How to be clean

How about some more?

Have you ever run out of toilet paper and decided to use the garden hose to clean up instead? Oh, and then found toilet paper, so used it to dry- throwing it in the ever-present trash can to your left? Yes! Well, then you’re ready to come to Oman- cause I sure wasn’t when I got here and was told that we would have to adapt this style because a) it would be expected of us, and b) the toilets would probably clog up cause they weren’t designed with toilet paper in mind.

What we have here is something between a b’day (I have absolutely no idea how to spell it nor have I ever seen one) and the garden hose I spoke of- next to every toilet is a sprayer type thing- similar to what some people have attached to their sinks on a hose. Evidentially we’re to consider ourselves lucky to be in Muscat, cause in some places of the interior you’ll just find a pitcher of water. Which of course is THE reason why you do not eat, pass things, or greet others with your left hand. The custom makes a whole lot more sense with the pitcher concept cemented in my mind.
(However, what I still have yet to understand is how people here end up getting the whole bathroom wet! Both in Dubai airport and at the Muscat festival I heard the person before me spraying quite a bit, and when he finished entered the stall to find the whole place effectively sprayed at least once over.)

Alright me, enough toilet talk.

The absolute most experience that Omani drivers can have in country is 38 years. That’s cause before 1970 there was something like 12km of road, and come to think of it I don’t even know why there was that much cause the Sultan at that time forbade such modern items as eyeglasses- so I certainly don’t know what they were thinking when building a road, let alone bringing in cars. Maybe the British were keen to have a nice smooth ride once in a while.
Oh, what I am doing is not giving you yet another history lesson- but trying to say that Omanis are awful drivers. The parents picked it up later in their lives, and kids growing up with it are mostly in the age where not driving fast is social suicide, so racing is…common. Also, text messaging is all the hype here, evidentially its easier than just talking; even while driving. But the government has tried to change people’s ways- by putting in speed bumps, making the driving test more stringent, and upping traffic fines. I think something that contributes as well is that car insurance is really cheap, and after you pay the $150 deductible, they’ll pay for the rest of any damage. I know $150 isn’t nothing, but compared to most body work it sure is.


Let me end this entry with something that brightens my day:
Imagine Europe 1000 years ago. Think back to your last history class for a minute and try to picture it… then change the location to the desert. Oman got by on subsistence farming, fishing, exporting dates and frankincense. Modernization that in Europe was invented and implemented over those last 1000 years was replicated here in 20. That’s not even a generation! Do some old ways still linger in Oman? (Read on for the answer)

Asked about traveling between Zanzibar and Oman (a distance of about 2500 mi) and how long it takes and how people would get there; one of the group members found out that what the most experienced and learned people do is go to a certain secret place in the interior- and teleport.