Hi everyone,
sorry for the long delay in updating the blog!
I can’t believe I’ve been here for almost three weeks, time is flying
by. I’ve been settling in pretty well
here in Jordan, and I’ve started gradually learning my way around Amman. While
I certainly don’t know the whole city yet, I’ve started to get at least a feel
for where I am and the neighborhoods, and I’m getting better at giving taxi
drivers directions. I think that traveling to the Middle East (and probably
many areas of the world) can be confusing for Americans/other Westerners
because people really don’t use addresses or street names here. You can’t just
put an address into Google Maps or a GPS and expect it to find the location,
and you definitely can’t just give a cab driver a street address and have him
know where it is. You have to memorize landmarks around the place or tell them
which “circle” it’s near (Amman consists of a series of huge traffic circles
and they’re major landmarks for getting around). It might not be a problem if
you’re just a tourist and only going to well-known places, but given that I’m
staying in a residential neighborhood and going to offices and stuff that
aren’t necessarily known, it can be a little challenging. The first few days I literally had no idea
where I was going when I’d get in a cab and would get frustrated when they
would ask me tons of questions just to get me to the office.
Work has been a
little crazy – the office here doesn’t have a lot of grant funding at the
moment and is really understaffed, so I’ve been taking on a ton of
projects. It’s good though, I’ve been
doing some interesting work and I’ve gotten to use a little bit of my Arabic
there. The whole team has been really
welcoming and friendly. I’ve become friends with my colleagues and some of the
Media Fellows at the organization where I’m working, the Jordan Career
Education Foundation (JCEF). The Media
Fellowship Program was a training program that JCEF started running this past
February to train youth in a range of media skills, like journalism, news
anchoring, photography, graphic design, PR and event management, filmmaking,
etc. There were ten Fellows in the program, all of whom have now completed the
in-class training and are doing internships with companies and organizations in
the media industry, and eventually will begin jobs with these companies or
start their own media businesses. In the
meantime, they’re also all volunteering with JCEF to help with its
communications and marketing strategy, so they’ve been in and out of the office
and helping me a lot. I’ve also been
helping with doing English translations and editing for the marketing materials
and videos that they’ve been producing.
Last weekend, my
new friend Dana, who is one of the Media Fellows, invited me to join her and
some of her friends in this program put on by the East West Initiative. It’s an organization that brings British and
American youth to Jordan and Jordanian youth to the US or UK for week-long
cultural tours. Dana started
volunteering with them a few years ago and also participated in one of their
trips to the UK, and this past week she was acting as a host for a group of
people visiting from the US and Britain. This weekend they were doing a bunch
of tours and activities around Amman and in the nearby city of Salt, and Dana
invited me to join the group. On Friday, she picked me up in the morning and we
met up with the rest of the group of Americans, Brits and Jordanians – there
were about 25 of us in total. We were divided into groups and hosted by
Jordanian families for a large, traditional lunch. My group went to the home of
another volunteer named Asal. She lives
in a beautiful home in West Amman, and her whole family was really nice and
welcoming. We had so much amazing food –
chicken biryani, kefta (spiced lamb meatballs) and potatoes, salad, rice,
yogurt, and some sort of pudding type dessert with pistachios. I seriously wished I could expand my stomach
so I could just keep eating.
After lunch, the
program organizers designed this scavenger hunt in downtown Amman. We started up at the Citadel and then were
given clues that we had to figure out as groups to get to the next destination. My group had a lot of fun until we started
going to the wrong destination at one point and ended up having to walk up one
of the most miserable hills I’ve ever climbed in my life under the blazing sun
with no water. At that point I considered
just sitting down and calling in reinforcements. The weather in Amman is really different from
what I’m used to. It’s actually not as
hot here as it usually is in DC, and because it’s a dry heat it feels a lot
more comfortable a lot of the time.
However, the sun is really strong, and because the air is so dry I think
I get thirsty here a lot more quickly than in DC. It’s a terrible idea to walk anywhere without
a huge bottle of water.
My group
eventually caught up with the others (although we came in last since we started
heading in the wrong direction), and then we had some free time to explore
downtown Amman. We walked along Rainbow
Street, which is a really famous street right in the center of the city with a
ton of shops and restaurants. On Fridays
they also have this huge open-air market and art show called Souq Jara, where
there are tons of artists selling jewelry and paintings and souvenirs of all
types. It’s really cool and I hope to go
back sometime, especially because they had some really pretty and unique
jewelry there. We ate dinner at this hot
dog restaurant called Wazzup Dog that specializes in selling (all-beef) hotdogs
with a variety of toppings. It kind of
reminded me of one of the food trucks that line the streets in DC at lunch time
and usually specialize in certain types of street foods. Although it wasn’t that different from what I
could get in America, it was still pretty good, and nice to have a small dinner
after such a big lunch.
After dinner we
sat for awhile at the Jordan Royal Film Commission, which is an outdoor movie
theater that shows artsy films. It’s
built into the side of a hill and looks over the entire downtown area,
including the Citadel and Roman Theater.
We only saw part of the film they were showing that night, which was a
French movie about the Algerian War, but it was still a really amazing
experience. The place is government owned and completely free for everyone who
comes, and they serve water and tea to everyone there. I’m going to check out
their website to see what other films they have coming and hopefully I’ll go
back with some of my colleagues or something.
We spent the
night on Friday at a hotel in Salt, which is a city about 20 minutes outside of
Amman. The hotel was brand new – it just
opened last month – and it’s also a vocational training school for youth in the
city of Salt. The city didn’t have any
hotels until this one opened, and its run by local residents who are also
students in their hospitality business school.
It was actually really nice – clean, well-decorated, and with friendly
staff – and a really good deal too, only about $25/night.
On Saturday
morning, we went for a little tour around Salt, and then came back to Amman for
a tour of the King Abdullah I Mosque.
It’s the only mosque in Amman that allows non-Muslims inside, and it’s
got a beautiful blue dome on the top and cool architecture on the inside. Women
have to put on an abaya, which is a full-length robe that covers your body (the
ones they had available to tourists were actually indistinguishable from a
graduation gown), and either cover your head with the hood on the abaya or with
a headscarf. I had a scarf with me so I was able to turn it into a hijab. We
toured the inside of the mosque and then listened to a lecture on Islam by a
prominent Muslim scholar. Then we went to another office for a lunch and a
discussion about Jordan’s economy.
Later in the
afternoon on Saturday, we went to the Baqa Refugee camp to do a community
service project. Usually when I think of
refugees, I think about temporary camps with tents and stuff, but the Baqa camp
by this point is a pretty permanent settlement and is mostly filled with
Palestinian refugees who have been forced to live there for generations. After
Israel was established in 1947, millions of Palestinian refugees were forced to
leave their homes and fled to nearby countries, especially Lebanon and Jordan.
Most of them weren’t able to obtain any sort of legal status or identification
in those countries because doing so required a lot of money and connections, so
they’ve been living in these refugee camps with their families for years as
stateless people. Although the camp had
permanent buildings, touring the inside of it was still pretty horrifying. Huge families were living together in tiny
rooms, without much indoor plumbing, and bugs were running around
everywhere. There aren’t any landfills
or places for people to put their garbage so for the most part it was just
rotting in the streets. The smell was
pretty putrid. It was a sad and eye-opening experience – nowhere in America
have I seen this type of poverty.
The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a pretty contentious issue around here, and I
try to avoid discussing it whenever I can.
I’ve studied it a lot and written numerous papers about it so I have a
pretty good understanding of the issues, but it’s just such an emotional issue
for people in the Middle East that I don’t like to talk about it. I consider
myself to be fairly neutral on the issue – I understand the desire of the
Israelis to have a Jewish state, the religious significance of the land to
them, and the reason they take their defense so seriously. However, I know too many Palestinians who go
through hell everyday just trying to live their lives not to have sympathy for
them and their cause. Most of them are unable to travel from the occupied
territory or refugee camp in which they live, and they have very few
opportunities to improve their lives. Unemployment is a serious issue
throughout all of Palestine, but it is appallingly high in the Gaza Strip.
Seeing the refugee camp last weekend made me feel pretty disgusted because it
seems like the world has just turned its back on these people. I don’t think there are any perfect solutions
at this point, but something has got to be done. It’s no wonder that people turn to radical
religious groups or violence in such desperate conditions. The status quo is
clearly not working.
Anyways, at the
Baqa Camp we were divided into groups for a tour of the camp and to do a
community service project. We delivered
food and supplies to an elderly woman, and she told us about her experience
fleeing Israel in 1947 and coming to the Baqa camp on foot. I also met a couple
of nice Palestinian women and their children, who stayed with us for most of
the afternoon. I got a nice opportunity to practice my Arabic with them, and
they complimented my speaking abilities.
I think they were mostly being polite, but most people are impressed
that I speak any Arabic at all. After
touring the camp and talking to some different residents, we helped paint used
tires and turn them into planters for flowers and other plants along the
entrance to the camp. A lot of kids came
out to watch us and we had fun playing with them.
The rest of the
people in the East West Initiative were having a cultural night and then going
south to Petra, but unfortunately Dana and I had to leave them after the Baqa
camp to go back to Amman because we had to work on Sunday. We went out for
dinner in Amman at this restaurant called Abu Jbara, where we ordered a whole
bunch of Arabic appetizers, like hummus, foul, some sort of hummus/yogurt mix,
and falafel. The falafel was the best
I’ve ever tasted – crunchy, a little spicy, and it just melted in your mouth. I’m getting hungry now just thinking about
it. After dinner, I headed back to my
apartment and just got ready for the work week.
Anyways, I think
I’m going to bring this novel-length blog post to a close here, and I’ll write
more about this week in a couple of days.
Tomorrow I’m going with Dana and my colleague Farah to Jerash and
Ajloun, which are two cities about 30 and 45 minutes north of here. Jerash is
supposedly filled with amazingly well-preserved Roman ruins dating back to 64
BC, and Ajloun has an amazing castle called the Qala’at Ar-Rabad, which was
built during the Crusades for protection. I’m pretty excited to see them both,
I’ve heard from a lot of people that they’re really cool.
Anyways, I’ll
try to get another blog post up soon, hopefully quicker than I got this one
up. Talk to you all soon!
Love,
Sarah
