No obstacle too big for this Omani achiever
MUSCAT: She is the youngest Omani woman to set foot on the South Pole in Antarctica. And not just that. She managed to scale Mount Kilimanjaro in June this year. Entrepreneur, environmentalist, footballer, aquaculture specialist — Rumaitha Al Busaidi has many titles to her credit.
Today #Oman Pride features this incredible achiever who has done the Sultanate extremely proud. The go-getter is extremely appreciative of the Times of Oman’s #Oman Pride campaign.
She said, “It is a forum that celebrates the success and the good stories of Oman. I would encourage more people to come and share every story that makes them proud of Oman.”
Rumaitha is still not done with doing Oman proud. Having graduated with an MSc. in Marine Pollution and MSc. in Aquaculture Management, she is actively working to change the landscape of business innovation and entrepreneurship in Oman, a field that seems to have lost a sense of connect with the youth.
Some people believe in the stereotypical concept that wearing a hijab restricts a woman from accomplishing certain objectives and goals, but Rumaitha Al Busaidi says it gave her more reason to go ahead and overcome all obstacles that came her way.
She has proved that a woman can overcome any obstacle in a male dominated society and that hijab is not an excuse to restrict oneself from achieving one’s goals.
“By default, we have started considering hijab as being restrictive for women, and that is absolutely false,” said Al Busaidi, aquaculture specialist at Al Hosn Investment Company.
“If that was the case, then we wouldn’t have had women in the past fighting on the battlefield alongside men. We have women in our army and police force today!” she added.
Contributing to the society, Rumaitha worked with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries on a concept of Integrated Re-circulating Aquaculture model farms for farmers who cannot use the same water to cultivate their crops.
“Farmers are losing land because they cannot reuse the same water to cultivate their crops since it is salty,” noted Al Busaidi.
“So, for them to continue to generate income, we transform their land into fish farms,” she explained. Since introducing the concept in 2012, 10 successful farms have been brought up last year with another 50 planned in the near future.
Decisively shattering the myth of women being limited or restricted due to hijab and proving false any association between hijab-wearing women and conservativeness, Rumaitha scaled the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in June this year, marking the 45th National Day and the safe return of His Majesty the Sultan.
Commenting on being the youngest Omani woman to set foot on the South Pole in Antarctica, she said, “The only word I can think of is being ‘proud’. I think I proved that Omanis can do anything, especially women.”