Category: Food

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Mental Maps and Wayfinding Apps in Dhofar, Oman

This proposal was accepted for the Royal Geographical Society’s 2024 annual conference but I had to cancel as I moved back to Boston. Since I had notes written up, I decided to post this essay as a less academic version of what I planned to talk about.

Proposal – “Mental Maps and Wayfinding Apps in Dhofar, Oman” for the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual Conference. August 27-30, 2024. https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference

One of the Dhofari men in my research group recently told me that the road I needed to turn off onto to get to the beach where we were meeting was after the mosque “where the road goes up and then down.” I knew that particular road weaves among foothills for over 30 kilometers without any straightaways. When I finally figured out after which mosque and which going “down” I realized that there was a sign at the turnoff.

But the men I do research with in southern Oman do not heed or discuss road signs when giving directions. Their mental maps are made up of geographical, not written, markers.

Electronic geo-locating is used throughout southern Oman for only two general purposes. The first is for finding a house. As most delivery drivers are not Omani and some do not speak Arabic or the local Modern South Arabian languages, finding a house is done with various mapping apps and the person who made the order must send a photo of their house. Also, fishermen have adopted different kinds of modern technology such as Google maps and Windguru to keep up to date about wind speed and direction. They also plot fishing areas on maps which are shared.

The result is that fishermen in my research group are very fluent in map-reading when gathering information about tides, currents, underwater formations, wave height, etc. but will navigate on land using only mental maps created from their own travels and what close friends and family members have told them. I have been lost with them many times, but the solution is always to simply keep going to see what happens, ask a person if possible or stop and look at the landscape to try to guess where the road might lead. Opening up any type of printed or electronic map is never an option. Hence, in 19 years of teaching and doing ethnographic research in the Dhofar region, I have never heard a man refer to a road by its given name. Roads are called by the towns they pass through or their endpoint.

In my presentation I will discuss how men and women in Dhofar not only create and pass on information about important locations using permanent indicators, such as mosques, tombs, hills and the color of rocks. I will also address how this use of mental mapping stands in contrast to the limited use of electronic geo-locating devices and applications.

Essay

In spring 2024, one of the research guys got in touch to say that the group would go camping. If I wanted to join, I should be at one of the fishing towns on Thursday at 2pm. I met up with two other men in another pick-up and we drove about 1/2 hour on a good, one-way-each-direction road, then off onto a gravel road through a wide wadi (dry river bed). After about 20 minutes, we turned off onto small road, threading though hills about 20-50 feet high, usually with the rocky inclines on either side of one-car-wide path.

Then it got bad. Either climbing up-hill (rocks on one side of road, steep drop off on the other) or balancing along on top of hills, lots of sharp curves and most inclines were ‘hail Mary,’ i.e. the angle is so steep that when you reach top of hill, the hood is up so high, you can’t see road or which way to turn. I was thinking “thank heavens I am following someone because this is hard driving, bleak landscape and no cellphone signal” (foreshadowing!).

We finally pulled out onto a sandy track following the curve of a beach about 4:15pm and drove to a shelter where the other guys were relaxing. We chatted and had dinner about 8pm, then I realized two of the men were there for fishing and had gotten up at 5am. By 9pm, it was bedtime, whereas usually we stayed up talking until 1 or 2am. I tried to sleep (on mat, under stars) and got bit my every insect imaginable. I wasn’t feeling great so I never fell asleep; the men all got up at 5am for prayers, then breakfast and the fishermen went out to sea to check their boxes (fish traps).

I thought “I need to get home and sleep” but how could I leave when I wasn’t sure that I knew the road out? So I drank tea and chatted with the men who weren’t fishing. After 2 hours, I mentioned that I thought I should go home and by the grace of God, one man wanted to leave. They all decided it was better that he pray the Friday prayer at home; it was decided that we should leave around 10am, meaning another hour of chatting and tea-drinking. Then I drove back with the man who knew the road, he let me choose the way, correcting me when I made one mistake.

2 weeks later one of the guys sent a message on Thursday saying that we couldn’t meet on Friday as usual because they were busy, but they were free that night. So I drove out to the beach only to discover that the reason they were busy Friday was that they was going back to that same beach. And they thought I should come, driving alone with a large cool-box (almost the size of my pick-up’s bed) filled with ice. They would fill the box with that day’s catch Friday night, then Saturday morning I would drive the freezer back to town where the guy who buys their fish would take it, while they would fish all day Saturday, then return home by boat.

It was all such fantastical nonsense, that I could cope with a huge chest full of ice over that road, that I could get to that exact beach again, I just looked at them and said, “I love your trust in me and I would love to be worthy of that trust but…” But this was not a discussion.

One of them gave me verbal instructions (“turn off after the mosque where the road goes up and then down and when your car is turned like this, do not take any right, but when your car is turned to there, then take the first right…”). No cell signal, no one with me and the hills so close and high, I could not plot by the sun. Oh, and since I was going on a Friday, I had to be in the fishing town at 10am the next morning so the other men could load my pick-up before Friday prayers. And it was now 10pm!

I drove home and organized everything. Got up at 8am and packed, went to the store for water and soda, was in the town at 10am, and back on the road by 11. I was stressed for the entire drive, but made it to the right place. Other people were already in the shelter we had stayed in so I went to a nearby elevated place and waited. And waited. I had thought (from the last trip) that they would be done with fishing by about 4pm but it got to be 5:15pm with no sign. I had no idea where they were or if anything had happened.

The sun was going down and I didn’t trust myself to choose the right roads in the dark so I knew I would sleep there. I had everything I needed to spend the night and was not concerned about being alone; however, I was not sure if they were ok or if I had missed some vital piece of information, such as I was supposed to be someplace else.

I was also a little angry because they had told me to send a message when I reached the fishing town, when I turned off the main road and from the last high hill, but when I drove back up to the high hill (where I could get cell signal) at 5pm, I could see that they had not seen any of the messages I sent, meaning they didn’t know if I had reached the place or not. The road is easy for them but it was my first time driving it alone and I felt like they had asked me to do something a little difficult, then not taken care to make sure I was ok.

They finally showed up at 5:30, loaded fish into the ice chest and we set up camp. When everyone settled down to drink tea, I asked about their day. They had left their town (by boat) and had spent the whole morning fishing. The waves were high, so they could not look at their phones. At 2pm, they drove into the large bay to check messages. They could not get a signal so they drove in closer to shore until they could see my truck on a wide ledge over the ocean. Now that they knew I had gotten there and was ok, they went back out to open sea to check fish traps. It made me feel a lot better to know that they had, in fact, checked on me.

After we ate dinner, I asked one of the men where the beach road ended towards the eastern and western directions. He answered then said to me, “now you are smart,” meaning that a wise person gathered information about the nearby roads. The “now” was added because during my first trip to that beach, I hadn’t asked about the road network. The third time I went there; I drove the beach road in both directions until it ended and was again complimented for (finally!) acting like an intelligent person.

On my last trip to that beach I realized that there was a sign for a small town a few klicks before the turn off from the main road, as well as a road sign with the name of the area directly before the turnoff point. They could have used the two signs in their directions instead of “turn off after the mosque where the road goes up and then down.”

But they don’t use man-made aids to navigate away from towns. I have never seen any of them use a paper map or call a road by its official name; they call a road by the town they are going to or its termination, i.e. “the Muscat road.” And they don’t say unnecessary information, e.g. “take the wadi before Hadbeen” not “turn left into the wadi before Hadbeen,” because the ocean is on the right side of the road, a wadi could only be on the left side. The only times I have seen one of them use GPS on land is when we wanted to get to a myrrh tree which someone had dropped a pin on and to drive around in the Empty Quarter.

The point of view of the research guys is that a good person is constantly constructing mental maps as it’s your responsibility to know where you are on land. When you go to a new place you should ask about the road networks and, if there is time, drive to endpoints. It is fine to ask someone about the road if it is your first time in the area, but you should memorize every road so well that you only ask once and can easily return to the same spot years later.

And never show fear. My favorite quotes from the guys are their responses to my expressing dread at having to drive up a steep slope: “You think that’s a hill? Give me your car, go sit at home.” Upon seeing the wreck of a piece of heavy machinery that had fallen off a steep road with a sheer wall of rocks to one side and a long drop-off on the other, one of the men said, “the driver meant to do that.”

In towns, they use landmarks, usually mosques, to navigate; the Dhofari women I know navigate by mosques, but also use shops and restaurants. If you need to get to a person’s house, either someone would drive you or give precise instructions. If you are going to attend a wedding or to give condolences, once you are in the general area, it’s easy to spot the house as it would have many cars parked out front (and strings of lights for a wedding).

GPS/ dropping a pin on your location is usually for expat delivery drivers who might not be fluent in Arabic or English. To receive food or a mailed package, you turn on your phone’s location and send a photo of the outside of your house or office building.

In other words, navigation is almost entirely based on visual clues. Dhofaris use what they can see to move across landscapes in contrast to using, for example, distances (“go three kilometers”), time (“drive for ten minutes”) or cardinal points. Expats use GPS to get to a general area, then use a photo of the building, as opposed to using street names and house numbers.

For navigating at sea, however, fishermen use both traditional and electronic methods of navigation. The most basic method of positioning is to triangulate using two points on land, e.g. “when I see that rock by the headland and the side of that mountain, then I know I am in the right place.” Fishermen also carry internal schedules of tides, as well as wind and wave patterns. The men I know would often tell me that, for example, the wind would die off in an hour or would start up at dawn.

I was terrified the first few times we returned from night fishing; sitting at the bow, I was amazed that they could drive their boats safely through rocky areas on moonless nights. With only weak starlight for illumination, they would bring the boat right to the beach without hesitation. If I expressed surprise at their knowledge, they would say, “If you do not know this, you should not be in a boat!”

But, in compliment to their personal knowledge, they also use GPS and weather/wave apps such as Windguru [https://www.windguru.cz/53 – sample page below]. The result is that fishermen in my research group are very fluent in map-reading when gathering information about tides, currents, underwater formations, wave height, etc. but will navigate on land using only mental maps created from their own travels and what close friends and family members have told them.

Coda

I saw The Finest Hours (2016, about an American Coast Guard rescue in heavy weather) with a Gibali-speaking hakli fisherman and he kept a quiet running critique of the boat handling skills with an occasional “not bad.” He guessed correctly that the townspeople would bring their cars to the water’s edge to help guide the boat home as he been part of similar efforts in his own town. The tagline of the movie is “We all live or we all die” which sums up how the fishermen envision their community.

They never try to hide information about good fishing locations as they know that all aspects of their lives are in Allah’s care; if they are supposed to have a good catch, they will have it, if not, then not. Therefore, all fishing spots that are marked on weather/ map apps are set for anyone to see, not hidden. There is a strong belief that a person who persistently and knowingly works selfishly against the good of the community will be given some sort of divine punishment and it is not the responsibility of the other fishermen to bring that consequence about, beyond the necessity of avoiding the man and making excuses not to fish with him.

Example of Windguru data

windguru

New book – Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions

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

Culture Shock – (Not) Being Under Observation

Culture Shock: The Parable of the Boxes

 

Chapter published – “Lifeways of Traditional Fishermen in Dhofar, Oman”

(photo by Hussein Baomar)

My chapter “Lifeways of Traditional Fishermen” has just been published. Because of editorial delays the information presented is now out-of-date as the interviews were conducted at the beginning of the Covid epidemic and the prices have changed. But the manner of and results from fishing remain the same.

“Lifeways of Traditional Fishermen in Dhofar, Oman,” in Fish as Food: Lifestyle and a Sustainable Future. Helen Macbeth, ed. International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition – Alimenta Populorum series. 2024: 155-170. https://archive.org/details/macbeth-young-and-roberts-ed-fish-as-food-anthropological-and-cross-disciplinary

abstract

Although most of Oman’s gross national product is derived from oil and gas products, fishing still plays an important role in providing jobs which create a cash-producing export and help ensure food security. However, there is little current information about the lives of traditional fishermen. This chapter presents the results of extensive interviews conducted in 2020-2021 to explain the daily lives and customs of fishermen in the governorate of Dhofar, in southern Oman. The chapter focuses on two important questions about fishing economics: how much does it cost to catch fish and how does that expense create a social benefit for fishermen, regardless of the money earned from the catch?

My research concentrates on the hakli/ qara groups of tribes who speak Gibali/ Jibbali (also known as Shari/ Śḥeret, a non-written, Modern South Arabian language) as their first language. I have been looking at the theme of generosity, including sharing food, for more than ten years and in this chapter I explain how much a typical day and season of fishing costs a fisherman, as well as how giving away part of every catch creates a benefit that is more than monetary. Using interviews and personal experiences, I explain how the cash outlay for gas, nets, bait, etc. is transformed into social, in addition to economic, capital for fishermen.

Screenshot

 

 

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Ending and Beginning

Now that my time in Oman is ending, I am thinking about when I first came here. My friendships began in the usual ways: meeting colleagues, accepting an invitation to dinner, deciding to take an evening class, accepting a lunch invitation, deciding to teach a summer class and deciding to take language lessons. These small decisions had many consequences, but not life-changing consequences. If I had not accepted that dinner invitation, there would have been another one, or if I had not met that person, I would have met someone else.

Starting my unexpected foray into ethnography was quite different; my academic work hinged on two insignificant, random acts: reading a footnote and cutting vegetables. Thanks to those two actions, I published three books and several articles, gave many presentations and tried to help newcomers with orientation sessions. I also have a whole set of life skills I will probably never use again from making a fire with damp wood to driving up steep inclines to sitting patiently for hours to speaking colloquial Arabic.

The story of the footnote starts on the first day of khareef (the monsoon season) in June 2006. A few Omani men (who were part of a larger group of Omanis and expats that I was part of) sent me a message saying they were in town and wanted to meet. I invited them to my house, sad that the heavy mist would mean that we would have to sit indoors instead of enjoying my nice garden.

But when they arrived, they picked up the trays of water, soda, chips and cookies and brought everything outside. “Khareef!” they proclaimed joyfully as we sat amidst the mosquitos and drizzle. “This is not fun” I thought, but their enjoyment of the humidity and light rain made me realize that there was a lot about them I did not understand. And what field of study helps people comprehend foreign behavior? Anthropology.

So I asked my dissertation professor, Michael Beard, if he had any recommendations for basic anthropology texts to help understand the cultures I was now living amongst. By chance he had a friend and colleague who taught anthropology and was retiring; Gretchen Lang kindly boxed up 20 texts and sent them to me.

I read the books throughout the fall. They were interesting but so few of the texts’ examples dealt with the Arabian Peninsula, I felt that they didn’t pertain to my life. Then I read a footnote that referenced Wikan’s work in Oman as an example of a particular phenomenon. And it was off to the races.

I read all of Wikan, then started reading the works in her bibliographies, leaving my home provinces of literature, pedagogy and travel writing for archeology, architecture, cultural studies, folklore, history, Islamic studies, political science and tourism, then farther afield to animal husbandry, city planning, house construction, fishing, ornithology, use of public spaces and zoology. I ended up writing about Dhofar/ Oman in terms architecture, comparative literature, cultural acquisition, ethnography, fairytales, foodways, gift/ gift theory, houseways and urban studies.

The second act happened in August, 2013. By this time I was part of two research groups with Dhofai men, which were centered around A and B (see note). B’s group included C and some of his friends. In August, C invited me for a picnic dinner with only his friends. We all had a good time and one week later, C invited me again. As we settled down on the mat, he handed me a plate of vegetables and said, “cut these.” I took the metal plate and knife and got to work. From that night until covid hit and we stopped meeting, cutting vegetables was my job. After the covid restrictions waned, the guys started to bring prepared food from home and my job changed to bringing the soda and water.

Years later, when we were talking about how we all met and how long we had all known each other, I mentioned those first beach picnics and C said that his asking me to cut vegetables was a test as he wanted to understand my personality. If I had refused, then he never would have invited me again.

His words were not surprising because by then I knew how the men always teased and tested friends, but it struck me that so much had rested on one small act.

All the men in A’s group spoke at least some English and had traveled; most of the men in B’s group spoke some English and had met other Western people. Also, when I hung out with A’s and B’s groups, we usually met in spaces where they would not see anyone they knew.

But in his group, C was the only one who spoke English so I generally spoke only Arabic. In over 300 picnics with C’s groups I had the chance to improve my Arabic, meet dozens of men, go camping and ask endless research questions. We celebrated weddings and births, mourned deaths, ate a lot of (too spicy!) meals and discussed all sorts of geo-political upheavals.

And, since none of the men had ever socialized/ eaten a meal with a Western, female Christian we went through a lot of steep learning curves together. This June I handed a package of cookies to one man and he replied by saying “Duck?” in Arabic. I thought that was odd, so I repeated “Duck?” then thought, he is making a joke by asking if I am giving him duck food! So I said, “Duck” again and began to quack.

C, who was scrolling through his phone, said, “Open” in English. Oops! I misunderstood; the man said “Open?” in the local slang of Hindi, not “Duck?” in Arabic – two words which sound somewhat similar. And by “Open?” he meant: should I open the cookies now or save them for my children? So I said, “for your children” in Arabic. No one commented on the fact that I had enthusiastically quacked for 10 seconds. This is what you have to put up with when you have friends from different cultures.

Reflecting on over eleven years of meetings, I brought up the subject of how we started to work together with C a few weeks ago. I asked him if he remembered the first time he invited me to a picnic, then the second invitation and “did you ask me to cut vegetables?”

He said, “yes,” then asked me why I was thinking of that subject.

The conversation in Arabic went something like this:

me: Now that I am going, I am thinking of the beginning, and I remember you told me once that when you asked me to cut vegetables it was a test. And I am thinking that it was a chance, an important chance, and if I had said no, then we would not be friends.

C: It is important to test people you don’t know. If they will just sit and never work, there will be trouble later. So it is better to see how a person is at the beginning.

me: I understand, but I am thinking if I was in a bad mood or sick and said “no,” maybe I would have missed knowing you and these men. It was just that one chance. You said you would have not invited me again.

C: I would have invited you once or twice more. You have to give space for a person, maybe they are tired or maybe they are saying “no” because they don’t know what to do. If you had said, “no” I would have given you another chance, because maybe you would have said, “I don’t know how.”

I nodded and we changed the subject. The next day I decided to check my recollections by looking at my excel spreadsheet where I have information (date, place, names, what we ate, what we talked about etc.) on all picnics and camping. For August 11, 2013 I have an entry about meeting at ‘the place’ with C and four of his (now my) friends. For August 17, there is another entry about meeting at the same place with the same people and after the summary for what we had for dinner is the note “me cutting vegetables.”

It’s nice to see my research life validates two of my constant talking points with other researchers: document everything and you may never know the good thing you do that will open doors for you.

Note: For the research guys, their friend groups are never conceived of as being “centered” on one person. I use this terminology as it reflects my reality. In each group there was one man I met first, who introduced me to the other men and ran interference in terms of me asking questions (what should I wear?) and other men asking questions about me.

Antigone and Ismene – Making Difficult Choices

Conference presentation about conducting research on the Arabian Peninsula

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: The Grasshopper

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Claiming Knowledge and Shifting Perceptions

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: What is Missing and What Changes

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Being Safe and Secure

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

Conference presentation on fishing off the coast of Dhofar, Oman

I am happy to announce that I will be presenting “Windguru and Other Gurus: Fishing off the Coast of Dhofar, Oman” for the Navigating the Transcultural Indian Ocean: Texts and Practices in Contact Conference, sponsored by the Rutter Project, June 5, 2024.

Research on Fishing in Dhofar

Foodways: Researching Fishing Practices in Dhofar and Selected Bibliographies

– طرق الطعام : بحث في ممارسات الصيد في ظفار وببليوجرافيات مختارة – Foodways: Researching Fishing Practices in Dhofar (in Arabic) and Selected Bibliographies

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Expat Workers and Issues of Payment (part 4 of 4)

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Deciding to Hire Expat Workers (part 1 of 4)

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Situating Expat Workers (part 2 of 4)

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Expat Workers and Reciprocity (part 3 of 4)

Overview

By chance in the past few weeks I have read several articles about labor and migration on the Arabian Peninsula such as

  • Gardner, Andrew and Sharon Nagy. (2008). “Introduction: New Ethnographic Fieldwork Among Migrants, Residents and Citizens in the Arab States of the Gulf.” City and Society 20.1: 1-4.
  • Nagy, Sharon. (1998). “‘This Time I Think I’ll Try a Filipina’: Global and Local Influences on Relations Between Foreign Household Workers and Their Employers in Doha, Qatar.” City and Society 10: 83-103.
  • Sarmadi, Behzad. (2013). “‘Bachelor’ in the City: Urban Transformation and Matter Out of Place in Dubai.” Journal of Arabian Studies 3: 196-214.

There are lots of numbers, data sets, opinions and ideas in these texts – but no sense of what it’s like to interact with expat workers. There is ethnographic work with and about them, but nothing about the writer’s personal economic exchanges: how to hire, discuss and pay wages, decide work load, etc. This isn’t a fault of the articles which have different objectives, but reading these texts made me reflect on my connections to other expat workers, how I manage them and how they manage me.

This essay will talk about issues with payment. [The information about wages and dates are from monthly lists of expenses that I have kept since I moved to Dhofar. 1 Omani Riyal is about $2.40; there are 1000 baisa in one Riyal so the 500 baisa bill is worth about $1.20.]

***************

In the previous essays I gave examples of me hiring other expats to work for me. In this essay I want to write about some of the bumps along the way. First was my almost complete ignorance about how to hire/ manage people. When a friend told me that I should have someone clean my house, I thought it was a great idea but was not sure about the protocols.

I thought about the examples I knew from my parents and what I would want if someone hired me. From watching my parents interact with people who they hired to help cut bush and work in their gardens, I knew that I should agree on a price beforehand, pay in cash promptly and always have drinks (water/ juice/ soda) on hand.

Over the years, my father made several joking comments to me wondering what his short, small cleaning lady was doing with all the pairs of size 13 shoes he left for her, so I learned that if you have anything to throw away, leave it clean and neatly arranged in a place for the cleaning person to take if they want. And I hated having someone watch over me if I was trying to work, so I was determined to leave the person alone to work in peace.

I had only hired movers on my own before moving to Oman (paid in cash and given lots of soda) so I tried to assimilate these lessons as I started to navigate labor practices in my daily life with N (manager at a housing compound), M (car-cleaner) and T (house cleaner).

When I moved to a house in a small compound, the manager (N) asked for a small salary for cleaning my car, sweeping the sidewalks and watering the garden. This all went well until one day I noticed that none of the work was being done, so I walked over to N’s room to see what was going on. He was sitting on the bench outside his door and told me that he was supposed to go home that week. It was the time for his yearly free trip home but the company that hired him was stalling, refusing to pay for the ticket. He was not going to do any work as it was his right to go home for his vacation. I have never crossed a picket line in my life and this was clearly a protest strike so it was incumbent on me to stand in solidarity. I did the sweeping and watering (and kept paying his salary) until he was able to go home.

After cleaning my car for a few months, M told me (in an English sentence he had memorized) that his daughter was getting married and he needed an extra month’s salary. I was startled but realized that the 10 Omani Riyal was not that important to me, but that amount was important to him. So I handed it over. In the nine years he worked for me, he came several more times with requests and I always said yes.

T cleaned my house for 14 1/2 years. After she had worked for me for 4 years, she told me that her son was at the age to start school. Since she was an expat, she would have to pay for a private school and she needed the fees up-front. She needed the equivalent of 5 months’ salary that week then, she said, she would work for the coming 5 months without pay.

I did not want to hand over all that money. First it would require me taking some cash out of savings and forgoing some items I had wanted to buy that month. Second, it meant trusting that she would, in fact, show up for the next 5 months. Plus, I knew I would feel guilty about her working without pay and would leave some cash for every week so there would be an extra cost for me.

I briefly thought of going to the school myself, to arrange for a monthly payment plan that I would handle. But doing that would infantilize her; I should either give the cash outright or refuse. It was a moment in which my ideals and beliefs confronted everyday-life; the request got right to the core of who I thought I was and what I thought about my place in the world.

On one hand, I couldn’t know for certain that money was for school fees, but if it was for school and I didn’t help her, her son might lose the chance to get an education. As a teacher, I felt I had to respect someone’s efforts to help her child learn. So, I gave her the money. She worked for 5 months with no salary, with me leaving her a few Riyal every week.

Two years later, she again asked for an advance. She wanted to buy a car and needed 4 months’ salary ahead of time. Having a car would make her life immeasurably easier because she would not have to depend on taxis. I agreed.

When Covid hit, I kept paying her salary (as did all the other expats I know who have hired someone to help them clean), but asked her not to come to my house. When it became clear that the disease was spread through direct contact; she and I created a new schedule so that I was always out of the house for an hour before and after she came.

Here is a final example to illustrate the question of how much I am/ should be responsible for those who work for me.

I sort my trash four ways. Soda cans get put in a bag to be set next to dumpsters for people to take for recycling. Non-meat food waste gets composted. Anything that is usable or edible is set to the left side of my front door for the cleaning person or gardener to take if they want and other trash is put in biodegradable bags with the tops tied shut to be thrown out.

One day I had to run back home from work while T (the woman who cleans my house) was still working. As I came up the stairs, I realized that she had opened the trash bags, taken out items I had tossed and put them into other bags for her to take home. The things I had thrown out which she wanted were foodstuff that were older than their “best before” date. I stood on the steps and thought: What do I do about this? How much am I my sister’s keeper?

I asked T to come out to the stairs, pointed to the things she had set aside and said, “not good to eat.” She nodded and said that she would throw them out, but I don’t know if she did.

How long you can use food or medicine after it has passed its sell by/ expired date is something reasonable people can disagree about. My point of view is never to use anything after that date because to reach Salalah, most items are in transit for a long time in trucks that are not temperature-controlled. I often open food that should still be good to find that it is spoiled and I have had enough cases of food poisoning to be wary. I try to use whatever I buy before the “best before” date, but if something expires, I toss it. I know others disagree with me and use medicine weeks or months after the recommended date printed on the package.

My choices were to tell T not to open the trash bags, not do anything or make sure that the expired things were not useable in some way.

Telling her not to open trash bags didn’t really make sense. I have learned from teaching to never say something that you can’t back up and I am almost never at home when she cleans so I cannot tell what she was doing.

To let her decide for herself raised the issue that she might not be able to read/ understand “sell-by” dates. On the other hand, she might understand but was willing to try expired food and medicine as a way to save money.

By tossing out the food and medicine myself, I would be doing what I thought was right but perhaps wasting perfectly usable items. I finally decided to off-the-cuff evaluate what I put in my trash. Now I throw expired items that I think should not be eaten away myself, anything else I leave for T to make her own decisions about.

For me, the through-line in all of these cases is my uncertainty; I didn’t know then and don’t know now if I did the right thing. Being a “boss” is not something I had experience with before I moved here. From the outside, I might look like a confident American expat, but I feel like I am slowly finding my way in the dark, making mistakes and constantly wondering if I am misunderstanding the situation.

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Making Adjustments for Positive Multi-Cultural Exchanges/ Events

Ethnography: Conversations about Men/ Masculinity, part 1

Using Cultural Understandings to Improve Teaching, part 1

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: (Not) Asking Questions

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: What is Missing and What Changes

I recently read two ethnographic texts about the Arabian Peninsula and was troubled that neither author articulated how their perceptions of the people of who they were studying (or themselves) were changed by their months in-country and years of writing.

The learning curve was perfectly flat – i.e. my conception of the project was X and this is what I found – without any mention of what might have been misunderstood or missed. I am not sure if the years of writing smoothed out the research process so that it appears seamless, or perhaps the researchers did not want to publicize or dwell on lacunas. But I don’t think any anthropological work can ever be complete or finished and it’s better to be clear about what changed/ what’s not there/ what questions weren’t asked, etc. I also think it’s important for authors to reflect on how they themselves have changed.

I wrote a book about food (Foodways in Southern Oman, 2021) and weeks after it was at the publisher I realized I had not been clear on the issue of Dhofaris not talking while they are eating. I was having dinner with someone who would say half a sentence, take a bit of food, chew carefully, then finish the sentence. This meant no one else could talk and, at the end of the meal, this person left one bite on their plate and talked on for 20 minutes as no one could leave the table until everyone was done eating. As I was thinking about their actions, I realized that this kind of conversation-hijacking doesn’t happen in Oman.

I had missed a whole series of interrelated food/ dialog practices and understandings. In Dhofar, there is an understanding that being upset can be physically harmful; for example, children (who can’t yet control themselves) should not be allowed to cry. Another example of this belief is that no one should say or do anything distressing while eating. There should be either no conversation or light/ polite/ general talk.

If someone wants to talk, they can – but side conversations are fine and people are concentrating on the food. When a person is done, they will usually stand up to wash their hands. If someone has something important to say, they will not do it during a meal.

In my book, I didn’t include the insight that a whole series of actions/ tropes which are normal in American culture, such as loud arguments at the dinner table (perhaps with screaming, throwing things or stomping away) are very rare in Dhofar. As is someone saying something dramatic, then calmly drinking or eating while everyone else is in an uproar. Eating should be done in a peaceful atmosphere and the Dhofari way to show fury at the dinner table is usually to not eat and not talk.

And as I read the two ethnographic texts about the Arabian Peninsula and wondered at how the authors didn’t change, I questioned how I would make that articulation about myself. How have I been changed by years of working with one group of tribes in Dhofar?

I would say that I am more patient, although this is not the perception of the men in my research group. And I have adapted the belief from the Dhofari people I know that you should frame learning that a friend is untrustworthy as positive. Even if someone you have been friends with for years betrays you, you should be glad that you finally know understand that person’s character.

I realized I had internalized this belief when I watched the last episode of the long-running series Endeavor. The main character (Morse) and his supervisor/ mentor (Thursday) are investigating the death of drug-dealer and trying to find the body of a long-dead boy. Their work is complicated by the impending marriage of Thursday’s daughter, Joan, to another policeman. Thursday is warned that if he continues to search for the culprits, Joan might be put in danger and Morse is torn between finally telling Joan that he loves her and staying stoic.

At the end, Morse figures out that Thursday is connected to a murder; his long-trusted and respected mentor is revealed as a self-serving hypocritic. Quoting Harry IV, Morse breaks with Thursday as Prince Hal did with Falstaff and, in their final scene, rejects Thursday’s attempt to regain their previous friendship when Thursday refers to Morse by his first name. As it’s clear that they will never speak to each other again, it’s a startling end to nine seasons of watching their camaraderie grow and deepen.

My reaction to Morse’s brush off of Thursday’s last effort at reconciliation was thinking, “oh, it’s a good thing that Morse never told Joan he loved her as there is obviously a flaw in the character of that family and who knows when it would have shown up in Joan.” Then I thought, “that’s the POV of the people I do research with.”

It was an interesting moment as I realized that I should have felt sorry for Morse [he lost his mentor and the woman he loved!] but I have adopted another POV over the years of living in Dhofar. When I have gone to a Dhofari friend with a tale of “this person did this awful thing,” I have gotten two reactions. One is, “That’s good! Now you know how that person is” and “Why you are upset when you already knew that person was bad?”

I joked in my first book about how there is no bad news – it’s like living in Voltaire’s Candide without the skepticism. Leibniz and his phrase “the best of all possible worlds” would be at home in the tribes I work with as the Dhofaris in my research group strive to find a positive outcome from negative events.

The framework is that all knowledge is beneficial. If someone revels themselves to be dishonest, this is a good thing because now you can avoid them. Perhaps you might have continued to be friends with them for years without knowing their true personality, unwittingly trusting a misleading and deceitful person. Or perhaps they might have tried to trick you or someone else out of large sums of money or something important. So you should celebrate the fact that you have learned that they are not good. You should not focus on the pain of this betrayal, but on the happiness of avoiding any further (perhaps worse) treachery.

Reflections on Ethnographic Research – Getting it Wrong

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Making Adjustments for Positive Multi-Cultural Exchanges/ Events

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: (Not) Asking Questions

Ethnography: Conversations about Men/ Masculinity, part 1

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Changes within Cultures

Donaldson’s article on “Units of Counting” in Oman

I recently read a great article about Oman:

Donaldson, William. 1994. “Units of Counting and Aggregation in Omani Arabic.” Journal of Semitic Studies 39: 87-96. https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/XXXIX.1.87

The same author also wrote:

  • Donaldson, William. 1979. Fishing and Fish Marketing in Northern Oman: A Case Study of Artisanal Fisheries Development. Doctoral thesis, Durham University.
  • Donaldson, William. 2008. “Enterprise and Innovation in an Indigenous Fishery: The Case of the Sultanate of Oman.” Development and Change 11: 479-95.

I think it is so interesting when a researcher gives a clear overview of a small aspect of a culture. I ran into the issue of how to count items when I was doing work on fishing a few years ago. At that time I noted:

Oman uses the metric system but different measuring systems are used in fishing. Boats are ordered by ‘feet,’ petrol is measured by ‘drum’ (8 Omani Riyal for a standard 30-liter petrol can), engine power is by ‘horsepower,’ and the radius of circular sardine nets is by dhirae (‘arm’ in Arabic, from the inside, centre point of right elbow to tip of middle finger on right hand). The depth of water, the size of fish boxes (traps) and the height of a curtain nets is by ba’ (from furthest edge of left shoulder to tip of middle finger on right hand).

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Making Adjustments for Positive Multi-Cultural Exchanges/ Events

(photo by S. B.)

For the first few years I was in Oman, I often went on picnics with mixed groups of Omanis and expats but that gradually stopped as I got frustrated with what I perceived to be situations in which the Omanis were doing all/ most of the work. I started having picnics with just the research guys and the few times I brought an expat, I ended up frustrated or embarrassed by expat behavior such as showing up empty-handed, sitting passively, dominating the conversation and not showing gratitude.

But a dear friend, T, was coming for a short visit and I was sure that she had the temperament to enjoy and appreciate a beach picnic, so I got in touch with the guys. This started a series of adjustments on all sides which illustrate the importance of compromise in effective inter-cultural communications/ interactions.

First of all, the morning of the picnic I told the guys that T did not like fish and asked that they not bring fish for dinner. This is completely out-of-bounds behavior. People who meet up together should never show any preference (or really, any interest at all) in the dinner that someone else will bring. But given that some of the research guys are fishermen, I guessed that they would want to bring freshly caught fish and cook it over the fire as a special dinner. I wanted to stop that as I knew T would not enjoy it and I wanted to protect her from either being hungry or forcing herself to eat a dinner she didn’t like.

On the other side, before we left my house, I told T that wearing long, loose clothing was my way of being respectful and asked if she could please wear one of my long tunics over her pants and t-shirt. I held out a white tunic with a toile print, something she would ordinarily never wear, and she agreed. Then I said that I cover my hair in front of the guys and that while she didn’t have to… She instantly agreed so I grabbed a lossi (headscarf worn with a thobe, the Dhofari-style housedress). Usually you wouldn’t wear a lossi outside the house, but it was 105 degrees, so I thought the light cotton would be the most comfortable choice for her. I knew the guys would say that she didn’t have to, but I also knew they were going to make an effort to bring a good dinner and this was a small gesture she could make to be polite.

When we got to the beach, we set out the mat and then put out cushions, Kleenex and the cooler with water and soda. I made a fire and we chatted until we heard cars. Then we stood up and I draped the headscarf on her and wound mine tightly.

When the guys came to the mat, one began fussing with the fire, setting rocks in two lines which usually means that fish would be grilled. I was disappointed and said to one of the men quietly in Arabic, “she doesn’t like fish!” He said, “there is chicken.” I nodded, then I saw one of the men open a plastic bag with lobster tails, removed from the shell.

I should not have worried. The men had listened to my (unreasonable) request for no fish, but as I had suspected, wanted to bring something freshly caught, so it was lobster. And, as I have never seen them take the meat out of the shell before, I knew they were showing politeness to a guest. [In contrast, the first few times I had lobster with them, they handed me a whole one and I had to twist off its head, pull off the small limbs, etc. – if I wanted to eat a lobster, then I had to deal with the lobster!]

The whole night was a series of modifications on their part – actions I had never seen in over 15 years of picnics. For example, instead of placing their chairs right at the edge of the mat as usual, most of the men sat about 6 feet back. Instead of eating by lights from cell phones or small battery-powered lanterns, one man set up a large, area-light attached to a car battery. Instead of a usual dinner with one dish (rice with meat, chicken or fish), there was a big container of rice and chicken, plus the grilled lobster tails, a salad in a separate bowl and a dessert.

Instead of people dividing themselves into two equal groups (or one-off if there was an odd number) around the two platters, the best pieces of chicken were put on one platter for me, T and one of the research guys, while the other five gathered round the second plate. Half the lobster tails were put on our platter as well. I had forgotten that T might not be used to eating with her hands, but one of the men brought spoons. The man eating with us gave her a spoon, then proceeded to eat his dinner with a spoon, which I have never seen him do before. No one commented on any of these adjustments and T did not comment on the bother of wearing a tunic and headscarf.

T chatted, answered questions, gave profuse compliments and (bless her!) was happy to sit quietly and look at the stars and ocean during the times the men were speaking in Gibali (Jebbali).

I was a little nervous – hoping that there would be a comfortable meeting between my friend of 25 years who was only 2 days into her first visit to the Arabian Peninsula and the research guys, most of whom had never socialized with a North American besides myself but everything worked out well.

By giving up some comfort/ in doing something unusual, we all helped create a positive atmosphere. I am very grateful to T and the research guys for a lovely evening and a lovely example of the necessity of all sides making adjustments to create harmony.

Houseways: Podcast, a discussion with Ahmed Almaazmi and Ayesha Mualla

Houseways: Including/ Excluding Expats in Discussions about Housing

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Changes within Cultures

Reflections on Ethnographic Research in Dhofar Oman

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: (Not) Asking Questions