End of story

I am back in good old Dirty Jerz. The next task is finding publishers to print my work, and then I have filled the terms of the grant. It's been a good lesson in the following ways:

1) Not all that Googles is gold. The guys in the Amman office of FoEME were kind of tough to deal with. They should have warned me that they had no intention of giving me real work or of even speaking to me in English. Instead they led me to believe that I would have interesting work and that they would go out with me. Lies.

2) Jordan, and the Arab world, are neat. There is more than just Israel in the Middle East.

3) Chicken shit and houseflies are a valid research topic.

4) I am addicted to the Internet even abroad. But having a blog helped me deal with not having any friends for the first 3 weeks in Jordan.

Nai on a Thursday

These last few days in Jordan are kind of like a victory lap around the country, seeing how much I can squeeze into a short amount of time.

I would consider a major feather in my cap the fact that I got into Nai on a Thursday night. Nai, the most prestigious club in Amman, is located in the basement of equally classy Howard Johnson. Thursday is the big going out night here. A friend of mine made reservations early, and we managed to get seats at the bar, where we could drink 7JD ($10) drinks and dance to a mix of Arabic and Western music. Only thing is, Nai doesn't have a dance floor - they expect everyone to just gyrate around the bar and tables.

Also, I went with a tiny girl and another two people. This girl, N, drank three drinks and was out of her mind. She was in a lip lock with a French guy with shitty English for about 80% of the night. N also has a boyfriend. After a fight involving broken bottles, we all decided the night was over. To get N out of the club and out of Frenchy's arms, I had to divert his attention by grabbing his ass. You do what you have to do.

Today I am going to try to hit the Dead Sea, which I didn't manage to get to in my travels so far.

Thanks for last night...seriously

For my grand finale in Jordan, I am crashing a friend, D, who is in Amman as an air force exchange pilot, training Jordanian soldiers. D got all his stuff shipped to him in Amman from his home in the States, including

- washer and dryer
- Toyota SUV
- Desk
- 2 bicycles
- remote-operated fart machine
- lay-z-boy
- boxes upon boxes of shit
- Toyota SUV!!!

He rents a palace near the American Embassy in Amman. It's got three bedrooms, three bathrooms and two salons. It also has its own washing machine, which stands disconnected since he brought his own. D did tours of service in Korea and Alaska, and he as these boxes around the house addressed to him at North Pole, Alaska.

If you are an American reader, you are paying for my stay. Thanks!

You are also paying for the American Embassy, which is one of the biggest buildings in the city. I went in yesterday to try to get this report on houseflies from USAid. The report was not there, but I got to see the parking lot - it's a big SUV hang-out. Surprise.

Friends of the....Oil Spill?

The war in Lebanon/Israel caused one of the region's worst oil spills to date. And since there is still no stable situation (the ceasefire is tenuous), the cleanup has not started in earnest. Here's FoEME's take on the scene. Pretty miserable result of war.

Now that the shooting is sort of over....

Hello from my leave of absence. I am traveling.

First of all, it's about time there was a ceasefire. It seems that in retrospect, this war was (surprise) stupid and unnecessary. Al-Jazeera says both sides claim victory. Different editorials and opinions in Haaretz say Israel lost, won, or neither. Loads of people are dead, including the son of one of Israel's most acclaimed authors and peace activists, David Grossman. Lebanon's infrastructure is bombed to pieces.

I would like you to know about how you can spend the money you might otherwise be using for booze to help people in the Middle East.

So, here is a list of organizations accepting donations, sorted by the political affiliations you may or may not have.

If you want to give to Arabs:
The Little Lebanese Toy Drive is getting toys for Lebanese kids who are stuck in Syria. It's run by a bunch of American, British and other expats who are in Amman currently.
UNICEF is collecting cash for its operations for children in Lebanon.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is pulling together funds as well.

If you want to give to Israelis:
You can give through the United Jewish Communities' Emergency Campaign. They have been contributing to bomb shelters and emergency supplies in northern Israel.
The One Family Fund helps victims of terror in Israel.

Enjoy.

More on Iraq

I didn't really go into full detail with my Iraqi lunch/dinner last post. Besides being a huge amount of food, it was also a really interesting look into how American foreign policy reverberates around the Arab world.

In the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq, this family of 5 packed a car, left all their furniture and things in Baghdad, and hit the road. The father, D, was showing me every table and rug and explaining how he had to furnish the apartment from nothing. The mother, Z, says Amman, compared to Baghdad, is nothing. She misses the beauty and the history of Baghdad, which has been around for thousands of years as a seat of culture, as opposed to Amman, which only became a big deal this century when all the other major cities of the region were drawn into other countries by the Europeans.

When we started talking regional politics, Z said she liked Bush because he says what he means. I.e., he said he would invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and he did. She said that is not a skill set that Arab politicians have. I responded that even if he means what he says, he says stupid things, but she was not convinced.

On a personal level, while D has a job training pilots, and the kids have made Jordanian friends in school and in the neighborhood, Z has no Jordanian friends because she cannot identify with them. So besides her Iraqi friends, Z doesn't really have anyone to talk to and stays in the house and cooks all day.

Flies and Journalistic Integrity

To catch everyone up on life in Amman, let’s play three truths and a lie. Which of these is true, and which a lie?

1. I got a load of free toiletries from the empty apartment of a friend who just left Jordan for the States. This means I can shower again.
2. I ate Iraqi food for three hours and then vomited on the table of my hosts.
3. I went to Ghore Safi in southern Jordan with a big business farmer who showed me his tomato fields, his nicely bagged chicken shit, and then kept telling me “I want to show you my banana.”
4. I tried to interview a guy, but he wouldn’t answer my questions because he was sure that by “I study geography” I meant “I am in the CIA and Mossad at the same time.”

Life here is a mix of abject boringness at work mixed with interesting things I have managed to arrange for myself. Everything was true above except that I didn’t vomit on my hosts. I just felt full for the next 4 hours.

I have been speaking to officials on both sides of the housefly issue. The main concern is figuring out what makes these houseflies breed and how to prevent them from spreading all over the region of Safi in Jordan and Tamar, across the border, in Israel. The problem is that when you talk about a cross-border science issue, the scientists don't agree.

In this case, the Israelis think the flies they have all summer come from Jordan exclusively. Some of the Jordanians think the Israelis' flies are coming from rotting piles of vegetables and untreated sewage on the Israeli side. The American scientists pin the blame on both (how diplomatic). Meanwhile, no one has given me a concrete study that would corroborate their thoughts. So it's a big game of 'he said, she said' for now.

The other issue I have is my lack of Arabic, which translates into cultural distance as well. I went down to Safi to speak with the governor of the region and representatives from the Ministry of Health and the Jordan Valley Authority about the houseflies.

First of all, about ten people were in the meeting room. Only four had anything to do with the topic at hand. This made for many useless interjections that meant nothing and wasted time.

When we finally got down to business, the officials said the flies come from chicken manure fertilizer, open trash, outdoor toilets, and farm animals. No one has a realistic plan to deal with any of this.

On the Israeli side, they all speak fluent English, can quickly cite figures, and can lay out smooth diplomatic statements one after another. It makes it really easy to give them more credit for their story. This is how journalistic bias starts! With flies!