the election issue

This post is dedicated to my friends and family in Toronto, where the municipal election campaign is coming down to the wire.  Having followed these elections from afar - particularly the mayoral race - with an ever-increasing sense of morbid fascination and dismay, my heart goes out to the residents there who have some difficult choices to make on Monday.  

Not that this is any consolation, but I am also surrounded by wacky electioneering here in Jordan.  About two weeks after I arrived here last December, parliament (which by many accounts was more than somewhat dysfunctional) was dissolved and the appointed cabinet was sent off to rewrite the election law to render better results next time around.  So I guess that happened without any fanfare and suddenly  11 months later, approximately two weeks ago, a parliamentary election campaign opened with a bang.

In the course of two days, the streets of the city were taken over by campaign posters.  And every day more appear. There are handwritten banners across all the streets, taking over the parks and circles.  There are printed posters plastering the sides of buildings, tacked to every possible street sign.   White canvas tents filled with plastic garden chairs have taken over the vacant lots all around town and out into the countryside where candidate meetings seem to be going on every night.  I guess petitioners come and make requests and candidates make promises.  And then maybe some roast lamb on a bed of rice is served on huge trays for all comers.  I am not sure about that last part - but keen to find out.  I am trying to convince my friend Robert to check out a meeting with me one evening, where we will unquestionably stick out of the crowd.

Like in places such as Hungary or Lebanon or New Zealand, the Jordanian parliament has seats reserved for minorities - circassians and chechens - and also for women.  So it is interesting to see some (small!) diversity in the posters.  I have also noticed one candidate who is posing in traditional bedouin garb in some posters - kefiyeh, dishdash - and western jacket and tie in others.   Others are almost uniformly in western business attire.

We will get the full day off work on election day - November 8th, I think - though I am not sure whether that helps or harms voter turnout.  I would think the desire to head out of town for the day off will be strong.  We'll see.   In the meantime, I am enjoying parsing the script on the posters and trying to figure out if there are any actual election issues.

I can't vote here and I also won't be able to exercise my vote in Toronto, so I can only hope that my compatriots make wise choices in exercising their right!  Good luck.  May the worst man not win.

Surprise!

It is a year ago this week that I first came to Jordan on a 'recon' trip to check out the potential assignment here.  That has made me a little nostalgic or reflective.   As I look back through the posts on this blog, I have been thinking about what I have learned.

One thing that really strikes me is that a lot of this blog is devoted to the element of surprise that perpetually lurks around every corner in this part of the world.  In the last 48 hours alone: finding myself in an unanticipated downpour while a full rainbow framed the Roman ruins across the valley; the stairs on the way to work this morning completely collapsed and fallen in as a result of the heavy rainfall -- an amazing thing to see;  this afternoon I was followed home from work at the end of the day by 15 adolescent schoolboys calling and singing all around me at the same time as a senior official was calling me out of the blue to intervene on his behalf on a matter I have nothing to do with.  This is both completely normal and completely bizarre.  Living here, I realize, has restored my capacity for wonder.  I am thankful for that - appropriate for the Thanksgiving season.

But nothing has surprised me lately as much as an event I attended last Friday afternoon.  A horse beauty pageant.

Who knew such things existed?  It was held at the picturesque Royal Stables - outdoors in a lovely wooded valley - and there were actual princesses and upper crust Emiratis and Saudis in attendance.  There was also a fantastically tony panel of posh European judges sitting seriously over score sheets.  Secretly, I suspect that the judges were all younger sisters or second cousins of minor European noble families... Younger brother of a belgian prince, a disgraced cousin of the Thun & Taxis family... that kind of thing...fodder for Hello!  magazine.  Who else becomes a judge at a horse beauty pageant?

In case you are picturing a show jumping or dressage competition in your head, think again.  This was all about the pure beauty of Arabian horses - not performing tricks with humans - just being horses in their naked glory.  There they were, free of bridles or saddles, romping around a big paddock.  It was a little bit like the film "Best in Show" about dog shows, only bigger and less orchestrated.

Of course, I became fascinated by the award categories and the criteria by which the horses were being judged.  There were competitions for "best female head"  and "best male head".    There were age categories - Stallions born 2000 or before... Stallions born between 2001 - 2003...  who were run around the ring on a loose halter with a human alongside.  And there was my favourite category: the "Liberty" class where a horse was let loose and encouraged/goaded into running around for 5 minutes.   For me it was the show-stopper - like the Evening Gown competition in Miss Universe.   I learned by studying the competition booklet, that these horses are judged on the beauty of their: head and neck; body and top line; legs; movement.  No requirement to answer a skill-testing question.

Here's the thing:  as surprising as this event was to me, I came away with a whole new appreciation for horse beauty.  My god, these horses were gorgeous.  I can understand why a person would become obsessed, start a stable, spend her time trying to breed this beauty.  Seeing these creatures run around tapped into some kind of really deep-seated definition of strength and freedom and mythology.  A field full of Pegasuses.

I had sort of hoped I might meet a very handsome, unmarried, (Oxford-educated) Emir or Sheikh.  But that didn't happen this time.  Have to wait for the next Equestrian Foundation event...

Field Trip

It has been a few weeks since I have managed to post anything.  A combination of things have kept me away.  Busy at work finalizing the first draft of a plan for the city of Amman.  An Eid trip out to the amazing eastern desert with its endless tracts of sand covered with black basalt boulders stretching as far as the eye can see toward Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia.  (There are amazing Roman fortresses out in the middle of the desert, built from the black volcanic boulders, that demarcate the edge of their empire.  It is amazing to imagine how they inhabited the landscape 2 millenia ago.  Those Romans were tough.) After that, a weekend at the dead sea to relax.  And then another weekend spent camping in the Dana biosphere reserve with a dear friend who was visiting from Vienna.  In short, life is good.

Despite long hours spent in the office during the work week, working on all the last minute things that go into releasing a government document - fact-checking, proofreading, briefings - I did get out of the office last week to do some field verification.  My favourite part of the job.

This time a colleague and I were verifying the mapping of agricultural lands in the city of Amman.  For reasons too complicated to explain, the mapping of agricultural lands is a tricky business and the lands themselves - which are scarce in this arid land - are constantly under development pressure.  I realized, in fact, that a lot of land I would have dismissed as sand year ago I can now identify as arable.  My eye has been trained to see farmland where I once would have seen desert.

Of course, as always, we came across wonderful and strange sights.  In addition to the endlessly fascinating (to me, anyway) bedouin tents and flocks of goats, camels and sheep camped out at the edge of the city, we saw new things as well.  In the middle of a completely rural landscape, in the heart of fertile olive groves, we stumbled upon a vast, newly built, utterly deserted social housing project that is a the result of a government housing initiative.  Completely isolated from any services, you cannot help wondering how and where the inhabitants will buy groceries, access employment, take their kids to school.  Another stark example of bad public policy at work.

Later, driving through a village at the south end of the city, our driver, Mansour, announced to us that we were passing his family's shop and that right behind it, there was a gold souq - would we like to see it?  Sure, we said - not quite certain what to expect.  Some cheap gold for sale?  So he drove us down a couple of dusty narrow laneways and past the requisite group of guys fixing a car, to pull up beside a Roman ruin, columns and intricate scrollwork intact, giant limestone foundation blocks still in place.  There were chickens scratching around and kids playing in the dirt.  Turns out  this was a Roman gold treasury - hence 'gold souq' - and the village has built up around it, just taking the ruin for granted as a part of the landscape.  My colleague had never heard of the site before - it was entirely new to her.  I went back to the office and double-checked... yes, we had identified this on the major antiquity map.  So that is a step in the right direction.  Now, perhaps, someone will pay attention to the site?

And so it goes.

Time keeps sliding by here.  It is October 2nd and the weather still feels like midsummer - 30 degree days and 20 degree lovely starry nights.  Except for the dust.  Mad dust storms, completely out of season, have been sweeping the city.  One came through this afternoon - something that looks suspiciously like a storm cloud, sudden wind, all at once zero visibility with sand swirling everywhere.  30 minutes later it's gone.  This time, mercifully, I had the foresight to close my windows!