spelling

When Jordan - or Transjordan, at the time - was established with lines on a map after the first world war, it was done so under a British 'mandate'. Meanwhile the neighbours to the North, Lebanon and Syria, were 'mandated' to the French. These different colonial pasts still manifest themselves today in different ways, large and small. For example, in Lebanon, bank notes are Arabic on one side, French on the other. In Jordan, they are Arabic and English. In Beirut, you can apparently get great coffee and croissants all over the place (I am looking forward to finding out!). Not so, Amman.

One thing that is perhaps a legacy of the British mandate in Jordan is the prevalence of the English language on signs. While there are some things that need no explaining when you are in a foreign place - florists are evidently florists, shoe shops are shoe shops - having signs in a language you can understand makes it infinitely easier to negotiate a city. It suddenly becomes possible to distinguish a dentist's office from a lawyer's without too much trouble and a government building from a police station. Particularly in a town where no one uses street addresses, this is a useful thing.

But one of the things that is both fascinating and charming is a total lack of spelling consistency for transliterated arabic words - particularly place names. You can walk down a street and see public street signs - presumably put up by the same people in the same city department - within 20 metres of each other using completely different spellings. Jebel Lwebdieh and Jabal Al-Waibdeh are the same place. So are Fuhays, Fuheis and F'hais; Bireen, Birayn and Birein; and Shmaisani, Shmeisani and Shemesani.

For the copy editors among you, imagine reviewing reports that are the result of many different contributors, with no advance agreement on consistent spellings. I am currently working with a draft report in which there is a King Hussein road frequently mentioned - or King Husayn - or King Hussain. All the same road. Random selection of spellings. It is not uncommon for an author to use two different spellings in two adjacent paragraphs. Or maps and legends to be inconsistent. And I guess it doesn't matter if we all understand. (Though it usually induces a "serenity now" moment for me!)

I have started taking arabic classes (and loving them!) and am coming to the conclusion that the inconsistency stems from the fact that any of these transliterated spellings are really just a pale approximation of the sounds that should be coming out of your mouth. In my notebook, I have written the word "we" phonetically on three subsequent pages as ihna... ehna... nihna... and none of them is really quite right.

All of this also means that I am coming to terms with no consistent spelling of my own name - Hana, Hanna, Hannah, Hanah - whatever works.

site visits

One of the most interesting things about my work assignment here is going on site visits to the partner municipalities. This happens about two times a week and it might involve a walk through the city or a trip out into pristine farmland to see a place where a new residential development is being proposed.

These field trips invariably leave me feeling wistful. Despite this project's best efforts to push for better land use decisions, the population growth here is so rapid and the changes to the landscape are happening so quickly in real time, so much will happen before the plans come into effect. It is hard to look at those ancient olive groves and know that within a year, they will be no more.

The visits with municipalities also might involve meeting with local staff to answer questions, dig for information. The team I am with invariably learns new, surprising, unanticipated facts that we never imagined and which send us in new directions. We also, quite often, get to spend some time with the local mayors.

I like these opportunities when I get to watch the mayors in action. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to spend time with these local leaders and see first hand the pressures they face. Until quite recently - 2007 - mayors were appointed to the position and not necessarily from the municipality they were governing. This is the first mandate for which elected mayors have been in position, and they face the same problems that are familiar in Canada but with greater intensity: unfathomable budget constraints, crumbling or non-existent infrastructure for playgrounds, schools, water, sewers, transportation, waste management - you name it - and never ending demands for more services as populations grow. It is much trickier to govern when one has to keep voters satisfied!

The mayors I have met so far bring widely varying experiences to their new elected positions. One is lawyer by profession, poet by avocation, and has a calm, philosophical approach that reminds me a little bit of Vaclav Havel. Another is a man of prodigious energy with four wives, thirty-two kids and many, many familial and friendship ties. All these people are knocking at his door wanting something from him in his role of mayor - a very delicate balancing act. A third has spent a lot of time in the States and has a clear vision for his town and a innate sense of PR that is serving him well.

Invariably these sessions with municipal partners never quite go in the way one expects: what you think will be a quiet meeting with three people, suddenly turns into a briefing for forty.... Or a television crew enters the room and starts filming... or sometimes our field visits turn into a convoy as more and more local folks join in, and then the police start to follow. No one really blinks when these things happen.

After spending years in my job back home trying valiantly to manage and choreograph stakeholder meetings so that they work to everyone's advantage, I have come to terms with the fact that anything can - and probably will - happen here. Chaos reigns. It is kind of great. A British woman I met recently told me - to my considerable astonishment - that I have the air of a yoga teacher - "always totally chill"! I think this is because my daily mantra has become that little alcoholics anonymous ditty about knowing when to give up control. Serenity now!

walking tall

This past Friday afternoon saw a terrific event here in Amman: a mass walk through the centre of the city to celebrate being a pedestrian! The occasion was triggered by a visit here of New York City-based architect, academic and writer Michael Sorkin, who (fairly) recently published a book called "Twenty Minutes in Manhattan". It is a book about walking, but also about cities and what makes them livable.

It was a beautiful afternoon, sunny, warm, clear. The route took us from the top of Jebel Lweibdeh hill, down a series of winding staircases into the old town, then back up more stairs to an opposite hill where the Roman citadel lies. Then back again along a different route. Hills are one thing this town has plenty of.

About 500 people showed up - not counting the extensive police escort - and the mood was incredibly happy. The group spanned a wide age range. People were making friends, chatting, happy to be meandering in the old town. A couple of my young female colleagues had never walked in this part of town before - had never felt comfortable doing so as the area is so stigmatized - so it was a whole new experience for them to see their own city on foot. Tremendous.

The event was co-organized by the Institute where I am working and - a new discovery for me - a group called 'fast walk' that organizes bi-weekly 3-hour walks on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights in Amman. In part their mandate is about health and exercise, in part it is about getting people walking, seeing the city, experiencing different neighbourhoods. Apparently they get about 200 people or more out each time. The one condition: you have to wear a flourescent yellow vest. No vest, no walk.

While I am personally not too keen on this "safety" element - for reasons which I am sure my biking friends reading this will understand - I am interested in checking this group out. It made me go back to my earlier post about walking in this city and made me think again: maybe there is something like a sustainable transportation movement afoot (no pun intended).

the office

One friend told me that his mental image of life at the office was something out of Lawrence of Arabia. Probably the scene where Peter O'Toole is being reprimanded by the military commander in an enormous, high-ceilinged room with graceful arching columns, carved wooden screens and ornate antique furniture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DNfzocPxRo&feature=related

So in case anyone else is harbouring similar illusions, this post is intended to disabuse you of them.

My day is spent 8:30am - 6pm (or more) in a recently constructed (but already failing) government office building. The team takes up half of one floor of the building and most of the staff are grouped together in rooms that were originally designed as meeting rooms, but have now turned into 1950's- style "steno pool" rows of desks - 8 or 9 people to a room, all in a row. No such thing as a cubicle. People are remarkably good humoured and chipper about this - and maybe even more productive because of it.

As someone considered more senior, I share a room with 2 others, soon to be 3 and invariably there is a visiting municipal person or a staff person who needs some assistance who shares a desk over the course of the day. It is like a giant hotelling space - laptops only and, of course, no computer network. We have a never-ending series of computer viruses in permanent circulation from infected memory sticks, which causes no end of grief. These pictures might give a bit of a sense of the space and how it is used.

What is impossible to convey in pictures is the level of noise. The din in the corridor is truly awesome - yelling, chatting, an inexplicable amount of furniture moving and one keen gentlemen who takes it upon himself to sing the call to prayer in the corridor at the appointed times every day.

If it is a good day we have both heat and water. That is maybe 3 days a week. The building's furnace runs on diesel, and when it runs out, it takes a while before the fuel truck comes to fill it up. It also costs a lot to do so. So whether it is a logistical challenge or a cost-saving measure of a post-collapse, cash-strapped government, I am not sure. All I know is that it gets cold sitting all day in a building at 8 degrees celcius.

One thing that is common across every single government office that I have been in and public or private institutions of any kind - schools, hotels, banks, health clinics - is a picture of the King and of his father, late King Hussein, in every room. You see them here, watching over my desk.

new year - new words

It is 2010!

I have learned that like Christmas, New Year's is not really a big celebration here. It's nice - just another normal social evening, so there is no big pressure to "do something" the way there can be back home. I liked that - it was a relief.

That being said, I was actually invited to two different events last night to ring in the new year. One was for an outdoor gathering on the beautifully named Rainbow Street in Jebel Amman - a lovely part of town in the old city centre that comes closest to being 'hip' in a western sense and rapidly gentrifying as a consequence. Apparently it was the first time ever that a new year's eve was to be celebrated in an outdoor public open space. Like Time's Square, only smaller. About 100 people were expected. People in my office were excited at the prospect of such a public gathering.

The second, equally lovely, invitation was to the home of the brother of a colleague where a group of friends was gathering to celebrate. This group is an accomplished bunch, well-travelled, well-educated, and well-placed in all kinds of senior positions in government and business. I was curious to meet the brother. The family is originally from the west bank town of Nablus, but the siblings ended up in different countries throughout the region.

The brother lived in Baghdad for more than 20 years working as an engineer and his wife for the UN. They left a couple of years ago, the current instability finally pushing them out. They left everything - their house, furniture, cars - and cannot get anything back. There are no records left in Baghdad of the family ever having lived there, so reclaiming these belongings, for the time being anyway, is impossible. And so they have begun anew here in Jordan, building a new house, setting up again. (As an aside: it is really interesting how porous the regional borders are for well-educated people ... the number of people I have met who grew up here, studied in Beirut, lived in Damascus, spent some time working in Abu Dhabi or Dubai or Baghdad, and ended up in Amman - or some combination thereof - is impressive).

In the end, I accepted neither of these kind invitations, as nice as they were. I moved into a new apartment, instead - same building, different floor, more light, nicer layout. And I was tired after a long week, so I went to bed early, slept a long time and greeted the new year feeling sunny and fresh - like the day itself.

To make the most of January 1st, I headed 50km north to investigate some more Roman and Byzantine ruins. Again there was sunshine and cardomom-scented coffee and bedouin shepherds steering goats through the ruins. And delight as I watched my taxi driver, the excellent Ahmad, play soccer with some street kids in a first century amphitheatre. Ahmad made me realize that I am actually learning some arabic. He spoke very little English and let me practice my best phrases like "i'd like coffee, thank you" and taught me new words to name the things we were seeing around us - pomegranates, sheep, olive groves, lemon trees, churches, columns. A curious vocabulary.

And so 2010 begins. No pictures of ruins today, as I misplaced my camera this morning. Instead a picture with some nice fellows Hashem and Hussam - tourists from Iraq - who I met last weekend when we were all hiking on a trail overlooking the dead sea. Proof I am really here.

Wishing everyone peace, prosperity, good health and happiness for the new year! H