Visual Podcast-Oman

Mustafa: It goes without saying that acceptance of sexual minorities in particular or even minorities in general does not transpire in society just because of legal reforms being legislated or imposed. Real improvement in the quality of life of members of the LGBT community comes about through evolution of actual attitudes of people in their hearts and minds.

Let’s move on to the next location you applied to work in. That location was Oman, where you and I eventually met a couple of years into your arrival. I believe you arrived there in 2010? How was Oman different, being the first time you found yourself in a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) country?

Tobias: I shall elaborate by means of an anecdote, I suppose. A friend of mine had been working in Oman in the major university in the capital city, Muscat. She had been a colleague in Yemen years back, and she described Oman as ‘Yemen for the middle-aged,’ meaning that the people were nice and very hospitable, and that the landscapes and climate were similar.

Mustafa: The climate is barely bearable when you have an air-conditioning unit!
Tobias: Well, Yemen was very similar in that sense. I had gotten really excited and it had sentimental value to me to go somewhere reminiscent of Yemen, which I had fallen in love with all these years ago. Oman proved to be absolutely scenic: majestic mountains along the seaside where the capital city is located with spectacular deserts on the other side of the mountains. It was really stunning.

Mustafa: Did people in Oman remind you of people in Yemen?
Tobias: I found Omanis to have a quality unique to them. The country had undergone major investment over the past few decades under the rule of the now late-monarch. His ascension to the throne came at a time when the country had been all but primitive in every sense of the word. He opened the economy up and the country underwent rapid development. Having had virtually no paved roads or modern utilities, and for means of demonstrating the contrast he materialized, there had been only a couple of religious school before he came to power, but within the time-frame of just years, there was suddenly foreign businesses, infrastructure, higher education with a well-funded research and development aspect, and just a massive transformation of society and with it national identity.

I found Omanis to have a clearer awareness of existing in a global context.

Mustafa: You are describing life in a somewhat cosmopolitan capital city. I’ll stress that even though I grew up in the same city, I would not pretend to have a better standing in describing Oman and Omanis. The context I grew up in was very sheltered in isolation within a religious and ethnic minority, and therefore I shall humbly label myself ignoramus of the diversity that Omani society represents. Nevertheless, I shall contribute to the discussion through my own lens of growing up an Omani.

Tobias: Living nearer to the border with the United Arab Emirates rather than the border with Yemen in the South, people in Muscat seemed to have an affinity to travel towards Dubai and the wider world more so than to Yemen.
Also, albeit being a GCC country, Oman maintain a distinct national identity. Compared to Dubai, the land of skyscrapers and glass, Oman is the land of understated stunning sandstone buildings. The former Sultan, the founder of the modern Omani state, was truly a visionary man. He realized that vision through investing in social projects. Women were encouraged to equal access into the arts, sports, government institutions, and even the state security apparatus. He spearheaded the foundation of notional arts and culture institutions such as the Royal Opera House, the National Museum, and the country implemented policies to create opportunities in mainly high-end tourism. Tourism is one of the ways that the country tried to diversify its economy from virtual total reliance on the oil and gas sector.

Mustafa: As we mention Yemen, we shall take a second to remind ourselves that the comparisons we are forming are to a Yemen which you had experienced three decades prior. Nothing in Yemen is the same anymore as a result of the devastating war there.
Going back to your arrival in Oman, you had now become fully-fledged in your expertise managing international projects in the sectors you were involved in, namely education and cultural exchange. Having solidified your professional foundation, how did you go about creating projects in the education sector? Let’s start with education and we’ll talk about the arts after.

Tobias: We worked, of course in English language development. We worked in all levels of schooling, mainly encouraging the cultivation of a culture of reading. We trained all sorts of teachers to pursue an attitude to encourage critical thinking in pupils; we founded many reading centres for kids. In the higher education sector we trained in quality assurance development, academic exchange and joint research projects.

Mustafa: By then the internet had encroached into all aspects of life, so despite the existing censorship and the state-monopoly on media outlets, students and the general public had access to any literature if they truly wanted to find something.
I remember when our school would take us to the book fair every year, coming from a religious minority, I was aware that some books were banned. Identity politics in terms of religion and state don’t possess a separation in that part of the world, especially in the context of the plethora of identities in the Middle East.
Were the people working in the organization were locals?

Tobias: Our teaching staff was mostly comprised of expatriates. However the customer-service and administration staff was mainly Omani. The examination staff were predominantly Indian. The majority of staff had been working for the same organization for decades.

Mustafa: What was the policy in terms of the content you used in teaching the English language as a British organization? I know of an American organization that did similar work to yours which utilized very American-oriented teaching material.

Tobias: British culture, whatever that may be, was not a central focus of the syllabus. Our policy focused on equipping students to be ready for further education opportunities. I was aware of the ‘preaching style,’ as it were, that the Americans used, but in our organization the topic of Britain, if it came up was dealt with more so along the lines of critically assessing the good, the bad, and the ugly, in order to create discussion.

Mustafa: I think your policy of developing language skills went in tandem with government programs which funded large numbers of students to pursue higher education in prestigious universities abroad. I know that students even went to non-anglophone countries and had to learn German or Polish even.
Ok. What about your work in the cultural sector?

Tobias: We managed to do a lot of projects. However, I did find it challenging to garner enthusiasm, for some reason. Sometimes I was disappointed to hold many meetings for projects that just never materialized. Perhaps this was due the novelty of such concepts in an evolving society. Having said that, we partook in a lot of collaborations in the visual arts. We hosted large exhibitions with local museums and worked extensively with the National Fine Arts Society.

We worked in building capacity within the non-governmental sector as well. One project we collaborated in creating was in the Japanese-originated art forum style by the name of Pecha Kucha. One would introduce 12 slides revolving around 12 different topics, and a group of creative individuals would contribute into a debate-discussion about the topic at hand. We had creatives take part such as architects, fashion designers, painters, sculptors, and people in the video games industry. The project was developed and then taken over by a local entity which sustains it to date. Similar projects in the form reminiscent of Café Arts received capacity-building support and expertise from our team.

Mustafa: Mentioning the word non-governmental in a Middle East context has to be taken with a grain of salt as none of the places you worked in were liberal democratic. How did you navigate the politics of authoritarianism?

Tobias: For being a very young nation-state, Oman was the least developed country in my international journey in terms of civil society. Therefore, there was much opportunity to pursue development.

Mustafa: I would agree that the people in Oman look up to a paternalistic government which they hold accountable for a duty-of-care, as opposed to a self-standing civil society.
Everything in Oman seemed single-headedly spearheaded by an unchallenged Royal Court and all social projects were carried out under the auspices of the government.
That ties in with a national admiration for a ruler perceived to have pulled the country out of the dark ages into a modern era.

Tobias: If I compare Oman to a place like Syria, Syria had a very developed civil-society which needed a larger security apparatus to be controlled by the government. The broader Middle East is not as easily dictated central authorities, at least in people’s hearts and minds.

Mustafa: Polities such as Syria or Yemen have a continuous history which stretches back millennia. In that sense, Oman has existed as a polity for a long time too, but in the 20th century it slipped into irrelevance a bit, and the rapid development dubbed the Renaissance in the 1970s was one where the government was worshipped by all for its leadership and presence in all arenas of society. If there were movements that rebelled in parts distant to the capital, the government had international allies, the most major of which the UK, which quelled those rebellions by means of force.

Tobias: Indeed. Even if I compare Omanis in Muscat to Yemenis, I have to say that the civil society in Yemen was very active even when suppressed. Yemen does have 10s of millions of people, as opposed to just under a couple of millions in the whole of Oman until the late 2000s, so perhaps that’s why I perceived Yemeni civil society to be more active as a result of sheer population. Nowadays Oman has just around 5 million people, around half of whom are not nationals.