One aspect of talking to expats is that if I intimated that something they did might not be safe in my opinion, my advice often had to be negated by them pointing out my actions were unsafe, particularly me going camping with only Omani men. This makes me think of how to define “safe” in terms of my life in Oman. On one hand, I camped with men I had known for years and I had usually met members of their family: brothers, cousins, parents, wives and children. On the other hand, I frequently felt insecure and lost. I was constantly telling myself to trust them, trust the process and that, if nothing else, I was going to have a useful learning experience. “Useful,” not necessarily fun or easy.

One Wednesday night, I got phone call at 9pm. It was hard to hear with the sound of wind and waves in the background. A group of the research guys were camping at a beach far from town and they had decided I should come. I wrote out what they wanted me to bring (water, more water and wood), hung up and started prepping. I had to proctor an exam at 8am, which meant getting up, going to work, stopping at store on the way home while I was still in regular clothes, putting everything in the car, buying drive-through McDonalds for lunch, then lots of driving.  

I got to the beach around 4pm. We talked, then they decided that they would take me for a short boat ride. This was not “How are you feeling?,” “Would you like a boat ride?” or “What have you eaten today, as in what are the chances you will throw up if we go out in the boat?’ No, it was: “Now you will go in the boat.”

So, I changed into boat clothes and out we went. It was very nice; the sea was calm and it was lovely to see the shore and hills… but wait. We appeared to be stopping. They were maneuvering a large barrel full of fishing line with many 4 inch hooks imbedded in soft foam to the edge of the boat. Oh, it was a curtain met, a long, strong fishing line to which plastic laundry soap bottles are tied at intervals so it didn’t sink and every 6 feet of so, a short line going down with a hook which they baited with a sardine (like the “icicles” type of Christmas lights which have a long horizontal line with short verticals going down). 

Hooking sardines and tossing the line out took over an hour. The sun sank lower, it got colder, they didn’t let me help so I watched the ocean, shore and seabirds trying not to think about being cold. Then we drove off in the direction opposite camp. I wanted to say that I wanted to go back, but I stayed quiet. If we were driving over to the other side of the bay, they must have a reason.

As the guy who was steering the boat turned off the motor, I realized we were going to a stop next to a fish-trap buoy. He had driven to one of his “boxes” (fish traps) which was very close to shore, meaning it probably had lobsters and since they know I like lobsters, he was deliberately going to the box most likely to have them for my sake (they think lobsters are so-so and would much rather have fish). And, yes, the trap had 8 large lobsters but no fish.

We drove back to shore and moved our camp to up to the top of small headland with a small bay to one side and the large bay (about 2km across) on the other. There were no lights visible so the sky was full of stars. They made a dinner of white rice, a kind of chutney made from various cooked vegetables and lobster taken out of the shell and cooked directly on rocks heated by coals. 

As the rice was cooking, one of the guys took a small shark they had caught earlier in the day and prepped it for drying. He cut it open, took out the guts, then cut the meat into long, thin strips which are all attached to the back of the head so it looked sort of like an octopus (or a small alien from the movie Alien). This is tossed over a rope to dry in the sun for a few days, then eaten. I saw the man cutting the shark, but hadn’t realized he had had put it on a rope that was tied between my truck and their truck.

After dinner, I glanced over at my truck and saw something white, taller than a cat and odd-shaped underneath it. This thing was less than 10 feet away from me so I called the name of the guy who was sitting closest to me, about 6 feet away.

He did not respond, so I said his name again. He said, “fox.” I said fearfully, “that is not a fox” as I have never seen a fox come so close to humans and the thing seemed to be square-shaped. I heard him shift, then his phone light shone on exactly the place I was looking. It was a fox whose hair for some reason glowed white in the darkness and it was standing at an angle so I could see the side of its body and hindquarters, with its tail was wrapped around its body so it looked like a square.

The point of this story is that when I turned back around, I realized that I had been blocking his view. The research guy heard me say his name, saw me looking back towards my truck and said, “fox” without knowing why I was saying his name or what I was looking at. He had instantly put together from how my head was turned that I was looking at the area below where the drying shark meat was hung and the anxiety in my voice meant there was something I could not understand – so the answer had to be “fox.” When I said, “that is not a fox,” he moved over and picked up his phone to show me that, with no visual or sound cues, he knew what it was better than me, the person who was staring at the fox.

So sometimes I felt cold, confused, tired or worried and yet, at the same time, always secure.

Reflections on Ethnographic Work – Trying to Make Sense of Words and Actions

Two poems for courage: “Against Hesitation” by Charles Rafferty and “Thalassa” by Louis MacNeice

Presentation – “Windguru and Other Gurus: Fishing off the Coast of Dhofar, Oman”

Predator Anthropologists, Anthropologist Predators: Anthropological Metaphors in Popular Movies

photo by Hussein Baomar