Quick update

Hello all... we've been bad about not updating this blog as much as we'd like to.... here's a quick update on what's been happening lately:

• We're still living at the Liwa hotel. We didn't take the big villa because there were too many pigeons already living there... we've decided to wait (another month at least) for the newer, nicer apartments;
• Living out here means getting up around 5:30am every day to arrive at work before 7:30. The morning always starts off with a school assembly and announcements in the courtyard, and includes a girl singing a part of the Koran. I don't know what she's saying, but it's beautiful to listen to (and the only time the students are actually quiet at all);
• Work is going well. I've been super busy and spending so much time in front of my computer that I don't even want to write e-mails in the evening (ergo the lack of updates);
• We made a valiant attempt to start a regular work-out schedule at the gym room in the hotel, in order to offset the effects of the breakfast buffet and a generally sedentary lifestyle. We managed to go 4 times the first week, 3 times the next week and once last week;
• Plans to see Margaret Atwood at the Dubai Literary Festival next weekend have been stymied as she is no longer coming. She's boycotting the festival because another author has been barred for writing a book containing "offensive content" about the Middle East;
• My Korean Pension payment finally came through, two weeks late and for the wrong amount. Happily, I was able to get it worked out with a lot of help from the Education Office in Gwangju. It's not a nice final Korean experience at all;
• The English teachers at my school treated me to some traditional "foule", or beans, made with tomatoes, spices, cucumbers and eaten with flat bread, then followed by strong, sweet tea because "foule makes you want to sleep";
• We've seen more camels wandering around lately - like bigger herds of them. We also caught sight of a few oryx (I think - gazelle type things with long horns) eating by the side of the road.
• I have a residence visa now - it's pretty and pink and fills up a whole page in my passport.
• There's a rumour about that we might get a week off this semester (it isn't in the regular school calendar), but we aren't sure when. Should we a) do a live aboard dive trip off a dhow in Oman or b) go to Egypt to see the pyramids?
• I've been waiting and hoping the new apartments would come through quickly, as it is pretty difficult to get on with life from a hotel in the middle of the desert, with no internet, or computer during the weeks.
• It's been a time for catchup on reading, getting guitar skills up to scratch, and generally finding anything to keep myself busy, including not letting room service come in to tidy the room, and making sure the washing is up to scratch. It's been a good holiday from the hectic business, and long teaching hours that marked the English Villiage job in Korea.
• I went to see Iron Maiden last weekend. It was fantastic, and only having about 2000 people, fairly intimate. It was also a really interesting cultural experience and rather strange seeing some women who were in Iron Maiden t-shirts and jeans, still constantly adjusting their headscarves to keep their head covered. I'm guessing about half the crowd had travelled from nearby middle-eastern countries - Iran, Iraq and Egypt included - just for the day, to watch the concert. They enjoy the music back home, but everything is so restricted, that they would otherwise never have a chance to watch their heroes live. I befriended a guy called Aiden, who emphatically invited us to stay at his home in Iran, whenever we have the chance to travel there. He had stories to tell. We'll definitely make the effort to get there.

Hope you've enjoyed this... it really is such a new and different experience from anything that we've lived before that it's a bit hard to choose what to write about! Thanks for reading, and we'll do our best to update more frequently from now on.

Hospitality, problems and solutions

Virginia wrote in the previous blog about mannerisms and the small things you pick up on when you first arrive in a country.

In South Africa there is a saying “’n Boer maak ‘n plan” An Afrikaaner/ farmer makes a plan. This is usually used by a certain type of person to point out their resourcefulness, just before they are ingeniously resourceful, and sort out some nagging problem. We are learning that this general attitude seems to exist here (perhaps because we are far from a big city, the type of place where this resourcefulness generally comes in handy).

Within the first few weeks of arriving in Madinat Zayed, Virginia had to get the ritual blood tests that are mandatory to fitting-in in any new country. We walked into the waiting room, which had the definite air of a bus stop, and saw 50 so men staring in our direction. After a little confusion Virginia was moved to the heads of each queue (women are given priority, though I am still uncertain whether it is to get them in and out of places quickly, as a way of avoiding them, or as a sign of respect). After getting the tests done, she needed a chest x-ray. The machine being broken, we came in the following day, to find that it was still out of order. The doctor at the desk took a quick look through Virginia’s papers, asked her if she’d had an x-ray before (presumably ever), and when she nodded, proclaimed, “Special problem, special solution”, and stamped the papers, as if that one stamp, empowered by that phrase, held the power to change the visa requirements of a country. It seems it did.

A few days ago this phase was buzzing through my head as some hotel staff helped me jumpstart our hired car. After searching for cables for a while, I found two men who took to the task at hand. Having realized the battery was dead, they rummaged in the back of a few bakkies (pickups for all you non-South Africans) in the hotel parking lot. One came up with two thick ropes of uninsulated cabling. He proceeded to test the battery by jamming the ends onto the terminals with his bare hands. Diving back from sparks and an electric jolt with a yelp, he declared that the battery strength was week. Fine. He and the other guy then tore up rags, which I guess had the same background as the cabling, and used the makeshift jumper-leads to get the car started again. “Special problem, special solution.”

And service with a smile. This takes me to today, and the hospitality we have been shown since we arrived here.

Today, Grant (a fellow husband in waiting; for the visa process to move along) and I took a drive down the road from the Liwa to have a look at a nearby settlement, and take some photographs of doors (it sounds odd I know, but each home here seems to have a brightly painted, elaborately designed door or gate, even if the place itself is crumbling).

The whitewashed, square housed town, which consists of perhaps thirty or forty homes, all built on a dune overlooking a palm tree covered oasis and across from a vast palace that has a glass pyramid poking up from its center, feels abandoned. Propped on the end of it is a beautiful bright white mosque (things can’t help looking bright here, as they are bathed in so much sunlight).

After a wander around town, which included meeting a Syrian man who, when he climbed out of his car turned out to be a giant, and a wander up the dunes, we decided to head down to the Mosque.

We took a couple of photos and then I decided we should have a wander around inside. After a few tentative steps through the gate and into the grounds (as we were worried about causing some kind of offence) we spotted a young man, barefoot, dressed in a shirt, and a wrap-around of holey material. I gestured, showing him that we just wished to look around. His smile broadened, and he invited us in and even allowed us to take some shots inside. The inside was beautiful with a high domed ceiling, chandeliers, and intricate stained glass windows.

“Are you drinking?” This was an invite to his house for tea. We went into what was indeed his humble abode. There we sat while this man my age, speaking just passable English, regaled us with conversation about his home, his job, and his family.

He told us that his name was Mohammad, later to be told that it was Mohammad Habaq, later to be shown his ID and find out that his first name is actually Habaq, while he has an entirely different surname, and only started going by Mohammad when he began work at the mosque.

He told us how he had two brothers, a mother, and a sister, all of who relied on him to send money back home in Bangladesh. How his father was, an upward flutter of the fingers “In heaven?”.. “Wit God”. How he earned 800 dirhams a month and sent home 600 of that to support his family. How his job was now to flick a switch so that the 5 calls to prayer would echo across the dunes; eventually arriving at our hotel which costs the same for a couple of nights as his monthly salary.

Here was a man who had invited us in and spent literally 5% of his disposable income on the orange juice, tea, rolls, jam and dates he was offering us for lunch, refusing any suggestion that he have some himself.

In the meanwhile we learned some tricks of being out in the desert; like if the room suddenly fills with flies, all that has to be done is to turn the light off and shut the door. Then open it just a crack, waving with your hands a little and the flies go pouring out into the light. The light was switched back on and the room was free of flies.

Overall meeting him and sharing that lunch was a truly humbling experience. Grant and I decided that we definitely need to take him out for a lunch or at the very least, if he can’t leave the mosque, to take him a lunch of some sort.

A while back I made a comment to Nawaf, that while we were watching the falcon racing, Virginia and I had somehow managed to get a police escort to the release nets to take some photographs. “Yes” he said “it is because you are a foreigner and we must look after you.” This without a hint of irony. He is from Pakistan and has only been here 3 years. He meant non-Arabic foreigner. “If I came to your country, or Canada, like this,” gesturing at the white gutra on his head, and the spotless white pyjama he wears every day, ”I would be treated the same way.” It was stated as something that should be an obvious truth, but said with a slight smile, that showed he understood just how unlikely it was that the same kind of hospitality would be forthcoming if he stepped into either country in traditional dress.

Then with another half smile, and what I have come to think of as a Nawafesque way of flipping things on their head, he said, “In Pakistan you might not get the same. I am from there, and they would not look after you before me. They would be nice about not looking after you first though.” He was well aware of the fact that we were getting special treatment here as non-Arabic foreigners, especially from people who are not originally Emirati. He did go further and say that people really were extra kind here. We may have a lot to learn about hospitality and respecting cultural differences. I think in the West the differences may often be respected, but probably are seldom seen as reasons for extreme hospitality.

Inshallah... and other concepts

One of the great things about living in a new country is learning the new mannerisms and sayings.

In Korea, for example, I learned to suck my breath in through clenched teeth to signify that I wasn't sure about something, or maybe frustrated by a question, or just in need of a few teeth-sucking minutes to think about my next move. I learned to say "no" by crossing my forearms in front of me, and to invite a person over by wiggling my fingers with my palm facing down, not up. We heard, but didn't use, emphasized words preceded by a strong gutteral hiss and I learned, the hard way, that "maybe" was generally "I don't know".

Every country has its own body language or oft-repeated phrase that becomes a significant part of the communication between its citizens. An alert traveler might pick up on these things after only a few days ~ I'm thinking of the rather prolific head wobble that is characteristic of Rajasthan in India, or the kissy-sound that is a friendly way of getting attention in Cuba ~ and here, Ty and I do consider ourselves to be alert travelers when it comes to decoding some of the gestures and words around us, using contextual clues to figure out what someone might mean, and even straight-out asking about it.

The first gesture we noticed was a clasping of the fingertips and thumb together, palm up, and a slight shake. It's what we, as Westerners, might use to signify "money" or "expensive", as we rub our fingertips together. Here, it's a nice way of saying "Wait a minute" or "hold on", even when the shake is rather vigorous. A bit shocking the first time someone waves their hand under your nose and then wanders off.

Remember that friendly kissy-sound from Cuba? Here, it's an expression of displeasure... a sort of "uh-uh" interjection that flows easily into conversation. We heard our friend Nawaf using it repeatedly as he tried to negotiate a better deal for our first rental car.

Finally, and certainly not the least common, is "Inshallah" or "God willing". It's the one word you can't help but hear, and you hear it, in every sentence, in every situation, in every environment. The meaning of it, however, seems to varied. First off, as "I'll do my best, but God has the final say" ~ such as when someone is asked to do something, like: "Can you fix this by tomorrow?" "Ahhh yes, Inshallah." Another interpretation of it is, unfortunately, "I'm not going to do a damn thing, and God will make it happen, or not." At this point, it's pretty hard to differentiate which Inshallah is being used when you're asking for something. Finally, there's the "Don't be too sure about that" idea, where when you have stated that something will happen, the people around you will generally reply, with a knowing look, "Inshallah".

All I can say is that I've started using it, sparingly, myself.

It's a neat saying, and I've taken it on as being a new way of looking at things, a sort of "How can you be so sure that this will happen, just because *you* want it to?", or the idea that circumstances (I hesitate to attribute everything to a higher power) may prevent something from happening, or allow it to. Some people do use it as a sort of a joke, a reason for why things might not happen on time, and I've found it makes a lovely excuse not to promise anything. Last week, a teacher asked me if I would observe her class as scheduled the following day. Knowing full well that I had a busy day ahead of me, but that I would try my best, I answered her the only way that she and I could both clearly understand....

"Inshallah"

Where we live...

Well, not exactly - I mean, I have yet to see a giraffe. The ladies in their burqas (leather masks that cover the cheeks and forehead) can still be seen around, but they are generally very old. The dunes, however, are pretty much our backyard these days:



We hope to find that mysterious coast of dhows and turtles one day soon...