On any given day retirees play maj jong, play musical instruments or just sip tea. I found out later that Kunming has become a favorite spot for retiring Chinese, it's also one of the most touristed cities in China.
Kunming is in Yunnan in the southwest of China, which is definitely my favorite part of the country. There are over fifty minority groups, who often wear traditional dress around town. We stayed in the Yunnan Minorities University (Minzu Dashue), which had been set up to promote education of ethnic minorities. It wasn't until about 1300 during the Yuan (Mongolian) dynasty that Yunnan even became part of China, so it still has a wild west feel to it, especially outside of the city where minorities maintain their traditional cultures. They have a saying here that "the mountains are high and the emperor is far", so there isn't the sense of government authoritarianism that I felt on the east coast.
Yunnan borders Schezuan to the north, so the food is spicy, sometimes ridiculously so. I like it, but neither of my co-leaders cared much for it. One of my favorite dishes, even from Yantai five years ago, is Ma La Tofu. I never actually knew what the name meant. It turns out, it's spicy spicy tofu. The La is Yunnan style spice, which is straight heat you'd recognize in most peppers. The Ma is the lip numbing spice, which I had never noticed before.
My only complaint with Kunming was that it was so cold. It snowed for the first time in five years while we were there. We didn't have any indoor heating, so I'd go days on end feeling cold. The good news was there are plenty of western style cafes and restaurants with pretty good heating and coffee (rare in China), so I could always go hang out there to warm up. The locals prefer hot pot, which is boiling water you use to cook your own meat and veggies.it is also usually very spicy, so has been known to have consequences and repercussions later in the night.