a look at all the ways restricted assembly doesn’t apply
Originally, I had the thought of writing a blog entry about the different concepts of time that polka dot the culture in Oman. I was going to explain how every clock in my house tells a different time, and how even at places (like museums and businesses) that have clocks that display times around the world, they are all off by 10 to 15 minutes from each other (as well as the number of hours that one would assume). I was going to talk about the difficulty of waiting outside everyday for a bus that comes between the hours of 7:10 am and 8:20 am without warning, and wondering how that would go over in America. I had also planned to write about the way that lecturers would call ten minutes before the lecture to cancel without excuse, and how on every excursion the million dollar question was always “where’s our bus driver?” But I figured that this would have the tone of frustration, and that it wouldn’t be clear that I actually like the way that Omani don’t focus on time in the same way as people in the West, so I decided to write this entry instead.
This summer, I studied intentional community in Memphis (as well as historical intentional communities) and I found out that intentional community is “a community designed and planned around a social ideal or collective values and interests, often involving shared resources and responsibilities.” Part of this study abroad program is a month of independent resource based around a topic and culminating in a hefty research paper. The topic that I have selected is Jamaea, which is the transliterated Arabic term given to Omani RoSCAs (or rotating savings and credit associations). Jamaea are small groups of people (usually relatives, friends or colleagues) who organize to form a system of that provides loans without interest to all of the members in order to fund a project or purchase. Jamaea is especially crucial in Islamic countries where people think it is haram (or forbidden) to take interest on loans. Example: You and me and two of our friends get together and decide to form a Jamaea. We decide that each month we will put in $50. The first month, you receive $150 from the other 3 of us, the next month you put in $50 and I receive the total $150, and so on until everyone has had their chance to get the money and use it for what they want to purchase. Sometimes Jamaea can help people who are having financial problems, or who have lost their job to get money that they can pay back in small increments and without interest. I think this is a form of intentional community, and that’s what I’m going to write about for my project.
Strangely, the people who form a Jamaea rarely meet all together in one physically location. Generally, they will see each other often, but it is rare that they would ever come together. Payments are made to one particular person who distributes, and sometimes transferred into a bank account or given directly to the recipient for that month and not necessarily passed person to person. In some ways, it’s hard to imagine an intentional community that doesn’t regularly meets face to face, however, they meet the criteria of being organized around “collective values and interests” (Islam and non-interest loans), and having “shared resources or responsibilities” (namely the money and the fundamental trust that each person will continue to pay and to pay on time). Maybe one of the reasons that people in Jamaea cannot meet regularly to collect money or develop a different type of intentional community is that the Omani government restricts assembly for the people. Although it is not uncommon to have a house full of family members on Eid, at weddings and funerals, and on holidays, it is against the law to have large gatherings otherwise (especially of unrelated people). This law, of course excludes religious gatherings, which are able to be freely practiced inside government authorized facilities.
Maybe in reaction to this restriction, I have seen community develop in multiple locations throughout my stay in Oman. Surprisingly, the small communities that develop may seem typical of situations among friends or colleagues in the United States, but can actually be analyzed as something different. I’ve had church in my bedroom with my housemaid who shares my faith, I’ve gone running in the morning with my sisters and shared the sunrise with friends on the beach, I’ve witnessed the stereo-type shaking conversation that occurs between expatriate laborers and Omani youth in the beauty salon, I’ve gotten to know my Arabic professors and asked (and been asked) challenging questions that tilt preconceptions, I’ve never eaten a meal alone and never been hard-pressed to make this happen, I’ve had kahuwa (coffee) with strangers who became friends, I’ve seen growth happen in taxicabs and over sheesha, I’ve been a part of a family that cares more about relationship than anything else, I’ve seen interactions break language barriers as I sat in Nizwa and had my homestay mother drop various items on my lap for hours on end and recited their Arabic name to me, I’ve walked at night with family to visit relatives and I’ve sat in silence because we have nothing new to say (because we visited yesterday) and still we sit to be with each other. In funerals, in weddings, on holidays, and without notice or planning, we visit, they visit, we stay, and they stay for days on end.
Relationships begin differently in Oman as well; Omanis seem intent upon establishing concern and trust at the forefront. Whether you’ve just had a car accident or you’re coming to pick up your laundry, conversation in Oman always begins the same—first there’s a long string of greetings, asking for news and about your family, then there’s a brief hand shake and then we get to the business—this is something that is unimaginable in American life. Today my family has a wedding; yesterday we went to an Aunt’s house to have lunch and a relative, who lives in Cyprus had come into town for the wedding. She speaks wonderful English and we were talking after lunch with my sister. Up until this point all of the time we had spoken she had been insistent upon the stifling lack of freedom that exists in Oman, but this time she talked about how family doesn’t mean anything in Europe. She said “In the West, someone dies or you get sick and no one comes, no one cares. That’s not how it goes here. Some things are better in Cyprus, but some things are also much better here.”
In America we have friends who we see regularly, we have people who we meet at school or who we share coffee with, but in Oman community develops when one person requests that the other would come to his/her house. Walking in Nizwa with my homestay mother, every woman we passed that stood outside her house requested that we come in and have kahuwa (I can’t even imagine how much coffee we would have had if we had accepted every time!). A minister in the government that I met a couple days ago began conversation with me by asking what I missed most from home, after I told him I missed my parents, he promptly invited them to come and stay in one of his houses. He made me take his number and told me to call and invite them. If there’s one thing that I wish to take back from my experience in Oman it is the understanding of developing community through hospitality at every possible opportunity.
*** my photobucket has not been working, the picture downloader isn’t loading. So I will continue to try to upload more pictures, in the future Insha Allah.
