Austin Goes to Salalah

Today, I have a guest author on my blog-- my son Austin!  He spent a few days in Salalah (in southern Oman), where Joe's company is building a gypsum quarry.  I will let him tell you all about it!

 

This is the view from my dads quarry as you are looking out into the desert. Besides a few small trees here and there it is pretty much barren as you might expect. What you can't see are a few scraggly bushes in the distance that produce frankincense. There are very few places with the right soil composition to grow these prosperous plants. One of these places is Oman which helped the country grow prosperous before the discovery of oil.

When you think of the desert, usually the first thing that comes to mind is unbearable heat and wasteland with no plants. But during the Khareef season in Salalah it is cooler (which is relative to the regular heat) and it is possible to see the beauty in the land that has stayed uncultivated by humans for hundreds of years.

And this is it. The reason we moved out to Oman. This is the part of the quarry where the gypsum is processed and broken up into small pieces so it is able to be used to make wallboard and other building materials. You currently see some of the porta-cabins which are the temporary offices while the official ones are being built.

So as you might imagine internet connection and cellular service is hard to come by in the middle of the desert. So you need an extra big antenna to make up for that!

Hard hat swag.

This is a rug in a sheik's majilas room (room for entertaining male guests). I felt the need to take a photo of it because it is a spectacular shade of hot pink with glitter mixed into it. A sheik is a leader of a village and we met with them to broker personal relationships with the surrounding villages and to help them out in little ways like hiring men from those villages or renting equipment from them.

Hospitality is a big thing in the Omani culture. Before lunch we were served dates with coffee and fruit platters. Most guests are treated with such generous gifts of food to start out a visit well.

                                                You have to have a TV in a bachelor pad!

Camel meat and rice. A normal lunch for a man who owns over forty camels. And while camel meat is tougher and chewier than beef it is surprisingly tasty when well done. This particular camel was boiled to cook it and then seared to give it the crust and bring out the flavor.

                                      The whole layout of our first meeting with the sheik.

                                                         Sheik Beheit and my old man!

Today we ate lunch in the Omani style. One big plate and everybody just digs in. This time it was with goat instead of camel and it was simply fantastic.

The Omanis eat by taking some rice and some goat and then squeeze it in their hands till they get a ball of food which they then pop into their mouth. If you know me at all then you know that I can eat quite a lot. But these men could give me a run for my money. I was a foot taller but they could put that rice away! By the end there was precious little left on the plate.

During the Khareef season, up in the mountains, it can get kind of foggy. And in the best of conditions Omanis aren't the best of drivers. [Austin means that they can be a bit daring, shall we say.] When you can barely see fifteen yards in front of you it becomes downright dangerous. It is a 45 minute commute to the quarry from the villa where my dad stays at and he makes this drive twice a day!

I hope you enjoyed Austin's trip to Salalah.  I was hoping to make it there myself this summer, but Joe wants me to wait until it stops raining so much.  Maybe September!