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.