friends, neighbours

One of things that I love about living abroad - both now in Amman and elsewhere in the past - is how it forces me to confront myself and consider what I value on a daily - maybe hourly - basis.

This is a fairly banal observation, especially for those readers who have spent time living overseas. But coming to terms with different ways of being, finding out what parts of your lifestyle you can compromise on (vegetarian diet, clothing choice) and what things are fundamentally important to your quality of life (strong coffee, walking, tolerance) allows you to learn about your own limits and peculiarities and biases, every moment of every day.  Insights that may require hours of determined journal-writing or piles of junky magazine self-help quizzes back home (Are you destined to succeed?  What kind of female are you?) emerge self-evidently without having to think deliberately about them.  It is something akin to introspection, only active and exhilirating.  And exhausting.  Your brain is working overtime, constantly processing all this new information - which translates into very sound sleep at night and vivid dreams - an added bonus.

At a certain point, after a few months, the state of wonderment decreases as you get used to a new normal - the fact that your colleague has two wives, or that giant cockroaches are living in your kitchen drains - but the potential for being truly surprised never really goes away.  It is all a part of the full-body learning experience of living in a very foreign place

I knew all this before I came, but living it is another thing altogether.  I was fully prepared to be surrounded - and even, in happy circumstances, embraced - by people with very different world views and backgrounds and opinions than my own.  I was ready for that and excited by the prospect.  What I absolutely didn't expect was that I would encounter someone exactly like me, with whom I have everything in common.  And that has been its own amazing surprise and learning experience.

Paul, until yesterday, was my neighbour and colleague.  He lives in Tucson, Arizona where he studies architecture, but has been spending time in Amman this summer working at the Institute where I work. Yesterday he left town for more adventures in London and Paris and New York before he heads back to  Tucson.  I will miss him.  We saw a lot of each other.  His (former) front door is about 12 feet from mine and his desk at work was about 20 feet away.  For about 6 weeks straight we shared the same schedule:  8:10am walk to work;  work all day; 5:30pm walk home and often in the evenings something social.   Along the way, through the course of our time together, we covered a lot of ground - topographical and conversational.

It is fairly unremarkable to me that through our conversations it emerged that we share similar political views - liberal, green, socially progressive.  Given our workplace, it is also not surprising that we have a a shared interest in buildings, housing, transportation.   We are both cyclists and downtown city dwellers with a penchant for transitional urban neighbourhoods.  It is even understandable to me that despite being from opposite ends of the same continent, and with a gap in age and a difference in gender,  we share the same cultural references with an astounding overlap in the music we listen to, books we read, movies, blogs, websites, news items that we jointly draw upon.  These are the external, contextual things that contribute to who we are, I guess, as a certain type of liberal, intellectual North American.   Other  preferences that we shared were endless: like a love of cats, or the sound of cottonwood trees rustling in the wind, or the slant of sunlight on Jebel Lwebdieh in the late afternoon.   The list goes on and on.

But what was really a learning experience for me was seeing Paul's approach to the world - his way of breaking down a question and figuring out answers and his openness to the people and experiences around him.  I learned a lot.  Also about a certain north american logic.  I realized that I bring it with me everwhere I go and it is the frame through which I interpret the world and connect with people.  I guess I never really realized before how much I belong to my own culture.  Or that I am "type" of person.

A couple of days before he left, Paul and I talked about the fact that we have so much in common, despite our obvious gender, age and geographic differences.  He attributes it to growing up in the sticks with professional parents - something we have in common - and bicycles.  I tend to agree with him.

I asked his permission to write this.  I hope he doesn't mind what I have written.  I will miss him and see this city a bit differently now as a result of his influence.  Happy travels, friend!

not a drop to drink

Summer has hit. The thermometer has been hovering around 38 degrees C (101 F) in breezy, high-altitude Amman and a balmy 45 degrees C (113 F) in Aqaba, a bit further south. Friends in Baghdad are are reporting 50 degrees C. Despite high temperatures, I am finding the heat surprisingly easy to handle - zero humidity and just fine in the shade. With a nice cross breeze running through my un-air-conditioned apartment, it is actually more comfortable than my place in Toronto on a hot summer night (sorry, Briana).

It is the searing radiant heat of the sun at midday that is a whole new experience. A visitor recently commented that "the sun seems closer to the earth here... is that possible?". The image of a steak sizzling on a barbeque grill plagues my mind's eye when I think about exposed flesh in this weather. Not that there is much exposed flesh to be seen - at least among women. Dress codes remain in place no matter the temperature - which means it is loosely a policy of ankle to wrist to neck coverage out in public. I threw caution to the wind this week after returning from a meeting out of the office and - somewhat overcome by the baking midday heat - I took off my cardigan, revealing my bare arms in the office. Risque behaviour on my part?

This weather has me thinking about water. Partly because I am being very careful to drink a lot of it. Partly because the summer water shortages are on their way I am told and I try to imagine what it would be like to live in this heat without access to a reliable water supply. I am not sure I am looking forward to finding out. Water delivery - which currently happens once a week - can slow down in August I hear, or get rationed. But, to be frank, I am not sure I personally need to worry with my above average income. It is the many, many other residents of this city whose access to water is severely compromised that I wonder about.

A friend recently sent me a note wanting to know more about water in the region. He wrote: "... I noticed that the Dead Sea seems to be in two sections... Is this drying up? Or has it always been salt flats? This raised more questions in my mind... a post on water politics/culture would be interesting.... You mentioned in one post how on the infrastructure side 40% of water is lost through leakage, which suggests that waste is universal. But then, how can that be!!? In an area so dry why do they put up with leaks? On the water use side, surely people don't take 15 minute showers, leave the taps running to get the coolest/hottest water? Who goes without water? How costly is water?"

So, here I go, trying to say a few insightful things about a very complicated topic:


Water is scarce. The Dead Sea is drying up and by good estimates will be gone in 25 years at the present rate of evaporation. Most of the water in the Jordan river - which runs as a mere trickle now into the Dead Sea at the north end - is either diverted for agriculture in Israel or Jordan - or is collected in water treatment plants for drinking water in arid Amman. Similarly the streams that run through the deep, dramatic canyons on the east side of the Dead Sea - where I have been hiking over the last two weekends: they used to be tributaries, but now when these streams reach the flats just before the Dead Sea, they are piped and channeled to a water treatment plant, and then pumped a kilometer up hill to the thirsty city.

A sample conversation: I am talking to the director of planning of a major city in the North about the impacts of scattered sprawl development on the water supply especially with the enormous growth in population expected in the coming years. I point out that this city is surrounded by the most fertile, rain-fed agricultural lands in the whole kingdom and sitting on an underground aquifer. We talk about why it is important to conserve those agricultural lands, and maintain the natural heritage cover to allow for water re-absorption, maintain soil permeability, minimize the need for irrigation. She stares at me blankly. I ask her: "Where will the water come from to keep this city alive if you don't protect those resources?" She tells me: "Industry is the problem. they use too much water. If it becomes a big problem, we will close them down. And for people? Well, for people, for drinking, God will provide. He always has."

This fills me with a sense of dread and fear. Currently annual per capita water distribution in Jordan stands at 150 cubic metres per person, well below the international water poverty line of 1,000 cubic metres. With rapid population growth, no one I have talked to has a sense of how this will look in 15 years - let alone 50.

I recently read in the newspaper that the price of water is going up. This is politically tricky as so many people on limited incomes have scarce access to water. The story reported that the hike in the prices of water is part of a three-year plan to address the government's budget deficit. It has nothing to do with pricing the resource to reflect its full cost. The story also notes that "an average of 42 per cent of the water pumped to the public is wasted - the figure varies from place to place - 35% wastage in Amman; 22% in Aqaba, 65% in some regions." The Minister responsible says that the water loss is due to illegal trespassing - people stealing from the water grid. My colleagues also blame bad pipes that are very frequently above ground and easily subject to breakage and leakage. Why does this happen? Why aren't there more water conservation, water capture, grey water recycling, water infrastructure improvement projects at the small and micro-scale? This is a mystery that I think about daily. Part of it is a lack of organizational know-how at the municipal and national scale; part of it is the structure of the industry; part of it is a sheer lack of access to capital.

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Instead big infrastructure projects dominate:  a giant red-dead sea channel that will generate hydro electric power and purportedly restore water levels in the dead sea (notwithstanding the inter-basin transfer!) is in the feasibility study stage with world bank money.  A very large pipeline is being built from Aqaba to Amman to tap the last large underground aquifer in the country. 

People do talk about water a lot. Which part of town has good water pressure; why it is best to live lower down in an apartment building - ground floor best, water pressure highest; where the best swimming pools and spas are. They share tips about getting the hot water from the boiler on the roof to the shower faster - flush the toilet at the same time as running the shower; do the dishes right before you have the shower and the hot water will be on stream.  Otherwise you are running the shower for 15 minutes before you can even get in.

These are probably the conversations of the urban affluent. I honestly have no clue how the water supply works in poorer East Amman, even less what it is like in bedouin communities in the desert or for the Egyptian farm labourers who live in tents in the Jordan valley. Driving through the southern desert the last few weekends, I have seen water tanker trucks parked beside the bedouin goat-hair tents, the sheep and goats lying in the shade the truck affords - the only shade around - the camels hanging around farther afield.

These trucks - often the only motorized vehicles in the vicinity - must serve the needs of the whole travelling unit, I figure - the humans, the livestock, washing, drinking needs. They must be the supply for a long haul - a week? two? a month? - and I am guessing that they are driven along to the next campsite when the herds move. I cannot imagine how much that water must cost. And now that the summer heat is here, that much more expensive.

Paying Rent

It is the beginning of another month - my eighth one here - and that means it is time to pay the rent.  I look forward to this event, all the more so because it is a tricky feat to accomplish.   First, I live in a cash economy - no cheques - so I have to accumulate the right amount of cold hard cash over the course of the month.  This means taking it out in the allowable small increments from the bank machine - when it happens to be working - and remembering to store up 50 dinar bills over the course of the month, like a squirrel preparing for winter.  Second, I need to be in the building at the right time - when the owner is here and the office door is open.  The office hours are unpredictable - non-existent, actually - and I need to watch out or else weeks will go by and I will suddenly wake up to the fact that I owe 2 months back rent plus utilities.

So around the beginning of the month, when I see that office light on,  I dash up to my apartment, grab  the envelope full of cash, head back downstairs and walk through a dark hallway filled with old broken furniture and other detritus into the back office of Abu Mohammed.

Abu Mohammed is the building owner. His name is Mahmoud and the "Abu" title literally means "Father of" which is both a mark of respect and an indication that he has a son named Mohammed.  He is a large man, in his mid 60s, who looks like he has done his share of heavy manual labour.   In contrast to his appearance, he has a gentle voice and an elaborately polite manner, bordering on deferential.   He conveys a certain simplicity.  He is the opposite of the polished, expensively dressed people I deal with in my day job, those with perfect English and excellent degrees from foreign universities.   Sitting behind the scratched wooden desk in his dusty, cramped office,  you could easily think that this is a hard-working labourer who had the good fortune to build an apartment building in a part of town that has now become popular. And here he is now reaping the benefits.

But things are not what they seem.  The lesson I learn approximately 2 times every day in this country.

In fact, this lovely unpreposessing man has a major contracting business with an expertise in energy projects and is involved throughout the Gulf and east Africa. The apartment building is a little tiny side project that he keeps going for no discernable reason except as a place to store old furniture - and a good little investment.  When I get that chance once a month, I like to sit with him in his office, and have a  chat to hear the latest news about contracting jobs in the middle east.  They are mysterious and amazing.  Yesterday, he reported that he was just back from 30 days away - 20 days in Abu Dhabi, 10 days in Sudan where has managed to secure financing from a Swiss Bank with a big pile of Emirate money to build a solar energy project in Sudan.  This is in partnership with a Chinese state company who are bringing in the technology.  "I will have a labour of thousands of people, Miss Hannah.  It is a very big project for me."  All the paperwork is signed - he showed me - which is why he had to go to Sudan  - to chase down some signatures.  

We talked about what it is like to work in Sudan.  "Hot" is one word.  "Miss Hannah - it is 60 degrees in the sun and so dusty and dirty.  The roads are just from sand, no asphalt, dust everywhere."

This constellation of Abu Dhabi - Chinese - Sudanese interests - with a little Swiss Bank thrown in on the side - fascinates me, of course.  All the more so since I am currently reading the (very good) book "What is the What?" by Dave Eggers about refugee children in Sudan.  Place names like Darfur come to mind.  Do people do business in this place?  It seems so.  I try and ask him political questions - what does he think about the outcome of the recent election in Sudan? Are people discussing the separation of Southern Sudan from the North? - that sort of thing - but he never takes the bait and remains unfailingly polite.  I remain fascinated and somewhat uncomfortable.

As we chat, his nephew sits on the side, like a character from Charles Dickens, making elaborate notes in a giant ledger book where all of the apartment transactions are duly recorded.  And various renters and other petitioners come and go to pay money or just pay respects.

After 15 or 20 minutes, my time is up, and - honestly - he has better things to do than satisfy the curiousity of nosy Canadian.  But he is deferential and gracious and we part with many repeated "go in peace" salutations until rent time comes around next month and I hear more about building big infrastructure projects in hot, distant lands.