First Impressions

Although the move and settling-in are challenges are stressful, we are all excited and feeling positive about our choice to make a life here. The climate and nature are gorgeous, the people friendly (both international and local), the aid scene apparently energized and growing, and the surrounding area has a lot to explore.

I felt giddy even at the Johannesburg airport. It was much more developed than Amman or Doha’s airports: lots of stores with safari camping gear and the usual African souvenirs: carved wooden masks, statues of elephants and rhinos, zebra skins, clothes with tribal and animal prints, pith helmets and khaki vests with countless pockets. This compared to Amman/Doha with tiny gold painted glass tea sets, elegantly embroidered head scarves and black floor length robes, and framed golden Arabic calligraphy of scripture from the Quran. The airport was of the high-ceiling, glass and steel frame enclosed design, and restaurants jutted out into the parking lots of 747s. We were probably more excited by the real English breakfast with delicious bacon (hello pork!). Instead of the usual young guy serving us in the restaurant, a middle-aged local woman waited on us. Seeing women in areas of work that I haven’t seen them in for the last 5 years in the Muslim world has been surprisingly refreshing. It makes me feel more relaxed to see women drivers, women bagging groceries, women waitresses and hotel managers. Because that used to be me—I used to work jobs that my many of my Jordanian and Sudanese friends could only imagine very down-and-out women doing. Yet seeing these women reminds me that I used to feel like I could do anything, and that is a freedom worth having. While there are advantages to the dignity, respect and honor that are important in Arab cultures, there are also advantages to just be taken for yourself and to be free to make something of yourself without worrying about how it might have a negative impact on one’s own (or one’s family’s) reputation.

Granted, these are first impressions. Still, I always remember vividly those first moments upon arriving somewhere. How can I forget that I had to be careful not to shake hands with the guy who picked us up at the airport in Jordan because despite his being a really nice guy who is well educated and fluent in four languages, he’s a devout Muslim who practices “not touching women.” In that first drive into town I was highly irritated that I had to monitor my behavior and that I had to worry when I accidentally grabbed his arm to stop him from giving something to the kids. He respects me, but he will be defiled by shaking my hand? After a while, one gets to sort of understanding these things. In a way, he’s showing me respect. It’s the same reason why a (male) cashier will put the change on the counter instead of in a woman’s hand. Same goes for eye contact. That stuff I didn’t like getting used to. Like thinking twice about a man making eye contact with me… What kind of woman did he think I was? Another loose Western woman?

In Harare, the sky was overcast when we arrived but the clouds were far away. I sensed the altitude from the depth of the sky and lightness of air. While David checked into the Bronte’ hotel, the kids and I explored the garden. There was a small fish pond in the middle of a green lawn. Around the perimeter were countless varieties of plants and trees. After years of desert and rock, the diversity of the nature was overwhelming – leaves of all sizes, shapes, colors and textures, sticking out in every direction. I felt like I was in a Matise (?). The hotel was white with dark wooden door and window frames. The rooms were off open air brick passageways that link to the garden patios under the huge jarcanda and cactus trees. Dozens of the locally made statues dot the gardens. There’s one of a mother swinging her daughter playfully that’s on our way to the room that Eliza likes.

...more later

Moving On

I keep getting asked: are you excited about the move? Are you ready? Are you looking forward to your new life in Zimbabwe?

Life as it is has not allowed my mind much time to consider these things. The end of my work is like a tsunami, everything thought or read or discussed accumulating into a thick wall, pushing forward, consuming everything else. I leave the house before the kids are ready, come home in the darkness when they're already back in their pajamas. I wish I had more to show for all the hours I put in. It's slow, but I am past the biggest procrastination station, full steam ahead for the next six days. Driving me is the real desire for product and the letting go.

Next are the logistics for leaving: material and personal. Sorting out the household: give away (what to whom), sell, pack the bags to take on the flight, pack the bag to ship, arrange to have other things professionally wrapped and sent. Spend time with people: one-on-one, in couples, a tea party for Eliza's friends, an early German Christmas party. Buy things native for people that they will not think too odd to utilize. DHL them to the States for mom to wrap as our xmas gifts in absentia. Meet with teachers for a preschool semester summary. Make skype phone calls in anticipation that we will not have a good enough connection in Harare. Buy children's toothpaste and other items we imagine we might not find there.

Then I'm hoping there will be time for reflection. Two years is long enough to expect you might know something about a place, if only a stronger feeling of it than when you arrived. It's also good-bye to the Arab world which we've lived in for most of the last five years (Alhamdaleila!). It's not that I've got real problems with the place. I'm just looking forward to seeing how my life will be different in a non-majority Muslim area...and to seeing something other than marble, stone, sand and thorny bushes they call "trees" here.

The Change That's Coming

From THIS to THIS in roughly six weeks. Wishing soooooooo much I could focus on the family's transition instead of being overwhelmingly busy at work. Am thankful we have the additional income to help with the move though.

Biding Time: Trip to a Bath House

For the last five months, I have felt that I must make the most of my time off from work. It wasn't planned that I should be unemployed. I've just been waiting, not very patiently, for things to come together at ol' SC. We have in fact been discussing the finer points of my new contract for at least 4 of the 5 months...but I digress.

At first I worked on making our house more of a home. I bought some old carpets, had broken pictures re-framed, and finally got some reading lamps after a year of oppressive overheads in the living room. After a month or so of that, I felt it smart to reign in the spending a bit, seeing as we'd become a one-income-family.

One place I'd been meaning to check-out but never made the time for was the bath house in the old part of the city. That area of Jabal Amman and the narrow, cobbled Rainbow Street have beautiful old houses clinging to the ridge overlooking the downtown market. There are interesting shops, art galleries, bookstores and bars. It's where our single friends live.

The bath house itself isn't old but is designed, at least to my untrained eye, in the Ottoman style with smooth domes pockmarked with tiny round glass through which a little light filters through. The great room we first entered was cool and refreshing with a fountain full of giant gold fish and people sipping tea behind plants in the corners. We checked in and got our personal bars of locally produced soap and loofas. From there we entered a locker room, and my friends and I had to sort out what to wear.

Unbeknownst to us, this bath house has a culture of conservatism about it, at least during the women's time in the morning. All the other ladies, though thankfully there were only a half dozen of them, were wearing bathing suits. My only other experience of a bath house was in Istanbul, and there it'd been full nudity, even the old ladies who worked there. Between my German and Palestinian friends and I, we only had our knickers, so there we were, a teeny bit embarrassed at not only being naked for the first time in front of each other but being in an environment that didn't exactly support our semi-nudity.

Luckily the grand dame of the place was kind and hospitable. She helped us on our way to do the done thing there. First to the shower (hmmm, group thing...moving on). Then to the steam room, a small, enclosed space, reminding me of an awful sweat lodge experience I'd had in college. Semi-nakedness hidden by the darkness and steam, I hunkered down with my friends and talked about the party we were planning. The grand dame shooed us into an even hotter area of the steam room, handing us cold scented towels for our heads and icy sweet hibiscus tea.

After that was the hot tub in the center of the room under the dome, where they left us for a while as they prepared the marble slabs. I went first (to get it over with?). I can't say that the scrub down was pleasant. It was in fact excruciating. I was clearly losing some skin, which is the point, I suppose. The Filipino in her biking shorts and tank top was not out to make me feel relaxed. I was stretched out on the wet marble like a fish being cleaned.

The next table was gentler, if more...invasive. One's limbs are soaped up, massaged, and rinsed, as are one's head and torso. Weeks before I'd already been mildly traumatized by the Arabic "bikini" waxing: think Brazilian to the extreme. So I was prepared for the worst, which it nearly was from a perspective of modesty - a modesty that simply had to be put aside for the sake of cultural exploration (am I not an anthropologist?), and hopefully, glowing, younger-looking skin (am I not pushing 40?).

After that, I made the rounds again, then waited for my friends with a few ladies in a lounge off the locker room. It would have been relaxing if not for a two-foot long shark swimming in a long tank that made up the back wall. The room was lined with long red woolen cushions atop low mattresses that made it impossible to do anything but recline in that extravagant Middle Eastern way. An older lady, her wet hair not yet covered in a head scarf, gossiped away with a Filipino still in her wet suit, apparently on a cigarette break. I had the local sweet tea; they had the Turkish coffee. The only thing missing was a sheesha pipe.

My friends and I still had an hour to kill before picking up the kids, and I was starving, so we had lunch at Wild Jordan, a cafe managed by the Royal Jordan Nature Conservancy. What it lacks in flavor, it makes up for in ambiance and healthiness. It's all glass, metal and polished concrete hanging on a cliff. The three of us were extraordinarily relaxed, even giddy like girls skipping school. It was a nice way to spend a morning.

Walking in Wadi ibn Hammad

A few weekends ago, I booked a hiking trip for me & David with an "ecotourism" company. We spent a full day exploring, without the kids. 

Usually, we do things on our own - I mean, with the kids but without a guide. We hit the interesting places, so we do end up going where the tour groups go. I envy them their guides who can provide a lecture on what it is we're seeing, its history. But for the most part, I appreciate the fact that I'm free....if that's what you call traveling with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. Yeah. Free to see maybe one-eighth of the world famous ruins of Petra for the fourth time while my kids play with the stones on the ground and ask for juice and pitifully look desperate for a nap and maybe later a swim in the pool. (pleasepleaseplease)

Still, we live here. We never get herded into the diesel fumes between enormous busses in the parking lot. I suppose I felt sorry for them, the package tour people. That is until we had our little day trip.

It's their business to know where we're going and what we need to bring, to drive us there, to even pack a lunch for us. Our only stress was making sure we got up early after a late night of lots of champagne. It was like being in college again. After kids, all the support of a group trip seems totally decadent. All I had to do was look out the window at passing scenery, perhaps write my cross-cultural musings in my journal. On the hike, I could walk at my own pace. I could even walk alone.

To get to the wadi, we drove south towards Karak, then off the barren plateau into a deep canyon. For scale, you can see a bus on the road here and even farther away a car. 

At the bottom was a shallow little creek. There were palm trees hanging from the cliff sides and huge bushes of oleander. We bouldered creek-side or just walked in the water. My boots were heaven: comfortable & sturdy when wet. The water was refreshing, not too cold. In the shade of canyon walls with clean running water all the way, this looked like the best place for desert hiking in the summer.

The others in our group were 2 Jordanian girls, a Dutch guy and a couple of Jordanian guys with the company: one of whom was the guide. He was an ex-UN peacekeeper type who'd been in all the worst places in the world and at the worst times. He told us a bit about the nature, but was more skilled in having a meaty hand ready to help a girl crawl over a slippery rock. (Not me though! - Adventure Girl!)

...and yes, I'm carrying Miles's school backpack.

Limestone stalactites form on the canyon walls that seem to lean together. They even connect in some places forming bridges. Water from the springs drip from the bridge and down the canyon walls through the ferns and flowers. There are bright red streaks on the face of the rocks where iron bleeds out. One feels like Indian Jones - if only I'd had my whip! (It might have been filmed here, since they definitely filmed in Petra). 

There's David on the left getting his back massage from the rapids.

On our way back home, this tiny, nice lady grabbed me tightly around the shoulder to take some photos together as we looked at the view of the reservoir. Of course the one of her by herself is much better!