wanderingquilter

Yesterday two friends and I went to Muttrah to visit the old souq.  They have done a bit of renovation here ( real roofing instead of palm fronds, and the ally ways are cobble stones) but it is still very authentic.  It is a huge maze of ways and alleys the twist around over a wide area, and full of shops selling pashminas, silver, wallets, t-shirts, fabrics and ribbons, antiques, frankincense and almost everything else for tourist and resident alike.  I could spend hours, and many many rials.

The shops are small, and quite high above the pathways.  I found out why just after Christmas… but that’s another story.  The sellers stand outside their shops, merchandise in hand, calling out to you to sample their wares.  The smell of frankincense and perfume fills the air; the walkways are crowded with people – Omani men in traditional dress, women in abayas, sometimes with their faces covered by an assortment of different types of mask, children running and pulling their parents impatiently by the hand,tourists  from cruise ships, those of us lucky enough to call Oman home for a while.  At first you just want to run to where you are going, but after a while you become comfortable with the scene and can banter with the merchants and compliment them of their wares without feeling that you must buy something.  Asking for a business card is a good way to get free of a particularly persistent salesman.  and if you are interested in buying….. be prepared to bargain, that’s part of the fun.

We went looking for pashminas…… Alice wanted an everyday one, and I needed one more gift for David to take to Dallas with him next week.  We entered through an alley I haven’t been in yet, and wow…. the silver and khanjars (traditional daggers) and other antiques were amazing.  One shop that we didn’t go into was full of prints and photos and maps.  We found carpets and foot stools and wonderful silk and cashmere shawls, as well as blends of the two…. we were met with an infinite choice of colour and design and quality ….. and price.  Some are so fine that they will pass through a ring, some embroidered, some machine made, some by hand.  Is it any wonder that I have a stack of them… and still can’t resist looking when the shop keepers call out and show me their wares?

We went first to the place David had bought the first shawls…… but he didn’t have what I was looking for.  The shop next door, however, was quite happy to show us what we had… and I ended up buying one wool and two silk/wool………and he threw in a small jar of frankincense…. I wonder if that means I still paid too much?

We went into a special shop full of wool and silk carpets, weavings and shawls.  The owner had a small bowl containing the cashmere wool (the undercoat taken from the bellies and throat of the longhaired Himalayan goats) carded and the spun into a fine yarn… you wouldn’t think wool could be so fine.  It is incredibly soft as well… he then showed us two different qualities, and it was amazing how easily we could feel the difference.  The finest can easily cost $250.

Getting hungry, we headed back to the car, bypassing the fabric and trim shops (what, a quilter going past a fabric shop!  For shame!). We stopped a moment to look at mug rugs and then we were gone.

Stay tuned for more about the souq… and hopefully some more photos as well.  It’s one of my favourite places, so I’ll be back.

The other day my friend Alice and I headed out of Muscat to the plant souq at Al Seeb.  I’d heard about it but never been there, and all the greenery in Muscat was making my green thumbs tingle.  We have no garden at our villa, only a couple of trees in front with rings of hard soil that are still begging for colour.  My gardening will have to be confined to what will grow in pots.  But then, almost anything will grow in a pot, right?

The plant souq is a street over 1.2 km long with nurseries on both sides.  We parted at one end, and entered wonderland. The giant bags of soil and peat moss and rows of clay pots, glazed and unglazed, gave way to row upon row of greenery. The air had a marvelous, moist “green” smell. The ground within the nurseries is set up in a series of depressions, each about 10′ by 6′, to hold the pots and make it easy to water without having mud all over. each section was crammed with plants.  Some I expected to see there.. the jasmine, hibiscus and bougainvillea, and lots I’ve seen growing in the area but don’t know the names of yet, but some we were both surprised at.  First there were the 3′ kumquat trees, covered with tiny orange fruit, then in another nursery we saw more, up to 12′, and then oranges and limes as well.  I’d seen an orange tree on my walks with the dog, but only one.  Growing tall beside a wall was a fig with green fruit on it, and also a mango.

The greatest surprise lay in one of the shops across the street (very busy street, by the way, quite a feat to cross it).  There was a truck unloading evergreens…. several different sizes and types of juniper.  It smelled like a Christmas tree lot, only they were late – it was already January. Tempting, but……  As we walked farther inside (these nurseries are huge) we spied a funny looking stick of a tree with leaves largish leaves held tightly upward around the trunk. Aha – I know what this is…. it’s a bay tree….. the kind you cook with.  Well, I had to get that one for sure, to add to my basil, rosemary and chives from the supermarket.  I didn’t like rosemary until I started to grow it, and the best bay leaves I ever used came from a friends tree.  I also bought three small trailing jasmine (300 Baisa or about 80 cents each) and my kumquat there… they are just too cute, and I know I’ll get at least one crop from it.

Back to the car and then we started to pick up my purchases….. peat moss at the first shop, double jasmine, hibiscus ($1.25 each for a 3′ plant with buds) and the bay and kumquat.  Good thing my little car has a hatchback.

It was great fun to get my hands dirty transplanting those plants in the big pots I brought from Kuwait.  I need more, and more soil.  There is a horticulture group here that I need to contact too.  My Diploma in Prairie Horticulture isn’t much use here for plant identification.

Here is my garden so far, including my pot of tomato seedlings that need to be transplanted. There is also a small plume grass growing in the sun by the wall, but it is in full sun,and I don’t think my new plants are quite ready for that yet.

Colour me happy.

We went to trade my Kuwait driver’s license in on an Omani one last night.  What a breeze!   We went to one office (open 7:30 am to 9 pm – no breaks) with one form, and were done in about half an hour.  The young man at the desk even teased me that I would have to wait a week, just to see my reaction.  Similar situation when I got my Residence Card before Christmas.  A few more forms,  and first fingerprints and then the documentation part, but no waiting to speak of, and in a little over an hour, I had the card in my hot little hand.  The system really works here.  And throwing in a bit of Arabic, however bad, seems to help too.  I wish I knew more….. my 5 word vocabulary is getting a bit tired.  Guess that’s something else I need to slot into my days, as I focus on Orderliness this year.

I couldn’t believe the difference between here and Kuwait……. the stack of papers was 1/2″ high, and we went to at least 6 different places all over the city……. it took 4 days in total, partly because everything closed by 12:30 or 1 pm.  I think it’s mostly because the Kuwait government hires more people than anyone else, and they need to keep them busy.

This morning we went to get Davids liquor permit.  A non-Muslim is allowed so much per month as long as you meet certain criteria regarding position and salary.  When we got there, we were out of luck because they are waiting for new permits to arrive, but the gentleman at the counter was quite happy to go through the papers to see if we needed anything else.  We do, so the trip wasn’t wasted. Can you imagine the feelings if there was one permit left and we didn’t have everything?

I’ve been very impressed with the system here… it works very much like you would expect back in Canada. The 6 people I dealt with regarding the set up of our wireless network were very professional, helpful, and patient, and we eventually got it running.  We need to do a bit of office shifting to get a good signal, but that is the house, and not the system.

I had a few issues setting up my iPhone, but it was more the language barrier than anything else.  Here’s a puzzle for you – if you were entering a string of numbers for an IP address, and were told to write “two point one over one under”, what would you put down?  I’ll put the answer in the next post.  Now, the iPhone and I are best buds – I’ve discovered how great it is to always have a book with you to read – and I always thought I needed to have the paper in my hands.

I’ve been thinking about blogging for a while… my life since moving overseas has been such a wealth of new experiences, and with all I see around me and it’s impressions on my, I thought it might be easier to tell my story this was instead of sending sporadic emails to a list of friends and family…. missing many I mean to send to.  This way, if anyone is interested, they are welcome to read at any time.

Right now, I am living in Muscat, Oman.  After almost 4 years in Kuwait, it is quite different.

I hope to include photos from my daily life and my excursions around Oman.

Never done this before, but here goes.