Musing

In “Ethnography Is an Option,” Yadav discusses abductive reasoning, which she describes as:

an iterative process of “sense-making.” Rather than beginning with a research question and testable hypothesis, abductive inquiry rests on the articulation of a puzzle, where what “makes a puzzle ‘anomalous’ is a misfit between experience and expectations.”

This is good way of thinking about how I try to understand foodways and cultures, although I don’t always get to “sense-making.” Sometimes I end up still confused as I try to catch and hold onto those moments in which my expectations are not met; sometimes a new level of understanding opens up. A week or so after I moved into a villa, I heard loud thuds and rustling from outside my window. I forced myself to open the curtain and look – there was nothing in my yard, but the sound was loud and frightening. I decided the safest thing was to go up on the roof, so I could look down at whatever it was. It was a herd of donkeys eating the grass on the other side of my garden wall. Once I saw them, the sounds which were discordant and scary coalesced into stamping, breathing, tearing grass and rubbing against the wall.

So when those moments of perplexity come, I need to stop and reflect. For example, in this video a man is pouring honey on small brown objects.

Certain things I can ‘read’ – that’s a man’s hand, he’s wearing a dishdash, that mat is typically used in Dhofari picnics, the background looks like Dhofar in khareef. Certain things I can guess from experience: the man is not from Dhofar because Dhofari men on picnics will usually take off their dishdash and wear t-shirts and wizar, a sarong-like item of clothing made of thick cotton with a plaid pattern. The honey is in an unlabeled, Vimto-style bottle which means it is local honey, from the mountains, perhaps from Yemen. It is expensive and not commercially produced, hence probably not bought in a store but at a roadside stand or from a local contact.

It’s slightly odd to me that there is nothing else in the photo. There is a habit of showing a cup of tea alone (as above), or a tea kettle with cups, but usually shots of eating during khareef have more food items (like the photo below, which has its own mystery: why are there potato chips with the ‘good morning’ sign and pancakes, which signify that this is breakfast. Is it because they are ‘Chips Oman’ and the photographer wanted to emphasize that this is Oman?)

But the biggest question is – what is he pouring the honey on? It that dates or meat? I asked an Omani friend who said, “dates, people from the north do that.” But when I sent the photo to another friend, I got the response, “honey and meat.” So this is something I need to do more research on.

More moments of abductive reasoning come up when looking at photos of foodways in khareef and I have to catch myself when I think, “Why are they doing that?” For example, seeing a video of a man cooking meat while sitting in a chair made me surprised. Cooking in a chair?!? How odd. Then I had to process my surprise – I have never seen a man cook while sitting in a chair in Dhofar, why was that?

A partial answer is in what is cooked and how. In Dhofar, most food I have seen prepared is time-, but not labor-, intensive for cooks. Fish or lobster, for example, can be wrapped in foil, placed in coals and left to cook. Curries require a lot of cutting and then stirring for a few moments, but then can be left to simmer. Cooking meat on heated rocks (madhbi) requires that the cook be next to the rocks, sitting in a chair would be too far away. But visitors in khareef often cook 1) on gas rings or with small metal BBQs, not a fire, and 2) prepared foods which need careful watching such as pancakes, scrambled eggs, and meat kebabs. Further, when Dhofar men have a picnic, they are usually stream-lined: in addition to the food stuffs (meat, vegetables, salt, tea bags, sugar, bottled water, rice and/ or bread) one needs a mat, some wood, a tea kettle, cups, a pot, a knife, and a round plate to cut meat and vegetables on and to eat off of. A big spoon to stir is helpful, but the knife can be used in a pinch; extras like canned milk, fruit, limes, spices, spicy sauce, biscuits etc. are welcome but not necessary. Thus what strikes me as odd in the photo below is not the cows, but the windscreen for the fire. What a luxury to have a metal windscreen instead of tearing cardboard from the box holding the water bottles and propping it up with rocks to screen the fire!

The last photo stunned me: tables! for a picnic! and bolster pillows! My first thought was ‘I want to go on a picnic with you!’ My second was ‘good grief, it must take ages to get the car unpacked and then packed again, and to get those pillows dry.’ This led me to considering the connection between food and relaxation in Dhofar: what is needed to make one comfortable while cooking and eating? Why do I see spartan picnics as preferable? It’s partially because that’s what I am used to, but also a factor of time. I once watched a group of western expats take over an hour to set-up a camp site: foldable picnic table, table for food, table to cook on, tent with groundsheet, chairs, multiple mats. The pièce de résistance was a wooden caddy with two kinds of ketchup, 2 kinds of brown sauce and 2 kinds of mustard.

In Oman, hospitality is linked to speed – the good host gives everything that is available happily, quickly and gracefully. A guest who arrives should not have to wait for the host to produce something intricate or expensive, a simple cup of tea served with kindness is the mark of generosity.

(photos from social media)

Yadav, Stacey Philbrick. Ethnography Is an Option: Learning to Learn in/through Practice. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190882969.003.0014