So looking forward to the Christmas and New Year festivities? Perhaps it's a day at the beach at A'Sifah? Or further afield stargazing in Wahiba Sands? Whatever you're doing out there in Oman-land, spare a thought for all of us poorer cousins back here where the snow falls, the temperatures dip and the cost of heating goes up!
It's bloody cold here, and snowy. Part of me loves it (I'd much prefer this sort of winter to the damp, mild rubbish Britain normally gets) but it is perishingly cold and I am getting older....and I don't like it for the most part.
When I lived in Oman, although not an official holiday at work, my boss would let me go for the afternoon on Christmas Day, so off I'd pop to the beach for a bit of festive sunbathing. How long ago those days seem to be now (they stopped only 5 years ago).
Next winter, I'm back in Muscat for a holiday - so I can relive the good times again.
Mind you, I can also pick my way through the trash left by locals who think the world turns only on the cheap labour of TCNs and that they can cause mayhem and destruction safe in the knowledge that someone will be along in the dead of night to make everything better.
One day...soon...that life will come to a shuddering halt. Reality will hit. Guest workers will disappear. Oman will fall of a cliff, the likes of which it has not done since the 19th century. Life will become hard; harder than anyone there has experienced in living memory.
One day soon, locals will have to clean up their own mess. No-one will be there to do it for them.
A winter's tale?
1 comment:
Well said. And if you haven't been there for 5 years you're in for a shock, especially if you visit those places that cheap foreign labour can't reach. Try driving through one of the trash alleys that the main dune valleys through the Wahibas have become, or go and camp on a beach to which the local Wali doesn't send cleaning crews. It will bring tears to your eyes.
WM
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