Salalah - That's Where I Wanna Go

Village of Taqah 

     In my just over a month of living in Oman I have come to realize that it is lucky enough to incorporate a variety of different types of people, languages, cultures, and landscapes. This variety can be seen, on a very micro scale, as in, within the capital of Muscat, where you have the Omani population as well as European ex-patriots, Pakistanis, Indians, as well as many others. However, looking at a much larger, or macro, scale is the differences between the northern part of Oman and the southern region, known as Dhofar. Comparing and contrasting the two is almost as though you are comparing and contrasting two different countries. I always knew there were differences but I did not truly understand how different until I took a trip to Salalah with the rest of the SIT students.

     There is a long history of the Dhofar region and its people, however, I am not totally clear on all of it so I will do my best to give a short yet accurate account of the past 45 years. In 1965, the final ruling years of Sultan Qaboos’ father, the Dhofari people felt that they should secede from northern Oman and thus, civil war ensued. It is an odd situation because the whole time that the Dhofar wars were going on in Salalah the current Sultan along with his father were hauled up in their Salalah palace. In 1970 Sultan Qaboos bin Said rose to power and within 5 years he put an end to the war, uniting Oman once and for all. He did this with, what Dhofari and Northern Omani people alike consider, one of the most charismatic and moving speeches of all time. In this speech he laid out his dreams for Oman, his dream of unity, of development, and of modernity. Since then Dhofar has been a large part of achieving that dream, being the largest exporter of Frankincense in the world as well as other goods, like bananas and coconuts, and attracting tourists from all over The Gulf and Europe to see its unique natural features. These unique natural features mainly include the tropical setting that is Salalah, and surrounding regions. In what is called the “Al Khariif” season a monsoon comes and all the rain produces mountains that are the same color as the mountains right outside Boulder during the summer. No-where else in the Arabian Gulf is one so surrounded by colors other then the red glow of desert.
     My trip began in the earlier hours of Wednesday, September 29^th as I boarded a plane to Salalah from Muscat International Airport. We arrived in Salalah at around noon and with out skipping a beat we made our first stop. The Ministry of Tourism was extremely interesting to me because it will play a big part in my final paper and just as I had suspected almost the entire meeting was like a time share presentation dedicated to selling the lot of us on all of the unique properties Salalah had to offer. “Come to beautiful Salalah” the presentation said with a slide show playing in the background filled with pictures of beautiful landscapes and soothing music.

Salalah Port

     After the ministry we headed off to the Salalah Free Zone. What a free zone is, for all of you who don’t share my infinite amount of knowledge, is a place set aside for foreign companies to set up shop independent, mostly, from the Omani government. The “Free Zone” was still mostly empty space but we could see the budding foreign investment as a few factories were built and being built and the tour guide was very informative in telling us the big plans for the future.

     We then made our way to the Salalah ports. These were quite the sight to see. The bus drove us up onto a hill over looking the entire port, which resides on The Indian Ocean, and our tour guide explained to us its main functions. Ships coming from all over the world would stop at these ports and there were products imported from Africa as well as resources like frankincense as well as others being exported out. We were lucky enough to see an Indian ship filled to the brim with cows that were being imported, which as a guilt prone American, really made me think (mostly about cheeseburgers but you get the point). These ports are at a large part of the economy down there in Dhofar and it was a great experience getting to see how they functioned.

    Something incredible happened after this. We got a break. The group and I headed to a hotel called Hafa House for a couple of hours to eat some lunch and rest up for the night ahead. The hotel was actually very nice. This may be because I am on Hotel Naseem standards; the hotel we stayed at during orientation, however, and it seemed to be a pretty good spot. The rooms had comfortable beds, a sitting area, a TV, a cupboard, a chest of drawers and most importantly, a very nice bathroom. The group all went out to get lunch and went back to have some fun at the establishment’s fine swimming establishments, however, when we got back we were disappointed to find out that it was the one hour a week that was for ladies only. It is a time for women to truly express themselves in a pool like setting. This, as it happens, worked out very well for me as I found two local Dhofari youths to chat with for a good 45 minutes.

    At 5 o’clock the bus picked us up and took us all to the Al Baleed archeological site. Here, a very cool guide named Ya’rob took the group around to look at old, dilapidated mosques and we saw Frankincense Land as a testament to the regions chief export. There was not much to see here and while we are being taught not to judge but interpret what we see, my short supply of patience and attention span lead me to believe most of what I was looking at was not much more then mounds of dirt. We spent some time in the museum, learning about the region and saw models of the different boats used for trade as well as learned about Islam in Dhofar. This was very interesting considering I love the water so learning about a place whose entire economy rested on marine trade was a truly valuable experience.

     We went to Hafa Souq, the big Souq in Salalah, for some dinner and shopping. It was, for the most part, similar to many of the souqs found in Muscat. It featured the same diversity in people and products that the souqs here generally do, however, it did not quite measure up to the beauty and style of the Mutrah Souq. After a quick run through of the many shops we all met for dinner at an Indian restaurant and ate a delicious dish called mushakeek, which is like a shish kebab.

     The second day was even busier than the first. We started off the day by going to Dhofar University, where we were served a very pleasant breakfast while listening to a lecture by a woman named Janet Williamson. Ms. Williamson is the director of the Engineering College at Dhofar University and she was Canadian before becoming an Omani citizen. She had spent a lot of her youth traveling and in the late 70’s, just after Sultan Qaboos had taken over and when Oman was still quite under developed; she arrived in Oman to become a teacher. Since then she has converted to Islam and become a Salalah man’s second wife and had three children of her own with him. When I first heard this, the same thing went through my head that is most likely going through all of yours. I thought, “How could this empowered and intelligent woman just forfeit all of her values of independence and become a man’s second wife. But before you judge a few steps must be taken. The first is you just have to accept that is would never work for you and that becoming a man’s second wife is just totally something that is foreign and out of the question. Then you have to take into account that this woman has her own house in which she lives, with her three children, and is still a prominent figure in the education community of Salalah. Finally consider that Ms. Williamson was intent on creating a life for herself here in Oman and to do that a woman really needs to have a man in her life to provide her with security and stability, especially in Salalah. After these things are considered, while still remaining foreign and almost backwards, it is easier to see how this choice may have been right for the type of person that Ms. Williamson is.

Taqah

     After a very interesting lecture on the history and culture of Dhofar we were formally introduced to two of Ms. Williamson’s three children, one of which is named Susan and the other Talal and then we headed to a small village a little bit outside Salalah named Taqah. This village is both the birthplace and the resting place of the Sultan’s mother and while we were there we were not only able to explore one of the old forts but also see the location of her grave. The fort was in a similar construction as many of the other forts that are so common to Oman but being inside one was certainly interesting.

     The entire drive to Taqah and then onward was all up the coast of Dhofar, which is along the Indian Ocean. We were able to stop on the beach for a bit and see the pristine sands, with almost no one on it, and the blue water that resembled a similar color to what you would see in the Caribbean. Eventually we came to another Archeological sight called Khor Rori, which is an abandoned village that over looked what is known as the Valley of the Witches. This place carried all the same types of eeriness that you can find in Salem, Massachusetts, where the witch trials took place. It is unknown why this town was abandoned but strange goings on have been supposedly witnessed in the valley below, especially every Thursday night, when some of the more shady locals go there to practice “black magic”.

     All this and it was only lunch time. We were lucky enough to have a four-course meal scheduled at the Marriot in the village of Mirbat, a village a bit more then an hour outside of Salalah. The Marriot, as always, is a beautiful place, located on the beach with a great view of the ocean. I was lucky enough to finish lunch early and spent the next 45 minutes listening to James Taylor on the beach. It was one of the most relaxing times in my entire life. On the way back to Salalah we stopped at this Darbat looking point and the beauty of the rolling green hills that this point looked over is too vast for me to even try to explain so ill just let the pictures do the talking.

     After a swim in the Hafa House pool and a quick nap we met Ya’rob, Susan, Tilal and our other hosts set up a huge barbeque in a dirt field a bit off the highway. It was great because there was tons of food and it was extremely relaxing. I took it upon myself to try camel meat, which tasted suspiciously like lamb, and we drank camel milk, however, I only had one sip because to me it tasted like warm grease and it apparently wreaks havoc on your entire digestive system. We finished off the night with a lesson from Ya’rob in Dhofari dancing, and let’s just say I dance like a rythemless American.

     On the final day of our trip we woke up early and made our way into the mountains to the prophet Job’s tomb. The drive was extremely enjoyable because it was a first hand look at the green mountains that I have been telling you about this entire time. For those of you who do not know the story of Job he was a man who lived over 3000 years ago in the Mediterranean are of the Middle East, I believe in the Lebanon area but I’m not 100 percent on that. He was a rich man and one day God took away all of his wealth and power and left him penniless so he and his wife picked up and moved to Yemen. There, he became very sick with leprosy and was forced to be a shut in, leaving only his wife to take care of him. Through out all of this he remained patient, faithful that God would reward him for his faith despite his suffering and low and behold he was right. God restored wealth, health and youth, to him and his wife and they lived the rest of their days on the border of Yemen and Oman, where is still buried today. The tomb was a really intense place for a multitude of reasons. The first is that it was so old that the original direction of the prayer area faced towards Jerusalem, which was the holy hot spot before Mecca was. Also, there were tons of people there praying and showing their respect and being that Job was one of the earliest prophets people get really into it. Finally, Job is a prophet in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which makes him really important to a lot of people and to be at the tomb of someone of that magnitude was just a really cool feeling.

     The final hours of hour trip were spent on the beach hanging out and eating lunch. After this we went back to the hotel, packed up and were on our way. Salalah and all the places we visited had a truly lasting effect on me and I can say confidently that our paths will cross again soon.