about the deadly desert and the generous beduins

Asalam*alaykum,


I hope this post finds you in good times. Today I want to tell you more about the country Oman.

Last weekend we went to the Omani desert - 50 degrees, endless rocks and sand, camels and still a beautiful place. Jihad (one of our Omani friends) got an invitation from his Beduin friend Hamdan, that we are all welcome to visit him and his family. So we did :-)

After several hours car ride, several time that we got stuck in the sand, that the wind blew sand in our eyes we reach the Barsma, an Beduin village in the desert. The Bedins gave up their nomad life quite some time and settled. But still they are trying to keep their traditions and way of life alive. So are hospitality and generosity major pillars of the society. Although we were 14 people, Hamdan's family invited us all for dinner, breakfast and lunch without hesitating and presented us amazing meals. They even slaughtered one of their goats for us for dinner. And they took their best one. I never met these people and still I didn't felt like a stranger.

Having some fruits as a starter for dinner and selecting our main dish (the goat) -we build our camp in the desert under a beautiful sky. Lightening up a camp fire we shared stories and drinks and enjoyed the mild 25 degrees :-) Who wanted to have an extra experience could watch some of Hamdan's friends slaughtering and preparing the goat.

After a few hours of sleep we got up at 6:00 am to see a camel race nearby. I have to admit that not all camels have an elegant running style :-) The most funny part for me were the Beduins who followed the Camels on their pick-up trucks to cheer / horn for them.
After that we had a nice breakfast at Hamdan's place and went on to hunt lizards in the desert. The Beduins developed an interesting technique. They search for holes in the sand, where the lizards live. Than they pump the exhaust fumes into the hole to suffocate the lizard. After a few minutes the lizards comes down by himself or you can easily pull him out. But the meat didn#t taste that good.

Having a nice lunch nap at the Beduin house and some chicken and rice we headed back home with full of memories between extreme heat and wonderful generosity.

Having arrived at home I decided to watch the new Batman movie (The dark night) in the movie theatre and had a great ending of the weekend by doing that.

So I hope you guys had a great weekend as well and hopefully the you some time here in Oman.

Hajo

Wadi bin Khalid - finaly I found cold water

Dear readers,


today comes another post about the countryside of Oman, Wadi bin Khalid !

This place is a drained riverbed in the mountains of Oman. It was an approx. 3 hour car ride from Muscat. If there would have been highways with more than one lane each direction, it would have probably only been around 2 hours :-) Because instead of driving 140 kmph we continuously got stuck behind a "slow" 100 kmph driving car.

Whatever, back to the Wadi. The Wadi itself is located in a deep canyon in the mountains. Because the whole riverbed is drained you'll find smaller stones and the end of the Wadi and huge rocks the closer you get to the spring. So, it turned out to become a nice hiking experience, as you can see on the pictures.
But the Wadi is actually not completely dry. From time to time you'll find some nice water pools between the rocks. After approx. 1.5 hour hiking trip we'll reached one of these. It was sourrounded by cliffs which were around 5-7m high at one end, And it was so deep that we couldn't see the ground. SO -> a great spot for cliff jumping. :-)))
And so we did, jsut right in the blue water and it was heavenly refreshing. It was not too cold, so that we didn't shiver but felt cold enough so that we didn't want to leave it any more. And it was fresh water, means drinkable.

After some nice jumps and fun, we headed back to our car, following some local boys who played chasing in the water pool and the surrounding cliffs.

So, if you ever have the chance to go to a Wadi, do it (not all of them are dry by the way :-)

My next post is going to be about my work at PricewaterhouseCoopers

Hajo

My people :-)

Hi all,

what's happening?

Today I want to give you some ideas of the people I share my time with.

There are several groups.

Group 1: the other AIESEC interns

Group 2: the AIESEC Oman national committee

Group 3: the local AIESEC Oman members and their friends

Group 4: my colleagues at PricewaterhouseCoopers

The interns

The AIESEC interns are the guys a spent the most time with. These are John (US), Elina (US), Celeste (US), Mufaddal (US) and Mikael (FIN). Muff is working with me at PwC and the rest are working at the HSBC bank here in Muscat. After work we are doing mostly the following, get some food at some nice place (mendhi, shawarma, hommuz, foul, chineese :-) or we spent some time at home chatting and making plans or we go out to a bar or cafe and have some drinks and shisha and/or we meet with the Omanis and play football and other activities. At the weekend we usually go to some place around Muscat (Beach, Souq, Diving center, etc.) or go around the region (Dubai or some place in Oman). Sometimes AIESECers from other countries drop by and then we go our with them.

The interns are all cool people and it's really nice hanging out with and I'm glad enjoying my time with them.

AIESEC national team members

the national team here consists of Lynn, Brett, David and Kate (all from the US). I know Lynn from the International Presidents Meeting in Macedonia in February and he is actually one of the main reason why I came to Oman. Until August they have their office in our house so we see them every day. They often organise some activity for the weekends and they are really helpful

for daily matters. Along with them are Amy (US and Lynn's girlfriend) and Susi (Colombia and Brett's girlfriend).

The Omanis

So far I met quite a few. There are Ghassan, Adham, Yaseen, Jihad, Hassan, Ahmed, Janid, Asma, Hasna, Tamira, etc.. So, these people often join us for our activities and it's great to experience their culture. Tonight we are going to play football. I just hope that I don't make a fool out of myself :-) I also try to learn some Arabic from them. But as almost everyone can speak English here which is mostly business language as well, it is not so easy to continuously improve on that.

My colleagues

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures from them yet.

But there are really nice. I share the busines advisory office with Vidya (India) she is the one I"m working most closely with, Absher (Omani), Jocelle ( India), Ahmed (Egypt), Lina (Oman) and the director for busines advisory services Abdulelah Salih (Oman) and the new partner Susan Daniel (Iraq).

The the audit site of the office are many more people, but I would take too much time to list up all the names :-)

Take care

Hajo

A day at the beach

Hello my friends,



as I have some free time at work right now, I use this chance to drop some line for you. Last weekend we went to one of the great beaches here. Unfortunetly, I don't have all the pictures to show you yet, but as soon as I receive them, you'll find them uploaded on my webalbum.



So, back to the beach. We went a few kilometers out of the city Muscat to a small village at the sea coast. There we embarked a small motor boat and cruised for a while through the sea. We, that were all the interns which are with AIESEC here in Oman (I'm gonna introduce them to you in my next post), some members of the national committee and some friends from Oman. Being on the boat and getting cooled by the wind was a real relief, because we had almost 45 degrees on that day. You can imagine how warm the water is here. I guess that the average water temperature in the Gulf of Oman is between 28 and 30 degrees. So, during the lunch and the afternoon the water is nice but it doesn't really cools you down. Luckily we had a pavillion with us so we could spent some time in the shadow.

Beside enjoying the time at the beach we had the chance to snorkel around the various cliffs around that place. There is a beautiful sea flora, many fishes, crabs crawling around and damn pointy rocks. At some spots the drift was so strong that it pushed me against some of the rocks which were covered with sharb corals and shells. It took some scratches and the salt water burned in the wound. But it was nothing serious.

Later that day we had a good traditional Omani lunch, enjoyed the drinks from the cool box and played some footbal (the American version and the rest of the worlds' version). Around sunset, which is usually around 5:30 pm, we went back on the boat and headed home. There I found out that I had a medium snburn on my back. I should have considered that when you snorkel, your back is exposed to the sun all the time :-) Lesson learned.



Alright, have a great day and my next post will be about the people that I'm sharing my time with here in Oman.



Hajo