Eid Mubarak and Happy New Year

More holidays!

The second major important holiday for Muslims (besides Eid al-Fitr, which happens at the end of the holy month of Ramadan) is Eid al-Adha, or holiday of the sacrifice. In Muslim tradition, God asked Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ishmael (this is Abraham sacrificing Isaac in Judeo-Christian tradition)and at the last minute, God replaced Ishmael with a sheep, allowing Ibrahim's son to live.

To celebrate the Eid, Muslim families sacrifice a sheep, dividing it into three parts. One part goes to the family, one part to the neighbors or extended family, and one part to the poor. Wealthier families who are able also buy sheep to donate to others.

I asked one of my friends which part of the sheep goes to which group. He told me that he remembered as a small child being asked by an uncle to come out to the yard. His relatives said, "Which one for the family?" he pointed. "Which one for the neighbors?" He pointed. "Which one for charity?" He pointed a third time. And thus it was decided with the innocence of a child. This doesn't necessarily happen every time, but I thought it was a beautiful story nonetheless.

The slaughtering is done all over the city, wherever the shepherds are, sometimes in people's backyards. Here's a picture of some sheep waiting for their last moments.





(I also have some pictures of sheep limbs and organs strewn about the neighborhood, which at first I was excited about posting, but I thought better of it, and your eyes have been spared, dear reader!)

The holiday is two or three days long - a time for visiting family, celebrating, and buying new clothes and toys for the children. This year it came just a few days before Christmas, on December 19th and 20th, though this is not always the case since Islam operates with a lunar calendar.

The Western new year in Amman is a cause for celebration (and January 1 is a national holiday), but it is not the wild debauchery that we're used to in the States. Many of the classier bars and restaurants have New Year celebrations, but these are 40-50 JD minimum to attend, and didn't seem worth it to me. I didn't have any plans for New Year's Eve until that very afternoon, when happily some friends decided to have a party.

*As a sidenote, this type of late planning is the norm here, and this has taken me some time to get used to. In my experience in the States, if someone invited you to a party - especially on an occasion like New Year's Eve - several hours before the fact, it would be rather insulting. Such an invitation would send a tacit message that your hosts didn't think you had much of a social life, or that they thought their plans so important, you'd drop whatever you were doing to attend. Here, plans are more often made several hours beforehand, and the ones made more than a day in advance are frequently modified or canceled. A consequence of the intense and ubiquitous mobile phone culture here? A side effect of the relatively more relaxed pace? An epidemic of tardy inspiration? Who knows?

At any rate, I rang in the new year laughing, which is what matters to me. The party was lovely. When I think that at this time last year I was still an undergraduate student, and now I am celebrating 2008 in Amman as a Rotary Scholar with people from Jordan, America, Australia, Germany, Iraq, and even Saudi Arabia, among others, I can't even believe my good fortune. Quite simply, this year is changing my life. There will always be the time "before" Amman, and "after" it.

Happy New Year!

An Indigo Lunch and Heaters: The Update

I apologize for my recent lag in blogging; I hope to make it up in the next few weeks!

Winter has truly arrived to Amman; it is cold even in daylight. During the day the sun shines brightly through blue sky, but don't be fooled! Once you step out of the house, the cold will pierce through your wool sweater and scarf, making you hunch and walk quickly. Snow usually arrives briefly at the end of February; I can't wait to make a snowman in the "desert."

It is unbelievable how quickly time passes - I blinked and suddenly I have lived here for four months! I confess that I now have to work much harder to discern the intercultural "collisions" that I experience. People, places, and their habits are increasingly familiar to me - I imagine that it is possible to create a sense of routine just about anywhere. I have classes, conference, Arabic, work at IOM, Rotary service projects, and of course friends - and all of these seem to cycle in a relatively regular way. I am also very grateful that I have chosen to live where I do - it is a source of stability, a family-like atmosphere, and you never know what subjects will engage us during lunch. Yesterday I learned the history of indigo (the plant which is used to make blue dye - it was at one time more valuable than gold) and today we discussed the earliest inhabitants of the Jordan valley with some of the archaeologists who have dug up their actual remains.

Archeology is not only historically interesting, I have learned - it is also a political, economic, and cultural force in this region. The Jordan valley and Mesopotamia hold the remains of some of the earliest beings on Earth. I say "beings" very purposely because these sites date back so far (more than a million years) that the definition of "civilization" or even "human" is called into question when trying to describe these places. One of the archaeologists today (Susan, who has been running digs for more than twenty years) described uncovering layer after layer of different existences, piled atop one another. Imagine.

This act can become very political, for example, if you look at Israel-Palestine. Archeology is being used to make a case for who was there "first," and thereby rightly possesses the land. As a result, there are accusations of some artifacts not being properly observed as the search goes deeper for the truly "original" inhabitants. People use archeology there to try to prove or disprove religious history as well.

These sites are economically important to their countries of location because of tourist dollars (for sites and later museums), research revenue, and employment of locals (for example when the assistant director of the center where I live goes to Petra, where he directs one major ongoing dig, he is stopped about 30 times between the entrance and his site, as all the Bedouins there know him via employment). But these digs are also major sites of grave robbing and artifact pilfering which feed a thriving black market in historical artifacts. There are unrecorded sites still in Jordan, and they are being attacked by opportunistic smugglers when (as is often the case) there is not enough security.

All of this makes me think of Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which lost great treasures in the chaos of recent wars - some of these were taken away to be protected, but some of them were destroyed or stolen. How easily we forget, it seems, that the history of Iraq is not just that of the Muslims or the Arabs or the "Terrorists," but of human civilization!

But, revenons à nos moutons, as they say - I'll talk about what I know best, my personal experiences here.

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Most importantly, let me give you an update on the delightful outcome of the heater project!

When I was worried about how we would fund our project to distribute space heaters to poor Iraqi families in Jordan, I had forgotten that underneath the commercialism of Christmas, a spirit of giving still remains. Soon after I wrote my first entry here, many kind offers poured in, some people willing to sponsor as many as 8 heaters. Most people wanted to donate for one, and heater by heater we made our way to the total. (Here I must particularly salute the ingenuity of my mother and a friend of hers, Frank, who both spread the word across friends and religious networks over the net to help us raise the money.

The heaters are already being distributed and have been much appreciated. I will not post pictures here for the sake of the receiving families' privacy, but if you donated and did not receive the update email, please let me know.

So, what next?

We had such an overwhelmingly positive response that we are looking towards planning the next project, which will hopefully work towards helping Iraqi children in Jordan regain or maintain an age-appropriate level of schooling.

This confirms for me something that I have been seeing all year while learning about humanitarian and development work: it all comes back to education. It all comes back to education! (Yes, there is also a matter of economic development, job opportunities, civil rights, etc. but all of this is undeniably, strongly linked to education.)

Many of the families that Laura has interviewed have school-age children here. And Iraqi children are allowed (since the beginning of this school year only) to attend Jordanian public schools. However, many are still not attending. Why? According to the anecdotal evidence from Laura's interviews, some are simply barred because they cannot afford the 60 JD yearly fee, and others have to "work" to help support their families. (I put "work" in quotations here because Iraqis are technically not allowed to work in Jordan. Often children are earning money with odd jobs such as selling packs of tissues in the street.)

Other children, however, have already missed several years of school, and they cannot attend class in their age-level. Middle school is hard enough for a normal student - imagine having a third grade reading level and trying to hold your own in a sixth grade class. Or, the alternative - sitting as a twelve year-old with a bunch of eight year-olds. These prospects discourage children from attending school, and once they are this far behind, they will never go back. We believe that some individual tutoring could help them regain their schooling level, and this is the next problem that we would like to approach. I'll of course keep you updated!