14-Nov-04 - With Ramadan at a close it's Eid Mobarik to one and all!

To eat our feast a few big mats were put outside on the ground and then for each mat a big platter of rice cooked in meat stock was prepared. On the top of this rice was placed a big whole joint or two of shua meat. One of these big plates were simply put in the middle of each mat - one plate per mat. No plates/bowls/forks/knives/spoons/etc... Hell no! You all just take your shoes off, sit down on the mat beside the plate of tucker and hoe in! You eat this dish by the handful - literally. You tear off a piece of meat, scoop up a handful of rice, compress the rice and meat into a ball with your fist and pop it straight into your mouth.


Ohhh well, here goes... When in Rome, do as the Romans do!






All good and well in theory of course, but not having ever eaten boiled rice with chunks of torn-off meat by the hand-full before, I made quite a mess of myself to say the least! I had shit everywhere! My t-shirt was covered in rice; along with my pants, my feet and the mat around me.

With lunch finished there was nothing left to do but prepare a big heavy dinner in true Eid/Christmas style. After all, if there's a day on the calendar that you're supposed to over eat - this is it! For dinner we made mishakik out of the remaining mutton, goat and liver. Mishakik is something we have on any special occasion over here. It's freshly slaughtered meat (the fresher better in these parts) which is marinated in a mild tamarind based sauce, then threaded onto sticks and cooked over a charcoal BBQ. Never a gas BBQ - always wood fired. The flavour difference is HUGE when the meat is cooked over a wood fire too. It's great.

This is a fuzzy picture of the BBQ area from a distance.


Here is Ali (who I work with all the time) with some of the rig crew. Ali's in the blue overalls in the middle.


Here we're cooking the mishakik on the BBQ. From the left is me, then a guy from the rig crew, then DJ, Salim, Ali (a different one) and another guy from the rig. DJ, Salim and Ali from this picture work in the same department as me, but they're based in Muscat (the capital of Oman). DJ stays at the same staff house as I do when I'm in Muscat and he's always up for a night out on the town.

This is DJ on the left and Salim on the right again.


Here's me with one of the rig crew guys. I've got my mishkak wrapped up in a chappati bread and covered in some home-made chill sauce.


After the food comes the shisha! This is flavoured tobacco (apple, rose water, etc...) that is smoked out of a hookah (a type of water pipe or bong). They don't smoke drugs out of their pipes (not that I've seen yet), just sweet scented tobacco.


Here's Ali trying to force-feed Salim one last stick of mishkak.


The rig guys tried in earnest to get me to try their shisha, but to no avail. It took a long time to explain that I just don't smoke. I did however consent to a photo with them and the shisha.


Finally the night got right down to business! There was singing, shisha and a guy playing the bucket! I got three short movies of the festivities on our mat. The first two have no sound and the last one does have sound. The last two files however are pretty big, so if you have a slow connection and little time to spare you'd better give them a miss for today.

07_EidParty1.MOV (1.63MB)

07_EidParty2.MOV (4.10MB)

07_EidParty3.MOV (4.91MB)