Jibreen Castle (1670) and surrounding area

Interior with carved Omani chest.

Flowers painted on the ceiling.

On the road between Ibri (home) and Bahla, the capital of Oman in the 13th century, and site of the castle.

View from the roof. Clouds and shadows!!


Interior courtyard.


Koranic verses carved on the walls in the stairwell.

College Life in Ibri

The institution started life as a college of education for women about 20 years ago. In 2003, it became the College of Applied Sciences and began to admit men. Though classes are now co-ed, there's very little mixing of the sexes, with the men, all in white, sitting up front and the women, cloaked in black like a flock of crows, in the back. Group work is difficult because the women outnumber the men about 8 to 1, and few women will write on the board if a man is present as that would be construed as immodest flaunting of themselves. English proficiency ranges from hopeless to near-native fluency.
The students, like Omanis in general, are unsophisticated, chronically indolent and incorrigibly sociable. Between classes the females hang out in the gazebos, and the males pass the time drinking endless cups of weak NesCafe in the male students' cafeteria....a shocking practice in a part of the world where coffee will normally support a spoon upright.

Fahad Khalfan Obeid Al Kaabi, one of my favorite students. He, unlike most of the students who

love to hang around our offices with no apparent purpose, actually has something to say. My colleagues and I have developed specific criteria to describe the various student approaches to hanging around: loitering, lurking and skulking top the list.

The buildings are all (surprise!!) blindingly white and every classroom has an OHP and a computer, but the internet access is so hopeless that net-based lessons are not really possible. The grounds, maintained by an army of Indian workers, attract a lot of birds that don't normally live in the desert.
The female students who live on campus are not permitted to leave except to go home for weekends and holidays. The gates are locked at night just to make sure there are no escapes.

We're not exactly overworked here; I teach two ninety minute classes 3 days a week, and one 90 minute class 2 days a week. Compare that to my New York schedule of 9 hours a day in the classroom 4 days a week. Keep in mind that here my house is rent-free, I don't pay taxes, and health care is free for everyone who works here. Life is so different from my teacher's life in New York that I may join my students in their terminal indolence.

Birthday Trip to Sohar

Sooty gulls, Caspian gulls and Siberian gulls

Through the mountains to Sohar, home of Sinbad the Sailor

Good Intentions: The Bite

My granny used to say that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. I took in an obviously sickly cat last week and was bitten for my efforts. (What was I thinking?) The congenitally languid Omanis have been shockingly efficient in providing rabies prophylaxis, investigating and testing the perpetrator. I was given the first dose of vaccine in the spiffy new clinic in Ibri, but to get rabies immune globulin, I was driven to an outpost in the desert where the hospital was as desolate as the bush hospitals in Sierra Leone. Picture the low mud brick buildings, a lone acacia tree coated with dust by the door and a few goats rumaging for something edible among the rocks. It seemed an odd place to have a stash of RIG on hand, but it was explained to me that the reservoir for rabies in Oman is a type of desert fox that has been known to attack camels, goats, feral cats and anything else that moves. Shortly after I left the hospital, the public health DVM called to get the details of the incident. By the time he arrived at my house, the cat had died (and was subsequently taken for testing.) Ahmed assured me in his near-perfect English that all would end well. My hysteria had begun to lose its edge when he started to talk about his recent interaction with a rabid camel. (I think I'll use the zoom lense to photograph free-range camels from the car.) This experience has been amazing on several counts. Everything was accomplished quickly and efficiently by friendly, helpful people: the doctor, the nurse, the epidemiologist and the veterinarian were all sympathetic and non-judgemental. Surprisingly, all of the participants in my adventure were Omanis. (Most of the professionals here are Indian, Egyptian or Iraqi.) Probably the most astonishing thing to an American is that money was not mentioned once.