Frenji Jordan Blog

Olive season

When I lived in Michigan we used to pick wild blueberries when we were playing in the fields and woods near my Grandmother's house. When I lived in North Carolina I picked blackberries when I walked Toby around Woodcroft Pond. Here in Jordan, it's olive season and the trees on our morning walks through Jabal Amman are full of ripening olives. We're at that sweet spot where the trees have about 1/2 green and 1/2 ripe olives. We've seen children with their parents and grandparents picking olives. We've yet to try picking and pickling them (in brine) but this weekend will be perfect for it.

9/11/11, just another day here in Jordan

For most Americans, September 11, 2001 is like November 22nd of 1963 for those of us who were alive then as well. Everybody can answer "where were you when you heard the news?" Because I now read news from the US, I've been reminded of 9/11. As you would expect, much has been made of the tenth anniversary, the state of the world, the state of US relations with the muslim world, and how we've changed in the ensuing 1ten years.

Here in Amman I did't hear one word about it being 9-11 and what that means. Not one. I don't know whether people really don't remember, or don't want to talk to me about it because of differing views on the topic? Anyway, the silence is noteworthy.

Rude vs. inconsiderate (lessons from the roads of Amman)

Even though I like to be careful about language, I've always used "rude" and "inconsiderate" almost interchangeably. But driving in DC, and then Amman, put a fine point on the differences. Rude means you knowingly cause someone else a problem. Inconsiderate means that you don't even consider the other person's existence, and this causes them a problem. DC drivers are rude, while Amman drivers are inconsiderate.

DC drivers will cut you off, causing you to slam on the brakes, and spill your coffee all over your khakis, and will laugh about it while flipping you off.

Amman drivers, on the other hand, really and truly don't seem to know that other drivers are around. In Amman you see every possible manner of driving that causes other drivers to brake, swerve, crash, run off the road, etc. Parking in the middle of a traffic lane while you go shop for vegetables is common. Turning left from the far right lane, across three lanes of traffic, is so common one barely notices. Creating a second (or third) left-turn lane, blocking all traffic behind while waiting to turn, is expected. Cutting off other cars once you are 1/2 a car length in front is how one gains right of way. And if you honk your horn and/or gesticulate in retaliation, Amman drivers will look up with a genuine face of surprise that 1) you're there, and 2) you're pissed.

So in the end driving in Amman is packed with many more heart-attack-causing moments per drive than DC, but it's a lot harder to be mad at the drivers.

What would you miss from home?

As we've written before, our previous postings in Ethiopia and Bangladesh were quite different in terms of the availbility of goods and services. Being typical Americans we're used to having everything in abundance. In Ethiopia I have to admit to feeling at least a little deprived. In this posting in my Addis Blog, I wrote about things I craved and looked forward to having on my visit to the US. When I read down the list now, all that stuff is available in Amman, with the single exception of traffic-free roads for cycling (and don't get me started on that one).

This is not to say we didn't do a lot of shopping while in the US recently. But this time the issue wasn't availability, it's the high cost of living in Amman. We went shopping in the upper-west side of Manhattan, among other places, because it was so much cheaper than Amman. No kidding.

Oh, we did have Mexican food about a dozen times while in the States. The faux burritos at the restaurant in the Intercontinental here just don't cut it.

An American couple and their dog

Written by Mari.

Our blog tag line describes our family of four: an American couple, our cat, and our dog making a home and life in Amman, Jordan. It has certainly been a period of adjustment for all of us: Toby (the dog) had a yard to go out to, Janet (the cat) could watch kittens in and birds in our yard and hiss at them. Marco and I were living life in a new city, about which we've written a lot on this blog and Facebook, too.
 
We sometimes think of this two-year posting as a fugue state where everything remains on hold while we have our little adventure. But time, and age for us all, march on. In mid-August, our cat Janet said goodbye to the world while we were on holiday. She was 15, greatly showing her age, and was moving slower and slower. The person who was caring for her during our holiday found her in a bad way and called the emergency contact we'd left. This contact, a colleague of Marco’s, took her to the vet immediately and it was found that she was in kidney failure, the condition that most frequently takes old cats. While we were communicating with the vet from long distance, Janet went ahead and made the decision on her own to leave this world.

She spent much of her time over the past year on my lap. She did what she wanted, including sleeping in Toby’s bed or occasionally eating his food. Janet had fun going out into the yard to munch on the spider plants and hiss at visiting cats. The best part of her time here had to be the temporary stay at the Hyatt for our initial two months in town.  The hotel duvets and fluffy pillows were here favorite puffy beds.
 
Now we are back from leave and feel her absence in a thousand ways. Our pack of three continues the adventure without her.

Ramadan starts, and why the date is never sure

Tomorrow is the start of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. By what I read, Ramadan is meant to teach self-control, and focus on spiritual matters. (More on that here or in Wikipedia.) From sun-up to sun-down one does not eat, drink, or smoke between dawn and sundown. I'll write more about my Ramadan observations in a week or so.

As with other Muslim holidays, the actual date of holiday is never clear until the day itself. Coming from a country where we move holidays around in order to suit our long weekends, and holidays are planned months in advance, this seemed somewhat haphazard to me. But I did a little asking around, and now it makes sense. Islam is governed by the lunar calendar, not the calendar we use. So, for example, Ramadan is set to start on the first day of the ninth month of the lunar year. The first day is determined by the sighting of the crescent moon. On Saturday night, nobody saw the crescent moon, so Ramadan did not start on Sunday. Given its absence last night, tonight scholars are sure to see the moon, so Ramadan will start tomorrow.

It's also interesting to note that the Lunar calendar is much shorter than our calendar, so the seasons and holidays are not in sync. Last year Ramadan was in August and September. This year it aligns almost perfectly with the month of August. Next year it will take place in July and August. So in comparison to our calendar, the lunar calendar makes a cycle every 33 years or so. For us it's as if Christmas happened some years in December, some years in March, and so forth.

According to the local paper, the use of modern technology to pre-determine the start of holidays is a matter of some controversy. While the technology exists, the holy Qur'an specifies the sighting of the moon with the naked eye. On the other hand, modern technology has been accepted for the practices of determining the direction of Mecca for prayers, as well as the exact timing of prayers during the day. My uneducated guess is that eventually technology will take over holiday start determination as well, but for now it's interesting to wake up in the morning and check the web to see if the office has holiday or regular hours.

On learning Arabic

When I lived in Ethiopia, I made a half-hearted try at learning Amharic. Despite the support of my local friends (hi, Jaz!), I never got past the restaurant-survival stage, and quit lessons after only a short run. Mari reports a similar experience in Bangladesh.

Learning Arabic is different for some reason. Maybe we're different, the languags is different, or something. After only a few lessons at Berlitz I feel like we're actually starting to understand and use a tiny amount of Arabic. You foreign-language speakers may appreciate some of the things we've noticed about the learning the language here:

• There are lots of sounds (phonemes) in Arabic that we don't have in English, like the gutteral "H" sound. Many of these sounds I cannot say, or even hear. (OTOH there is no "p" sound in Arabic.)
  
• In Arabic the adjectives and some nouns change based on gender, as in most languages other than English. Luckily there are only the two forms, masculine and feminine, not also plural as in Amharic.
• There is no "to be" verb in Arabic to parse or conjugate. This makes life infinitely more easy. You can say things like "Where Hanan?" "Hanan home, she sick."
• In Arabic there are different noun forms for singular and plural, but also for "dual," meaning just two.
• The language uses Arabic letters but Indian numbers. (Just as English uses Roman letters but Arabic numbers.) Aparently this practice took hold so Arabic speakers could trade with Indian traders.
• No matter how badly I maul the language usage, grammar, and pronounciation, every single person I meet praises me for trying to learn Arabic, and offers to help. Every single one. You would expect this of colleagues, but I also include the usually surly cab drivers, and shop clerks.

So we're going to stick with it. And maybe by the time we come home, I'll have the speaking ability of a young, slow child.

How water works in Amman

Living in DC, we just had water, all the time, coming to the house through the creaky municipal system. Living in Addis, we had water coming to the house through municipal pipes 24/7. In theory. In actuality, Addis's water infrastructure had not even come close to keeping up with the demand of the constant new construction of businesses, homes, and apartment complexes. So we ran out of water every day at about 3:00, especially in the dry season which was nine months long. So people who could afford it built elaborate systems that held 1000 liters of water, which filled up in the night time and morning when we had water; then we used that during the afternoons of no water.

In Amman it's different. There are water pipes that run in most parts of the city, but most of the time there is no water in them. Water in our part of town flows through the pipes for 12 hours, once a week. In my neighborhood, that's Tuesday morning. The water flows, and fills up whatever storage tanks you have. The size of the storage tanks becomes a selling feature when landlords are showing you an apartment. Then you use this water for the rest of the week. And if you use up all the water, too bad, no more is coming until next Tuesday. But during that sweet 12-hour period you can use water, and have it fill the tanks at the same time.

What this means in my neighborhood is that Tuesday mornings are an orgy of water wasting. The caretakers are washing cars, watering plants and lawns, and (my favorite part) hosing down the driveways and sidewalks which will become dusty again by noon. So, while the King has called water Jordan's scarcest resource, and there is simply no clear plan to supply the Kingdom with water past mid-century, on Tuesday mornings the water runs down the street in rivers, and the cars and driveways are dust-free. For a couple of hours any way.

Ten ways Athens is very different from Amman

Mari and I just got back from five days in Greece, in Athens and on Santorini Island. While we didn't consciously pick someplace completely different from Amman, we surely did so. I write about it on the Written in Caps blog, here. Photos are on the Flickr site, here.

Below are ten ways we noticed that Athens is way different from Amman, in no particular order:

• Sidewalks are clear of obstructions, trash, and parked cars, and are made for... walking. Lots of people walk for transportation.
• People love dogs
• There are lots of parks and other green spaces with fountains and sitting places
• There are places where smoking is not allowed
• Traffic:

• There are traffic laws and they are obeyed and enforced
• People turn left only from the left-turn lane
• Bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles are everywhere, saving gasoline and space. Car drivers respect them.
• Pedestrians have the right of way by law and in fact

•     Taxis are really expensive
•     Women can wear short sleeves and short skirts and not be harassed
•     There is no loudspeaker system to wake you at 3:45 a.m.
•     Graffiti takes you back to 1970’s and 80’s in NYC
•     Beautiful sidewalk cafes, sans dust

Arabic Cooking Lessons

Today was the first day of a series of six Jordanian cooking lessons. An expat woman graciously asked if I was interested in joining her group. When I brought it up Marco enthusiastically agreed that it would be a good idea to learn, especially given our preference to eat at home. Today’s lesson was how to make Maklouba, a rice dish that is served by inverting the pot onto a platter right before serving.

Our teacher is a very proud mother and grandmother with a thriving homemade-cake business called Sparkle Cake. She had one sample dish ready and enthusiastically went through the process of making the second with us as a group. Although her English was fine, one of her daughters was there to see if we had questions. Since Marco is a vegetarian, my questions were directed at figuring ways to cut out meat. It’s actually surprisingly easy with this dish as the main flavors for the meal were the spices and the technique used to cook the vegetable, meat and the rice combination.

While we waited for the vegetables and chicken to broil in the oven, the teacher had us sample some of her cookies with tea. I could taste the butter in her date and pistachio filled cookies, which is a good sign in baking. Once the meal was cooked, the pot was inverted on a plate and sprinkled with fried almonds. Chicken, eggplant, cauliflower, potatoes, and rice emerged smelling of aromatic spice with a hint of cinnamon. Each of us were required to have a full plate of our meal and sent home with instructions to cook it on our own before our next class. It was yummy and very filling. As I ate my serving of the Maklouba, I thought to myself that my future Wednesday afternoons will require a 5k run at the gym to undo the wonderful caloric consumption of the mornings’ meals.