A walk along an ancient shore

Apparently this site is not called the 'Edge of the World' but I rather think it should be.

The landscape that I have seen so far has been very flat, with sand dunes on the edge of town, but I had heard of the drop of the escarpment where you can look down into a deep valley. When we received the invitation to go camping with friends, I didn't know that this is where we would be headed!

We drove about an hour out of town, through a wadi which was at first cultivated with stands of palm trees, and then increasingly sparsely populated the further we travelled. Finally we saw only camels and thorn bushes, then we turned off somewhere and came to a stop at the most incredible precipice. The ground was simply littered with fossils of corrals and shells and what the kids told us where the fabled 'Saudi Diamonds'.

Saudi diamonds are quarz crystals that can be cut to look exactly like real diamonds. I have seen these in jewellery. The stories go that they can be picked up in the desert at certain places. Well, we certainly found bucket loads of what I think were quartz crystals. For all we know we can now retire in luxury!


Fossil hunting was certainly a highlight. Once again, we came home with quite a large number of rocks. I wish I could find out more about the natural history of the region and the ancient seabed that has left behind such treasures and beautiful camping spots.

We were on our way to Turkey when...

Life happens when you're making other plans, they say.

Rean's second bit of annual holiday was to fall over the Eid al-Adha holiday, a week during which the willingness of the prophet ʾIbrāhīm (Abraham) to sacrifice his young first-born son Ismā'īl (Ishmael)^a as an act of submission to God's command and his son's acceptance to being sacrificed, is celebrated (Wikipedia). Since we had missed out on our much dreamed of overseas holiday during the first Eid  (Eid al fitr) holiday, we were going to make up for it by going on a holiday to Turkey. I had worked out my pocket money and planned which shopping to do where, which were our must see places, got the guidebooks, travel advice from everyone we knew who had been there, tickets, bookings, transfers, taxis. You get the picture...

Two weeks before we were due to leave Mieke started getting sick. And she got worse and worse. We nebulised, humidified, self medicated, rested, but nothing worked. At last we decided to go look for a doctor. Our medical aid doesn't cover us for the smart 'foreign' english speaking hopsitals. Rean had to wade through lists of local, usually non english speaking hospitals, before we finally found one quite close to us. The doctor who saw us had lived in the States for 16 years, so he spoke english well, and we felt very comfortable with him. He said,'don't worry, she should be better within two days' and gave us paracetamol and ibuprofen syrop to alternate every three hours, day in and day out. But still her fever climbed. By now I had not sleapt for more than three hours a night for about two weeks, and Mieke was really sick. We were really worried about her.

So back to Doctor Basel. He just shook his head and had her admitted to the hospital. The next morning I saw on the breakfast delivery slip that she was diagnosed with pneumonia. It was not a nice experience. They tried six times before they could find a vein to put a drip in. Then to get her to stay still enough to prevent the drip line from pulling out of her foot! That was definitely a challenge.By now we had cancelled our trip and just tried to survive the troubles of the moment.

 Mieke and I spent two whole days and a night there. The antibiotics and whatever else they gave her started to work and Dr Basel felt we could be discharged on wednesday evening. The first leg of our flight to Turkey left at 4am that next morning. Should we go or should we stay? 'Go!' said the doctor, it is a great opportunity, just keep Mieke warm, she should be fine. Hmm, what a choice to make! By now I hadn't sleapt much for three weeks and I was just at the end of my line.

We decided to trust the doctor, and uncancelled our cancellations, got home from the hospital at 7pm that evening, put Mieke to bed, packed and went to sleep. At 1:30am we got up and went to the airport. Halfway through the long long cues, Rean told me he hadn't brought our entry/exit visas! We tried to sweet talk them into letting us through without our visas at the emigration counter. They might have done it, but no way would we have been able to get back into the country. So at 5am that morning, we caught a taxi back home. My only though was of overwhelming relief. Now we could all rest and hopefully sleep!

We spent a week just lounging around at home. Mieke slowly got over the illness and her hospital experience. Turkey was just not meant to be at this time of our lives. Fortunately we managed to get some of our money refunded.

We got news two days ago that Rean's contract won't be renewed, so we are coming home around the middle of December. Thoughts of turkish shopping still haunt me. Obviously that is not going to happen any time soon now. But I'm putting it on my bucket list.

But first, a thousand and one other things....

Camel Chops and Scorpions

While the wheather is favourable, for the next three months or so, we intend to make the most of camping. Thus a single weekend passed before we loaded our gear again. We drove out to the same camping spot with four other families late on thursday afternoon. We put up our tent and dashed for the dunes. The kids, including our little one simply couldn't get enough of sliding down the dune. I think we migh be responsible for a shift in its position.

The approximate coordinates taken from Google Earth are  25°22'48.54"N and  47°18'10.38"E if you want to check it out. Seder Village is our compound.

 

 
We had done some shopping before our trip to stock up on edibles. We had to make a dash before the store closed for prayer time and ended up buying camel chops. I didn't read the label, thinking I had taken cow chops. We decided to live on the edge and give it a go (we made sure to pack in enough snacks for incase!). The ladies back home suggested I marinade it with lemon juice, paprika, ginger, garlic and pepper or olive oil sherry (no go in Riyadh!) and Worchester sauce. Shanahz also suggested we feed the camel rosemary twigs a few days before the braai. We'll keep that in mind for next time. I also added a good dolop of coriander.

On the fire it went with great anticipation but I must have done something wrong because the marinade overpowered the meat completely. So we packed it in and put it in a stir fry the next day. It was very tender by then, and the spice mix was delicious. I must admit that I could't tell the difference between camel meat and cow meat after all.

This time we notice such a variety of animal tracks all over our little camp. A lot of movement must have occurred while we were sleeping as they covered our vehicle tracks the next morning. We looked out for scorpions because we had seen some suspicious burrows the previous time. We found one under someone's tent when they packed up. It is a small brownish little thing. You would never see it in the dark. It is something that worries me a bit, out there far away from civilisation, as nobody wears shoes in the thick sand. We also found a sand lizard or ghecko. It runs across the dune and burrows quickly under the sand. If you find fresh tracks you can see where it is hiding and flush it out. Behind our dune was another small depression with a huge burrow, large enough for a mammal, maybe a fox. Some of the tracks we saw looked like mammal tracks to me. Of course my camera's bateries died when I wanted to photograph them for further investigation, but this gives me an expedition to look forward to. Maybe we could get some of the older kids roped in and make an inventory of all the different tracks and try to identify their owners.

There is a scorpion in the middle there somewhere

Since I didn't have the use of my camera I took some photos on my phone and then of course had to finally figure out how to download the. Rean did the figuring out for me, and so I can also post some pictures that I took of the city to give you an idea of our streetscapes.

Why are clandestine pictures of people sleaping so funny?

Mieke loves to wear her Dad's socks

A night under the stars

Since I last wrote, much has happened, yet little worth writing about. We spent our ten day Eid holiday back home in South Africa. We needed some medical advice about Mieke's teeth. We ended up spending a morning in hospital while they performed two root canals and two additional repairs on her little baby teeth. Since she doesn't ever eat sweets or drink juice, the jury's still out on the cause of our problem. But it was a huge relief to be able to speak to someone who we could communicate with and have her teeth seen to. The sight of the black nurses who worked at Femina hospital made me want to cry. They are so warm and soft and sassy. We really shouldn't complain about health care in South Africa, we have much to be thankful for!

Big girl!

Back in Saudi, the long hot summer is slowly drawing to a close. Schools started and kids steadily flowed back into the compound. The poolside had been crowded by moms and kids, all sharing their summer stories. Mieke has started going to the nursery school on the compound. I'm so proud of her, she's so confident and independant and is starting to put together little sentences.

 Three times a week the kids go to the 'Big Gym', a recreation hall next to the restaurant where they play with balls of all shapes and sizes for an hour. The little tots love to stick balls under their T shirts and make 'babies'. Late one afternoon Mieke and Rean went for a walk and she saw one of our neighbours, a man with a big tummy, walking to the pool. She pointed to his tummy and said 'baby!'. I hope he didn't understand, or if he did, that he had a well developed sense of humour.

Jipee, my first ice cream!

Eugh, tiggers don't like ice cream!

 The cooling weather also allows for other activities to recommence, such as camping. On the spur of the moment we decided to join some friends for a night under the stars. We rushed to a huge camping store and had the most incredible fun choosing camping gear. I really learnt something about the local people there. Camping is really a feature, although not really the domain of women. They sell all their equipment in nicely sewn bags with pockets and zips and velcro, toilet paper bags to hook from the roof of whatever, grill bags, cooler bags of all shapes and sizes, wind shields with matching bags etc etc. Camping carpets, amazing sleeping bags. The list just goes on and on. Guess what you're all getting for christmas!

At 4pm on friday afternoon we jumped in our car and drove out to the dunes. Only about an hour out is a wadi that lies between the gravel plains and the red dunes and here is a sheltered spot where we put up our tents. The kids spent the evening climbing up the dunes and sliding down, and the grownups made a fire and cooked dinner, and chatted, or simply listened to the quiet as I did. It was warm and dreamy, quiet and safe. The next morning we had an early breakfast and then packed up and came back home since it still gets quite hot early in the day.

This is definitely something we're going to be doing often in the coming months. It was wonderful!

Rainbow Spagetti

As promised, here are some pictures of our Rainbow Spagetti. The pasta stuck to the paper nicely on its own, it wasn't neccessary to use glue. When we were done for the day, I put the remaining pasta in seperate ziploc bags and keep them in the fridge until next time. O yes, and a nice twist is to put glitter in the pasta. It looks beautiful!

Words in our lives

We got our Iquamas! After seven months of waiting and regular inconvenient travelling, it feels as though we have surely earned them! Now we can apply for a medical aid and get ourselves really settled in. We shouldn't complain though, I heard of a family who have been waiting for two years where for most people the process takes three or four days.

It's getting really hot. As I write the mercury is soaring to 47degrees C in the shade outside my front door. Practically it means that we don't really go out after 8am and before 5pm although we do go to meet the shopping bus at 9am and go to join the nursery school children for a run in the gym hall at 10am. The we walk quickly and go strait there and back, you can really feel the heat melting you bit by bit.

Ramadan started yesterday. For the ladies in the compound this means that shops are only open after 8pm, although we can get groceries during the day. We are all careful not to eat in public, not even drink water in respect of everyone who is fasting.

I thought you might enjoy a few beautiful words that have infiltrated our lives. My favourite is habibi which is arabic for 'child' and is used by the compound ladies with a very specific inflection when their offspring venture into the realm of the disallowed (if you know what I mean). Then there is matapat which is the word used for a speed bump, shukran; thank you,  inshallah; if God wills.

Mieke and I have been trying to get creative with things to keep busy with. There is a wonderful website with incredible activities for little people that is currently our favourite: http://www.theimaginationtree.com/. We recently had a green glitter bath with lost of green glitter, food colouring and different textured toys. I was a bit too cautious with the food colouring though. Next time...

Painted pasta is fun to stick into play dough, and can be sorted into endless variations of kitchen containers. It is also nicely crunchy underfoot and can be used to paint things with if you mix some spit with the pasta.

One of our favourite was a huge big bowl of spagetti. The idea is really to colour it into rainbow colours using food colouring. I just wanted to test out the concept. We'll try rainbow spagetti this week and post a picture!

Four and bran are fun and relatively easy to clean from the floor and furniture. Nice to scoop and sweep with your hands, spoons, brooms and all sorts of things. You can also rub it all over your body without permanent effects.

The littel flour footprints all over the house just melted by heart...

Fingerpainting friends

No, not just a witty title, we really painted our friends.

It started out quite cheerfully, with loads of clean white paper, pretty pots of colourful paint, and three little babies on the lawn.The first of Mieke's artworks was her leg.

Then came her other leg, little Jibriel who was stitting next to her (Mommy managed to get sume paper under her hands and feet at that stage), Mieke's tummy, then her head, the tree, the cat...

I couldn't get a picture of the cat, it ran away too fast.

O its grand to be one!

The Secondhand Souq

One of the compound's shopping bus' most controvertial stops is at the secondhand souq. Here second hand clothes that have been given to charity are sold for next to nothing. Some ladies wrinkle their noses at the mere mention of it, and others may consider receiving treatment to cure them of the frenzy that comes over them at the sight of so much ridiculously cheap clothing. I have been to many social getherings where the ladies strutt around in their finery, if you look carefully you can see some of them winking to each other, and may hear them whisper that they paid the enormous sum of five or ten riyals for their gorgeous outfits (Five riyals is about R11, depending on the exchange rate).

Many ladies go to dig for evening gowns. Some have reported buying designer dresses still with the labels on. I haven't come across any of those, and have found the dresses to be quite garish, decorated with tons of sequins or costume jewellery. I have bought many girls outfits there, some a bit moth eaten, others perfectly fine. Children's clothes go for 3 riyals a piece (about R7), and adults clothing from 5 riyals. If you can get your husband to accompany you you will certainly pay quite a bit less. Obviously you can't try anything on for size and it is inevitable to come home with some duds and the haggling is an inevitable part of the experience. It certainly is dusty, and during the summer months is too hot as it is not in a building, but outside under tarpaulin. Forget about the grand malls and designer boutiques, there is nothing quite like digging around for treasure at the second hand souq.

It's been a while

It's been a while since I've had the time to write. My days are filled with small domestic things and the general goings on in this hot dusty place we're calling home. I can give you an update on my new year's resolutions: I have painted my toenails! A beautiful blue. I have eaten healthy food and I have been to the gym three times or so. That takes me off the hook for this year I guess.We still have no Iquamas and all our furtive attempts to move to a house with a garden have been unsuccessful as yet. Mieke is growingup so fast. She is potty training very nicely and has a vocabulary of words that her mom and dad can lovingly decipher. She likes to choose her own outfits every day, mostly from the dirty laundry, complete with hats. A few days ago she managed to open one of Rean's drawers and draped every single one of his underpants around her neck. She thought it looked beautiful!

I'll quickly tell you about our recent travels. We had a lovely trip to Oman around my birthday. Rean booked us into a smart hotel for a treat. The evening of my birthday I had a tall, cool Gin and Tonic. I have never enjoyed a drink quite so much!

Our last trip was to Dubai. We had both hoped to work in business meetings whilst we were there but none of them worked out. Since it was too hot to spend time outdoors, we hung around in a mall. Dubai Mall has a nice aquarium which Mieke really enjoyed. We also went up the world's tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa.Quite impressive to watch the tiny buildings far below. I was suprised to find I had to equalise my ears in the lift to the top!

Iquama medical

We were called to do our medical exams required for the work permit or Iquama, a sign, we hope, that the process is progressing, so to say. Rean has three colleagues who did their medicals the week before us, so he got clear instructions about where to go in the King Saud Hospital complex, and also quite detailed stories of what to expect from the experience. We were told that we would need to have blood drawn, chest x-rays taken, would have to provide urine and stool samples and have an interview with a doctor.

We packed the nappy bag with snacks and toys in the hope that we could keep Mieke relatively happy during our possibly lengthy visit to the hospital and planned to take turns, one staying with Mieke while the other went through the medical. Alas, as with many great plans, reality was quite different.

From the Google Earth image we were able to find the correct examination center for the men. However, the absence of English signage quite complicated our search for the female quarters. Rean flagged down a masked lady with a white coat, and she immediately took me by the arm and said, 'follow me'. I grabbed Mieke and the (enormously heavy nappy bag) and set off hopefully. Inside a dark and very crowded hall, with several unmarked doors leading to several other crowded rooms, my lady in white waded through waiting women of all ages and shades. We got to a cubicle with two women behind a glass window. They asked for our passports and photos, and I realised that Rean had them! And then my phone chose to freeze. And I didn't know the pin number in order to reset the blasted thing! Our kind lady went in search of Rean and finally brought back the passports. My nerves were getting more frazzled by the minute. Mieke obviously noticed this as babies tend to do and started acting up. We got called to do the blood test, and I was provided with two plastic containers for my two samples and pointed in the direction of the WC.

So, off we went, Mieke and I and the nappy bag (and the two plastic bottles) to look for the loo. It wasn't that hard to find, and was relatively clean, but turned out to be the arabic kind, where the porcelain is comprised of a trench with two foot pads on either side. A water spray nozzle thingy was also provided, in the absence of toilet paper. In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought. My years at Yoga class served me well as I balanced precariously over the trench with my two bottles, trying to keep my Abaya out of the water, and Mieke out of the trench, and the water, and off my lap. And producing my samples. Before prayer time, because then everything grinds to a halt for three quarters of an hour.

In retrospect, it was quite funny.

I was enormously grateful for the kind ladies who helped us through. They were really compassionate and professional.

Hold thumbs that we pass our medicals with flying colours, and that our permits will soon be in the mail!

On the road again

And so the time came for us to get our passports stamped again. Since our wedding aniversary was close at hand we thought to make a trip of it, so to say. We tried to arrange a visit to Salalah (Oman) to see the old Frankinsense routes and beautiful beaches, but unfortunately there were no direct flights and we couldn't very well stay over for eleven hours for a week-end away! So, Muscat it was, again.

Fort overlooking Old Muscat

Beautiful street view

This time I chose a funky little hotel from the internet. What a mistake! If you ever hear of anyone going to Muscat, please warn them not to go near the Beach Hotel! The first night we had no warm water and the fridge sounded like a jackhammer. The 'fully functional' kitchen had no kettle, and other than two teacups and saucers, no single recepticle that could contain water. No dishcloths. No soap. They then moved us to a second room, where we had no water at all! The mirror frame in the bathroom was badly broken so all the pressed wood fibres got in our toothbrushes, the marble slab serving as a vanity table in the bedroom was broken right through, the fridge was quiet, and we had a kettle, but the microwave didn't work. By this time, the staff were getting rude, we were getting grumpy. But that is the great thing about week-ends away, by the time tempers get frayed, it's time to go!

Muscat was beautiful as we had expected. We visited a quaint little museum, Bait Al Zubair, and, of all things, an art exhibition.We drove out to Nizwa to see their Fort. We got there just in time to see them closing the doors for prayer times so we wandered around the deserted Souq (market) admiring all the woodwork and patterned tiles.

Another highlight was a trip to Sultan Quaboos Grand Mosque. It is a modern building, quite recently completed. It certainly but all the old european cathedrals into perspective for me! The arabic arches and linked patterns repeating and varying were so elegantly and intricately woven into the architecture, carvings and mosaics. There are also numerous plaques with information about historic designs from various regions.

Mieke, of course, had a ball. She had her photo taken by several groups of visitors, and had great fun with the shoes that people trustingly left in the numerous cubbyholes at the entrance to the prayer halls!

My personal favourite memory from this trip was an unexpected hour at sundown on a tiny beach just north of Muscat (I think it was called Quantab). The fishing village that nestles between the jagged mountains is certainly not on the tourist map. No grand buildings, just a cluster of small homes that peter out on a little beach where we sat and watched the sun go down. Some men in their beautiful traditional dress were walking together as old friends at the close of day until the prayer songs called them away and left us by ourselves in a beautiful place.