We are back in Germany – green, rainy, well-organised, toilet paper deprived Germany – oh how we missed you, or did we?! I`ll admit it dealing with the thought that we might not be able to get back was pretty unpleasant, but I can`t say that I felt particularly homesick over the last two weeks and I hope neither did the other fieldtrippers. Letting go of the excursion routine, the great outdoors and the people that surrounded you non-stop is easier said than done. So, to make our transition back into our everyday lifes a bit smoother and to say goodbye to our readers, I am writing one last blog.
Oman is a wealthy state. We have seen various expressions of this wealth in the last two weeks. They come in form of prestigious development projects like the botanical gardens or the university, in form of a rather wasteful usage of water and in form of cheap fuel, I mean when did you last fill you 120 l tank for 45 €? For Omani citizens the governmental welfare is almost limitless. There are no taxes, free healthcare, education, and a piece of land to build on for every married adult. All of this wealth pours from a single source: oil. One can discuss the sustainability of this situation, but that is not where I am going with this.
Imagine a wadi. A dry river bed, filled with gravel, at the foot of a tower-shaped mountain. A few trees and shrubs grow between the rubble. Night has already fallen, the mountain stands black before the night sky. The full moon is bright enough to see every pebble and every thorny twig. In this wadi there sits a camp right beside a rudimentary dirt road. The camp has a large white truck, a row of cars, some tables, a circle of camping chairs around a campfire and a few scattered tents. The fire is burning, an interrupted card game lays on a boulder and from the boiling pots in the truck`s kitchen comes a smell of roasted chicken, but nobody is there.