As  I’m currently visiting Palestine, I couldn’t help but notice the difference in culture, eating habits, purchasing habits and other social factors between here and Oman. My main observation was the difference in the rate of obesity and people suffering from diabetes. From what I’ve seen, people in Oman are generally bigger. They’re bigger; they eat more, purchase more and generally live a lazier lifestyle. Now this is not a problem if exercise was thrown in the picture, but this is usually not the case. When it came to diabetes though, I noticed that many more people here suffered from it. This did not make any sense to me as obesity and diabetes are usually proportionally linked. So I took this to the internet and here’s what I found:

For not so surprising reasons ¹ , the Middle East is the second major diabetes event area in the world and the obesity rate has more than doubled since 1980 ² . I say “not so surprising” because with the rapidly growing economies, individual wealth and improvements in the standards of living in the Middle east, it’s quite normal for this to happen. The shocking result however, was the % of obesity in Oman and Palestine. I was honestly shocked when I saw that the percentage was much higher in Palestine. But I guess statistics are statistics and here are my findings:

Now as shocking as the result was, looking at the results from other gulf states is not surprising or shocking at all; the obesity rates there are insane (A simple observation would be switching to another gulf state’s television channel and observing how overweight many individuals are). Anyway, so obesity was a failing observation. Moving on to diabetes then…

First of all, I’d like to introduce this interesting info graphic I found online in  which you can clearly see the % rate of diabetes in the Arab world is much higher than many other places around the globe (3 of the 5 top countries are Arab and from the gulf region):

I’ve spent  almost my entire life in Oman, and I never see so much change in a short period of time except during this holy month.  There’s  a noticeable change of mood on the locals, the people become more spiritual, lazier (during the day)  and festive as they are either given holidays or their work hours are shortened.

My experiences of the holy month have always been interesting, our family rarely gathers up or has such a chance to spend long periods of time together, The food tastes better than ever because of my anticipation and food deprivation  and I am given a reason to actually be able to sleep all day without being bothered by my mother who forces me to do chores.

The best experience of the holy month I had was back when Ramadan used to occur during school days, kids used to prank their friends by tricking them into saying a bad word or by waiting for someone to forget about the fast and then remind him as he is drinking water out of the tap and then watching him panic, the class also had an excuse to be tired during lessons and not pay attention and therefore the tests had to be easier.

It seems like the country of Oman goes quiet in Ramadan, I experienced very few traffic jams during the month and noticed that leisure spots  such as bowling centers and cinemas find very few customers, you’d  usually find out that everyone is spending their time with the family and/or performing their religious  duties.

The generous spirit of the people here is also most obvious during this holy month, It brings a smile to my face when I increasingly see people donate to the poor and to the charities, and prepare and deliver meals to the poor at the local mosques.

These are some of the many changes that you can notice in Ramadan, and you can say that i find change exciting. I hope you all have a great month. Ramadan kareem! Also, a word of advice to those who may not know but the roads can get more dangerous a few hours before the fast is broken as people rush to get home or wherever their food is!