Thursday night fever

Living in KSA, "Thursday night fever" implies much more often warming up your credit card at the mall than dancing all night long. However, there are some exceptions, which happen whenever some compound’s ladies organization do us (by us I mean the expat community) the favour of throwing a party! We were glad to be invited to a party in Saudi Arabia (where having fun the way we do is usually frowned upon), but when we were told it was going to be a Latin-Hispanic fiesta, we virtually got carried away!

And the fiesta did not disappoint us: Spanish paella, carne mechada from Venezuela, Mexican mole (I never enjoyed a mole as much as this one, 14,000 km away from México Lindo!), Spanish sangria, typical dances from Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico, and authentic Latin-American music! I even met two Mexican women, one from Monterrey and one from Nuevo Laredo; unfortunately they were only born in Mexico and raised in Houston, Texas. So there was actually no one to remind me of the accent of Monterrey, nor of the charming rude words that I’m particularly fond of! Anyway it was great, the only bad thing about this party was, it made me miss Mexico and my Mexican friends more than ever!  Los quiero amigos!

Random discoveries of the week end

Since every day in Saudi Arabia is an opportunity to learn something new, here's a couple of discoveries the week-end brought me:

- I shared a very tasty, huge dinner with the - female - members of a Saudi family, and even practised a bit of Arabic (based on the "Food and Drinks" chapter I had just studied in class!)

- I was told exciting stories by a lovely 3 year-old Saudi girl, of which I hardly understood a word, but I can tell there was great plots, adventures, emotions and fun in her tales!

- I was asked if I had a brother by a couple of Saudi teenagers dreaming about a handsome French husband! (That was before their mothers explained me the reality: arranged marriages will be their lot too, and love... will hopefully come eventually, after years of marriage!)

- I was confided Arab women's secrets to smell so good all the time: they use long-lasting concentrated Arabian perfumes, and they spread Oud smoke (scented wood which is burnt as incense) in their hair and under their clothes.

Nice souvenirs I was given after the dinner, including perfume and oud

- I discovered a very nice waterpark in Al Khobar, clean, green, refreshing! It was very nice feeling like being out of KSA for a day

Sunset Beach, Al Khobar

- I was taught an even yummier recipe for Om Ali by a Saudi friend at her house. And this is the one I've just baked myself!

Arabic qahwa

I already mentioned how much I like being offered Arabic coffee in Saudi houses. However I still was very curious about how it was made and if it was real coffee, since both the taste and the colour indicate otherwise. So I asked my french student Sarah how she made her coffee and - honouring the Arab hospitality as always - she gave me all the ingredients I would need and explained me the whole process. So yesterday I carefully followed every step and the result was as tasteful as the original!

Arabic qahwa step by step:

Ingredients: very lightly toasted coffee, cardamom, saffron

1. Grind all ingredients

2. Boil about one litre water with two tablespoons ground coffee

3. Put one teaspoon ground cardamom and one pinch of saffron in the coffee pot

4. Pour the hot coffee into the coffee pot, onto the spices

5. Drink hot in small cups; you don't need to add any sugar. Serve with dates.

Now here comes a little challenge for my French readers: can you remember a French song containing the word qahwa? If you do - therefore admitting your memory knows no musical taste! - I'll invite you for one!

Dy(e)ing for henna!

Having dyed my hair with henna for a couple of years now, and living in a region where henna is cultivated and used as a cosmetic to colour nails, skin and hair, I thought I'd write a short tutorial about how to dye your hair with this natural product.

This time I used a very good henna which I bought on the Sinaw market in Oman. I am not a specialist  on henna quality, but I could actually see there was no added product, since the powder looked very green, smelt strongly of dried plants and there was even some bigger pieces of henna leaves in there. 

Now the main advantage of dyeing your hair with henna is that it's 100% natural and it actually protects the hair. Chemical hair colouring products get inside your hair fibres and weaken your hair, whereas henna forms a protective coat around each strand of hair. The drawback of henna is that it will always give a copper brown result, so if it's not your colour, it's not your product!

Instructions: I usually use about 100-150 grams of henna powder, on which I pour boiling water until I get a smooth, creamy paste. This part is the tricky one, since if your henna mix is too liquid, it will fall off your hair, and if it's too thick it's going to be hard to apply it onto the hair. Then I apply the warm mix onto my wet hair with a small brush. When finished, I wrap my hair in plastic to avoid stains and put a towel on top of it (maintaining the hair warm improves the dyeing process). I keep it  on for around two hours, rinse, et voilà!

The Bedouin woman I bought the henna from, in Sinaw, Oman.
On the picture she's trying to sell me one of her peaked masks, but it didn't convince me!

Henna powder

Henna paste, ready to be applied

If your hair is a dull light brown mixed with sooo premature greys, the result will look like this!

Getting a henna tattoo in Dubai

Result of a tattoo after removing the henna paste.
It can last from 10 days up to three weeks. 

Oppressed women or divas?

It's been about three months since I arrived to Saudi and I started sharing my experiences on this blog. One of the strongest experience we face here is obviously the strong gender segregation there is here in the Kingdom. However, this subject is one of the hardest for me to write about, since I can only observe and try to understand how the society works. This is way to complex for me to have a clear opinion, and then I am really no one to express a judgment on this topic. Instead, I can recommend you a highly interesting article on the condition of women in Saudi, by BBC News, under this link:

The Saudi women taking small steps for change

The article quotes a Saudi woman saying: "We Saudi women are privileged and pampered by our guardians". By guardians, they refer to their father / brother / husband who is responsible for them and must accompany them everywhere. For the outsider, it's hard to believe that they really think this way. I actually heard the same kind of position in several occasions. My arabic teacher for instance, as a fellow student was mentioning she wanted to go to Mecca, and that it was too long a distance for her husband to drive (Do I really need to recall you women cannot drive?), our young Saudi teacher answered: We are like queens here, our husbands drive us accross the country, and if they find it's too far to drive, then we go by plane!

Buy my camel! (Oman 7/7)

Last but not least, the last article about Oman (for now...!). There's just so much to see in Oman, on our way back to UAE we felt we had to try and visit as much as we could! That's how we ended up paying a night visit to the old town of Mudayrib, on our way to Sinaw. Wandering in the old, partly deserted village of Mudayrib by night was an interesting, almost mystical experience, even though the villagers tended to look at us quite weirdly... they probably thought we'd got lost!

And then we arrived in the town of Sinaw by night. The idea was to spend the night there and get up early the next day to go to the souq. Sinaw's souq is one of the most lively and interesting in the region since the Bedouins traditionally go there to trade their livestock for modern commodities.

Wandering around the market at 7.30am the next morning, we'd already forgotten the night we'd spent in a creepy dirty Indian hotel! It was actually totally worth it! On the market, we obviously drew some attention since we were the only tourists, but on the whole people were very nice and courteous. As we were having a look at traditional daggers that some old men were trying to sell, and were surprised at the price (200 Omani Rials), a lovely old Omani showed us his own, 2,000 OR worth dagger! He also explained us a couple of things about the market, starting with the camels on sale, which were actually sold for their meat (around 300-600 OR) whereas racing camels cost at least 15,000 OR!

Al-Mudayrib

Old fort in Al-Mudayrib

Deserted houses in Al-Mudayrib

Dinner at an Omani restaurant

Sinaw souq

Camels ready to be auctioned

Dried fish

Bedouin family bringing goats to sell

Beautiful Bedouin woman wearing the traditional peak-mask and a shiny sea-through abeya

Omani wearing a khanjar (Omani dagger) at his belt

Khanjars for sale at the souq

Camel in the middle of a dual carriageway on the way to U.A.E.

So that's for the report on our trip to Oman. If the pictures or my words didn't speak for themselves, I highly recommend discovering this beautiful country!

Have a good weekend everyone!

Wadis (Oman 6/7)

The most beautiful sceneries of Oman are found in its wadis. A Wadi (also known as Oued in North Africa) is a dry riverbed in a valley. A river usually forms when it rains heavily in the mountains (sometimes even causing flash floods); the rest of the time - most of the year - the riverbed is completely dry. However, thanks to the water they receive, most wadis host lush oases of palm trees, and in some of them, you can also find natural deep pools of turquoise blue water to dive into! 

Wadi Bani Khalid

Wadi Bani Khalid

Wadi Bani Khalid

Near the town of Tiwi

Tiwi

Burning the fallen rocks with fire in order to split them to move them away

Wadi Tiwi

Wadi Tiwi

Wadi Shab

Wadi Shab

Wadi Shab

Closer to the edge (Oman 5/7)

Once out of the deep Wahiba sands we headed East towards the eastern edge of the Arabian peninsula. 

We spent a night in Ras-al-Jinz, at an observatory for sea turtles, which we went out to see twice during the night. We were lucky enough to see a couple of turtles lay eggs and cover them with sand, as well as half a dozen hatchlings (they're actually as small as 5 cm!) coming out of the sand, avoiding the hungry crabs and entering the sea for the first time in their life. Once grown up, i.e. about 37 years later, the female turtles will come back to the exact same beach to lay eggs at the very same place they were born!

The following day, we went to Sur and its famous dhow building yards, and then to the ancient city of Qalhat, whose settlements date back to the 2nd century AD. Interestingly, it's a place where both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta once stood, respectively in the 13th and 14th century. Back then, the city of Qalhat was a big port playing an important role in horse trading.

On the coastal road towards Ras-al-Jinz

In a coastal village; goat stealing food from the pick-up

Sunset on the road to Sur

Ras-al-Jinz, 5am, turtle returning to the sea

Sea turtle returning to the water after laying eggs

Ras-al-Jinz: fishermen going to work

Sunrise in Ras-al-Jinz

Sur

Traditional dhow under construction

Sur

Qalhat - tomb of Bibi Maryam, built for Baha al Din Ayaz by his wife

                                                                                                                                             Sur

                                                            Sunset on the coastal road towards Ras-al-Jinz