A camp for Syrian Refugees 30 minutes from Amman

Back in June or July, 2014, I went along for a children's activity day at a camp for Syrian refugees about 30 minutes from Amman. It is 300 families, and they actually are all living in tents. I've never seen such a thing.

The people at the camp have two tents erected for schools. It's their own schools, and they're being run thus far outside of the reach of the Jordanian Ministry of Education. I've never appreciated the role of some sort of organized school board till I was hearing about these schools. No books, no curriculum, no ideas about what a child of a certain age ought to know. Apparently the camp paid two "teachers" 200 dinars a month to teach, but what I heard is that those two teachers took the money and ran. They were the Arabic-speaking local teachers who were supposed to teach all the essential subjects. Then there's an American called Olive. She's 55, worked 30 years as a United Nations translation, and speaks like 6 languages! Among them Arabic. She quit her job in the spring, took an early pension, and went to the camp to see if they needed an English teacher. So she's been teaching since mid-May, and the kids love her; but she's leaving at the end of June, though with plans to return in September. There's no communication between Olive and the two teachers who vanished; there's just Olive; a volunteer student who's here during her summer break from Georgetown University; and a Moroccan-American lady here for three weeks, trying to put together lesson plans and a curriculum with the aid of 20 donated physics books here, 20 donate geography books, and the schoolbooks of somebody's 13-year-old brother, and it's all just so ridiculous.

Jordan allows Syrian refugee children to attend Jordanian schools, officially. But it's a huge strain cause there's so many. In the official camps, like Zaatari, I think there's proper schools being run by UNICEF. But this camp I don't think is so official. It sounds like 300 families just showed up and erected their tents on a flat plain in front of a factory. And they've only been here 5 months, so they're probably still find their way around. Maybe for the moment they just fall through the cracks. Although they do have a water supply something-or-other donated by Oxfam and Belgium's government.

For the children's activity day, we did puppet shows and artwork. My job was to hand out crayons. It was hard because the crayons were also needed for a second group of kids, so we had to conserve them. I felt a little miserly handing crayons out one at a time, and asking that each kid must return a crayon to get a new one. Especially when they've had to flee their homes, etc, and now even their crayons have to rationed, all of which were old and broken anyways (though they still worked). But luckily, no kid seemed offended. The only kid who had a hard time with the proceedings was a little boy called Hammouda. He had a hearing aid on, but the kids said he couldn't hear at all, in which case I don't know what the hearing aid was for. Any case, Hammouda didn't want to color, but he danced around in front of me the whole time, trying to push his little hands into the crayon bag, grab the best ones, and stuff them into the pockets of his grubby jeans. All this while giving the most earnest, pleading looks on his face which I wasn't sure how to interpret. We finally made him happy by holding him in my lap while all the girls sitting around clapped for him. He liked that.

Then they started singing a song about "Daddy, please come home safely, my tears are running down my cheeks for you" at which point a little girl called Hala in a pretty pink dress crossed her arms and said, "I don't like my dad." I cautiously asked her why later. She said she had two sisters, five brothers, and her dad had gone and married a second wife! So she doesn't like him now. She was a bold personality. When they led the tent-full of kids in singing, Hala would be off in a corner, singing a completely different song with her friend in a loud voice. Then she turned to me at one point and asked, "did you all bring us presents? Jump ropes! Please can we have jump ropes?" Another girl suggested we bring a few jump ropes that everyone could take a turn with, but Hala said, "no, a jump rope for each girl, please!" Well, I kind of want to buy a bunch of jump ropes now.

Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Jordan

The Raoul Wallenberg Institute is named after a Swedish man. That's all you need to know to know it is probably doing a good thing.

They have an office in Amman, Jordan which mostly focuses on human rights law throughout the Middle East.

What they want to do is get the judges and lawyers in each Middle Eastern country to undertake a review of all their legal code as relates to a particular branch of human rights law.

First, RWI contacts the Head of the Judicial Unit and explains what they want to do. If the Judicial Unit Head agrees (and apparently they usually do), the Head signs a Memorandum of Understanding with RWI and then they can get to work.

[I thought that was funny because I've always gotten the impression that Iraq's justice system, for example, is very corrupt. I always remember this story http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/23/world/fg-iraq-woman23. So I was wondering why Iraq's judiciary would ever want to sign an agreement that would require them to review human rights law. But I was told that the Iraqis involved are very hard-working and dedicated.]

The first step is to find lawyers and judges who want to be part of a Working Group. Then, those lawyers and judges pick a topic. In Morocco, they chose labor and women's rights laws. In Algeria, they chose child rights, and in Jordan the penal code. Iraq doesn't know what their focus area will be, yet. They are still deciding.

The Working Group starts to meet and to fulfill its purpose. The members have to investigate how local laws compare to international standards.

Each Working Group has a leader who stays in contact with RWI. And maybe two to three times a year, the Working Group members from the entire Arab region get together so they can talk, discuss, and compare progress and learn from each other.

Because the process is signed off by each country's judiciary, and because the work is done not by RWI but by the volunteer judges and lawyers in the Working Group, it makes for a very non-confrontational approach. Sometimes NGOs come in and say: we have the money, so do what we say. But that's not the case here. There's very little money, in fact. All the members of the Working Groups are involved without compensation, so they really have to be committed to the cause.

RWI has already been supporting these Working Groups for about three or four years in Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Algeria. Those countries have made more progress, are moving faster, and are more sold on the process. The newer countries (Tunisia, Palestine, Lebanon, and Libya) are still organizing themselves, and then there's the effect of outside events. For example, there's a Working Group in Libya but it's not really meeting at the moment because the security is bad. They wanted to include Egypt, but couldn't, also because of recent events.

The idea is that if the Working Groups get far enough, they will take their investigation of national versus international law and incorporate it into the judicial curriculum for current law students. In that sense, the change that they hope to see in application of the law would come to fruition years from now. But it would be good, solid, internally-motivated change.

I asked: in Lebanon, they just passed a law against domestic violence by the skin of their teeth, and there was lots of opposition to the law from people who I guess like to see husbands beating up their wives, or something. So how would Lebanon's judiciary have agreed to RWI coming in and trying to change those laws? And I was told: it's not that RWI changes laws, they just convene the Working Group under the Judicial Unit, which compares country and international law, tries to see what is different, and one day maybe the law school curriculum is changed to instill a greater sensitivity to human rights in graduating students.

Then I thought of something else: in Morocco, the Working Group is looking at women's law. But just a year ago or so, a girl was raped, was forced to marry her rapist, and then she committed suicide. So how can the Working Group deal with that? And I was told: the Working Group probably didn't choose women's law based on a particular case. The first issue they looked at was labor laws. Then they added family law. And they just look at what's the same and what's different between international and national law.

But I think that when it comes to women's law, they'll just find so many discrepancies, it'll be like, what the heck??? It's just be super depressing, right?

Some countries, like Morocco, have supremacy of international law over national law for any branch of international law for which Morocco has signed and ratified a treaty. That's kind of cool! So if a judge is aware of that and wants to apply an international standard in a situation where the local laws are not adequate, then s/he can.

In Jordan, judges have been applying or meeting international law standards in some cases.

They use an RWI booklet for guidance. This booklet was compiled by a coordinator in Algeria. It is full of cases in the Arab world were judges applied international law in their sentences and decisions. Seeing all these cases can be encouragement for other judges and prosecutors to do the same. It's not cases that happened in Europe or elsewhere, but right at home. So the judges can say: okay, there's a precedent for it and it's acceptable here in the Middle East and North Africa. They have this booklet for free in English and Arabic on the RWI website.

I think it sounds like a very decentralized process, because you have all the Working Groups, who are in contact with the office in Amman, which in turn is in contact with the office in my dear, darling Sweden. That office is always involved as well.

Last but not least, it looks like this process of an internal Working Group in which lawyers and judges investigate their own laws had not been tried by RWI in any of their other world-wide regions before. The Middle East and North Africa is the first place it's being done. That's nice and creative!

Other glimpses of Sweden in the office:

Gazi Camp in Jordan

Gazi camp for Palestinian refugees

This is a camp full of maybe 1,000 Palestinian refugees. I think millions of Palestinian refugees arrived in Jordan around 1950, and they were all given Jordanian citizenship. But the people in Gazi camp maybe came a few decades later, so they do not have Jordanian citizenship.

The camp is really poor. There's a lady called Sofia there who tries to coordinate relief efforts. She said that the people in the camp don't actually get running water except for once every 3 weeks, and even then, the water flow is weak, and the water is dirty and full of bugs. As far as I was able to gather, since Gazi camp is not comprised of Jordanian citizens, the Jordanian government doesn't necessarily take responsibility for providing a good water supply. To them, it is the responsibility of the UN. But I'll get the real reason (maybe) is that neither the UN nor the Jordanian government has money to drill a water system.

People in the camp have tanks that store the little water they get. Or, if a family has money, they can buy water from a private company and fill up their tank that way.

Well-to-do Jordanian families contact Sofia and ask: who are the orphans in the camp, or the kids with no father, and how can we help them?

Then, Sofia keeps a list of every time a family receives help, so that she is able to distribute things as fairly as she can. You can buy your adopted family lunch or dinner, or school clothes for the kids, or maybe even pay for them to fill their water tanks with clean water from the private companies. Or you can buy baby formula for their babies.

There's an UNRWA school at the camp that the children attend.

The camp is just outside of the city of Jerash, where you can find lots of archaeological ruins. It is less than an hour from the capital, Amman. Young people from Amman from time to time gather up money, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, and buy presents for kids at the camp, or cater a dinner for them. But the problem is that there's hundreds of kids at the camp, so it's hard to invite everyone.

One time, a group of young people from Amman hosted a Ramadan dinner for about 50 kids at the camp. The same group of young people came back a few weeks later, and in the desert heat, during a water-prohibited Ramadan day, cleaned out the camp school. The school was full of glass and trash that they swept out.

Just a few days after all that hot, sweaty work, a group of camp boys came and wrecked the school all over again. They went and broke glass everywhere. It is believed that those boys are amongst those who did not get to attend the Ramadan dinner, so they were mad about that.

A lot of the girls at the camp get married young, and then have baby after baby after baby - even in cases where the mother has no money, no income, no milk, no water even, to care for that baby. I think there is a lack of birth control at the camp, and also I think the girls believe they have to serve their husbands all the time, even the ones who are beating them up.

For example, there is a lady there whose husband beats her up. Then he abandons the family and all his kids. Then he comes back for a while. Then he abandons them again. Well, in the brief period of their reuniting, the wife becomes pregnant with child number 8. But the husband doesn't care. Word is that he has now supposedly left the family for good to go live with a new wife in Amman. Ewwww. What kind of stupid woman is his latest bride?

When the first wife delivered her eighth baby, her little seven-year-old son helped find the taxi and took her to the hospital!

And the oldest 13-year-old boy works at least during the summer.

I don't think that the newest baby girl (child number 8) has anything like diapers. She just lies in her leaking bundles and blankets.

Tips on bus-riding in Amman

The first thing you want to do is be safe. So in terms of buses, unless you know any better, maybe you should only get on the official city buses. These are big and look like normal buses. You pay half a dinar to get on, and ride for as long as you like. Often times, you won't actually be able to go to your final destination without first going to the main bus station, which I think is called Raghadan, and transferring. But maybe you don't want to do that, because Raghadan is out in the middle of no where.

It is hard to get the hang of the buses, because I looked online and couldn't find a website with bus schedules. But, you just pay attention to the buses you see driving on the streets you often travel. Memorize the bus numbers. And then one day, when you're waiting for a taxi and the taxis doesn't come but the big bus is lumbering towards you, just get on and see where it takes you! (Probably best not to do this until you have been in Amman for a while and can recognize streets and landmarks.) At the very least, the bus will take you somewhere that has more taxis!

Probably the bus driver will mostly speak just Arabic, so just kind of wing it if you don't know any. And even an Arabic-speaking bus driver will understand if you make a big noise that says you want to get off. That, however, is only something you should do if you haven't seen the buzzers you're supposed to press to signal an exit.

Then there's small private buses that really just look like vans. These are usually full of people, women and men, so I don't think they can be very dangerous. Nevertheless, they reminded me that "private bus" on which a university student in India was raped two years ago. Also, I think they have less oversight, and the driver has leave to drive as crazily as he would like.

One time I was waiting for a taxi, couldn't find one, and along came a bus in the distance. I just happened to be close to the bus stop, so I skipped on ahead and was in the correct spot by the time the bus arrived. When it did, I saw that the bus was packed! No fussing about "Passengers Must Stand Behind the Yellow Line." Instead, there were girls actually sitting on the steps you climb up on. It was so crowded that the men ahead of me in the bus stop line passed the driver their half dinar fare, and then walked along the bus to the second door and got on there. So I copied them: I passed my fare to the girls sitting comfy on the steps, who passed it to the driver. The girls told me: come on up! (in Arabic.) So I did just that: I walked along the bus to the second door, and made to get on, when I noticed the second door was all young men, looking at me in amusement. So then I figured it out: I ran back to the first bus door, and squeezed in somehow amongst all the girls, and off we went.

So when buses get really full, and people are standing in the aisles, they segregate them: girls in front, guys in back. Of course, the bus driver himself is male, so that messes it up, but oh well. The girls were sitting everywhere: on the steps, on the ledge beside the bus driver, on a little bit of shelf sticking out between the legs of the properly seated girls. And when all those places were taken, the rest of us had to stand. I think the bus was full because it was coming from the university, and the girls were all holding books on physics, thermodynamics, French conversation, and lots of other lovely stuff.

And although there was no "Passengers Must Stand Behind the Yellow Line" sign, there was at least a "No Smoking" sign.

So, in case anyone needs to know, here are the bus routes I figured out:

Bus 427: Goes from Bayader (Sina'a Street in particular) to Abdoun to the Fifth Circle and on to the City Center and Raghadan Central Bus Station. However, NOTE! I never figured out if you want to go the opposite way, if the bus takes the exact same route. Not sure if it passes Fifth Circle on the way to Bayader.

Bus 252: Goes from Jordan University on "University Street" (on Google Maps this is called Queen Rania Street) towards Sports City; it goes around the Sports City Circle, and then turns onto the road which on Google Maps is called something like "Nasser Ben Jameel" and which has a Safeway on it. At the point where this road is renamed "Arar Street", the bus will take a right onto "Kindi Street" and then swing onto Fifth Circle. After that, it goes to a place called the "Wahh-dat". I don't know what that is. But, if you want to go the opposite direction, then the bus takes the exact same route from Kindi Street, onto the Safeway Street, onto the Sports City Circle, and onto University Street.

Bus 426: I just road this bus for a short clip: from Fifth Circle to Third Circle. If you are trying to get to First Circle, it's not much longer walking from where the bus drops you at Third Circle. The bus itself after Third Circle takes a turn and goes towards the City Center.

I found a train slower than Amtrak!!!

This post is all about the very exciting business of taking a train through the deserts of Jordan!

There is actually a train station here in Amman. When I found out about the train station, it was my dream to go.

I read Murder on the Oriente Express by Agatha Christie once. I think that book begins either in the Baghdad or the Damascus train station. Well, the train station in Amman is connected to the same railway system as those two stations. I think it's been a long time since any train went between Baghdad and Amman, but the Damascus-Amman train was running up until three years ago, when it was derailed by the war.

But a train station is a train station, so we went to check it out. Just tell the taxi driver you want to go to the 'Mahata'. I went on the last day of Ramadan. I stepped out of the taxi, and thought: wow, this is so beautiful. We walked up to the front gates, which were closed and locked. We pressed the buzzer, and a man came out. He spoke Arabic in I don't know what kind of accent, so it was a little hard, but we tried our best.

He showed us around the station - the steam engines, the diesel engines, the carriages, the water tower, and all the related mechanical equipment. I was wild to go for a ride! And I was in luck, because the trains are still running! They might not go to Syria any more, but they run inside of Jordan. The man at the station said the trains go everywhere: Mafraq to the north, Aqaba to the south - though he didn't recommend that. Aqaba is a port city. It is about four hours away by car, but ten to twelve hours by train. And then he listed a bunch of other stations: Qasr, Jiza, Lubban, and on and on.

Then he said that the train travel only cost 4 dinars (!) and that although the trains were not running during Ramadan, they would be running on every single day of the holiday of Eid - except for the first day. And that during the rest of the year, the trains run every Friday and Saturday (that is the weekend in Jordan.) He was all sorts of persuasive, explaining all the sandwiches, juice, coffee, tea, biscuits, and soft drinks the train offers. And the carriages have bathrooms. And they take you to see beautiful sights!

So I left the station that day with every intention of coming back for the real thing.

I found this website: http://www.english.jh-railway.com/page/Information/1/. It seems to be the official one. It lists the stations and has a history of the Hejaz railway. It also has a number to call. We called the number, and the number works! However, I think the people answering only speak in Arabic. The person on the other end of the line had a whole different version of events, however. No, the trains are not running every day of Eid. No, the trains do not run on Friday and Saturday. And apparently, the trains also don't stop at every station.

The new story was that the train this week were running Thursday and Friday, and going solely to the station of Jiza. You call the day before to reserve tickets. You show up at 8 am the day of to wait and to pay. The train leaves at 9 am. It takes 2.5 hours to get to Jiza. Then you hang out in Jiza for about 2 hours, then you take the train back and you're back in Amman by 4 pm!! To be sure, according to Google Maps, Jiza is less than 25 miles from Amman, so if it takes 2.5 hours to get there, then this train system is indeed slower than Amrak! But who can resist traveling in these ancient carriages over the ancient desert??? Not I!

Everything was planned and reserved, and then the afternoon before our trip I fell sick, and stayed sick, and it was too much to attempt a train journey in such conditions. I am so disappointed. I am leaving Jordan very soon and I think this was my last chance to ride the rails.

But if you come to Jordan, you should definitely try to take a train ride.

On the subject of non-car transportation, there is a town called Madaba approximately a 40 minute drive from Amman. The way is nice and straight and non-hilly. People bike between the two of them. And sometimes, but not during Ramadan and I guess less during the summer, they have group bike trips between the two of them. I heard of them through word of mouth, I don't know if maybe you could find a Facebook group organizing one and join in. And there's women who bike along!

Shops in a working/middle class street of Amman

First, it's a bunch of apartments and houses, all built from the slabs of white, greyish stone now stained amber with rain and wind and smoke. Just a short clip down the street, and you come to a house that has a rooster and two hens living in a cage on the alcove that is the front porch; beside that, a dusty garage that sells electronics and repairs your car; and finally you come to the end of the street, where there is a large plant store overflowing with greenery and vines in pots.

The street you've come to is now starting to get filled up with commerce. First, there's a super-market called C-metro that sells milk, cereal, meat, chocolate, paper towels, toiletries, cheese, butter, noodles, nutella, peanut butter, toothbrushes; but not scissors, and no floss, and not really any fresh fruit. If you want fresh fruit, I think there's a whole fresh fruit and vegetable store just a street over, with peaches, watermelons, canteloupes, red Turkish apples, and green apples, and grapes.

Back to the street to the C-metro. If you turn Left onto the street, you first come to store with shovels, garden stuff, and tools. Then, two stores with stickers, purses, hair barrettes, cheap jewelry, school bags, and all sorts of fun trinkets. Then an electronics store. Then a grand-looking place made of clean stone slabs with an archway, called the Daghlise Architecture firm.

Then there's an alleyway.

Then there's a store selling spices and herbs like oregano; then a place called Al Qowqaziya (the Caucasian), I forget what that sells; then a mobile phone store, a shoe store, an ice cream and juice store, then a big empty building, and with that, the street ends. It comes out on a main road called "Shara' Al Shaheed." That means Martyr Street. There is a big monument nearby to Jordanian soldiers killed in action.

If you turn right onto Martyr Street, you come to another mobile phone store; then sunglasses; then a store selling chips and drinks; and then another grocery store. And that's as far as I got.

If you turn left onto Martyr Street, you come to the City Rise Hotel, and a men's hair salon.

If you keep going two blocks onto the right of Martyr Street, you come to the best place ever: a stationary store. It has notebooks, pens, highlighters, and gel pens; piles of school bookbags; and stickers of smiley faces, cakes, and hearts. It has alphabet and numbers coloring books. It has really gorgeous journal books that come in pastel colors (lavender, apple green, light rose, soft blue) and say cheerful things like "Best wishes" on the cover in gold script, and have a lock and key on them, and so must be a girl's dream! There's play-dough, foam cut-outs of soccer balls, footballs, basketballs, and trophies; glitter and colored cotton balls, pads of post-it notes, scissors in glad colors, rulers, heart-shaped notebooks with flowers on the cover, and every other nice thing you can think of!

If you want to read about a really rich part of Amman, click here.
A poor part of Jordan, click here.

Jordan's high-tech, pedestrian friendly, sustainable new hot-spot

There's a place over in the Amman skyline where you see tall buildings with lots of glass, and maybe a few cranes. This is called Al Abdali. It is the only place in Amman that looks like an American city.

There are other rich, fancy places in Amman, like Abdoun; but these places don't look like an American city. They are very rich and expensive, but the big fancy mansions are nevertheless made of stone slabs that fade from pearly to sandy; and the sidewalks are all uneven; and the little bit of sidewalk there is has been dug up with trees planted in the middle, which is nice because it's good to have greenery! But it actually makes it so there's no room to walk on the sidewalk.

This new place Abdali is all glass and uniform cement, and the sidewalks are so wide they reminded me immediately of broad, spacious avenues. And there is no trash on the ground.

Abdali has apartments up in the towers over the shops and the malls and cafes, and a university is going to be started there.

 Shining glories of Abdali

There's lots of confident signs around the place. The one below says: "Pedestrian-friendly traffic."

 And we were moving too fast, but another said, "Built with sustainability in mind."

I'm going to describe a working/middle class area and a poor area in Jordan later on!

Forest reserve in Jordan

Jordan has set aside protected land for conservation. I don't know all the rules, but one of them is the Sherhabil Bin Hassneh EcoPark that Sweden supported, and there's another reserve called Zay National Park. It is just a bit northwest of the capital Amman. It's set on forested mountains and hills from which you have wonderful look-out points.

And the road going into the park is full of white and pink flower bushes.

Pardon the blurry pictures, they were all from a moving car.

 

Around the park, the hills have been terraced by low, stone walls which you can just see in the last picture. 

And as you drive around, sometimes you come across a stand of Erz trees, which is the tree on Lebanon's flag and which look just like pointed firs. 

Sometimes, you come across a lonely mosque on a cliff, surrounded by a small settlement. It reminded me of biking around the very southern tip of Sweden and suddenly coming across a church spire rising out of a village!

From the park towards the west you see the mountains of Palestine. Just when we were there, the sun was setting and had left behind a strip of icy-pink flare, and a valley in between that looked to be full of slowly curling, grey-blue smoke. It was the mist and haze of the departing day.

Eid in Jordan and getting new clothes

This is a major Muslim holiday. I kept trying to take pictures of the kids prancing around on their evenings out in their new clothes, but I never seemed to get the timing right. So I'll describe the clothes here:

- a girl in a forest green-colored dress that was all ruffled in the skirt, just like those Spanish dresses that flounce out and make a triangle at the bottom.

- a girl in shimmering folds of a long violet dress.

- a little three year old in a long blue dress with a purse and white sleeves, kind of looked like Snow-White's dress.

- an older girl in a sparkly gold top.

 The toy shops get really popular

 Blurry shot of kids

This sign says: "May you be happy and in well-being every year" (standard Eid greeting)

گل عام و انتم بخير

Food in Jordan

Yesterday, we went the house of some newlyweds. The wife had made:

- a chocolate cake with nuts and cream
- a coffee-flavored cake with nuts and cream
- this really wonderful creamy-jello-y stuff that was orange and melted in your mouth!
- a pancake stuffed with almonds and fried, and then soaked in sugar-water
- then they also had cookies, crackers, and chips, and apple juice, orange soda, and Turkish coffee
- and chocolate candy

Today, a girl showed me a picture of what she had cooked when her in-laws came for dinner:
- a dish with fish
- rice that was yellow from being soaked in chicken broth, with corn and almonds, and roast chicken on top
- salad
- lentil soup
- yoghurt with cucumbers
- and something else

Taxi drivers in Jordan talk about Sweden

One time I told a taxi driver in Jordan that I was from Sweden. He said: hej hej hej hej hej hej hej!

Yesterday, the taxi driver said: I went to Sweden once. The people were so nice, I really liked it!

Today's taxi driver asked if I drive in Sweden. I don't even live in Sweden, so of course the answer is no, but I cobbled together a whole recitation: no, I don't drive! I mostly ride a bike or take the buses or trains! In Sweden, they have just as many special roads for bikes as they do for cars! It's great exercise, and it reduces traffic snarls, and it's good for the environment! And, it means there's less health problems linked to air pollution!

I said all this while we were driving through Amman, where there is not a bike lane to be seen. So I felt kind of bad for the driver.

Then he said, you speak Arabic "very well, very well," which I was really happy about. I asked him how well he spoke English. He said, just a little! I said: I also can't speak Arabic very well when I get really nervous or angry. He said: hahaha, of course, when you're angry and you're just about ready to explode, of course you can't concentrate on speaking in your second-best language.

Or, he added, when you're hungry! Then we both laughed again.

Then he said: is there Ramadan in Sweden? I said, yes, of course!

Then he kept taking us onto the street parallel to the main street, so that we would escape from the super-snarled traffic. He kept preceding these forays by saying: now, I don't want you to get scared. Please be at your ease! So I told him that I trusted him and it was okay, and he said, good, good! I want you to be relaxed.

Then I told him that in Swedish, the word for bike is cykel. I thought he'd like that, because in Arabic, we say 'bicycle' (pronounced with an Arabic twist, of course.)

Finally, when I was getting ready to get off, he said: thank you so much for riding with me and thank you for the wonderful conversation, and now you can go back and remember me, I'm Abu Mahmoud. I said I would definitely remember, and thank you for the nice ride and for everything.

Cheats and Guns in Jordan

Yesterday, we got to go to a nice restaurant and eat as much pasta in white sauce with mushrooms as we could muster after the sunset. Someone else was paying, which made it all the more delicious!

Then, we had a trivia game. Whichever table got the most points would win nice prizes such as: a watch that apparently costs $1000 and free dinners at the Dead Sea and all sorts of things.

Using your cell phone to look up information during the trivia game was expressly forbidden, but at my table, we had two cheats flouting the rules. Also, the man who was in charge - who was supposed to deduct points from cheating teams - saw us cheat, but didn't say anything. I think it is because his wife was at our table, and I guess he wanted us to win. Also, he was busy cheating himself. He would go off to other tables, see their answers, and then come back and share with us. And this guy is a director at the institution paying for our meal.

Except, the cheats didn't even contribute any helpful information. One question was: which four Middle-Eastern countries use the 'pound' as their currency. The cheats sat and looked it up on their phones, and then gave us the wrong answer.

I got quite huffy. If that scenario was repeated in the US, I don't think anyone would have pulled out a cell phone, because they'd know enough of their fellow team-members would object, and it would be a point of pride to play honestly. Am I being too rosy-eyed about that? I am basing this on my own experiences, and I can't remember a single instance of cheating during something as silly as a trivia game, whether in college or at work. It would just be such a shameful thing to do.

So then I started thinking: yes, this is why Arab countries are such complete failures, because cheating at a game leads to cheating in real life, and no one plays by the rules, and everyone is loyal to their family members ahead of being loyal to values like justice and truth!

I was getting ready to give everyone at the table a lecture, but then another thought occurred to me. In the US we have a lot of gun violence and innocent people get killed or massacred all the time. This also, based on the news, happens a lot in Iraq, Syria, and probably many other Middle Eastern countries, but I have not - knock wood - heard of any gun violence in Jordan while I've been here. I've just heard about people being horribly and unfairly killed in the US.

I guess someone else could think: yes, gun violence is just one thing wrong with the US, and it's a country where you're not safe and where you never know when you'll be killed just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and what can be said for a society doing such a bad job taking care of its children!

After I thought of that, I was glad I had not given everyone a lecture about their cheating.

Letter-writing in Jordan

I thought I would write letters home from Jordan, but I've postmarked five of them - the first almost 2 months ago - and none have arrived.

Finally, I went to the post office and asked them if they only send the mail-plane to the US once a month or something. But they said, no, no! Your letter should arrive in a week. Maybe ten days.

The nice thing is that I think the post offices are all pretty plentiful, and they are clearly marked with the 'Jordan Post' sign on the street. When I first got here, though, I didn't know where any of the post offices were located, so I searched on Google and found a website that seemed official and as though it belonged to the Jordanian post office. They had a map that showed post office locations. The map only showed two locations in all of Amman, and maybe six in all of Jordan.

Since the website doesn't help, just ask someone where the nearest post office. It's probably within a ten to twenty minute walk.

It only costs 1.10 dinars to send a letter to the US. That is about $1.50.

But unfortunately, it looks like all your letters will go to an early grave if you hand them over.

I have a friend whose dad sends her weekly letters from Europe, but I think that only two of them have arrived. That is a better record, though, compared to my out-going letters.

So I wanted to commemorate the sad fate of my pretty handwriting...

I pray that you may be resuscitated one day.

Update: This letter arrived! In fact, I have confirmation that three out of the five letters I dared send from Jordan arrived in the US (the first arrived two months later, the second and third only journeyed for a month.) And the two missing letters might have arrived. I just never heard.

A night on the town in Amman

Before Ramadan, we went one evening to Amman's city center. It is called the بلد, that is to say, the beh-led.

It was three women and one man, and the guy paid for everything. First, we all went to a famous shop called Habiba. They take white cheese, stick it amongst red-feathery type swirls of something or other, and then soak it all in syrup. Then you eat it. We all had a portion. Then we went to a coffee-shop and were begged most most earnestly to please please have a tea or coffee or something to drink, and last we went back out on the streets and we all had a smoothie with oranges and strawberries.

The guy paying was paying for his co-worker, and his co-worker's cousin, and the friend of the cousin of his co-worker. I thought it was nice!

Ramadan in Jordan ...

Is not so fun.

Well, it was 14 years ago when Ramadan fell in the winter. Then it was a mere eight or nine hours of fasting, followed by nights out on a cool street eating ice cream and riding bumper cars. Now it is summer, and we got a special-order delivery on the first day of the month: the hottest weather we've had for the whole year practically.

It's so hot that you really cannot walk long distances plus not drink water plus be attacked by the traffic fumes all at the same time. That means spending more time in the taxis or cars, and they are no picnic, either. You sit in them and still feel like you'll suffocate from both the heat and the car exhaust.

But if you walk, then you feel like you're going to have a heart attack. I actually felt the "tightness in your heart" that is so often the warning sign for trouble, and I am by no means out of shape.

Also special order just in time for Ramadan: all of a sudden, I'm getting ripped off big-time by every other taxi driver. My troubles started the day after I gave a taxi driver 1.25 instead of his due of 1.30. I wasn't trying to short-change him! I didn't have any 5 cent coins, and the last 15 cents had been consumed by a traffic jam so intense that we only moved like 10 yards during that time. So I thought, hopefully he'll forgive me the last 5 cents. Apparently not. I see I have not yet thoroughly repented, because my punishment is on-going.

During Ramadan in 2000, every time you walked out on the streets, everything felt joyful, peaceful and like all the shoppers were best friends. It's not like that this time. I don't really feel anything special at all.

Meantime, the man on the morning radio - not the man with the nice calm voice, but another with a kind of aggressive voice - is giving us lectures on proper Ramadan terminology. He said: all us Jordanians are going around saying "Ramadan Kareem". This is very wrong. Ramadan is not Kareem, because Kareem is a word used only for the One who made the month in the first place. We're really supposed to say, "Ramadan Mubarak."

On the evening of Ramadan, we suddenly started hearing explosions, but not to worry, it was not advancing militants! It was just people setting off firecrackers at their happiness over the advent of the holy month. I know someone, however, who did not like those firecrackers at all because they make such loud, sudden noises. I said, well, at least it's just for one evening. She said, no, it's not just on the first day, but rather we'll be hearing them all month long. I said that in the US, it's illegal for people to set off firecrackers in the middle of a city, because it can be dangerous. She said, it's illegal here, too! But people still do it. You can go into stores that are full of fugitive firecrackers.

Then on today's morning radio, the man with the aggressive voice was giving us another lecture. He was talking about how dangerous firecrackers are, and how they make very shocking noises for the sick, the elderly, children, and pregnant women. He was trying to raise some social awareness. He repeated what I'd already heard: that the government ministries had banned the firecrackers, but you can go into stores that are chock-full anyways. Then he took a call from a man trying to crack down on the crackers. The crack-down man said: people use the crackers as an expression of happiness, but it really isn't...

Then I left the taxi, ripped off big-time.

Jordan's morning radio

Yesterday, the street by one of the universities in Amman was full of young men and women, and their families. It was graduation day.

Likewise, all the high-school kids have been taking their end-of-term tests.

One girl called into the morning radio and was telling the anchor that the English exam she had taken the day before was really, really hard. Then the moderator tried to console her.

That was the day that the plane in Ukraine was shot down. So one of the headlines on the morning radio news was: the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon condemns it, etc.

One time, I think a refugee from Syria living now in Jordan called into the morning radio show. The moderator told the Syrian refugee: you know, us Jordanians are a welcoming people. We don't look to see if someone is Jordanian or Syrian. We just look to see that we're all Muslim and Arab, and so we welcome all refugees, we want to help everyone, we will do whatever we can!

The Syrian refugee said back: well, no, you don't.

That's when the moderator started yelling at him.

More Sweden in Jordan

For Midsummer's day...

I went to a conference at the Dead Sea, and there was a man from the Swedish Embassy there. I was so happy.

We were making a video about the conference, and so of course, I asked the Swedish man if he wanted to be on the video. He said yes! His part in the video was so nice, especially when he smiled and said 'marhaba' and 'shukren'.

A Jordanian man at the conference mentioned how Sweden helps Jordan all the time. So of course I asked him to be part of the video, too. He talked about environmental projects he is part of, and he wrapped up his bit by repeating on camera all the nice things he'd said about Sweden. It was so nice.

The conference ended. Just my luck, after we spent a week or two editing the footage and making a polished film, or as polished as you get with mobile phones and iMovie, our higher-ups decided to cancel all our efforts. They were afraid our film would generate negative publicity, because the conference had hosted Palestinians, Israelis, and Jordanians. This makes some people very angry. Even though the conference attendees are not working together for an evil purpose, and no one is trying to be traitor to their homeland, still some people got mad.

The theme of the conference was how to live in a region of the world where water is scarce. The conference had lots of workshops where Palestinians, Jordanians, and Israelis were trying to teach each other and learn from each other how to protect water resources.

But because some people got mad, the film was canceled. So no one gets to see the man from the Swedish embassy, nor does anyone get to see the Jordanian man who said nice things about Sweden.

So I thought, okay, I'll write a reflection on the conference. That way I could mention the Swedish Embassy man. And I even mentioned the environmental projects of the Jordanian man, and I wrote all about a Palestinian mayor who has done neat things with rainwater harvesting barrels, home composting, helping farmers use cleaner and cheaper fertilizers, and raising awareness with schools.

I wrote it and now they told me: ah, that's too bad, the conference is now so long ago that we can't post any reflection about it anymore.

Every time I try to do or write anything nice about Sweden, it is always cut down, and if it isn't, no one watches anyways. I don't even know why I bother.

Then, a lady at the office told me to proofread a 60 page long article. I thought, okay, for sure this will be useful and won't be a waste of time. I sat for several hours proof-reading, and got halfway done. Then I noticed the lady was leaving the office. She didn't even come to talk to me! I had to flag her down and ask what to do, because she's said she wanted the editing done that day. She said: fine, finish over the weekend and then send me an email with all the edits.

First of all, how are you supposed to send edits by email for a hard-copy article? How the heck is she supposed to know what the context of the edits are? Besides which, the internet was out at home. So she finally took the half-finished edited article home with her. Otherwise, I suppose all my editing would have been for naught. I wouldn't be surprised if she tosses my edits in the back of her car and forgets about them anyways.

Enough complaining, here's more about Sweden in Jordan:

There is a Palestinian-Jordan man at the office who lived 25 years in Finland and whose kids learned Swedish in school. He still speaks Finnish. I liked that!

The other day, my taxi driver gave me a big, happy smile with crinkly eyes when I said I'm from Sweden, and he said: Sweden is a Heaven, no? He used a word that means Heaven and beautiful all at once.

One time, I actually had a Swedish speaking taxi driver. Well, he just knew "hur mår du?" "måndag," "tisdag," etc, and I think he knew "vad heter du?" You can imagine my shock. He was a Jordanian man who had lived with a Swedish lady in Greece for a couple of years. They spoke English together, but he'd used to hear her talking on the phone to her parents and friends. So now you know: do not impersonate countries that you actually have no clue of, because you never know when the taxi driver will find you out.

World Cup in Jordan

There are Arab sports satellite channels that carry all the World Cup Soccer games. Yesterday, a moderator with a very vigorous voice commented on the Holland-Spain match.

He was so excited that he didn't pause for breath once. Here are his best proclamations:
- Holland yes, Holland si!
- Holland had vanquished the Matador
- Oscarrrrrrrrrrrrrr
- RRRRRRRobin, Robinhood!
- Allaaaah!! Allaaah, Allaaah, Allaaaaaah!!

Then he told a story. Something like:

Back in the Middle Ages, the Spanish were under attack by some fierce warrior, and the mothers would tell all their unruly children at night who refused to sleep that the fierce warrior would come and get them.

Then, the moderator finishes with a flourish: today, Holland has become that fierce warrior frightening the Spanish!

I did not know this, but apparently when Barcelona and Real Madrid soccer teams play against each other, it is a big game for Jordanians, too! Most everyone has pledged allegiance to one team or the other. But the state of awareness is so high that even people who don't really watch soccer will still ask the next day, "so who won?"

And there's some neighborhoods here in Jordan which, during the European games, will get so excited that you in your kitchen know someone has scored a goal by the noises that erupt from other people's living rooms.

Right now in Amman, there are more Brazilian, German, French, Argentinian, Spanish, and Dutch flags than the national flag.

Songs against Cigarettes in Jordan

Today in the car, these were the news headlines on the radio in Amman:

1. The US is giving $35 million to Syrian refugees. The money will go to the World Food Programme and to various NGOs in the area.
2. Jordan is struggling under the pressure of amongst the largest Syrian refugee populations in the region.
3. The Ministry for Agriculture is preparing a campaign to counter the attacks against water supplies. I think the people doing the attacks are farmers who do not get an adequate supply of irrigation water, but I'm not sure if I heard that part right.
4. Dozens of people have been killed in fights in Syria.

Next came a segment, spoken in the innocent voice of a young child - who was likely coached into all the cheesy inflections he used - that is called, "Letter from a Child to a Grown-Up." They have that segment every morning, apparently. Today's was about the English language, or about writing letters, but the windows were open and the wind was too loud for me to hear!

After that they had a long anti-smoking commercial. First, a man with a nice, serious voice talked about how smoking is against Islam, and the Muslim community all needs to take a stand and show how wrong smoking is. Then, they had a short dialogue between two men, a smoker and non-smoker. The non-smoker asks the smoker, 'are you smoking again?' Finally, they finished off the campaign with a song. It went something like, 'he lit the cigarette, and then he left it. he lit the cigarette, and then he left it.'

Seeing Pope Francis in Jordan

The Pope held a mass at the sports stadium in Amman on May 24. For the weeks preceding, Amman has had signs like this at all major intersections: the Pope and the King shaking hands!

Though the service was in the afternoon, while still in bed that morning I could already hear horns from the heavy traffic blaring every so often from the road.

There was a lot of security, or at least the appearance of security. There was police, traffic police, and men in camouflage with the word 'Gendarmerie' sewn into their uniforms. Those are the security forces that carry large rifles, and you see them outside of ministries and embassies. On that day, they were on guard for the Pope.

There was also a cluster of female cops standing outside the entrance to the stadium grounds directing traffic! The road was jammed with cars so there was great need for direction. Every so often a truck labeled 'police' would drive up and deliver cases of water and soda for the police.

To get into the stadium, you were supposed to bring an ID card ... except no one checked for it. All you had to do was show your ticket to the phalanx of armed men at the main Sports City entrance. They were really nice, and even tried to help you out if you had two different tickets and were wondering which was the better view. (The tickets were distributed freely at churches all over Amman, and you didn't have to be Catholic, or even Christian, to get one.)

Once you were inside the Sports City, you walked along past police and armed forces every few feet. You walked towards the stadium, and then started walking around and around it until you reached whatever stadium entrance was printed on your ticket. Once you found the correct point of entry, that was where the real security check took place.

First, the men and women were separated. The men had to go through an x-ray machine, and then their bags were manually searched (ha!)

The women were not searched bodily at all. All we faced was two ladies sitting at a table. We handed them our bags, they unzipped just the biggest pocket, not bothering with the smaller ones, took a quick peek, and handed them back.

Inside the stadium, there were volunteers everywhere to point out the way, and they also handed every person coming in a small plastic bottle of water. That is bad for the environment, but it was nicely organized. The volunteers came by every two hours or so to offer you more water.  We estimated an attendance of around 20,000 people, counting all the seats laid out in the field.

And they'd even placed booklets so you could follow the service on each seat, and a book about the Pope and the church. A choir was up at the front by the Papal tent, warming up.

And they had ambulances to take away people who had fainted.

In order to keep the crowds entertained as we waited for hours, the Catholic Church had written songs especially for the occasion, songs all about the 'Baba' (Pope in Arabic). It was a good thing for the song writers that Amman and Salam almost rhyme, they got good mileage from that. We listened to the songs about Baba Fransees on repeat about fifty times, and they even rhymed 'Fransees' with 'peace!' Then they went into long choruses of Hallelulia! The singers got really enthused and started wailing with excitement by the end of the songs. It was great.

Meanwhile, everyone was waving their flags in time to the rhythm. There were the red-green-white-black Jordanian flags with the single star, and Iraqi flags, probably carried by Christians who'd had their churches blown up there, and flags that said 'PACE', and a single French flag, flags from Lebanon, an entire contingent from Argentina (Pope Francis is from Argentina), Egyptian, and for every Jordanian flag there was a yellow and white Vatican flag. It was all very festive.

There were kids dressed in white robes, some with wreaths in their hair, walking hand in hand across the field.

At 1 pm, a Jordanian elder in the Catholic Church came to the microphone under the Papal tent. He said, in Arabic: '
Good day! (cheers!)
Good something else! (cheers!)
Good day to the great Kingdom of Jordan etc etc (loudest cheers yet)

Then he kept on going:
Jordan of the security and peace! (cheers!)
Jordan  of the best of something! (cheers!)
Jordan of knowledge! (cheers!)
He had about ten great epithets for Jordan, and finally closed with:
Jordan with the wonderful King! (loudest cheers!)
And then:
The Baba's plane has landed on the blessed kingdom of Jordan! And the King is with him! May the King live!
Crowd yells back: He'll live!
Man at the microphone: May he live!
Crowd yells back: He'll live!
Man at the microphone: May he live!
Crowd yells back: He'll live!

Three times is a charm, so the man at the microphone moved on to the Baba:
Viva el Baba!
Viva el Baba!
Viva el Baba!
But this time, no one yelled back an echo. We speculated because 'viva' is a harder word.

Then we listened to songs about Baba Fransees for another hour, then around 2 pm, the man at the microphone returned. This time, he said:
Here we have Jordan: Muslims and Christians as one! (loudest cheers yet!)
This is a land of respect!
He went on and on.

When he was done, we had another hour of songs about Baba Fransees on repeat.

3 pm: the man at the microphone was back, this time to announce that el Baba Fransees was in the car, and on the way. In celebration of the moment of anticipation, we got more songs on repeat!

Then we heard more praise of Jordan: Jordan is a distinguished country! Jordan is in the holy land! Jordan where many important religions live! And for all time, Jordan blessed and in peace ...

More songs, and then more speeches in Arabic:
We welcome Jordanians from all over Jordan! (cheers!)
We welcome our friends from other Arab countries (loud cheers!)
And to our friends from all over the world, ahlen we sehlen! Repeats in English: "Welcome to Jordan!" (loudest cheers yet!)
Welcome to the wonderful people watching on TV at home! (cheers!)

Just at this moment, we saw military helicopters circling overhead! Everyone yelled out, the King has come!

Just a bit later, the Pope arrived. Before he entered the stadium, the man at the microphone led again in three cheers of 'may he live' for the King, and then three cheers of 'viva el Baba' for the Pope, and this time everyone was prepared and yelled back 'viva'!

Finally, the Pope himself appeared in his white car.

He circled the track all the way around the stadium before it stopped at the Papal tent up front, waving at everyone. Of course, this whole time, the Baba Fransees songs were back in full swing. As the Pope made his way around, the people who had the tickets for special seats right in the field were running from corner to corner, tailing him and trying to get to shake his hand. Twice the white car stopped, and the security people and volunteers holding everyone back transferred a baby from a mother behind the fence to the Pope standing in his car, for a blessing.

Contrary to the military helicopters, the King never showed. The Pope started his sermon and the readings and the choir singing. He has a gentle, detached, philosophical voice that was nice to hear; despite that, the service kind of dragged. Probably because half of it was in Italian and no one knew what was being said.

So it turns out the Baba Fransees songs on repeat were the best part of it all. Y'all, the songs are in Spanish, English, and Arabic. This is not a chance to be missed! In fact, your life is certainly not complete unless you listen to them once a day: