Teaching in Oman 1

I have taught English in all its variations in a few different countries, as you can see from my blog, but the one place I wanted to go was Oman. The image of Aladdin with his white turban flying on a red carpet over towering minarets in Baghdad had stayed with me from childhood and I had longed to see strange new worlds in the east from my earliest years. Once I dreamed I was on a flying carpet soaring above the earth and it was so wonderfully real, only to wake up and discover I had wet my bed. Oh well, now here I was, on a plane to Oman. Baghdad would have to wait. 

In 2010 September I was hired to teach the General English Program at Al-Sharkiya University in Ibra, a town approximately 150 miles south of Muscat, the capital of Oman. The university was new, I was one of ten teachers hired to get the program up and running under the direction of Dr. Ali Mansouri, a refugee from Iraq. 

The flight was long from Vancouver Island. One hour from Comox to Vancouver, ten hours from Vancouver to Frankfurt, five hours from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi and then forty minutes from Abu Dhabi to Muskat. Almost everyone disembarked in Abu Dhabi and the plane was empty, except for the two pounds of vomit that the girl in front of me had left in a bag on her tray table.  

At the Muskat airport I was relieved that obtaining a visa was nothing more than paying for it - handing money to a young woman with long nails wearing a full-dress black abaya. "Welcome to my country," she smiled, handing me my passport.   

The moment the outside doors opened from the air-conditioned airport, a gust of air from what might have been a blast furnace whipped my body. It was almost 90 degrees, but it felt like 110. Nasser, a tall, bearded man wearing a dark dishdasha and beaded kuma, the long gown and hat traditional to Omani men, approached. 'You are Nancy?'  I nodded.  'Welcome to my country,' he said, the same line I was greeted with all over the Middle East by the most welcoming and friendly people in the world.  

Nasser would be our driver for Al Sharkiya University in Ibra, where I'd be working. Another teacher who had just arrived from Washington, Kate, said hello and waved from the backseat of Nasser's car and after a long day, we were driven to the Hotel Manaf in Muscat. 

I kept a diary of my experiences in Oman, as I did in Taiwan. It gives the reader an idea of the complexity dealing with new faces and places and the perpetual psychological strain that occurs. ESL schools many times hire people who aren't qualified to teach, or who have fake qualifications, or aren't dedicated to the students, but are more interested in making money, partying and moving on. Many are alcoholics. Others may be there to leave their problems behind and make a new start, not realizing the difficulty of integrating in a different culture and the stress it creates. The language barrier alone is taxing. I've seen almost everything in my time overseas, so I wasn't surprised by what transpired at Al-Sharkiya University.