WILL SOMEBODY TURN OFF THE HEATER?!

That’s what I was about to say last Tuesday night at the end of the PCO Church Council meeting at the church complex in Ghala. We were breaking up to go home, and I suddenly noticed a hot draft. It felt just like someone had turned on a heater unit in a motel room – not necessary in Oman. Then I realized the door to the outside was open. And the hot air was not manufactured – it was natural! Yes, folks, it’s that hot outside. And this was about 9:45 pm at night.

Last week, somebody at work described it as “like a hair dryer” outside. And as hot and windy as it’s been, that’s not exaggerating. Want to dry your hair real fast? Just step outside!

March is usually the last gasp of decent temperatures before we enter the long tunnel of hot, humid days April through October. But there have been spots of relief even during the normally “hot” season the last weeks. One weekend in April, I met some “old” neighbors (from fall!) downtown on our seacoast town of Muttrah for dinner and a walk along the corniche / boardwalk. A lovely spot on a scenic harbor that feels like you’ve left Muscat and gone to some nice tourist-y place, but only about 30 miles away. The air was low humidity, the temperatures hovering just around 80. Very pleasant for an evening stroll.

But then there have also been days like a week ago Wednesday, when I met up with some other American teachers to have a Mexican meal at El Pavo Real and then, to walk off the calories along the beach, we headed to the little Beverly Hills part of town – Sarooj. It was hot and humid, but you’d expect you’d acclimatize pretty quickly once you started walking. Wrong. It was sticky and miserable the whole time. Even your sweat didn’t cool you down. This was after 8:00 pm, and it felt like noon in Phoenix! When our 30-minute walk was up, we headed for the nearest air-conditioned place – Starbucks, as it turned out. Iced lattes, anyone?

THE SUNDBERG BROTHERS

An interesting new development in my ongoing Sweden trip plans. I had gotten the names and addresses of many of my great-great-grandfather Per (=Peter) Sundberg’s relatives in Sweden from the Swedish genealogist, Jan Feith-Ell, who I’ve been corresponding with since Dad died in 2003. Our family had had no contacts with the Sundberg side of the family in Sweden since Ellis Sundberg, a cousin of Dad’s father, died in the 1970s. And he was probably the only one even then.

Per had three sons by his first wife Matilda Ekbom; one of them was John Emanuel Sundberg, who immigrated to Omaha back in the 1880s. The other two sons stayed behind in the same home turf in Sweden and also had sons and daughters, and today there are scores of Per Sundberg descendants in Sweden, mainly just northeast of Stockholm. Any of the female descendants have changed family names many times, of course, so they were no longer “Sundberg’s” in name, but there were about five living male “Sundberg’s” on the genealogy chart.

I wrote an introductory letter to three of them in Swedish (with help from an Indian teacher here who was married to a Swede and spoke some Swedish), hoping that at least one of them might reply. Well, after a gap of about three weeks, one group of three brothers – Kenth, Lennart, and Arne – sent an email just last week – in Swedish.

Two work for a paper company in Hallstavik, and the other works in Sandvik (job not mentioned). Two have common-law wives (over 50% in Sweden these days) with teenaged kids. Kenth, the oldest is (currently) unattached. They thought it sounded “jätteroligt” (giant fun) to meet up when I’m in Sweden later in summer and wanted me to send some pictures to see if we looked anything alike. (Sent some family pictures just yesterday.)

So, now definite links have been re-established with both my grandmother Selma’s and grandfather Ernst’s sides of the family in Sweden. A northern European “Roots” novel in the making?