taking the long way home. almost to the finish line.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Well well well well well… I suppose it’s time to get back to my long neglected blog. I should be careful. Too many long periods of time without an update and people will stop reading. But honestly, this has been the first chance I have had to sit down and think like a semi-sane person in quite some time.
First, the bits and pieces. This last month has found me on a good many busses, and almost inevitably something strange happens on every ride that lasts more than half an hour. For example, on one bus ride from Amman a man stood up and started to proselytize for a good 40 minutes. He talked until his voice gave out. I sat giggling with a friend and texting another who was several rows behind us. You see, he was a boy, and even though we were the only three foreigners on the bus and we had showed up to the bus station in the same taxi we had to pretend that we had no idea he even existed. Everyone else on the bus rolled their eyes and tried to ignore him.
Bus ride #2 to amman found me on a bus with 2 other foreigners on it. I gathered from the conversation that one was british and one Scandinavian. The Scandinavian was named Robin, and decidedly un-amused by the Jordanian behind him who insisted on calling him robin hood. The fun thing about having been here so long is that I can understand what is going on around me. These two, however had no idea. So when the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere for 5 minutes to wait for a girl who had called the driver they looked like they understood it about as much as if they had been dropped on the moon. And when we left without her, only to stop five miles down the road and pick her up from a taxi they gave up trying and put their hats over their faces and went to sleep.
And this morning. I got to listen to a tape all the way to Amman condemning smoking, pills, alcohol and hashish. The speaker was saying not to get lured into the world of Michael Jackson and Bob Marley by these vices. He seemed to have a particularly large problem with Bob Marley.
And in other bits and pieces I found my new favorite place to hang out when I am out of my site. It is a hotel lounge that has live music every night. And this live music comes in the form of a Polish woman and her guitar. She amazes the crowd with such hits as Hotel California and The Gambler. My personal favorite was when she sang that James Blunt song “you’re beautiful” and her Polish companion (a very pale man in his sixties) would sing, or rather scream along with her from the audience. I found myself almost hypnotized thinking about what on earth would bring this woman and her guitar to work this gig… in Jordan.
In bigger news, I finished the first of my two big Peace Corps projects. My project partner Andrew, and I hosted a first aid training session that lasted for 5 days. We had roughly 45 youth show up. I won’t bore you with too many of the specifics. But it went something like this: up at seven every day, two 3-4 hour lectures per day, testing every day. It was pretty intense. Every day ended around 10:30 or 11 for the participants, and anywhere between 1 and 4 am for me and my fellow volunteers and translators. It went fairly smoothly, but wore us all out. There was a bit of a bugaboo with funding and we had to have an accountant from the higher council for youth follow us around and make all our purchases. But at least it happened at all, right?
I taught first aid for trauma, and because it was the least hands on of our material I gained the reputation as the “bad cop”. Apparently none of the participants had any experience with a girl who has the right to fail you on a test or chide for bad behavior. and my frequent references to the possibility of death or permanent disfigurement didn’t help to soften my image. All the participants were afraid of me, especially the boys. I’ve been told before that when I am in a teaching position I come across as a bit of a hard ass, but never before have I actually seen terror in someone’s eyes when they were put alone in a room with me.
On the other hand, Andrew got to teach all the fun interactive stuff that used dummys and talked about sensitive material. He said he had 2 “a-ha” sort of moments with the kids. The first was when he was teaching the Heimlich maneuver for infants with the girl’s class. He said that it seemed to click with all of the girls that they would one day have babies, and that when that day came they would be prepared should their kids put anything chokeable in their mouths. The second was in a discussion about HIV/AIDS. The youth centers here host lectures about AIDS, but they mostly revolve around the evil things you have to do to get it. Andrew was open and honest and answered their question about the virus and sickness itself and got a sort of amazing reaction. These participants had no idea what AIDS really was and that there was a difference between having the virus and having full-blown AIDS. And unexpectedly, their questions revolved around what you could expect to happen to an HIV positive person rather than talk of sex and dirty needles. A topic we never thought we would get to broach in Jordan.
One of the strangest parts of the camp was getting to use a translator. In all my life in the village I have sounded like my head is as empty as a balloon and that all I know how to talk about is clothes and food. But for once, my counterpart got to see me think semi-coherently about a huge range of subjects. It was nice to let them know that I am not as “slow” as my Arabic makes me sound. But it was strange to have to formulate sentences one-half at a time. And my counterpart’s feedback for me was “I am so happy for you! At first I was scared when you were going to teach, but your face didn’t even get red. Not even in front of the boys.” I suppose I couldn’t have hoped for more resounding praise.
She also told me that now that I have neared the finish of my service and successfully completed at least one big project I am free to get engaged like my predecessors at site. She even has a volunteer all picked out for me and gave him her blessing as discreetly as she knew how. This involved telling him, on a bus full of people with me standing three feet away, that she had told me she would kill me if I got married and left early, but it is ok if I just get engaged now. I suppose in the minds of my friends in the village 25 is just too old to be unmarried, and I should settle down ASAP.
Well, I guess I should wrap up. When I go too long without writing my thoughts just get all jumbled and long-winded. Hope you are all reasonably well and staying warm.