Advertisement
We are back in the States having flown home on Wednesday, June 29th. Thankfully the flight home was totally uneventful. We spent the first two days trying, and I must say with some success, in doing the million and one tasks required to begin to get life back to normal. However, today we took a break from the household chores to attend the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Nancy and I find it hard to believe this is the 39th annual Folklife Festival as we remember the first one.
"Man," Nancy said upon hearing this is the 39th such festival, "we are getting old."
This year Oman was the country featured, a country neither of us know a whole lot about. Sure we knew it is a country at the end of the Arabian Peninsula, that it is an Arab country, that it is a dry and hot land and that it is a monarchy. That is about all we knew.
We met Nancy's sister, Joyce, and her husband, Gary, at the Oman food tent and as it was lunch time we bought our lunch there, a nice grilled chicken on saffron rice and a plate of hummus, both of
Hats
These are the type of hat the young woman was sewing the decorations on. which came with pita bread.
Oman is a Moslem country and all the women wore head coverings. I only saw one who had what might be called a veil. Actually what she wore had more the appearance of a small mask.
The handcrafts of a country are always what interest me the most. The young woman sewing the decoration on the hat has to have very good eyesight as well as a sharp needle. I really could not figure out what the man who was stringing the threads was doing. My feeling is that he was getting ready to begin weaving. The incense and spice tent was very interesting. There were samples of sandalwood, frankincense and other fragrances and spices used in Oman. The best frankincense in the world comes from Oman. At least that is what the literature said and I have no reason to doubt the truth of the statement.
I understood the process of making Indio cloth. The man dyeing the cloth uses long rubber gloves. The narrator said that the man’s father and ancestors were always blue from their hands to their shoulders, as they would wring the cloth with bare hands and
arms. Unlike so many of our modern dyes Indio has no toxicity to humans.
I would have liked to have been given the opportunity to drink some year Omni coffee, but the “real stuff” was not available. We were told that traditionally guests drink three cups and then either shake the cup or turn it upside down indicating that they have had enough. The cups are not large, so it is not like drinking mugs of coffee. It would have been interesting to see how the coffee was made. I wondered if they, like our friend Chris from Poland, simply spoon some ground coffee into the pot and fill it with hot water … no filters, no dripping, no perking, just water on coffee grounds.
The festival is always interesting and if you ever have the chance to attend, do so. The only problem is that often it is beastly hot this time of year in DC. Fortunately today the temperature was only in the 80’s with many clouds in the sky.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.489s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 23; qc: 167; dbt: 0.2307s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb