University of Nizwa

            Putrid, pungent, rancid is that tasted smell, a bitter tinge slides past my face to sting my nasal cavity driving my senses into eye clamping, nostril squeezing defense. Such a futile coping mechanism to elude the stale stench of urine and maturated fecal matter. Germinated heat wafts off a festering morsel of meat near the sun-bathed windowsill, maybe chicken, maybe lamb, definitely a few days old. Welcome to an all male hostel at the University of Nizwa. A five-story villa with 22 rooms set suddenly and purposefully in the desert about a half-mile from the college. Men live off campus in Nizwa. Women live on campus. For one week I woke, slept, smelled, ate and laughed with the men of this all but quaint hostel in a town directly adjacent to Nizwa, Burkat al-Mouz. My weeklong endeavor was one of grindingly uncomfortable living arrangements and smoothly traversed cultural boundaries. I had my first impressions shattered and my experiences molded into emotional cornerstones for which I will always derive faith in the human condition as well as a perception of the imperative need to incessantly dispense knowledge to even the most basic levels of students, as long as they are willing to learn.

            The university is relatively new. The current enrolment is considered to be the first college generation to pass through Nizwa. Consequently, as is the case with any new organization, the kinks are not quite worked out yet. An American teacher at the school said to me, “yah, sometimes I wake up and it’s like…let’s all get together and play university.” Nizwa University is a real learning environment with some motivated students. However, there is a pervading paradigm in Oman’s developing educational structure that says just put up the sign and start moving. Rather than toiling over every detail and making sure that the functions of a specific school or learning center will go according to plan, administrators simply press teachers to move forward and essentially “play” successful academic institute in hopes that everything will eventually fall into place. While this bold tag and dash strategy leaves little room for serious planning, I kind of admire it. There’s something to be said about an organization that progresses simultaneously with the delusions of its own grandeur.

            By ‘some’ motivated students I mean women, and a handful of men. At Univ. Nizwa, every class is taught in English and by mostly British or American professors. I lived with the men of Nizwa Univ. for a week and spoke only Arabic. I was happy to get the practice. However, none of them spoke great English so I didn’t really have a choice. This lead me to believe that even though a couple of these guys were in English literature classes, they were still taking an ‘English as a Second Language Course.’  The guys I met seemed to be more interested in the fact that Nizwa Univ. housed roughly 7,000 girls to surround about 2,000 guys rather than any econ or early British literature classes. Girls are everywhere at Univ. Nizwa. They own the university. I had full conversations about politics and cultural differences with a few girls…in English. I sat in on a 17^th Century American Literature class in which the American teacher did an outstanding close reading of Anne Bradsteeet’s ‘ notes on a burning house’ poem. The depth at which these Arab women were able to express themselves emotionally as well as comprehend the complexity of Bradstreet’s work in English blew me away. The class was all female and I didn’t say a word. Not because I was a visitor or estro-genetically outnumbered…but because I’d never read the poem before and was learning more by just listening to their valuable insight.

            For better or for worse, classes and social life at Univ. of Nizwa are segregated by gender. This de facto segregation reflects a broader tendency within Islam and the greater Omani culture to keep men and women apart except in marriage. I get it, it’s easier to concentrate academically when there is no pressure to appease or impress the opposite sex. Men learn differently than women, visa versa. Islam and Oman have chosen this path long ago and therefore present academic institutions should respect the trend. Make any argument you want for the validity of gender segregation in schools… my Western lens will always have me see it one way. Girls and guys should be educated and socialized together. The men I met at Univ. of Nizwa have grown up entirely cut off from the opposite sex. Their mothers and sisters don’t count. Consequently, women have become objects to be revered, feared and intensely desired by men who have no idea how to socialize with them. They consistently asked me about “strategies” for how to “trap” the best woman. I told them everything I know and just how I did it, when I was in the eighth grade. The more pertinent issue arises when those men who do want to succeed academically and professionally and have never been beaten by a girl on an algebra test move into the work force and are supposed to function efficiently and cooperatively under a female supervisor. Univ. of Nizwa is an English speaking university with English professors that teach their students to interact with English materials. There will be female supervisors and there will be men who hold a false sense of pride in a societal constructed stereotype.  i.e. men should hold higher positions than women.  

            The men I lived with have it in there minds that they are set for life. With a family and some land to live in to, a wife that will be chosen for them and hopefully a college degree…life in Nizwa should be smooth sailing. Education is just a bonus and school is a great social life… a way to look at girls and talk about girls and never speak to them. Women who don’t want to accept their fate as wives and mothers and as life long dwellers in their respective villages view education like a basketball in the hood, it’s a way out! Presented with no other alternatives for intellectual expression or social mobility, school has become a beacon of light and an intersection of respect for women in Nizwa. If men don’t step up to the plate and if the system in Oman does not recognize the issue at hand with affirmative action for males who are motivated…change will occur and it will have two x chromosomes.  An educated mind is a free mind, and freedom of thought is impossible to retract, regardless of gender.

            Oman is facing a tough future. The loss of its ‘rent’ based economic system through the exhaustion of oil reserves is inescapable and imminent. Sultan Qaboos is not old, but he is not young. Will Oman go the way of Yemen as NYT writer Nickolas D Kristof suggests it could have 45 years ago? (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/opinion/14kristof.html?_r=1&ref=nicholasdkristof)… Or will education prevail and allow Omanis to carry their nation through hard times with innovation, linguistic diversity and technologic expertise? Only the crystal ball or the sands of time can tell. However, the University of Nizwa is the perfect place to start formulating a hypothesis.

            Afterthought: I met a few guys who were truly motivated students and were genuinely concerned about the intellectual condition of their comrades. One guy sticks out in my mind… he had lost both of his parents two years previously in a car accident and was granted a scholarship to Univ. Nizwa to study economics and English translation for four years. He was genuinely concerned for his less motivated buddies, but also for himself. He wants to work in America some day and have a family…but he is not sure if he will be able to speak good enough English in order to make the kind of money needed to support a family in ‘the home of the free’. I really felt for this guy. He was not granted a scholarship to Sultan Qaboos Univ. (often considered the Harvard of Oman) and he had no place else to go. Education is his only stepping stone to prosperity.  He is unique but not alone. There are guys who want to lead and foster change in Oman at the Univ. of Nizwa. However, they lack a sustained enabling community.