Mubarak Al-Busaidi
Deputy Director
Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center
Washington, DC
Thursday, June 29, 2006
When Heidi told me this morning that she needed someone to shed more light on the Omani experience, I thought maybe I could try to share with you my experience as someone who lived two hundred kilometers from capital. I saw this changing status of my hometown from an old-fashioned town to almost a modern place. I will try to be clear in my points, but it’s actually discussion, presentation, more than lecture. Anybody is welcome to ask questions.
I’ll try to talk about infrastructure, which was there in a village called Adam – just an example – that’s the place I know more, and I can saw how things happened throughout this change. Transportation, electricity, water systems, media, the type of communication, and the education system changed. And, all of this was changing the social life of the day-to-day person in that town. This picture looks like Adam. This is very close to the place where I grew up. Houses, mud, and stones. This place was two hundred kilometers from Muscat. Here is the map and it’s almost two hundred kilometers, just to give you an idea of the distance between official capital Muscat and the remote places.
By that time, the early seventies, the link between the capital and the remote areas was not very easy. There was no transportation means which were very easy. Of course, transportation was mainly very, very basic roads. I can remember hardly… only the military land rovers were crossing. And maybe, six years before that, there were not even Land Rovers there. The type of houses was mainly mud. Up to 1980 we lived in a Fort Like huge building community with only one main gate. We call it “the Hara” Electricity was not there. The first time we experienced electricity was with a small generator and everybody was debating about the right amount of power to be allocated to each house hold, but then everybody agreed that at least one tube light should be provided to each house. It was mostly a private project by people who experience living out of the country.
The water system at that time was depending very much on what we known as "Aflaj" system, which is mainly ground hot springs. Other than that, there were just a few wells inside that Fort alike building but for irrigating the farms. Those wells were secured for when something goes wrong – and I mean by something goes wrong that if there were any tribal problems and that gate was closed – people can survive. That’s why there were wells inside some of the houses.
The only media I can remember at that time was listening to the Arabic BBC program. The first TV I saw at that time – someone brought it from Qatar; after things started to change, his brothers convinced him to come back and I can remember the day when he came – he had a box; he called it a television. Other than that the "Sablah" played quite a big role in spreading the news. The "Sablah" is quite a traditional Omani system where people used to gather very frequently in the different occasions, and some time on daily bases, most of the time it is considered as a mean of democracy in the early days where every body in that community has the chance to address his concerns publicly in front of every body. Of course in a place like that one will expect very preliminary mean of communication, if anything at all.
Regarding the education, I consider myself lucky because I was one of the first to join the first school. Lessons were held in tents and under tree shadows. Of course I joined the Quran classes as well, which was the predominant schooling system at that time. The new school meant so many things to me. It meant new way of learning, which was hard, but I managed. It gave me exposure to new means of writing and of reading books other than the Holy Quran. For example, we were able to study sciences and theater. In addition to that we had the chance to deal with people other than our own people, who dress differently, and speak differently, and look different from us. I saw this as a means of globalization and cultural exchange.
In many ways, I believe the palm tree, our national tree, provided us with the means of civilization. It helped us build a new era and bridge us into a new lifestyle. The palm tree, also known as the date tree, was the nucleus of the whole life in the village because daily life revolved around it. We eat from it, we use it in our households, and sometimes build houses using palm tree leaves. In fact, our daily life was scheduled according to the Palm tree time frame. That is way it meant so many thing to us. Kids need to go to the farms to collect the dried dates and some times young girls make them into necklaces. In the afternoon, when the heat would not permit us to work in farms, we used to invent our own games in the Hara, avenues, using the palm tree stuff and toys Even in Ramadan (the Fasting Month in Islam), we used to gather as kids. The boys would donate with the food from their houses and girls would cook, which saved parents from cooking lunch when they were all fasting. After the school was built, the kids found new games for their pleasure, like football.
Adults are also dependent on the palm tree in their daily lives. Both men and women leave their houses early in the morning to work in the farms as much as they can before the weather gets too hot. Later in the day, the women go to the house to prepare the food, and they go back to farms in the afternoon. The cycle starts again until the sunset when every body goes back home for dinner.
That daily schedule changed as the different means of civilization emerged. People joined the monthly pay roll jobs, which was a new idea to them having previously only worked in their own premises any time they want. Enhanced transportation gave them the chance to look for jobs outside the village, which expanded their employment opportunities.
Omani in Adam experienced their own national radio station, and their own national TV channel. The school system was improving more and more and people were reading and writing. Newspapers visited the village, and in almost 1987 Adam was connected to the national telephone grid network. At that time, I was studying in the first University in Oman ( Sultan Qaboos University).
After 35 years in renaissance, Adam is no longer a small, quiet village. It has 4 schools performing the basic education system i.e. from class (1-10), and has a 12MW electrical station fed from the first gas turbine IPP (Independent Power Producer) in the whole Gulf States. With the internal roads in the town it self, the people are holding their mobile phones, sending messages to each other.
The water is supplied from the main tank, the satellite dishes are everywhere, and people can enjoy the different channels all over world.
Well, that is how Adam is now, compared with what it was 35 years ago, and I am ready for questions.
Page last updated 05/07/2007