Easter in Jordan Part II, or Happy Egg

Writing about Easter the other day reminded me of a story a friend of mine told me last year. It's not a long story, but to me quite funny, and also indicative of how little many Muslims here know about the Christians who live amongst them.

According to my friend, two years ago on Easter he wanted to wish his Christian friend a good Easter. Being a Muslim, however, he was apparently unsure of exactly how to do that, as he proceeded to say to his friend not "Happy Easter," or "Have a good Easter"--or something along those lines--but instead, "Happy Egg." He said after this his friend had a good laugh at him. I didn't catch if his friend then took the opportunity to tell him what Easter is all about, but I do know that he at least found out from him that "Happy Egg" is a dubious Easter salutation. It is, however, the thought that counts.

Easter in Jordan

Yesterday was Easter here in Jordan. Since Easter occurred a month ago at home, this may surprise a lot of people who read this, but we celebrate Easter here according to the Orthodox calendar, which is different from the western calendar. Since Sunday is the first day of the work week here, Easter Sunday is, of course, different from Easter Sunday at home. Christians may have the day off--although not necessarily--but everyone else is working, or does whatever else they do on a regular day of the week. Also, at the most the population of Jordan is around 5 percent Christian, so very few people were actually celebrating the holiday.

Still, there were signs that Easter was being celebrated here. At 11 o'clock the night before we could hear the bells from a church ringing in the distance, calling worshippers to a pre-Easter, midnight service. As I sat in the windowsill, taking in the cool night air and enjoying the absence of almost any other sound, it was a simple, beautiful reminder of the coming of the day. Also, it is traditional here for Christians to visit their friends and family on Sunday after the Easter service and for one or two days afterwards, like Muslims do during their two Eids. We have several Christian families on our street, and as a result on Sunday we saw a steady stream of people outside our apartment making the rounds in their best clothes. At times we could hear them laughing or just talking loudly--cheerful sounds that we don't always hear on our street. This helped--along with the church bells--in a small way to give the day a festive, holiday atmosphere, at least in the area around our apartment.

Happy Easter From Jordan!

Mapping Amman

Among the many things about Amman that struck me when we first moved here was a simple, yet extremely noticeable detail: the city had few street names and few actual addresses. This seemed strange to me--especially for a city of several million people--since I was coming from a city like Minneapolis, where every kind of street is named and which runs on a straight and easy grid pattern, making any destination easy to find if you just know the address. Because of the lack of street names and building numbers here, however, most destinations are not always so easy to find. Instead, if you want someone to find your home, for instance, you end up pointing people to the nearest large landmark, then to a certain falafal shop, then a certain number of streets, and so on. Or, to find someones home you have to navigate directions like those we were given below (some details have been taken out):

From _____ go under the tunnel toward _____. Continue straight through _____.
Take the first right (at a toy store).
Go through two stop signs. After the second, turn left at the next street.
Go until the road T's. Turn right.
Take the second left.
This is a dead end street--they are at the end--#____ on the right.
Their apartment is on the ____ floor--use the middle set of doors and head up the stairs.

Recently Annamarie ran into some German tourists near our apartment who asked her for directions to a certain restaurant. They were frustrated, as they couldn't find any reliable maps, and even if they could, they said, nobody they asked could tell them where the street was that they were looking for.

Perhaps, however, this is changing, as a few months ago big, blue numbers like this began appearing on buildings in many parts of Amman.


Then, new street signs like this one began appearing at intersections throughout Amman.


I don't know if these streets already had names but just weren't signed, or if they got names and signs at the same time. Whatever the case, it appears that in the future, navigating the city will be easier for me--and for German tourists.

Living Overseas 101

"WE DO NOT NEED TO UNDERSTAND OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR CUSTOMS FULLY TO INTERACT WITH THEM AND LEARN IN THE PROCESS; IT IS MAKING THE EFFORT TO INTERACT WITHOUT KNOWING ALL THE RULES, IMPROVISING CERTAIN SITUATIONS THAT ALLOW US TO GROW."
Mary Catherine Bateson, writer and cultural anthropologist

Presidential Politics in Jordan

A few days ago I saw a short report on CNN discussing the views on the presidential race in the United States from people in various countries around the world. I can't remember all the countries from which CNN reported, but the theme was the same in each: the reporters believed most of the people in the country wanted either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to win, and they also didn't really know who John McCain was.

I found this report interesting because it exactly mirrored the opinions of everyone--and I do mean everyone--I know or have discussed the election with here. All of these people want Clinton to win--although they would accept an Obama victory--and very few know much about the Republican nominee or even know his name.

From the conversations I have had, this overwhelming affinity for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in general seems to stem from two reasons. First, most of the people here really like Hillary's husband, Bill Clinton. Exactly why this is I am not sure, but it probably has something to do with his push to find a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Most of this occurred late in his presidency, but I think most people here believe that his approach to the issue was more evenhanded than is George Bush's approach. Although one can debate the specifics of this point, it is at least a reasonable position to hold, unlike the position of one particular friend of mine, who told me he likes Bill Clinton because when he was president, "there were no wars in the world." Of course this position is not just debatable, it is not true.

This does bring me, though, to the second reason that Jordanians support Hillary Clinton for president, would accept an Obama victory and know next to nothing about John McCain. They know that Clinton is a Democrat, and that her main challenger in the general election will be a Republican, the same party as George W. Bush, whom they do not like. Most Jordanians see Bush as one who has created chaos in their part of the world with invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, supported oppression by maintaining strong ties with Israel and yet is still perhaps willing to cause more chaos in the general region by invading Iran. He does not have a good name here, and as a result neither does his party. I supported decisions other than what the president made and continues to make regarding these issues, so I can agree with a lot of what people say here and believe that many of their opinions are again at least reasonable, debatable positions to hold. However, people here can be lead by their dislike of the president to hold some unreasonable and irrational positions and attribute too many of the problems in the world to him, such as my same friend, who believes all of the wars and war-like violent conflicts in the world currently being waged are the fault of the president--somehow even, he said, the war in Darfur, Sudan in which a Muslim government is fighting Muslim rebels and killing Muslim civilians.

Whatever their reasons--reasonable to me or not--the Jordanians I know hope Hillary Clinton is the next President of the United States. If she loses the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, though, I'm sure they will then hope for an Obama victory. I'm also sure that over these next few months as election day in the United States nears, a lot of Jordanians will be almost as interested as I am to see what the outcome will be, and what that means for American policy in this part of the world.

Spring is Near

Days here in Amman are starting to be longer and warmer. You can feel a change is coming and we are ready. Winters in Amman may not be as severe or long as they are in Minnesota but we find them harder somehow. Maybe because there are no outdoor activities here like cross-country skiing, quiet walks in Powderhorn Park after a fresh snowfall, sledding or broomball. Or it could be because the heating systems in most houses in Minnesota provide relief from the cold, which the heating systems here don't always do. This is especially noticeable on those days here when we can see our breath inside!



Spring in Jordan is my favorite season as the country that is normally dusty and brown blooms in color for a few weeks. The weather is nearly perfect--warm enough to relax in the sun but cool enough so that you aren't ready to run for shade after 10 minutes. Over the weekend the weather was warm and sunny--the beginning of spring in Amman--so we decided to go for a picnic. We packed a bag of warm pita and fresh hummus and went up to the Citadel, the site of the biblical city of Rabboth Ammon and the Greek and Roman city of Philadelphia which is located on a hill overlooking downtown Amman. We were greeted by some new friends who sat and talked with us and shared our food.

A Final Sudan Post

While in Sudan we stayed with some friends in Um Durman, a city north of Khartoum just across the Nile River. All the homes there--and throughout the Khartoum area--had high mud walls all around them like the one behind the girl in this picture.

Two girls near our friends' house.



Annamarie washing her feet at the basin in our friends' courtyard. Many homes in the Khartoum area have basins like this in the area in front of the door to the house.



Matt pretending to help clean up the kitchen after lunch. Like all homes we saw, this kitchen was located in a separate area outside of the main part of the house.



The neighborhood dry cleaner.



Two men in a busy market in Um Durman.



We had the opportunity to visit several friends during our time in Sudan. After about an hour on the bus, this three-wheeled vehicle--the driver is inside--took us the rest of the way to the home of one friend in an area just south of Khartoum. We were told this particular town was the last place in the Khartoum area that had electricity.



Annamarie with another friend and her children at their home in another area outside of Khartoum.



A soccer match outside their house.



A woman selling Sudanese coffee and tea on the street in Khartoum. These women were everywhere, and we stopped every day for a drink.

Khartoum

This is the main bus station in downtown Khartoum. We spent a lot of time here, as all city buses are directed to this station. We found Khartoum to be filled with buses, so much so that it is difficult to find any picture that we took of the city that does not include at least one bus in it.



Downtown Khartoum. Sudan is a dusty place, and a large percentage of the streets downtown are still dirt. Also, even some streets that were paved were overtaken by dirt.



Downtown, behind a group of women selling various wares. There were many women--mostly widows--throughout the city selling such things as spices, bread and coffee to support their families.



Dogs taking a break from the heat of mid-day. Wild dogs are were common sight wherever we went.

An outdoor barber shop, set against the wall of a building.

A mosque in downtown Khartoum.

Chickens hanging from the window of the bus next to us.

The Nile River, which cuts through Khartoum.

A market just outside of Khartoum.



Traffic jam.

Sudanese Impressions

Two weeks in a country isn't nearly enough time to learn a lot about it, but we felt that after running around Khartoum for that amount of time we were able to get a decent sense of what life is like at least in the Khartoum area. It was also more than enough time for us to be impacted by some of the characteristics of the city that stood out to us and form some impressions that we will remember for quite some time.

First of all, Sudan is the first country we have visited that is not really a tourist destination. A lot of people, for instance, dream of visiting Egypt or Morocco--and even Jordan--but never have we heard anyone speak of a yearning to visit Sudan. We like to do a little bit of basic research before going anywhere, but there is no "Lonely Planet" Sudan travel guidebook, and surprisingly the Internet doesn't provide much information either. Even finding a map of Sudan--when we were in Sudan--was difficult. That Sudan is not a travel hot spot--and that the government doesn't seem to care that it isn't--in itself made our trip different from others we have taken.

Sudan is also the first country we have visited that can really be called "developing" in every sense of the word and which is developing in every part of the country. This is different from a country like Jordan, which still could perhaps be considered a developing nation, but only in parts of the country and not in major cities like Amman. Jordan may be lacking in some of the amenities that we are used to back home, but it is far ahead of Sudan in terms of things like standard of living and infrastructure, particularly in the two capital cities. Seeing this difference made us realize how much we have here, and how much easier life is here.

What else? We noticed that vehicular traffic in Khartoum wasn't bad for a city of 6 million people, which perhaps was so because most of those 6 million were instead walking. We did a lot of walking in Khartoum ourselves, and everywhere we went the streets were full of people walking. Mobs of people, walking everywhere--on some streets only occasionally disturbed by a car or truck--probably because most people there don't have vehicles. This continued after sunset and into the evening, at which time we were always further impressed by the strange experience of walking with thousands of other people in the downtown of a large capital city in the dark. Of course it wasn't pitch black--some shops had dim lamps and cars would occasionally drive by with lights on--but there were no street lights downtown, which meant that at night Khartoum turned very shadowy.

We were also struck by the number of dirt streets in Khartoum. Since Khartoum is a large capital city this was a surprise, especially coming from Amman, which is a fully concreted capital city where even the parks sometimes have more pavement than grass or dirt. Some of these dirt roads even had big potholes or random mounds of dirt that cars needed to maneuver around. Also, the city is so dusty that even some streets that were paved had been overtaken or were being overtaken by dirt, as if nature was reclaiming what people had tried to claim. To be sure, We did see many nice paved roads, but in the heart of downtown it seemed that there were more dirt streets than paved. These dirt roads definitely told us we were far from home.

Finally, we found Sudanese people generally to be friendly and open. We also found many to be quite tall. Relations between men and women also seemed to be a bit more free and relaxed than in Jordan. Men and women seemed to interact more together, and I even shook the hands of several women when greeting them, Muslims included. Not only that, but those women shook my hand in a manner that indicated it was not something they were doing for the first time, as I usually feel here on those rare occurrences when a woman extends her hand to greet me. So in the future whenever I think about our time in Sudan, I guess my dominant memory will be of a lot of tall, smiling people, walking everywhere, shuffling along sometimes on dirt roads, sometimes in the dark. They better know where they're going, because no maps are available.

Exploring Sudan

Sunday afternoon we returned from a two week trip to Sudan; hence the break in our blog entries We spent our time there visiting Sudanese friends and trying to get a sense of what life is like for them--and others--there.



In terms of size, Sudan is the largest country in Africa, and according to the United Nations has a population of around 35 million. The Nile River flows through the capital city--Khartoum--which has a population of around 6 million (bigger than the entire population of Jordan).



In terms of religion, Sudan is about 70 percent Muslim, 25 percent various indigenous beliefs and 5 percent Christian. Although just 40 percent of Sudanese are Arabs, Arabic is the official language of the country, although 134 tribal languages are spoken, along with over 400 dialects. The northern region of Sudan is mostly Arab and Muslim, while the south is mostly populated by the various tribal groups who practice the indigenous religions or Christianity.



Sudan struggled through 21 years of civil war between the north and the south, although a peace agreement was signed in 2005. Of course, there is now war in the Darfur region in the west of the country--populated entirely by Muslims--which has gone on for about five years now. The people of Sudan have suffered a lot during these wars. It is estimated that over 2 million people died during the civil war, with 4 million displaced--including 500,000 who fled the country. Currently in Darfur, it is estimated that approximately 300,000 people have died, with over 2 million displaced from their homes. We spent all of our two weeks in the Khartoum area, where the only sign of all this fighting are the people who have moved there to escape it. However short our time and the little we saw of Sudan we are very grateful for the time we had to visit. We hope to share with you some of our experiences over the next few days and we will post more pictures from our time there as well!

Enjoying the Views

Doors from Syria, Tunisia and Morocco
(The door Matt is standing in was used in the filming of Star Wars)

I Went walking on Wednesday and this is some of what we saw

Love Bombs

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be...Martin Luther King Jr.


These days when the word extremist is used we tend to think of specific images associated with destruction, hatred and bigotry. But wouldn't it be great if when the word extremist is used we would think of extreme acts of love, peace, reconciliation and life instead of things related to violence and death?

This is a photo that we took last fall while we were back in Minneapolis for Matt's sister's wedding. If you really think about it dropping bombs changes lives but what an incredible idea to change lives through love. It isn't a new idea but one that continues to be difficult to actually execute in everyday interactions with people. We can only hope and pray that we will all be extremists who fight for justice and peace and who struggle to show acts of kindness to all. Dropping love bombs throughout our lives!

What kind of extremist are you?

Cold Jordan

Here in Jordan we are experiencing what the overflowing water tanks on the rooftops of apartment buildings or water squeegeed out of those buildings on cleaning day. When I asked the guard shivering in his telephone booth sized shack outside the Turkish Embassy a few days ago if the weather was "a little cold", he aggressively responded--not in an angry but in an I-can't-believe-what-I'm-seeing way--"A little cold? Look at the street! There's ice on it!"

The buildings here aren't exactly made for this type of cold weather. Several days ago the pipe from one of our water tanks burst, sending a waterfall cascading down from the roof on to our back porch. The water was promptly turned off and the pipe fixed the next day, just in time for a different pipe from the same tank to develop a small tear, launching a sprinkler like stream into the air. That problem is still ongoing. Also, the temperature inside our apartment tends to hover around the same temperature as outside. There are many in Jordan that do not have heat. Most people, including us, use space heaters to keep warm. The rooms where the heat is on do get warm, but in the rooms where the heat is not on we can see our breath when we exhale (this makes it very hard to get out of bed in the morning!). Last week we visited some friends and while at their house we all sat in their salon on mats on the floor in the traditional Arab way, each one of us with two large, thick blankets covering us to keep warm. There we could easily see our breath, like we were all smoking and exhaling clouds of fumes as we talked between tokes. Some of my toes were actually frozen by the end of our time there.

Being from Minnesota we are of course used to living in cold weather. Most of the people here, though, are not, and I think right now there are a lot of people here who feel like that Turkish Embassy guard.

Even our cat is cold.

Cruising the Countryside

George W. is Near

As many of you know, George W. Bush is in the region this week, making his first visit to Israel/Palestine since becoming president in the hopes of helping to forge some kind of peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. One would think this would be big news here and cause for much hope. After all, this isn't Condoleezza Rice or some other lesser representative of the American government coming over for vaguely purposed "talks" or relationship building initiatives. This is the leader of the purported most powerful nation in the world finally deciding to push harder for peace by visiting the region just a few weeks after meeting with Arab leaders in America to push for peace there. He even said in Jerusalem--in reference to the land we in America call the West Bank and the Arabs call Palestine--that there must be "an end to the occupation that began in 1967," that there must be a home there for the Palestinian people.

However, while I haven't discussed Bush's visit with many people here, I am positive that most Jordanians--approximately 60 percent of whom are of Palestinian origin--are somewhat less than optimistic about it. Over the years, they have seen a lot of world leaders come and go and a lot of unimplemented agreements made. Just within this decade, there has been the end of the end of the seven year long "Oslo Peace Process," the European, American and United Nations backed "Road Map for Peace" and the Saudi Arabian sponsored "Arab Peace Initiative." I think the one friend I did discuss Bush's visit with--also Palestinian by origin--speaks for the majority of the people here. "There have been a lot of people coming and going, travelling, making speeches, talking, having meetings," he said. "I don't know what they talk about in those meetings." He doesn't expect much from all those meetings, and instead of exciting him or giving him hope, he is uninterested in them. "They are playing," he said. "We are bored."

A year ago today

A man and his sheep in Sousse, Tunisia

PEACE in the MIDDLE EAST

The Dead Sea in Jordan looking towards Jerusalem

Happy New Year!

We started 2008 with days and nights of fun and laughter, enjoying a fun filled time with our dear friends visiting from Minnesota. We ate good Arabic food, enjoyed lots of coffee and yummy wine, laughed a ton and toured around Jordan a bit with them.
We hope that this year brings everyone continued joys of
laughter, love and hope.