Cycling in Celebration!

Dead Sea, Jordan

I chose to celebrate Egypt's new-found democracy with a Bike & Hike with the group that was formerly known as Tareef Cycling Club.

From Wadi Himara Once More

Jad warmed me that cycling and hiking with the organization Tareef had become was not the same experience as outings with Tareef. Even so, I'd really missed those weekly trips, and I wanted to get out of the city and get some exercise while I was here. Plus, I knew when I'd RSVP'ed to Aktham that he, at least, would be going, and I was looking forward to seeing him. He brought along a fellow Iraqi Kurdish refugee who's been living in Orange County, California, since she was relocated several years ago, and she was also fun to spend time with. We talked a lot about the cultural differences between Jordan and the US: what she and I had learned and Aktham will discover when his resettlement to Anaheim finally comes through.

Sure enough, it was not the same mixed demographic I remember. It was almost entirely 16-18 year old boys. In fact, it reminded me of backpacking with the Boy Scouts in high school, where everything's a race, and the boys were literally climbing the walls of the canyon. Still, it was the same beautiful Wadi Himara I remember from previous trips!

Politics was Inevitable
One of the things I always loved about Tareef was that even while we were raising money for the Gazans in the Hannukah War, no one spoiled our fun with discussions of politics. But Egypt's revolution is something entirely different. It has infused Arabs with a sense of hope they can't remember ever having, perhaps best explained by the Black Iris and Christine Makhamra of 7iber.com. When they find out that I fled Egypt to Jordan, everyone wants to know what it was like to be there at this exciting time. I keep coming back to the same point: for the first time since I've been in Egypt, I'm finally seeing Egyptians proud of their country, hopeful for the future, and believing in their ability to influence national politics. It's inspiring, and I can't wait to go back on Wednesday!

Farewell Tour of Jordan

King's Highway, Jordan
(Madaba, Macchareus, Mujib, Kerak, Wadi Musa)

From an Ammani evening

As we walked around the Castle Hill in Amman last night, it occurred to me that several of my favorite pictures from Jordan were taken on that hill. This morning, as we were winding our way through southern Madaba and Jabal Bani Hamida, I realized that while I was showing Wade all my favorite places in Jordan, I'm also saying goodbye.

From Farewell Tour

I'm excited about my move to Cairo for a CASA Fellowship. It's a great honor and a fabulous opportunity to immerse myself in Standard Arabic (as much as that's even possible) and learn the Egyptian dialect that I find so challenging. But there are so many things I love about Jordan, so many things I haven't seen (Umm aj-Jammal, Shaumari Reserve, etc.), so many things I haven't done (Petra-Wadi Araba by camel, climb Jabal Rum and the tallest mountain in Jordan, etc.), so many friends I'm going to miss. I've spent 4 years of my life here, and that's no small thing. So if my photos are captioned with nostalgia, well, it's a fair representation of how I'm feeling these days.

From Farewell Tour

...Just Different

Eilot -> Dead Sea -> Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

I’ve heard so much about the stark differences between Israel and the Arab world, so of course it’s the first thing I looked for as I came across the border.

You can see it in the city of Eilot: cleaner, neater, and more central European in architecture. In the people, for sure! I haven’t seen so many mullets outside of Lower Chanceford Township, nor so many leggings since the 80s, not to mention the short skirts – far too short for my high school dress code! It’s also much harder to pick out the foreigners on sight.

But pass outside the city limits, and one side of the Rift Valley is pretty much like its opposite. It’s still Wadi Araba. It may be a touch more green.

I’m fascinated by the date plantations: hundreds of palms, all the same height and shape, in a perfect grid of straight lines and right angles, the dead fronds trimmed neatly away.

It’s at the northern end of the Dead Seat that I started to see a real difference in the natural scenery, about where I spotted the distinctive Wadi Mujib Bridge over on the Jordanian side. From there most of the way to Jericho, between the road and the Dead Sea, was miles and miles of salt marsh, thick with reeds, acacia trees and the occasional palm, and bordered with short grasses in vivid earth tones. All of it was protected by chain link fence topped with barbed wire. It was just beautiful, even if segments of the trees had been ruined in a fire in the last year.

Then we turned left at the top of the Dead Sea and went up, up, up to Jerusalem. As we wound our way through the hills, which on the Jordanian side are barren and rocky, on the Israeli side were covered in a soft fuzz of green and yellow grass. Where the road cut into the hillsides, you could see a thick layer of fertile soil above the sharp, white layers of rock. Then we got to the top and it was greener than the greenest parts of Ajlun. How much of that difference is Mother Nature and how much human (mis)management is not mine to judge, but it was a dramatic difference.

Then we ducked into a tunnel and...
...there it was, the holy city, with the golden Dome of the Rock glowing in the late afternoon sunlight.

Promised land, indeed!

Jordan and Peace Corps In the News

Aqaba, Jordan

Yesterday on CNN, which I wouldn't ordinarily watch except that my new apartment doesn't have BBC or Internet, there was a story about Jordan. Not the usual "Jordanian kills a bunch of people" story we've seen of late. This time it was a positive look at Jordan, specifically the Dead Sea Ultra Marathon and the rising popularity of physical exercise in Jordan, and especially in Amman. Nice to see.



Also, Mel found this article in yesterday's Jordan Times that's not just about Jordan, but specifically about Peace Corps in Jordan. Apparently it also appeared in Al Ghad newspaper in Arabic. Peace Corps Volunteers rock, and now all of Jordan knows it! =D

Well Earned Bruises

Wadi Himara, Jordan

From Wadi Himara from the top

They called it a hike. Maybe last year it was a hike, but this year the rain that's been pouring down all week transformed Wadi Himara, and this was less of a hike and more of a scramble. Had we not gone with a group of gung-ho guys from Walking Jordan, Melanie and I would surely have decided it was too dangerous and gone back home. Pretty early on, we found ourselves more or less sliding down a scree slope to the wadi floor.

From Wadi Himara from the top

We were up and down, sliding down boulders, scrambling over rocks, sliding through mud. But the view from the waterfall, down the wadi, over the Dead Sea and into Palestine was worth every heart-pounding moment of the scramble.

From Wadi Himara from the top

Kristen Conquers Her Fears

Dead Sea & Wadi Himara, Jordan

Our new Bell Amman colleague Melanie is determined to get Kristen to conquer some of her fears and phobias this year, and become a generally more self-confident person. To that end, she set Kristen a challenge as a New Years resolution: Do something that scares you every month. Today we addressed two fears: cycling and heights.

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

First she cycled 25km without getting off the bike once (voluntarily OR involuntarily), without going below 3rd gear, and still beating a third of the group!

Then we went for her fear of heights. Like Philip before her, Kristen got this far and decided to sit down and wait for us to come back:

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

But Ammar, bless his heart, would have none of it. He convinced her to give it a try, and coached her over the big boulders, and she made it all the way up to the little waterfall.

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

I figured she wouldn't climb up the waterfall with us. After all, I didn't on my first trip up Wadi Himara, and I'm not nearly so afraid of heights. In fact, I was so sure that she'd stay at the bottom that I left my backpack with her when I went up.

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

But Kristen's student, who happened to also be on the trip, was absolutely right when he said, "Just don't watch, and she'll come up when she thinks no one's looking!" We hadn't been up at our final destination for long when we turned around, and there she was! And let me tell you, it was worth the climb for the spectacular waterfall!

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

Not to mention the galayat bandoura and wood-fired tea!

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

Keri, the Dead Sea, and good ole Mohammad Naser

Dead Sea Panorama, Jordan

From Keri Goes Biking

This afternoon, my roommate from last summer, Keri, joined Tareef for a Panorama Sunset Ride from Madaba towards the Dead Sea. She's a much better cyclist than I, especially since I had the flu this week, but I was pretty pleased with how well I did. This was my second time on this route since my month in Budapest, and the last time I did this route was disastrous. I even had to resort to the bus! But this time I walked less than on any of my half dozen trips down this road.

It was also wonderful to watch the sun set and chat with Keri, about what we're both doing with our lives, reminiscing about Peace Corps, and dreaming about the future. Not to mention catching up on the life of one Mohammad Naser. One day last summer, it occurred to me that I knew someone other than Keri at the University of Arizona - Tucson. My Peace Corps TEFL trainer, Mohammad Naser, had gotten a Fulbright to study there mid-way through my time in Peace Corps. I mentioned him to Keri, but she didn't know him. Since then, however, she's taken 3ammiyya classes with him, and it was interesting to hear what he's been doing. He's married with a very small child, still working on his PhD, and was recently given an award by the university for his workshops on non-violence. I think that's the kind of role that would really suit him. I dredged up some of my most memorable stories of Mohammad, and it was fascinating to think back to how lost and timid I was then, compared to being Kitty's "Jordan guru" now!

Sunset Panorama

Madaba & the Dead Sea, Jordan

From Dead Sea Sunset

I've done this trip half a dozen times before, so I could really feel what six weeks without Tareef did to me! I just hope the heat doesn't keep me away too much over the summer!

From Dead Sea Sunset

Downsides of an SLR

or, If I Only Had a Digital Camera!

From Philip Goes North

Amman, Jordan

I've been teased a lot in the last few years for still having one of those old-fashioned film cameras, and for most of that time, I've been able to counter that it takes better pictures than some cheap digital camera. That claim's getting harder to make, especially in Jordan. I don't know if it's the way the vendors take care of the film before I purchase it, or the heat I subject it to after I've purchased it and taken pictures, or the quality of the developing, but it seems that all the photos I've taken in Jordan this time around have been grainy and poor quality. They tend to be washed out, too, even with my UV-protected and polarized lenses. I think this is probably because I can't find a place to purchase 400-speed film in Jordan. Every shopkeeper I try to ask says, "The sun is so bright in Jordan, you don't need 400-speed film!" But I think using 200-speed is over-exposing my film. (Not to mention that sometimes I want to take indoor pictures of kids whizzing around, or people dancing, for example.)

The other problem with film cameras is the time it takes to finish a roll of film and develop it. I just developed seven rolls of film this week, the best of which I've uploaded to Picasa. These photos go back months, all the way to our first trip with Tareef Cycling Club: Biking in Wadi Musa and Hiking in Wadi al-Ghwayr. Most of the other pictures are more recent, from the trek down the King's Highway with Philip, John and Ann, from my trip with Philip to Umm Qais and Jerash, and from the day that Ryan, John and I rented a car to go to Ajlun, Pella and Umm Qais. There are still a few more pictures left in my camera, and I'm waiting to get the pictures I took with Philip and Ryan's cameras!

From Ryan's Rental

Panorama to Mujib

Ma'een -> Dead Sea -> Wadi Mujib, Jordan

The last time we cycled down the Dead Sea Panorama Road, I got three quarters of the way down the hill and realized that every muscle in my body was tensed almost to the point of cramping. Whether consciously or not quite, I was terrified of wiping out the whole way down. This time, although there were plenty of people who passed me on the way down, I was much more relaxed. I feel much more confident of my balance and competence on a bike now.

At least on the downhill, anyway.

The second half of the trip, though, South along the Dead Sea to Wadi Mujib, was a very different story. For one thing, it was mostly uphill, and on all three hills I eventually got down to first gear and had to disembark and walk, and on the last hill, I just gave up altogether and flagged down Nader. Ammar, however, was having none of that! When he found me in Nader's truck, he read me the riot act, and convinced me to get back on the bike, which I'm glad I did (especially since it was all downhill again from there!)

Donkey Ravine

or, Philip Communing With Nature

From Wadi Himara

Wadi Himara, Dead Sea, Jordan

Finally, another hiking trip on a Friday! This was a Bike & Hike day, actually, starting from near the Baptism Site, taking the bikes down to the Panorama Road, and then hiking up into Wadi Himara (which means, Donkey Ravine). This is the first Bike & Hike I've been able to do, and as I was coming up that last hill to the Panorama Road, I started to wonder if I really wanted to then hike up a wadi. But when we got off the buses at the bottom of Wadi Himara and started in, it was like a whole different trip on a whole different day. I can't tell you how many times I completely forgot that we'd even been biking. I don't know if it was the scenery and the fresh air, or the fantastic company, but I got a substantial second wind.

I think, perhaps, that I may have worn Philip out this week, though. It's true that I didn't warn him to bring crick-stompin' shoes, so he only had the sneakers he has to wear home on the plane tomorrow, but this was a hike you actually could do without getting your feet wet. Nevertheless, when it started to get wet, Philip decided to sit and commune with nature till we came back down, and he insisted that I go on up the ravine, so eventually I did. He says he had a wonderful time sitting there in nature, and I can certainly believe it.

As for me, I had a wonderful time with Emily and her father, visiting from Chicago. And while he was hauling people up cliffs, Emily and I had some long, therapeutic girl talk!

More pictures will be coming when I get mine developed, and Philip sends me his!

From Wadi Himara

P.S. When I got to Safeway this morning, one of my Tareef friends comes up to me and says, "What's my name?" Apparently, I'd had Ammar and Raslan confused again, and it was in fact Ammar and not Raslan who, two weeks ago, commented on how much I had improved, and I got their names mixed up on my blog. Apologies. It's been fixed now. But I could definitely tell today that I am improving, because I've done the biking stretch a couple times before, and it was easier than ever today!

King's Highway Tour

Criss-Crossing the Backbone of Jordan

Amman -> Madaba -> the Dead Sea -> Kerak -> Wadi Musa & Petra, Jordan

Despite short notice, a full work schedule, and the threat of snow, I was determined that Philip get to see the highlights of Jordan in his brief stay here. As luck would have it, my co-worker John also had a friend, Ann, visiting from London, and had hired a driver to take us down the King's Highway to Madaba, the Dead Sea, Kerak and Wadi Musa, the town at the entrance of Petra National Park. Philip and I decided to tag along, despite my corporate client's warnings that it was supposed to snow and be miserable all weekend long. Philip agreed, it would be silly to come all this way and not even get a brief, rainy glimpse of Petra!

So we left early, in order to arrive in Madaba as St. George's Church opened in the morning. The Greek Orthodox church features a Sixth Century mosaic map of the Classical World, one of the oldest and most accurate maps of the Trans-Jordan region, though the part of the map depicting Egypt is quite skewed, so that the Nile River runs perpendicular and not parallel to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Archaeologists interpret this to mean that the mosaic makers were probably from the Trans-Jordan, and were only able to construct the Egyptian section of the map from texts and word of mouth.

As it turned out, the weather was simply beautiful today, warm and sunny and perfect for a trip down the Dead Sea, and along the backbone of Jordan, through the mountains that formed the edge of the Crusader kingdoms. Back in the period of the film "Kingdom of Heaven," the European Crusaders had built a series of castles along the mountain range beyond the Jordan River: Aqaba, Wu'ayra (in Petra National Park), Kerak (which features prominently in the film), Shobak, Ajlun, Krak de Chevaliers and others. They were built at such intervals that signal fires could be lit at one castle at night, and seen at the next one north and south. We visited one of the best preserved of those, Kerak Castle. One of the fun things about archaeological sites in Jordan is that they're poorly labeled (and likely poorly understood as well), so you mostly get to make things up as you go along. Sadly, I couldn't locate what Auntie Viv and I thought was probably the kitchens, but we had some fun wandering around and wondering.

After lunch, we went out to the Desert Highway and hurried down to Wadi Musa so that we could make it to Petra By Night ... which was rather more fun when I came with my parents and there were about fifty people, instead of a couple hundred. Being one of the New Seven Wonders of the World has made Petra an awfully crowded place! On the other hand, I could tell my Arabic was better, because I understood what the rababah player was singing!

Thunder Thighs!

Dead Sea, Jordan

From Crossing the Dead Sea

I almost didn't go cycling with Tareef today, between last night's engagement party and that third glass of red wine, and the horrendous wind and ominous clouds in Amman. I knew, though, that if I could just make it down the street to meet the club at Safeway, I wouldn't regret it. I was right. The ride was beautiful, and not too hard, from the south end of the Dead Sea about two thirds of the way north (i.e. downwind, which is totally the way to go!).

And I got some nice compliments from people who would know.
First there was Sawsan, who I consider one of the best of the amateur cyclists. She came up behind me pedaling away furiously on a relatively flat stretch (it's all about momentum for the next hill!). "Shift up," she says. "I can't," I say. "I'm already on 8th gear." I have to repeat myself, but then she says, "Wow! Your legs are really strong!" And suddenly I had an image of my best friend Phredd, with a backpack out on the Appalachian Trail, shouting, "Thunder thighs!" (I don't think this ever happened, but it was a vivid image, just the kind of thing we would've done on the trail!)

Sometime later, Ammar came up beside me. He's one of the true professionals, and the one who most frequently passes out advice to riders. He wanted to point out that I had made noticeable progress in the months I've been riding with Tareef. This was really nice to hear because, while that was part of the point of joining, it's sometimes hard to tell oneself. As I've told Aktham more than once, sometimes I feel like I'm in worse shape from week to week.

I'd also like to thank my two heros of the day.
The first was Anas, another of the professionals in the club. On the two occasions, last week and this week, that the Tareef buses drove past the hot springs along the Dead Sea Highway, both sides of the road were mobbed with young men in their tighty-whiteys, and I was really not looking forward to riding past it. Then, when I saw the sign for the hot springs, I realized that I was riding alone, and couldn't see anyone else back to the next curve behind me. But much to my relief, as I came up to the edge of the mobs of people, I saw Anis coming back the other way, and then watched him turn around and wait for me. He escorted me past the hot springs, reaffirming what I love about Tareef: they not only arrange the trips, but they are really great about making sure everything goes well for everyone.
Ahmed came to my rescue not once, but twice! First, when I ran over a nail and popped the inner tube in my rear tire, he was the one who stopped and called Nader for me to get a new bike, and Ahmed and Hatem kept me company until Nader arrived. That was in the first 7km. Then, though he probably doesn't realize it, he came to my rescue again in the last kilometer. There I was, a little ways ahead of Ahmed, minding my own business, when a powder blue sedan full of shabaab (young men) pulled up alongside me, shouting something I didn't understand in Arabic. I ignored them, so they stopped on the shoulder ahead of me, clearly hoping I'd take the narrow little bit of pavement left to their right side. Instead, I swerved out into the street to pass them (uphill, no less!). So, of course, they pull off the shoulder and, as they drive past, several hands reach out the window and thwack me. Fortunately, they didn't stop again, but I knew I was never going to make it the rest of the way up the hill. So I stopped, and waited for Ahmed to catch up and walk up the rest of the hill with me, to the outlook that's becoming our regular stopping-point for our Dead Sea excursions.

As luck would have it, we also encountered Sam and Ester and her parents at the Dead Sea.

On Biking

Mount Nebo, Madaba, Jordan

From Mount Nebo to Wadi Mujib

Much to my surprise, though perhaps not surprisingly given both my nature and nurture, I've got a competitive streak and a need for speed!

I mean, with the exception of that first trip in Wadi Musa, I've been very pleased to find that I'm usually ahead of the middle of the pack. And I have a practical reason for passing people along the way: I know that my reaction time is not very fast, and I'm afraid that if I get stuck behind someone else, I'll wipe us both out. Even moreso on a precipitous downhill like the road down from Mount Nebo. At least four people did have wipe-outs, and while that may have been because there were more people with less experience than usual, it still made me want to get ahead of anyone I got too close to. And yet, every time I pass someone, I hear Dad's Goose and Maverick impression in the back of my head....

"I've got a neeeeeed ... a neeeeeed ... for speeeeeed!"

Maybe it has something to do with Dad's mantra I grew up with on the sailboat: Any two vessels on a similar tack is a race. Ergo, any two bikes going to the same destination is a race.

In fact, I learned a lot more than just sailing from Dad. I learned a surprising amount about bikes! On this trip and the last one, I found myself handing out all kinds of instruction and advice on bikes. Your seat should be high enough that your knee is straight when the pedal's at its lowest point; you get more power that way. When you start to go uphill, downshift so that you're never pedaling either too hard or too fast; use your mechanical advantage. Your helmet's on backwards; it's more aerodynamic the other way around. It was maybe the sixth time I'd said, "It's all physics!" in just four hours that I realized how much I sounded like my father. So, you see, Dad, I really was listening to you all these years, even when I was rolling my eyes!

From Mount Nebo to Wadi Mujib

Reminiscences of Lynn

or, They Actually Built That Ridiculous Bus Station!

Municipality Jebel Bani Hamida, Madaba, Jordan

From Return to Jebel Bani Hamida

This week's trip with Tareef was a special one for me, for the beauty of the route, and the nostalgia. This was a route I'd taken by bus almost half a dozen times to visit a Peace Corps friend, Lynn. In fact, the whole route was reminiscent of Peace Corps, as we started in the village of Mshaggar, which was one of our training villages, drove through the center of Madaba past the bus stop for my training village of Ma'in, and ended up in Jebel Bani Hamida where Lynn and Cassie lived as Peace Corps Volunteers.

We actually started in the village of Mshaggar, north of Madaba, where 5 of our J7 Peace Corps Trainees lived in Spring 2004. We Ma'een Trainees went to visit them once, which was interesting to me because the terrain is so different. Ma'een is built on a hilltop, whereas Mshaggar is almost completely flat. It made a good place to start biking, a nice little warm-up to get us going.

Then we regrouped and rode right through the middle of Madaba, which was not as bad as I had anticipated. My memories of Madaba usually involve lots of little boys throwing stones at tourists and other foreigners, and my friend Chris who lives there now says not much has changed. A few boys did run at us as if they were going to push us over, but for the most part it was quite tame, thanks to the Tareef guys announcing in native-speaker Arabic to all and sundry that we were not tourists.

After that, the ride was pretty sedate, a few gentle ups and downs, until we got to this giant hill in Lib. Now, I'd come this way a number of times, at least a dozen, to visit my friend Lynn, to take my Auntie Viv to visit Lynn and climb Maccharaeus, and to take my parents to climb Maccharaeus. I knew that the big hill in Lib was coming, and I wasn't looking forward to it. It wasn't until after I'd walked half way up the hill at Lib, and then ridden a good distance more, that I remembered that the rest of the trip went up, up, up. Nader wasn't kidding when he said that the second 25km were much harder than the first 25km. And a couple km after Lib, it wasn't as fun. It seemed important to stop before it wasn't fun at all anymore. So I rode the bus the rest of the way.

But there was one thing I still wanted to see more than anything on this trip. I wanted to know what had happened with the Jebel Bani Hamida bus station project. I like to tell this story as an example of one of the strengths of the Peace Corps. When Lynn first came to Jdaideh, one of 5 villages in the municipality of Jebel Bani Hamida, she went around asking village elders, "If I could find some money to do a big project, what do you need?" and they immediately said, "A bus station!"
"Nonsense," said Lynn. "I ride the bus out to the village. You have a perfectly good bus, it runs frequently from Madaba, and it goes to every house in the village. What else do you need?" And she bargained them down, as they had probably expected, to a women's center. A few months later, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) came to Jebel Bani Hamida and asked the village elders what the US could build for them. "A bus station!" they said. And USAID agreed. They arranged for the five villages to share one bus out to the site of the proposed bus station, and then the local buses would have new routes out to the homes in the surrounding villages. It seemed like a good idea, a bus station around which a local economy might develop, with local farmers and shepherds selling their goods to each other, saving them the 45 minute bus ride into Madaba proper. In reality, however, I was witness to several fistfights over this new bus route, which didn't run frequently enough, and put young people from rival families on the same bus. Noses were bloodied, windows were broken.... It could get quite scary. By the time Lynn left Jordan, she told me that the five villages had gone back to the old bus routes. And yet, when we arrived on the mountaintop this afternoon, there was the bus station! Whether it will lead to the kind of economic development that USAID intended remains to be seen.

Return to Madaba

Ma'een, Madaba, Jordan

From Dead Sea Panorama Downhill

This week's trip with Tareef Cycling Club was the Dead Sea Panorama trip, starting midway between the town of Ma'een and the Ma'een Hot Springs, and coasting down the hill to the Dead Sea for tea and manakeesh. On the way there, the bus passed through the town of Ma'een, and I was reminded of Naureen, Jennifer, Jeremy and Audra, my fellow Peace Corps Trainees for Pre-Service Training in Ma'een. I could still pick out the home of my host mother, Auntie Nayfa Haddadeen, and the center where we had our Arabic clases, the little restaurant where we got falafel, and the girls' school where I did my student teaching under the supervision of Miss Mary Haddadeen. Outwardly, not much seems to have changed since I lived there almost exactly five years ago.

The trip itself was quite a rush, as we rocketted downhill, through switchbacks and chillier weather than expected, down to the Dead Sea. It was pretty easy, but sort of nerve-wracking, too. But beautiful. Definitely beautiful.

From Dead Sea Panorama Downhill

Crick-Stompin' Shoes

...or, What Protests?

Wadi al-Kerak near the Dead Sea, Jordan

On Protests
I've been getting messages from Germany, Switzerland and the USA concerned about my safety here in this volatile part of the world. And yes, it's true, there were protests in Amman today. The US Embassy sent out warden messages advising caution:

The Arab Islamic Leaders asked the people to demonstrate over all countries and they called it the anger day against Israel and to support Gaza, so in Jordan the people will demonstrate after the pray and start from the biggest mosque in each province, in Amman from the Al-Husseini Mosque to the Amman Municipality building.

I understand that tear gas was fired into the crowds again at the Israeli Embassy today. One of our friends from Tareef Cycling Club, Jad Madi, was there and has put up his photographs on his blog. But the photos of my Friday midday are far more serene:

From Wadi al-Kerak

This weekend, Tareef Cycling Club left the bicycles at home and opted for hiking far, far away at the other end of the Dead Sea. And this time, I came prepared with my crick-stompin' shoes! (For those of you who didn't grow up in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, a "crick" is what some parts of the country call a "creek" but may also describe a "stream.")

On Jordanian Customer Service
You see, when we went hiking in Wadi al-Ghwayr, I didn't know that I would not be able to avoid getting my feet wet, and I got blisters, and my hiking boots were wet for more than a week. So, last night, I went to Mecca Mall to get a pair of shoes that I could hike in but that were meant to get wet. I knew just where I would find these shoes, and made a bee-line to Champions, where I explained what I was looking for. "Water shoes?" says the salesman, without even looking around. "No. We don't have anything like that." So I walked all around the entire Mecca Mall, went into every shop with shoes, and found nothing but ordinary trainers. So I thought, well, I don't know of anywhere else in Amman where I'm likely to find just what I'm looking for, so I'll go back to Champions and get a closer look. Guess what? I found a dozen styles of shoes meant for the water! And I found a pair that were perfect. No blisters!

On Hiking
So this is the biggest crowd I saw on Friday, today's incarnation of Tareef Cycling Club:

From Wadi al-Kerak

It was a perfect day for hiking, about 19C down below sea level, sunny, and green. The scenery is just beautiful, very green because of the crick we were stompin', sometimes with boxy, wind-scoured rock walls, sometimes with more curvaceous water-carved siqs that evoke the landscape of Petra. I saw several different species of frog in different shades of green and brown, and some freshwater crabs, and at one point a bird flew over head that looked very much like a North American blue heron from the bottom of the canyon.

It did seem, at times, to be the same as Wadi al-Ghwayr, but when we came to our lunch spot, with this gorgeous waterfall and palm trees, we agreed that it was much more spectacular. The company was pretty good, too. Stephanie brought her three German roommates along on the trip, Sina, Lena and Theresa, and they spoke a lot of German to each other and some with me. To my chagrin, however, when I tried at the beginning of the trip to translate Ammar's Arabic description of the trip into German for them, I failed miserably. Oh, sure, I could get the first sentence out in decent German. But after that I switched back to Arabic without even noticing, until finally Sina said, "In English! In English!" Embarrassing. I need a lot more German practice! Unfortunately, the girls are leaving soon, with the semester over, and I'll have to find new Germans to pester with my crazy, Arabized, Swiss-influenced German!

It was the perfect day, and perfect timing to get out of Amman. The closest we ever came to the issue of Palestine was watching the sun set over the Dead Sea and the West Bank. It looks so peaceful from Jordan's Dead Sea Highway!

From Wadi al-Kerak

Bike for Gaza

...or, How Jordanian Youth Respond To Crisis

Amman, Jordan

From Bike For Gaza

I was only a very minor participant in the amazing recent campaign wonderfully described by Black Iris here and here. I dropped off just one bag of non-perishable foodstuffs, having been unemployed for a number of weeks and unable to contribute more. I knew from some of my friends in Tareef Cycling Club when and where they were loading on New Years, and it was just across the Airport Road from my apartment, but I grossly underestimated the Jordanian people and didn't think they would need my help. I regret this, despite lingering shreds of my Peace Corps training telling me to avoid politically sensitive gatherings, because I think Black Iris makes a great argument in support of what I've been telling a half-Jewish friend here in Jordan: for all the anger that there is here about what is happening in Gaza, it's not being directed at individuals, but at the Israeli leadership.

I also did my part today, and a little bit more, when I went on the Save Gaza bike trip with the Tareef Cycling Club this morning. I mean, let's be honest, I was going to go anyway, because Tareef goes cycling every Friday, and I'm fulfilling a promise to myself from several years ago to become a competent cyclist post-Peace Corps. But when I found out that Tareef would be donating all the usual 5 dinar fees to the Red Cross for the relief effort in Gaza, I was especially determined to go, and even to contribute more than the usual fee.

I went because, while Tareef's members are passionate about the Palestinian cause and they were eager, as I am, to make some contribution, that was not the sole purpose of today's ride. These guys and gals get together to go cycling. Some of them are members of the Jordanian national team, others are even less athletic than I am, and there is absolutely no censure. These are some of the easiest people to spend time with that I know in Jordan, because they are all very ambitious, successful people, but they don't take themselves very seriously. The girls are very stylish, even at the end of a long bike ride, because there's absolutely no avoiding it here, but they're not the Barbie dolls you usually see around town. I suspect that most of them are of above average wealth, but you'd never know it by looking at them. And they didn't disappoint today. There was some talk about Palestine, but there was no diatribe, no vitriol, no censure of other viewpoints. More than angry, the people on this trip were disappointed.

But mostly, we were just biking!

From Bike For Gaza