Author: Robin Chartier

Josh and I went on a shopping spree today. He leaves for Saudi Arabia on Saturday morning and there were a few things we needed to buy at the souk before he left.

The key to good souk shopping is to have “a guy.” Everyone has a guy for pashminas, a guy for silver jewelry, a guy for carpets, etc. If you go to the same person over and over again he gives you the “friend and family” price. If you don’t have a guy for a particular thing, the way to get the best price is to go with a friend to visit their guy.

So today was a day where several of us got together to show each other “our guys.” First we went to visit our dishdasha guy. We needed a little boy dishdasha and a friend needed one for her son. While we were there we found that the shop also carried traditional Omani dress for little girls. We needed 2 outfits and then picked one up for Camille as well. When it came time to pay we were quoted a higher price (because our guy wasn’t in the shop) so were about to explain that we weren’t cruise ship people, that we actually live here . . . but then our guy walked in, recognized us, and gave us the reduced price.

From there we wove our way through some back passages of the souk to visit a friend’s abaya tailor. Not only is it better to go with a friend to get the better price, but it’s almost impossible to give directions to these little shops: “Turn left down the alley where the cats are fighting over a fish head, go past the 1001 guys waving incense at you, right before the corridor gets really narrow turn right and you’ll find yourself in the abaya tailoring section. It’s the 8th shop on the right with 3 abayas hanging from the doorway, ask for Mohammed . . .  never mind, I’ll just take you there myself.”

I wasn’t going to get an abaya, but since we’re going to be living in Bahrain I’m sure we’ll be visiting Saudi. Saudi law requires all women to wear an abaya so I figured I should get one now while I have an abaya connection. I looked all around and found the style I liked and the pattern I liked. I figured if I was getting one, I was getting a glammed up one like the Omani women. No plain black Saudi ones for me.

You pick the style, embroidery, rhinestones, and color. Everything can be changed. I liked this one, but it had too much yellow and I wasn’t sure about the big flower right on the boob. 

I ended up ordering one similar to this since it was Josh’s pick and he’s way better at this stuff than I am.  I love the colors of this one so I kept that the same. The only real change I made was to give it a small v-neck with a short zipper in the back instead of a high collar.

The “special price” for this custom made abaya and hijab is approximately $100. If I had less handwork it would be less expensive. While we were in the shop we watched one of the guys applying the rhinestones to the fabric one by one. Tedious.

From there we made our way to a silver/souvenir shop (picked up a pair of silver earrings) and finally to the guy who sells camel bags. Josh has been wanting one of these huge old handmade bags that the Bedouins used to haul their stuff around via camel. They are heavy wool bags with leather seams, handles, and straps. On previous visits the lowest price we could get was 130 OR for the largest bag, but on this trip, because Christie knew the guy, he gave us the “special price” of 100 OR. We snapped it up.   

Our Omani girl sitting on the camel bag

We had the camel bag filled and it makes a great seat/ottoman. We were considering using it to store all of our unused winter clothes, but we don’t have many of those left! 

By that point in our shopping trip we had exhausted all of our funds so we headed home loaded down with our purchases and a whole bunch of new “guys.”

found in the Japanese store Dyso. Not as strange or funny as my normal finds. The Japanese must have better quality control.

On a reusable grocery bag. I do find that grocery shopping always goes much better when I’m wearing clothes and socks. 

Are you a good apron or a bad apron?

Ah, the land of animals — is that like Narnia?

I found a four leafed “crover!”

The larger size case holds two memories.

Yeah, um . . . huh?

This morning I shared at our women’s fellowship meeting as part of a baby shower for one of the pastor’s wives. I’m putting it on my blog because I usually write things and they disappear into the black hole of my computer hard drive, never to be seen again. Back in the 29 Palms days I wrote a parenting column for our church newsletter. I would love to reread those today to see what wise words of wisdom I have for myself, but I have no clue where they are. So I’m putting this on the internet because supposedly once something is put on the web, it’s there forever. We’ll see.

This is the written version that I spoke from (using it as notes) so it’s pretty close to what I ended up saying:
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One of the traps that is easy to fall into as moms (and as women) is comparing ourselves to others: Am I doing a good job? I’m not as good of a mom as Sara. She has 5 kids and they’re always so well behaved. I should be more like her. 

And BKs baby — in the creche she plays nicely with all the other little kids and smiles at everyone. My baby frowns and steals toys and food from everyone. What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with me?

One of the things I’ve realized after having several children is so much of who they are is a result of the way God made them and not how good or bad of a mother I am.

I’ve learned that my job as a mom is to help my children discover the ways God has gifted them, encourage them to use those gifts to serve him, and to figure out how to turn their weaknesses into strengths.

For example, my oldest son is cautious, careful, and a perfectionist. He was a dream to parent as a toddler. We’d go to the park and I could sit back and relax and read a book because I knew he would never move out of my sight and he wouldn’t climb any higher than he could handle on his own. The perfect child, right?

Not exactly. Unfortunately for him, our military life takes us to many new places and adds lots of uncertainty to our lives. Ask me how much I loved his cautious, careful personality when he was holding onto my leg and crying every week for the first 2 months at a new church. At that moment I was praising my middle child — the fearless, impulsive one who would say, “See ya mom!” while marching off into the unknown without a second thought.

Of course, taking that second child to the park was a nightmare as I had to shadow him around the playground because taking my eyes off of him meant that he was either going to disappear or get into trouble. Different children, different personalities, different gifts. 

Just as it’s not fair or healthy to compare my children to each other, I shouldn’t compare myself to other mothers. God gave me these particular children for a reason and I am confident that he can even use my weaknesses to prepare my children for the future he has planned for them.

As an example, when I was growing up, my mom had a lot of guilt because by the time I was in kindergarten she had 3 younger babies at home. She said she couldn’t care for me the way she thought she should because she was tired and overwhelmed.

I remember getting myself up for school, getting dressed, feeding myself breakfast and then waking my mom up to say goodbye before walking myself to school. I was 6 years old.

For years my mom lamented, “I’m sorry Robin. You had to grow up so fast. You never got to be a little kid.” It was only once I was the mother of 3 little boys 5 and under, with a husband who was deployed that I fully understood her regret. I could not be everything they needed. All I could do was pray that God would cover over my mistakes and fill in where I was lacking.

And then I had a flash of insight and I called my mom. “Mom! Isn’t it wonderful how God knew when I was little that I would grow up and marry a Marine who would be gone for months at a time. That I’d be living a life where my husband isn’t around to take care of me or baby me? God knew that I needed to learn to be self sufficient and independent. He prepared me perfectly for where he has me today!”

God is good. He has a plan for your son and will use you to accomplish it — he can even use those things that you’re sure won’t win you the award of “Mother of the Year.” I hope knowing that gives you peace and confidence as you take on this new role of “Mom.”

Isaiah 26:12 
Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished, you have done for us.  

On to the rest of our International Day fun:

There was a stage set up where different groups performed music and dance from around the world. The audience was free to come and go like you would at a county fair. 

The show started with the preschool class singing “We’ve got the whole world in our hands.” It was interesting because they took out the mention of God from the original song. Yes, it makes the song politically correct, but as Josh said, it’s really only the West that cares about that. The irony is that here in Oman, if you don’t believe in God, Muslims would think there is something wrong with you. Anyway . . . cute song and performance that generated an interesting discussion at our house.

This little guy in the middle is decked out in the US equivalent of a tuxedo. The dishdasha and kuma are daily wear, the massar (the wrap worn over the top of the kuma) brings it up to suit and tie level, and when you wear the khanjar it is black tie event-worthy. The khanjar is the Omani curved knife that is carried inside of a leather sheath covered in woven silver. Next to him is an adorable Turkish naval officer. 

The Omani kid in the center with the black robe over his dishdasha is even more dressed up — the thing they wear over the dishdasha? That’s like going white tie.  

“We’ve got the rivers and the streams, in our hands . . .”

Typical American, wearing whatever is most comfortable. In my defense, Dairy Queen is an American company.

We had to wait for the Irish dancers to perform before we could explore the food booths because Caleb had several girl friends performing in the group that he wanted to watch and then hang out with after. 

Caleb looking for his harem. No kidding, we gave him his share of the food tickets and he ran off in the center of a group of five girls. 

 

The rest of the school grounds was covered with food booths representing all the different countries that have students at TAISM. Each ticket cost 200 baisa (approx 50 cents) and the different booths charged between 1 and 4 tickets for food items. Here Carter and Josh are visiting Pakistan and trying to decide how to spend their tickets. Josh got Pakistani ice cream (vanilla with a rice pudding custard topping) which was really good. 

Off to find more food. She was yelling, “Eat! Eat!”

This huge tent had food from all over the Arab world. We ate tabouleh (Lebanese parsley salad), roasted eggplant with chickpeas, koshary from Egypt, flatbread with cheese, and I can’t remember what else. 

After dancing, it was time for more food! We ate chicken satay with peanut sauce and glass noodles with shrimp from Indonesia, sausage from South Africa, Caleb had a hot dog from America (of course!), and the kids all got snow cones from somewhere. I’m not sure which country was claiming them, all I know is they came back with blue and green tongues. 

While all this eating was going on, music, dance and other cultural exhibitions were happening simultaneously. We happened to pass by the stage in time to see this martial arts demonstration.

I loved the Bollywood dancing. It would be really fun to take a class. These women are all teachers at TAISM.

A quick stop so everyone could get hennaed up — Carter got a snake on each arm. 

After henna we spent the last of our tickets on desserts: fruit kebabs with chocolate fondue from France, pecan bars from the United States, scones with cream and jam and apple crumble from the UK. We managed to eat our way around the world. 

In between all the food booths and music there were plenty of bouncy houses and inflatable slides for the kids to play on. There were no adults supervising so it was kid heaven — jumping in and out, diving and tackling. Camille didn’t seem to mind, but I kept her out of the way of the main action just to be safe. 

One last picture with our Flat Stanley in front of all the different flags of the countries represented at TAISM. When we did an admissions tour I remember the administrator giving a number in the 60s. 

Then it was home to bed to sleep off the feast!