Continued

I apologize for the unfinished nature of my last blog post. I'm still in Nizwa--one of the shababs took us to school with him today so I'm in the computer lab at Nizwa University right now. It's been interesting and enjoyable being here the last couple days, but first a jump back to the UAE and Qatar.

So, I haven't read that much about Dubai at all, but there was this very tall, spire like building there, and I was told that it was intended to be the tallest building in the world. Apparently they had to rethink things half way through when people in Abu Dhabi started planning an even taller buiding. You can see through the top floors of the buiding now, though, because construction is halted. I was told that the builders ran out of money. Dubai has been hit much harder than the rest of the region by the financial crisis. For lack of a better term, let's just say that lots of people in Dubai were acting very American with their money. To get just how symbolic this building was to me (I still don't even know its name), you should look up a picture of it, and I swear it has a ziggurat-ish shape. So there's a tower of Babel, built on the sand instead of solid rock, and the builders didn't count the cost before starting. That's Dubai in a nutshell.

Except for the whole racist, sexist, capitalist social structure thing. I was able to speak Arabic twice in Dubai--with expat Arabs--it's really an international city, and in my opinion, if there's any place that represents the mix of problems, hope, lies, sin, glitz, poverty, and wealth that is the modern world, Dubai is it--or close anyways. After being in a conservative, gender segregated society for so long, the centrality of prostitution was pretty shocking. --- And switching to the whole South Asian underclass, white upper class, and Arab financiers model in the city, it ocurred to me at one point that the problem is more that I am a racist than that Dubai is. I felt all "righteously indignant" and revolutionary as I observed things, but then I realized that I've known the world is like this for so long...but it didn't arouse feelings moving me to really reject things until I saw the rich and the poor together. I will condemn it in my head, but I don't actually FEEL bad profitting from the global, working "underclasses" in the States, but when they live in the same city as rich people I feel like something's wrong. Maybe I'm that guy who just doesn't want "other" races living in my neighborhood, or beggars in public places.

But enough about Dubai. Qatar was even richer and much less Las Vegas-y, a welcome thing. The same goes for Abu Dhabi. The Al Jazeera station did in fact make me feel like I was all that, which was part of the point I guess. Hah, no--not quite the point--but I was learning, though. I definitely know much more about the Gulf than I did, which of course triggers interest in more and more things. There were lots of amazing buildings, museums, and such in Qatar and Abu Dhabi...money can buy a lot of stuff.

And to bring it back quite quickly, here I am in Nizwa, which has a small town feel that I enjoy. We had the craziest time at a technical college the other day where we didn't realize that we were going to have "an open discussion" with Omani students on a stage in front of 100-200 other students. It was great, though. We got the expected questions about Obama, how we "view" or like Oman, etc. (everyone loves telling me that he's the first black, American president--I sometimes feel like I let them down when I reveal that I already knew that). Then, there was a sort of gameshow competition between Americans and Omanis. The questions were in Arabic, but we had some translation help and made out ok.

And I'll stop there, because I know I certainly wouldn't read this whole post in one sitting unless I had lots of homework to do. There's obviously lots that's happened and lots that I've been mulling over and thinking about. As always, it takes time.

Peace