Namaste

My family has a maid. Her name is Seti and she is from Bangladesh.

For the two readers who will understand this reference, Seti kind of looks like a South Asian Elise Guinee-Cooper. For the remainder of the readers who have no idea who I'm talking about, Seti is adorable. She's about five-feet tall, wears her long, black hair in a thick braid and her upper lip is a little bit too short to cover all of her front teeth, so she has a permanent sort of rabbit-like expression on her face. More importantly, she is phenomenally sweet (with me, at least). From what little I understand, she is does not hesitate to tell my two homestay brothers to get something themselves when they ask her to get something for them.

Not being used to being waited on by one person exclusively (let's face it, the rise of the service industry in the US, and in New York particularly, proves that we are all at least somewhat used to being waited on), Seti and I have become friends. As a result, I have a really hard time letting her do everything that she is 'supposed' to do for me. That said, I do my best to do my dishes, clean my room, etc. secretively lest I jeopardize her job.

Before coming to the house, I knew that Seti had been with the family for a long time. Upon moving in, I learned that she had been in Amman for 12 years and that she was thirty. Obviously, then, she was about eighteen when she left Bangladesh for Jordan. It is also pertinent to mention that she knew no Arabic when she came here and now speaks it very well as a result of immersion only. Every day, Seti and I have breakfast and muddle through a broken-Arabish conversation with occasional Bengali lessons for me.

Nam = 'my name is'

Clearly it is not yet my time to visit Bangladesh. Anyway, the other day I gave her a big hug after a delicious meal of all sorts of meat that I'm going to pretend were all identifiable pieces of identifiable animals for the sake of my own piece of mind. Since then, she has been more candid with me and tonight, after an unfortunately long and somewhat one-sided conversation about how happy she is that I'm gaining weight so quickly, I learned that she is not only married but has a 14-year-old son. Both her husband and her son live in Bangladesh and she sees them once every year or two, if that. I can only imagine how she felt as she helped raise Nabil (now 15) and Hamoudeh (now 19).

love,

anneke

Also...

I read this totally outdated blog post the other day and almost wet myself in a country where you are not supposed to discuss bodily functions -- I've decided that, in the case of such an unfortunate event, I would claim that it's how Americans say hello. Anyway, for anyone bored at work (hopefully in a place where laughing out loud would be completely inappropriate), here you go:

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=quantum_of_phallus

A Far Cry from Cocoa Pebbles

So, I have been sick and blogging goes by the wayside when real life comes up. Luckily, and in my mucous-filled idiocy, my Baba is a doctor and gave me everything I needed to recover from what I think was the flu. Unfortunately, that meant antibiotics, but as it is rude to refuse help, I acquiesced and now I feel a bit better.

Anyway, one thing I wanted to share the other day was a short story about animal innards. The other morning I had something for breakfast that looked sort of like Cocoa Pebbles, and tasted something like what I imagine dog kibble and happiness would taste like. Imagine my surprise when I found out that what I had been eating was, as I had only remotely suspected, chicken liver. I have no shame -- this former vegan loves chicken liver. It was delicious. After seeing goat heads, brains, sheep's liver, hooves and hearts in the window of a shop last weekend, though, the surprise was not quite as grand as it otherwise may have been.

On a completely different note, over the last couple of days I have become curious about a couple different topics as they relate to Jordan....

Firstly, the treatment of the mentally ill. One of my host brothers is quite obviously a little different (it's difficult to fully gauge mental illness given the language barrier), and his situation apparently has something to do with the fact that he was ill when he was much younger (around 6 to 10) and was given a lot of medicine during that time. My information availability bias makes me think that it had something to do with bipolarity, but I'm really not sure. This has made me wonder about whether there is any kind of support infrastructure in place for the mentally ill (or their families) or if individuals, like all children until they are married, remain completely the responsibility of their parents indefinitely, since they are often much less likely to get jobs, buy houses and get married (which are all necessary for moving out of the house in Jordan, particularly the getting married part).

Secondly, Amman has a somewhat incomprehensible transit system. For pedestrians, there are a few (usually blocked) sidewalks, some medians in the middle of four-lane highways that pedestrians are expected to cross, awkwardly slippery streets and a handful of stoplights and traffic circles. Crossing the street is, in fact, very much like playing Frogger with your life. I actually just saw my first pedestrian signal today! Moreover, the buses don't have predetermined stops, per se, but seem to stop whenever someone waves at the bus driver or whenever someone on the bus asks the bus driver to pull over. These buses are also much smaller than US buses. Finally, forget about bikes. Just forget about them. Pretend they don't exist, as you wouldn't be able to ride on main streets without being hit, maimed or otherwise injured and you wouldn't be able to ride on side streets because the city is essentially built on 8 hills that are paved questionably. What, then, would be the solution? At present, most people take cabs or buses everywhere. Is there be a more self-propelled option?

I present both of these topics somewhat selfishly because now all of you reading this know what my homework is, so I can't bitch out -- I'm going to do some research over the next couple weeks and will report back.

Sorry for the disjointed post -- I'm still not quite 100%,

anneke

p.s. If anyone knows anything about these topics already, please do let me know

Lebneh or Death

So last night, I had to be out of the house for Mama's Qur'an Study....at least I call it that because it sounds like it was going to be a lot like Bible Study. Similarity noted! Anyway, so I left the house around 3 to meet a friend at this DANK museum near al-Weibdeh. The exhibit was by an artist named Halim Al Karim, who does work in Baghdad and the UAE. This exhibit consisted of a lot of out of focus pictures with very well defined and finished eyes, which made for a creepy, if striking, presentation. The museum itself was set up on a hill and in it were lemon, pomegranate and olive trees all around. At the bottom of the hill was a big white screen with columns leading up to it, so I can only hope that they will screen movies there.

But I digress.

I spent the rest of the day with my friends Mara and Dana, but at around 7 Dana went home and I went to meet Mara's family and have dinner. Mara is staying with two sisters, both of whom are in their sixties or seventies and who LOVE to feed people. When I got there, I was fed pizza, lebneh, tomatoes, fruit preserves, cheese, tea -- you name it. Over the course of the dinner, we also tried to engage in pleasant conversation despite my poor Ameeya. Obviously, when one sister got a phone call, she seemed somewhat relieved to return to Arabic. Whomever she was talking to on the other end, however, must have asked about her dinner guest (me), as she stared at me and said a long sentence that included the words 'lateefah' and 'negro.' Though some of you may be pleased to know that 'lateefah' means 'nice' in Arabic and that I was not being compared to Queen Latifah, you may be amused to think that this was a) a common go-to description and b) something that this old woman found tremendously funny.

After dinner, the two women also brought out some delicious date-filled cookies, which they noticed that I liked and gave me a large bag of them before I went home. At that point, I was completely stuffed and looking forward to a little bit of a walk before getting in a taxi to go home. As I was leaving, the other sister's curiosity could no longer be assuaged. As I was pulling away from my third kiss on the cheek, even though my hand was on her shoulder, she reached her hands up under my arms, put them directly into my hair and shook them back and forth with what can only be described as unbridled glee. She told me that it was because she thought my hair was beautiful, but I really just think she wanted to make sure that it was real (and, of course, to touch it). After that, I was on my way with my cookies, if a little startled.

The night did not end there. When I got home, I expected the Qur'an Study would be wrapping up. I was right. Unfortunately, however, my Mama, being the wonderful hostess that she is, did not neglect to prepare dinner for me. Of course, on that day of all days, she did not opt for the traditional (and light) hummus, lebneh, cheese, tabouleh and pita dinner that we had had almost every night this week. Last night, she chose to prepare a heavy, lukewarm dish, sort of like a ground beef and potato succotash, with an oily sauce and rice. With fear in my heart and a smile on my face, I sat down to eat this massive (and delicious) meal. Each bite I could feel filling the remainder of my stomach; I reached the point that I was working to hard to finish my plate that I was sweating. Luckily, there were still some stragglers from the Qur'an group to distract my family such that I could secretly wipe my brow and occasionally whimper in agony. Upon finally finishing the last bite, a combined feeling of triumph and unparalleled nausea washed over me. I shimmied up out of my seat, said goodnight to my lovely mother claiming that she had fed me so well that I had to go to sleep, waddled back to my room and presumed the fetal position for about 30 minutes.

May you all never be put in the position in which otherwise delicious food becomes toxic for no other reason than that it is literally killing you by sheer volume.

Everything in moderation,

anneke

Customarily....

* post from yesterday that I....didn't post. Whoops!*

The family keeps getting bigger.

Last night Mama and I had a conversation about the size of the entire family. While originally she listed 33 as the total for both hers and Baba's, I didn't realize that she hadn't even counted her first cousins. Mama comes from a family of 12 -- 6 boys and 6 girls. Each sibling has at least 2 children, except for two sisters who are apparently spinsters and live together somewhere in Amman. Altogether, her side totals somewhere in the twenties, including her children from her previous marriage. On Baba's side, though I don't know about his siblings, he has 4 children from a previous marriage, an ex-wife (who is very close with Mama), and each of his children have at least two children. All of this leaves the total immediate family somewhere in the mid to high thirties.

That being said, about a quarter of them dropped by last night.

In Jordan, as I was made aware of during orientation but only truly learned last night, it is very common for people to 'drop in.' Dropping in does not, however, consist only of a quick hello and short conversation. We brought out the sweets, the ice cream, the Turkish coffee and the tea over the course of two-and-a-half hours of, as far as I could tell from the violent giggling and gesticulations of a 200-year-old woman and her equally animated, but comparatively....smooth, daughter, very exciting gossip. Then, a neighbor, who may or may not be related to someone in my family, brought her gaggle and her maid over as well for even more gossip, gesticulation and giggling. This time, though, I got to hold a baby so I was a little less useless in the social context.

Every 40 minutes or so, the old woman would look at me, give me a giant, toothless grin and ask my host mother in Palestinian-accented Ameeya whether I had any idea what they were talking about, and each time I would grin just as widely and shake my head.

The words that I understood over the course of this three-hour conversation:

تفولتنا = Our childhoods

محمد = Mohammad

اولاد = children

There were some others, but, I assure you, not many.

'til tomorrow,

anneke

no means no and eat means eat

Over the past couple of days, aside from adjusting to being a pedestrian in an area where cars own the road, the sidewalk and the occasional limb, I've been learning to navigate the well-known difference between the US and the Middle East that is the relationship between men and women.

Everyone on the program attended an orientation session about the culture in Jordan. Apparently, if you are woman and you sit in the front seat of a cab, then you either like the cab driver, are easy, or both. If you go out with your hair wet, you are easy and probably a bit cold. If you are alone with an Arab male, then you may be easy. If you are out with many Arab males, you are definitely easy. If you show your knees or shoulders, you are easy. If you show your boobs or belly, you are easy and people will stare at you. If you are making out with a dude in the street, you are stupid and easy. Most of the tips we got from these sessions could pretty easily be deduced by anyone with an ounce of cultural competency, but I appreciate that the program would rather we be safe than sorry.**

As for the changes that I, personally, need to adjust to, the change in interpersonal touching will be most striking. As a bleeding-heart, Birkenstock-loving, tree-hugging, dreadlock-aspiring, tattoo-coveting, OCF-going, Berkeley-adoring, granola-eating, garden-growing, flannel-wearing liberal, making the transition from hugging, embracing and touching to will be the most difficult difference for me to deal with. I just have so much love to give. It seems, however, that I will find the absent embrace will be replaced by my host mother's benevolently violent fits of excitement and the consumption of food. I think that I will easily adjust to not looking men in the eye when talking to them and avoiding eye contact on the street.

I've now moved in with my family in Amman. Two parents (each on their second marriage), one 19-year-old boy and one 15-year-old boy. The extended family consists of about 35 people, all of whom visit on a regular basis. Hana's (my host mother's) daughter visited with her own adorable daughter last night for what turned out to be a delightful conversation about how old and tired Fairouz is and how Shakira is the way of the future. Perhaps it will soon be time to bring Lil Wayne to the region, but we shall see.

Later that evening was what I hope will be a more typical experience. Hana, Mohammad (my 19-year-old host brother) and I visited Majed's (my host father's) ex-wife, I think, and some of his children. I am not entirely sure what the relationship between everyone was because 'Mama' and 'Hamadee' kept telling me that everyone else is family -- myself included. I look forward to the day that I, as family, will also know how to start the argileh, engage in the gossip and help with the cooking.

I am now stuffed with lunch (I actually might pass out) and need to go out and explore the neighborhood.

More tomorrow,

anneke

**Side note: I sincerely hope that UN officials get better and longer orientation sessions than we did, not because the CIEE orientation was not good but, rather, because UN officials are, theoretically, doing much more important work. If anyone reading this happens to know that this is not the case, please don't share it with me. Or if you do, know that I will just get very, very depressed.

Marhaba, Elhamdoulilla, Inshallah, etc.

Jordan is awesome.

Today the whole group of students that opted for homestays is heading to their respective houses, so today is going to be the first day that we actually get to use Arabic, as I'm not going to count last night when I asked the waiter where the bathroom was last night, didn't understand his answer and wandered around for 15 minutes being proud of myself, though quite uncomfortable.

I have to admit, waking up on the first morning here, getting a little irked by what I thought was the bathroom light being on and then realizing that it was a) the sun and b) a spectacular panoramic view of the entire city from the 9th floor of the hotel, made for a really nice welcome. After that, a series of gloom-and-doom related safety and general knowledge orientation sessions over the course of 4 hours wore down on all of us, but ending the day at the Dead Sea, covered from head-to-toe with mud (I opted to do the hair as well and looked sort of like a comparatively out-of-shape and covered blue lady from X-Men) and floating like a buoy at the lowest point on Earth. I have seen the promised land.

Once I get a converter that works so I can charge my camera (long story), settle in with my host family and get fed (within an inch of my life, apparently), you'll hear from me again.

Love,

anneke