My place of employment (which shall remain unnamed) had a National Day Celebration Event that included: live making of traditional Omani handicrafts, traditional Omani games, traditional dances, recitations of Omani poems and a buffet of Omani cuisine!
Our male Omani students who organized the dancing were all proudly wearing their Khanjars.
Several of our students had these bullet belts on which is pretty cool!
Drums are an important part of many Omani dances to keep the timing as they chant/sing.
In case you were wondering what the blade itself looks like within the Khanjar!
That is a small shield (or “buckler“) our student is holding. Up until this point, I had only seen these in a museum! (Bait Al Zubair to be exact)
Some of our students singing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC0mPCyjt-s And here is some singing plus “dancing”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG731X49BsE Interesting! 🙂
This was one of the traditonal items for sale. It’s a traditional powder (all natural) used as make-up.
Would you believe that this powder is used as shampoo?!
As you can see, it’s not only Omanis who are in a celebratory mood these days! Several teachers could be seen sporting the latest “I love Oman” pins and such!
The Omani buffet was a wondeful way to end the afternoon of celebration!
This was something new for me. This is “Harees”, a traditional Omani barley porridge. It doesn’t look like much but boy was it ever good!
A BIG THANK YOU to all our colleagues and students who did an outstanding job organizing the National Day celebrations at my workplace! I’m sure that Omanis have been preparing similar events around the country during these historic days in the Sultanate. Congratulations to the Sultan and to all the people of Oman!!!
Andy in Oman 