A Jordanian Wedding

Woot, Fireworks and men dancing while holding hands,
it must be an Arab wedding!

Ever Since I have arrived in Jordan I have wanted to see a Jordanian wedding. When a month or two ago, my facilitator stated that this was wedding season and we would hear a lot of fireworks, I had no idea how true that statement would be. Up until this past week, all I knew about weddings in Jordan could be summed up in a few words, loud, long, and expensive. Every night we hear fireworks going off late into the night and processions of cars with people hanging out of them, yelling, and honking their horns non-stop. It seems like that’s simply what you do at a wedding, and I thought I wouldn’t know anything more about it until a friend at work invited us to his nephew’s wedding party.

Arab Wedding Cake, not sweet at all!

First of all, calling it a wedding is misleading and any Arab will correct you when you say that. There is no religious ceremony for an Arab wedding, at least from what I understand, and the day before the festivities start the families and the groom (I’m not completely sure if the bride goes) go to the local courthouse and sign the wedding license making the couple officially married. After that, the partying ensues. Traditional weddings, the only one that I’ve seen, used to last a week but with dwindling money most families shorten it to two or three days. The first day is a party in a huge tent on a rented piece of clear property for only the groom’s family. The men and women are separated and for the first 3 hours or so the groom meets all of his guests (many of whom he may barely know) and loud music plays incessantly. This is the time of the party where shabab are dancing constantly, old men are talking about how things have changed with the years, drinks and snacks are sold, and basically the groom doesn’t get to have much fun. The party we went to was called very small because it only had 200 male guests and was only two full days long. Anyway, there are a lot of traditions to be involved in and the normal antics of the groom’s friends, lifting him on their shoulders, dancing with him, and generally having a lot of fun being completely sober. A few interesting traditions I saw involved the music. Specific songs require you to do certain actions. For instance, when the older/traditional music began we were told we had to stand up in the front of the the gathering with all the men, shoulder to shoulder, and sway side to side while clapping.

Henna and that wonderful Parasol!

This was where we all had to stand next to each other and clap.
The old my next to me is wearing a shamech traditionally denoting
someone of palestinian descent (It's white & black not red).

 When another song started, it signaled that henna had been delivered from the women of the groom’s family. A few elaborately dressed little girls brought over two heaping plates of henna which was then applied in designs and letters on the groom’s hands so, “They will look beautiful to the bride,” as a few arab men told me. The whole time the music is playing loudly and the men are joking around and playing with a garishly decorated parasol that the little girls brought with them. Apparently, by having the parasol placed over you, or dancing with the person holding it, it signals that you will be married soon (much like the throwing of flowers at American weddings). Also at this time, the mother of the groom came to the party to see the henna placed on the groom’s hands. I was told it is how she shows her approval of the wedding and if she doesn’t show up, the shabab at the wedding will start to chant trying to get her to arrive. Anyway, it was quite an adventure, and like always, I got to hold hands with lots of random Arab men and dance the night away, it seems to be a theme in my life.
After this aspect of the wedding was over, we were taken with the close family friends and family up to the house at about 11 o’clock (at this point we had been here for about two and a half hours). With the smaller group of about forty men we went to the grooms new home and ate mansaf which was amazing. It is probably the only time that man cook in this country but it was fantastic. There were probably a dozen seperate plates of mansaf with about 5 kilos of lamb meet on each. The men from the groom's family were the servers as all of the men devoured the mansaf and enjoyed themselves. After a very short time, less than 15 minutes, all of the non-family members were miraculously done (except for us) which we thought was extremely interesting. We found out, after everyone else left, that the family had not eaten and that everyone left so that they could eat. One the men had had their fill, the food would be delivered to the women in the family and finally to the bride's family. Nothing is put to waste here ever!

Mansaf partay ...woot!

Overall, the wedding was amazing and quite an experience. It was loud and long like most Jordanian parties but at the same time wonderful and eye-opening. It is awesome to see cultures who put such a high price on weddings and feel that they are so important, but I hope that they put that same type of emphasis on the marriage which is what actually matters.

Inter-Gender Relations

So that might have been a weird title but believe me, it is a good one for today's blogpost.  So, ever since I have been in Jordan I have wanted to talk to the women and find out about them, their lives, and how they feel just like I have been with the men.  Well, obviously that is quite hard since men and women aren't allowed to eat together, women are very closed and won't speak to you on the street, and I think the only woman I have regular contact with right now is Fatimah at the center.  This weekend all of that changed.

The sign for the Iraq Al-Ameer
(It means cave of the prince)
handicraft village

  Saturday, I decided I wanted an adventure and headed of the "Iraq Al-Ameer Handicraft Village" a women's cooperative near to my work where they hand-craft shawls, paper, soap, and ceramics and are also close to two different archaeological sites.  I had visited it before with a person from our work and found out that I could take classes in traditional Jordanian weaving, pottery, soap making, and ceramics all of which sounded extremely interesting.  Well, since I got there late in the day I was informed that they were already closed but was shown around and introduced to every single woman in the center.  It was very interesting for me, because like I mentioned earlier, I have wanted to talk with Arab women my entire time here.  Mainly I have only seen them in passing and have never had any meaningful interaction with them except for our boss, as work.  I was surprised to find that instead of closed off women who did not wish to talk, I found women who were very accommodating and interesting in what a random American who speaks very bad Arabic was doing out in the middle of no where talking about learning how to weave.  After getting a tour of the ceramics and weaving areas, I informed them I would be back the following day (Sunday) after work to begin classes in weaving.  I was then asked to sit down with the director of the center who was very nice and found out that her cousin who was sitting beside her, Naeem, spoke extremely good English and was preparing to go back to school to earn a masters degree in Geography.  She asked that I help her practice English when I am at the center and I told her that I can help her in anyway possible.  It was very nice, and I then went and sat near the caves and pondered/read a book for a few hours.

Me attempting to create a beautiful hand-made Jordanian Shawl

  Since my first encounter at the Handicraft Village I have returned twice with Austin after work.  The women have opened up to us immensely and apparently find us quite attractive (which was a completely unexpected occurrence).  In fact, the first day we visited they even fed us lunch which made it the first time I have ever eaten a meal with an Arab woman in this country.  They are extremely nice and accomadating, and are allowing us to work on Shawls that they are doing to fulfill an order in the United States.  Can you imagine the label on those shawls, the people think they are getting ones made my little Bedouin ladies from Iraq Al-Ameer and instead the label reads "Hand woven by extremely tired American Interns for the Ministry of Social Development."  Oh well, what they won't know won't hurt them right?  Basically, I am having a wonderful time learning how to weave and find it to be a very tiring and labor intensive process.  Not only do I understand them and theirs lives better, but I also understand why the industrial revolution rocked so much.

My Arabic name is Mohanned which means Sheath,
Apparently it is because I look like this fellow
who is an extremely famous Turkish Television Star.

  Perhaps the coolest contrast to see is the difference between these same women when we are talking to them in private, and when we enter the public sphere and get on the bus.  In private they are vibrant, fun and talkative.  They make jokes, laugh hard and can be seen to enjoy life immensely.  In contrast, when we board the buses these same women are solemn, closed and completely quite.  They do not say hello and do not register our proximity.  It is not my place to judge whether or not this is appropriate or good.  This is simply my observation, instead, I simply find it interesting and enlightening.  Some would say this means that the woman are belittled and demeaned but I do not know.  I think I need more information and understanding in order to form an opinion on this point.  To close, our boss informed us today that the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, said that knowledge should be gained first by observation, then by listening and last of all with questions.  This is much the opposite of how we look at it in the west and we must remember this as we seek to learn about the Middle East and it's people.

Syrian Sunset

   Well, I'm a little behind in multiple different ways but this past weekend I saw Syria!  Can you believe that?  I saw frikin Syria which I think is so darn cool.  Also, judging from what I saw... all of the Media is lying.  Seriously, the only explosion I saw was fireworks and there was no sign of gun fire or tanks.   Seriously, our media must be lying because my first hand extensive knowledge says they are wrong ( haha, I hope everyone knows that I am joking).

  Maybe I should explain why I was chilling close to the Syrian border, especially since people are probably freaking out right now.  Well, the director of our program, Ralph Brown, was in country and was able to get all of us students invited to a huge dinner in Northern Jordan with a very powerful family he knows quite well.  So, after church on Friday we all pile into some vans and made the long trip up to what seemed like the Middle of nowhere.  It was amazingly gorgeous and surprisingly green from all of the agriculture.  Of  course the family we were eating with had to show us all of their property and expensive possessions so we go to see a lot of camels and I even got to ride one, bare back!

Once again, I feel like the best way to describe the day is through a number of pictures so here you go!

This is dozer, the huge bull camel I got to ride bareback.
I was the first person in the group so he wasn't angry
 yet but it was actually surprising enjoyable

Dozer's disgusting mouth after he became angry a little later.
Camels are huge and have disgusting mouths.

This is the sign on the outside of the camel pen.
  Apparently a camel can kill  you quite easily.
Maybe that's what that disgusting smell was...

That is Syria in the background.  Pretty cool photo in my opinion.

This is "Sophia" the pregnant white camel in a different pen that
absolutely love to be scratched under the cheeks.
Is she smiling at my kiss?

Just a cool picture in my opinion

The Syrian Sunset...

So yeah, this was the most eventful thing I did last weekend and it was a heck-of-a-lot of fun!  Also, if you ever want to ride a camel bareback, just let me know and I can give you some pointers!

The Arab form of Work...

This is how I center looked
when we got to work this morning

Sunday was pretty uneventful with us going to work for only a couple hours and mainly just watching other people do work.  On Sunday, however, I ate one of the most humble and delicious meals I have ever had with the Egyptian workers at the center.  They bought some pita bread, a can of tuna fish and a box of soft cheese.  The tuna and cheese they poured out onto plastic bags and then you would rip off a piece of the bread and grab some of the cheese or tuna and then drink some tea with it.  Honestly, the entire thing fed five people and it was amazing, and it made me so grateful for the many things I have back in America.  However, after one of our Jordanian co-workers saw us he said that that was a horrible meal and that he would show us a great meal tomorrow and then we would explore the caves that are nearby.  So, the rest of this post is going to be about Monday which was absolutely amazing!
  First of all, we showed up to work late because our boss from the previous day told us there wouldn't be much to do and it was alright if we showed up at 10:30 or later if we wanted.  So, we got to the center a little after 10:30 and then did the obligatory sit around for awhile and make small talk that we can't really do because we (or at least I) don't know enough Arabic.  By the time we started moving furniture and doing a bit of cleaning it was almost 11 and we were told that the painters would not be coming that day to finish it and so there wasn't much that we could do anyway.  So, we moved a little bit of furniture around and swept out the corridor and the front area with horribly inadequate tools.  Once that was finished we decided we would go clean up the play area which was covered in discarded building supplies.  So, we asked Mahmud if he had some gloves and he said, "No".  So then we asked if they had a rake, and he said, "No".  We then decided that we could work with a shovel so we asked him and he said, "No".  Finally we decided all we needed was a wheelbarrow but once again he said, "No".  So finally we said, well then what do you have?  Mahmud then proceeded to hand us a broken old plastic bucket and were able to find a dustpan to use as a shovel.  It was epic.  So, we simply did the best that we could cleaning up the area and after our hour of work was done and there was nothing else to do Mahmud took us on an adventure!

Mahmud and I at lunch

  Our adventure consisted of visiting the local Women's Co-op where they hand-made paper, ceramics, wove and made soap.  It was awesome and they gave us brochures talking about how we could get them to teach us how to make these things for not that much money at all.  It was an amazing place, but it only got better when we sat down to eat lunch. which was also epic!  We had for lunch a traditional bedouin breakfast where everything was in communal dishes that you ate by taking a chunk of pita bread, ripping it off and dipping or grabbing whatever it was that you wanted to eat.  The food included awesome jelly, scrambled eggs, olive oil, yoghurt sauce, cucumbers, tomatoes (which I didn't touch) and the most amazing potatoes ever.  It was amazingly good because of the simplicity, versatility and vitality of the food.  It was so fresh and raw that it was amazing to have.  Quite a change from the processed food that I must normally eat.  Once we were stuffed fool and wanted to go into a food coma from the delicious meal Mahmud led us across the street to explore the caves that had been carved from the solid rock walls.

Some of the caves I got to explore today

  The caves were really cool, and that is an amazing understatement.  Something I love and find sort of disturbing at the same time is that no sights are really protected in Jordan that I have seen so far.  You can pretty much crawl over any ruin you see and touch anything you want unless the government makes it physically impossible for you to do so.  This means that while seeing the caves we got to explore and climb through every nook and cranny looking for fun things to see and talk about.  It reminded me a lot of when we would explore the cave dwellings of the Native Americans in New Mexico all the time as a family.  I was constantly seeing new things and analyzing the things that I saw.  It was amazing, however, because these caves were so much older than the ones I had seen in the United States and they were so much more sophisticated as well.  A number of the caves had carved rectangular doorways and were multiple stories tall.  There was also a sophistacted system of writing that was extremely interesting to analyze and think about what it said.  We spent a solid two-hours there so all together we worked for an hour and then spent the next three chillaxing and enjoying ourselves exploring our region.  It was so much fun and I am definitely going to go back to learn how to weave and make paper, not to mention have another delicious meal!
  Anyway, the rest of the day wasn't really anything to highlight but tomorrow is Aid Istiklal or independence day for Jordan and there are supposed to be some pretty sweet celebrations and a parade by the army that the King might even be in!  I'll tell you how it went tomorrow!

Fun Fact:  It is the arab way to just make do with what you have or fix it as many times as possible until it breaks into a million pieces.  For instance, when I asked for a screwdriver at work I was given a Knife and when a bed broke in our house we nailed it back together and coated it with what smelled like Elmer's glue.  It's very cool.