Category: research

Culture Shock – Drugs, Medicines, Choices and Chances

(photo by Onaiza Shaikh, Instagram: Onaiza_Shaikh)

One of the interesting linguistic differences between the US and Oman is with the word “drug.” In Omani-English, “drug” is always a negative, meaning an illegal substance.

“In the States, ‘drug’ has two meanings,” I would explain to my Omani students. “It can mean something illegal, but it is also used as another way to say ‘medicine.’ So, for example, a pharmacy can be called a ‘drug store.’ If you are at work with a Western person and someone asks you, ‘Do you have drugs?’ Don’t get upset! They are asking for an aspirin.”

That statement opened up new issues to explain as the common word for a headache-reliever in Oman is Panadol, so I would sometimes have to clarify what ‘aspirin’ meant.

When we were talking about a pharmacy, in such stories as O’Henry’s Love Medicine, I would explain the difference between pharmacies in the Arabian Peninsula and North America. On the Arabian Peninsula, pharmacies are only for medicine and almost all the items are kept behind the counter. You tell the clerk what you want, but you can also say what’s wrong and ask them to suggest something.

In North America, pharmacies are like small grocery stores, with drinks and snacks as well as candy, make-up, magazines and household cleaners. Almost all of the medicine is on the shelves. Just prescription-only drugs are kept behind the counter and if you want one of them, you must have a doctor’s approval. There is no way to sweet talk your way into buying antibiotics as I often did in Oman.

The difference is store set-up is the answer to a much larger question: who is in charge of your health?

In Oman, the answer is usually God. If you are sick, you pray. You might also go to a doctor or a traditional healer. You might take the prescribed medicine, but you don’t usually engage with the process by, for example, looking up information about the medication. Over and over, when I asked Omanis, “What did the doctor say?” the answer was, “I got a shot.” What kind of shot? They didn’t know.

In North America, the first answer to who is in charge of your health is you. Training starts early with parents modeling appropriate behavior by either standing in a drug store, looking at the types of medicine and making their choice or doing their own research, on-line or by talking to other people with questions such as, “My symptoms are x and y, what do you think I should do?” Many children grow up with the idea that they are responsible for their health care. For example, moving out of your parent’s house means gradually building your own medicine cabinet. You learn that when your body feels like X, you take Y pill.

These are generalizations but I want to highlight this difference as a cultural shock issue because most Americans carry their own personal pharmacopeia in their head. When they have joint pain, they want X medicine; if it’s a stomachache, they want Y. Moving to the Arabian Peninsula, means walking into a pharmacy and announcing your symptoms to the clerk and being given a choice of 2 or 3 products. Or you can go to a doctor and get an unexplained list of drugs to buy. Instead of your old standby (which comes in 4 flavors, 3 sizes and as a pill, powder and gel), there is a smaller range of options and fewer chances for you ask questions to a medical provider.

And the reverse is just as jarring. Someone who is used to the limited choices on the Arabian Peninsula stands aghast in an American pharmacy staring at 4 by 8 feet section of treatments for a sore throat: sprays, lozenges, gargles, antihistamines, and hot drink mixes. You have a huge variety of manufacturers, sizes and flavors, not to mention the organic and natural types. If you haven’t been trained for making this type of choice, it’s overwhelming.

When you move somewhere new, it’s all different – fun, new, exciting and, sometimes, overwhelming.

Culture Shock: (Not) Being Under Observation

Culture Shock – Communication is Always the Worst Part, part 1

Teaching: Reflections on Culture Shocks

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Claiming Knowledge and Shifting Perceptions

Culture Shock – Communication is Always the Worst Part (Don’t Lie), part 2

(photo by Onaiza Shaikh, Instagram: Onaiza_Shaikh)

Culture Shock – Communication is Always the Worst Part, part 1

I realized as I am working on my next book, Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions (accepted for publication at Palgrave Macmillan), that I am often giving the advice “don’t lie” in different contexts.

For teachers, I mean: don’t say anything to your students that you can’t back-up. Making idle threats signifies that your word can’t be trusted. Once students think you say things you don’t mean, then trying to give directions and enforcing rules becomes progressively more difficult.

For researchers, I mean: don’t try to trick your informants. Explain what you are trying to do in realistic and honest terms. I wish researchers on the Arabian Peninsula who despise the people they are studying would be clear about their disdain so that there could be some honest dialog. Just writing down responses while silently reviling the people you are interviewing does not seem an effective way to do research to me.

For business professionals, I mean: don’t lie at the office by exaggerating your connections, your abilities, your background or your opinions.  

This is a large generalization that I am still thinking about/ trying to refine but what I see as a common trope in the States is that a ‘boss’ will speak more and employees will listen in one-on-one informal interactions. [I am not talking about formal contexts such as employee reviews or giving information.] Even kindly, well-meaning bosses may assume that they have interesting experiences to share and are often used to people listening carefully to them.

What I often found on the Arabian Peninsula was that non-North American, -UK and -EU managers often want underlings to talk in social conversations/ informal settings because of a differing understanding of the purpose of those conversations.

To me, the purpose is different because of how different cultures conceive of finding out and using personal information. In the States, many people are on websites such as LinkedIn. They often have a personal website connected to their university and/ or job, as well as various kinds of social media, so it’s easy to get data about someone. Plus, most employers have screening as a step in the hiring process and want a diverse workplace, or at the least have to follow state/ federal laws about employee protections.

So, pace outliers such as George Santos, people in a workplace usually trust that others are who they represent themselves to be. If someone says that won X prize or finished Y achievement, there will be some sort of digital proof. Thus, bosses don’t need to figure out who they are working with.

Often on the Arabian Peninsula, it is more difficult to get accurate information about someone. Someone might not be on LinkedIn, or their university/ former workplace might not have an active web presence so it’s impossible to verify their stated qualifications. A person’s social media presence might not be in their name as they might have opinions which would be problematic for their family, social group, workplace or government. And in tribal societies, you could have several people with the same first name, father’s name and tribe name but who have very different levels of social capital.

So, managers might use chit-chat as a way to gather more information, at the same time employees use social gatherings to highlight their social, academic or business credentials. I knew one person who would tell higher-ups that their grandmother was originally from the higher-ups’ country. Over the years, their grandmother changed nationality four times as the person tried to form connections with bosses from various cultures.

Another aspect of social discussions at work is to instill fear. I have known several people from one Arab country (not on the Arabian Peninsula) who would drop an obscure fact about my life into conversations. The first few times I showed my amazement and asked how they knew. They smiled and refused to explain. I realized that the goal was to put me on guard so I stopped reacting. I have never had that kind of interaction with an American.

I could drive myself crazy wondering how they figured out some obscure fact about my life but the easy way to live is to always tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

Culture Shock: The Parable of the Boxes

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Getting it Wrong

Culture Shock: Bumpy Reentry and Moral Dilemmas

Teaching: Reflections on Culture Shocks

Culture Shock – Communication is Always the Worst Part, part 1

(photo by Onaiza Shaikh, Instagram: Onaiza_Shaikh)

A friend recently asked if I was planning to write about culture shock, I laughed and said, “that is all I write about.” And, as I have always avowed, the hardest part of culture shock is how to talk to people. You can adjust quickly enough to the clothes, food, meal times and public demeanor, but communicating is the real terror.

For example, in the States, age is off the table as factor in work conversations. Talking to a person who is older than you does not create a power differential.

Also, American conversations are like ping-pong, incessant back and forth. Someone gets in a comment and then it’s the other person’s serve. I keep forgetting that I am supposed to ask the question back!

After living for years with people who will tell you what they want to, when they want to – I am out of practice of asking questions. Now, someone will inquire, “How was your weekend?” and I say, “Fine, thanks.” Then five minutes later I remember that I was supposed to say, “How was yours?”

In Oman, the research guys and I would do endless repetitions of “how are you?” but no one really cared about the answer. If someone wanted to talk about their weekend, they would start in. And if they wanted to talk for 45 minutes, they would. I still remember the first time an Omani decided to tell me about their weekend: it was a 20-minute monolog. Don’t try that in USA.

This past week I watched a conversation in which one person was trying to explain how to do something and the other person kept interrupting to focus on just the data that they wanted. It was excruciating for me, but the two Americans were well-pleased with each other. One had taught and one had learned in a fencing-match style that was exhausting to listen to (no one finished a sentence!) but was exactly the kind of interaction they both expected and were ready for.

It’s accepted in America that people can pick their input. There’s an implied: I can choose what information you are giving me and I only have to pay attention to information that I think is relevant or important at this moment. For example, all those people moving through cityscapes while texting, missing when the walk sign lights up because they are looking at their phone.

In Oman, it’s more common to pay attention to surroundings and when dealing with people, you need to focus on their motivations as what you are hearing is less important than what you are seeing. For example, compliments were often meaningless, and often used to bring attention to a problem not convey something positive.

One example this week was that several people told me about a mysterious quirk in Google maps that showed up in relation to our work building which had been on-going for over a year. I figured out the reason within a day. I had the same data they did, but I was looking at it from the perspective of an outsider who was unused to navigating with apps. I always had to use my own knowledge to decide where I was walking/ driving.

Another example was when a person suggested a major change in one aspect of the work-flow as a certain delay was creating anxiety in one group of people. My suggestion was to reframe the issue for the anxious people. Don’t buy into their framework that the delay was a worrisome/ bothersome pause. Posit the delay was a beneficial and deliberate slowing down of the system to ensure everything was perfect before the data went live. The delay helps them from making mistakes. That kind of rethinking comes from years of living in Oman and being told (implicitly and explicitly) that I must always know what other people are thinking/ how they see the world so I figure out how I can best communicate with them.

So, I have skills in some areas, but I still need a lot of work in others . So… “How was your weekend?”

Culture Shock: The Land of Detachment and Toolboxes

Bumpy Reentry and Moral Dilemmas – Adjusting to Life in the States

Culture Shock: (Not) Being Under Observation

Culture Shock: The Basics

Culture Shock: The Land of Detachment and Toolboxes

photo by Onaiza Shaikh,

Instagram: Onaiza_Shaikh

To survive in the US, you need scissors, 8 square feet of empty floor space, a complete collection of tools (screwdrivers, hammers, wrenches, etc.) and a cell phone.

That’s it.

You use your phone to order everything for your apartment and then you use your floor space and tools to put it all together: a fan, a lamp, pots and pans, bookshelves, etc. I am having a hard time adjusting to the IKEAfication of the States where everyone is expected to have a Masters of Mechanical Engineering. You have to set up your own wi-fi, make chairs, reset the garbage disposal and hang pictures, no matter your manual dexterity or skill level with drills.

Even the simplest action (opening a container of guacamole!) requires patience. First you have to take off the cardboard cover, then take off the lid, then take off the inner cover.

On bad days I think American consumers have been sold a load of codswallop and told it was spun gold; everything is impersonal and do-it-yourself. Coming into the system is over-whelming; I have to deal with 3 different apps for my apartment building. Farewell to the happy days of simply calling Ali, world’s best landlord, for repairs!

But there are benefits of living in a culture in which transactions are often impersonal: there’s no one to create chaos out of personal animosity. Getting a lease required submitting certain forms: if you don’t have the paperwork, you don’t get the apartment. There’s no way to influence the outcome through networking or to stop the rental through enmity.

If you want to do anything, you go to websites, tap in information, get codes sent to your cell phone, enter the codes, type some more and voila! Then you spend hours putting whatever you ordered together, but at least it is all at your own speed and under your control.

When I think of leaving Oman, I have numerous unhappy memories of chaos with people deliberately lying to me and others about processes. I spent 2 1/2 hours my last morning in Oman trying to get people to complete a task I was told would be done days earlier. I finished the paperwork on my severance pay with ten minutes to spare before the bank closed – a harrowing and upsetting end to 19 years!

However, I don’t think systems are necessarily better in the States. It’s often entertaining in Oman to have so many things based on personal relationships; almost everything is negotiable if you stay pleasant. Yes, you can get the ‘forbidden’ I-tunes music program onto your computer if you get along with the computer tech person. When I went to get my first covid vaccine, the nurse told me to come back in a week. I said, “I live alone and I am scared,” and she gave me the vaccine.

In the States, crying, screaming, smiling or begging are of no avail: you either have the little computer code on your phone or you don’t. It’s not better, not worse – different. And I don’t say this lightly. Many times I talked to my students about how, when you arrive in the USA, everyone stands in one of two immigration lines. If the line takes 2 hours, then you stand for two hours. There are not people, as on the Arabian Peninsula, who walk along and pull people out of the immigration line who have young children or need assistance.

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

Culture Shock: The Basics

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Getting it Wrong

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

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

 

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

I am happy to announce that my 4th book, Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions, has been accepted for publication at Palgrave Macmillan. I am very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers who gave positive and helpful comments.

This book outlines strategies for current or soon-to-be business professionals, government employees, anthropologists, researchers and teachers to communicate, study and work effectively on the Arabian Peninsula. Using first-person accounts, as well as scholarly research from the fields of anthropology, history, literature, political science and travel writing, this text gives clear advice so long- and short-term visitors can create successful interactions with people from Arabian Peninsula societies. By discussing how the practicalities of work and research intersect with cultural norms, this book fills the gap between guides aimed at the casual tourists and academic texts on narrowly defined topics.

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Leaving and Learning

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

Culture Shock – (Not) Being Under Observation

Predator Anthropologists, Anthropologist Predators: Anthropological Metaphors in Popular Movies

 

Culture Shock: (Not) Being Under Observation

(photo by Hussein Baomar)

As I am slowly settling into a new type of life, the biggest difference is the issue of observation. When I leave the house now, I am never noticed. Children in the USA are often told “it’s impolite to stare” but in Oman, there are many people from cultures in which it is usual/ expected to watch other people closely.

Oman has visual-based, high-context cultures, meaning adults learn by looking around. You have to know what is going on in nearby spaces. Plus, there are tribal-based cultures, part of which is the necessity of recognizing and acknowledging relatives and tribe-members. When men are in public places like a cafe or store, their heads swivel constantly; they need to make sure they are greeting all acquaintances. Women are also always on the look-out so, although there are less female-male exchanges of glances than in the States, everyone is constantly canvasing their surroundings.

Here, everyone here is walking distracted, staring at the middle distance or the ground, usually wearing earbuds or earphones. The goal is NOT to look at anyone. I had to live for years with two colleagues who refused to acknowledge the presence of me and several other department members, which created a very hostile work environment. But coping with that unpleasantness has helped me deal with my new reality; walking down the hallway of my apartment building people pass each other studiously examining the ground, never offering greetings.

One aspect of common Omani surveillance is a sort of, to use Anne Meneley’s term “Tournament of Value,” in that the good/ smart person is the one who identifies who they are looking at. It used to drive me crazy to go grocery shopping and hear whispered comments about me: “she’s a teacher,” “she’s at X university,” “she’s American,” etc. There was a social value in being able to place me so people who knew who I was would always display that knowledge to others.

The “tournament” part was that when people fail to acknowledge someone they know, they are judged negatively. The judgement might stay as a silent rebuke, but it might be brought out in front of family members and/ or peers, “I was sitting in Y cafe, and he came in and did not greet me, perhaps he was thinking of…” This is didactic teasing – teaching the person that they should take more care in looking at their surroundings.

In response to living in a benign panopticon in Oman, I was very careful about my appearance whenever I left my house. As a foreign teacher, I wanted to make sure that, if students pointed me out to their parents, I appeared sufficiently trust-worthy. And given my work with the research guys, I wanted to look frumpy so that no one would wonder why Z man was spending time with an immodestly dressed woman. The result was, to me, a very odd combination of being closely scrutinized while looking incredibly dowdy: long flower-print shirts, tunics in faded colors, the most uninteresting shoes on Earth, muted make-up.

So imagine my feeling of walking out of my house now wearing a bright pink sundress with messy hair and red lipstick! And no one looks! It’s both freeing and scary. In Oman, when I walked through the mall it sometimes felt like I was the star of a kind of The Truman Show as I constantly would overhear people commenting on me. Sometimes I would be told days or weeks or years later, that I had been seen in X place talking to Y person. But now I am nicely invisible.

And part of my current invisibility is when I walk into a cafe now, I look similar to other customers. For the first few years I was in Dhofar, there were many expats from North America, UK/ EU, New Zealand and Australia. The number declined steadily so that for the last ten years or so, everywhere I went I was a visible minority. At the two cafes I frequented, I was usually the only woman. On college-level committees at work I was always the only woman and the only person from a Western country; by the time I left, I was the only professor who was a native speaker of English.

A related cultural change is that my 19 years of learning how to constantly check my environment and place people, has resulted in a body of knowledge that is of no use here. In Oman, by asking questions and receiving warnings, I was taught that A item of clothing meant the wearer was from B place, that a man who sat in C cafe was D sort of person, that this kind of outfit meant the wearer had that kind of job. Now I can’t derive any information about a person by looking at them.

A friend who moved back to her country after more than a decade aboard told me she went through the same learning curve. When she first moved back, she couldn’t figure out anything about the people she was seeing in daily life; it took a long time to rebuild her knowledge base, e.g. X kind of purse was expensive and Y type of car meant the owner was probably Z. I have talked about the hunt to figure out meanings when watching foreign movies [ Teaching Literature and Staying au courant – The Man from Nowhere and the Ancient Greeks ] but what was once a distanced, intellectual exercise is now my every-day life.

Culture Shock: The Basics

Culture Shock: The Parable of the Boxes

Throwing Children in the Street: Culture Shock Omani Style

Intercultural Exchanges

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Culture Shock: The Basics

(photo by M. A. Al Awaid)

It is interesting after studying and discussing culture shock for so long to be in the throes of it myself. I knew it would be challenging moving back to the States, but I didn’t know how and in which ways it would be difficult. I keep telling myself it’s like body-surfing, don’t fight the wave, give up and roll with it. Some highlights of my adjustment so far:

* toddler brain – at a certain level of exhaustion and being over-whelmed, your usual cerebral safety features give up and you start saying everything you think, like a small child. I sat next to a woman on the metro who had a small fan and said, “you have a fan!” I found myself wanting to do this constantly for the first few days whenever I saw something unusual for me: telling people that they had a dog or were wearing fun sunglasses. When I went to the laundry room, there was a man with bright orange shoes and I had to tell myself over and over, “don’t say ‘you have orange shoes’!”

* odd choices – I went to a few grocery stores when I first moved in and when I eventually organized my kitchen shelves, I realized I had bought 5 different kinds of artichoke spreads. No basics like pasta, rice, honey or vinegar but I have enough artichokes for 25 people.

* simple things seem impossible – doing my first Uber ride felt like falling off a cliff – using my microwave is harder than figuring out Ancient Greek…

* transference – sometimes you do what feels right, only to realize that it’s not ok in the culture where you now are. I got into an elevator and stood with my back to the side wall, staring at the other two people as I had learned to do, got out of the elevator and realized that I had done it completely wrong! In USA, you stand facing the elevator door and don’t look at anyone. Sigh! I spent days obsessively cleaning my countertop and wondering where to get something to cover the sink drain before I realizing that hordes of bugs would not descend if there was a stray crumb laying around.

* relearning to trust – given that certain cultures value a person who is always in control, I had to learn that in asking strangers for simple information such as directions, it was a 50/50 chance of getting the right answer as sometimes people would not have the information but not want to say “I don’t know.” In the states, usually people will be up-front (I certainly am!) when they don’t know, so you can usually trust what you are told.

* rethinking safety – Before I never worried about personal safety or my possessions; I would walk out of my office and leave my purse, phone, wallet, sometimes even cash on my desk. I would leave my purse in the grocery cart and wander over to another aisle. So I had to keep reminding myself to zip my purse, be aware of surroundings etc. But I was glad to see that within my big apartment building, there is a lovely ethos of trust. Deliveries are left willy-nilly by the front door (cartons of soda, Taco John’s, bags of fresh vegetables, Target boxes, etc.) but I have never had anything stolen, or heard of something that went missing.

* getting upset at odd moments – I stood in the drinks aisle and started at the cases of Mountain Dew; no research guys means no need for Mountain Dew in my fridge. For the first time in 19 years, it’s only diet Coke and seltzer water. I picked up a box of Liptons then put it back, no need for tea or sugar.

Culture Shock: The Parable of the Boxes

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Leaving and Learning

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Being Safe and Secure

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

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.

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Culture Shock: The Parable of the Boxes

(photo by M. A. Al Awaid)

This is the first in a series of short essays about the shock of moving back to the states from Oman, with musing about how (writ large) the two cultures work.

When I realized I had to leave Oman, I talked to a man (X) I had known for years who helped me get through everyday life. X had a wide range of friends and acquaintances with various jobs so when I needed work done, I talked to X and he brought someone to my house, e.g. a plumber when the pipes were clogged with algae, an AC repairman, a man to repaint the walls, a man to charge the gas cylinders, etc.

I asked X if he knew someone who worked at a shipping company and of course he did. A few days later X came with supplies and we put together 4 boxes. After I had filled them, X came with the shipping company representative and a worker. I explained that I wanted door-to-door service as the boxes were mainly full of books and too heavy for me to lift.

The worker set each box on a scale; the rep calculated the weight total/ cost on his phone, gave me a price and I paid him in cash. Then I tipped the worker who carried the boxes to the truck and handed everyone a bottle of water.

Business concluded without any paperwork, although the rep did send X a photo of the bill of lading a few days later, and the whole basis of the transaction was my trust in X.

When I arrived at my apartment building in the States, I was amazed that, despite the fact that I had paid for door-to-door delivery, the 4 boxes had been stacked (2 on top of 2) in the 10-foot space between the (unlocked) door to the street and the (locked) door into the building. The apartment building had a large trolley (like bellhops have) for general use, but the space between the doors was at an incline; the trolley would not stay still while I tried to load the boxes unless I found something heavy to brace it with. The bigger problem was that I could not lift the lower boxes up onto the trolley.

I was 3 days in country, jet-lagged and at a loss. I had no one to help me and there was no way I could pick up 35 kilos of books to set up on the trolley. At least I could take the 2 boxes that were on top (resting on the other 2) as I could push them down and onto the trolley but I needed help holding it still.

There was no one in lobby, so I walked out onto the sidewalk. A young woman was walking towards me so I put my arms in front of me, palms up and asked, “Could you please help me?” She agreed so I asked her to hold the trolley in place while I pushed the 2 top boxes onto it. I pushed the boxes into my apartment, pushed them off the trolley and onto the floor, then went back to the lobby.

If I was in Oman, I would have just called X and asked for help, paid him and given him a bottle of water as I had for many years. But in the States, there was no one to call. I had no idea what I could do – asking a stranger to brace the trolley for a moment was one thing, asking them to pick up very heavy boxes was another.

I maneuvered the trolley next to the boxes and stared at them, trying to think of a solution. A man walked in from the street door, saw me, asked, “Do you need those on the trolley?” and before I could respond, he set his backpack on the ground and walked over. I sputtered thanks as he lifted each box up, then held the building door open for me. Problem solved.

As I pushed the boxes to my apartment, I thought – this is a perfect example of the difference between Oman and the States. In the States, all sorts of small public actions are easy. If I saw someone weaker than me struggling to lift something, of course I would immediately help. Strangers, especially in a city with so many transients as Boston, hold the elevator door and do general courtesies. There are endless repetitions of “please,” “thank you,” “no problem,” and “go ahead.”

In Oman, you can’t trust on that kind of minor help; people don’t hold doors open or pick up something you dropped. There is no chit-chat in the elevator.

I call this marble theory: people have only so much time/ energy/ bandwidth to give others and in Oman most of those “marbles” are given to family, so there are few left over for people you don’t know unless you see someone in great distress.

Several times I was with the research guys at a beach when someone got their car stuck nearby. “Aren’t you going to go help them?” I would ask the first few times this happened. “No, we are close to people [meaning: a town]” or “No, if they need something, they will come and ask” I was told. But when I got stuck in sand miles from anywhere, the three cars that came by all stopped. The first driver was a man with his family. He saw me, drove about two blocks on, stopped, all the passengers got out of the car, then he drove back to help me.

I stood as he tied the tow rope on, then I looked down the road at the group of women and children huddled by the side of the road in the heat. When the next car stopped, that man insisted on driving my car out of the sand, so I took some boxes of cookies over to where the women were waiting. They smiled and greeted me; standing in hot sun for 10 minutes while their relative pulled my car out of sand was nothing to complain about.

Neither way of life is better. If I approached a door with my hands full in Oman, there was zero chance of someone opening it, but there were other compensations such as being able to send all my possessions across the world without filling in forms, signing paperwork or sending e-mails. In the States, I can trust that strangers will perform simple acts of kindness, but mailing a small package involves pressing button after button on the touch-screen at the post office and a signature.

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Ending and Beginning

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Changes within Cultures

Foodways: Cultures, Food Selfishness and “Could I Have a Little Bite?”

Teaching: Reflections on Culture Shocks