Hey all,
I am writing this blog post as much for myself as an account of the epic-ness that was today as I am for all of you who are checking up on me. Today was epic--ep. ic. Nothing short of serendipitous. And I think we owe it all to Moses. Here's how...
So, today started with me trying to organize a group of folks to visit Mount Nebo, a mountainous area famous for being the place where Moses died (at 120!). If you're not up on Moses lore, as I wasn't prior to coming to Jordan, there's a lot of cool stories about him. Besides the whole parting of the Red Sea business, Moses was the only prophet to ever speak directly to God, and he was apparently the strongest and coolest prophet ever. Yes, the coolest. I'm sure many of you know the story about him showing up the Egyptian pharaoh by turning his staff into a snake (with God's help, of course--Moses was many things, but he was not a magician). Whether you're religious or not (and I am certainly not fundamentalist, i.e. I don't take this stuff word-for-word), I think we can all agree it's an awesome story. And, in general, Moses seems to have been pretty awesome.
Anyway, a bunch of the volunteers from different village groups met up in Madaba and we took some taxis to Mount Nebo to see Moses' old stomping grounds. This taxi-driving sheikh who had seen us the previous day hounded us all through the streets of Madaba to give us a ride to Nebo, but his price was too high. Finally, after like an hour of him following us and shouting new prices, we got a pretty good deal on two taxis for 4JD each, but it meant squeezing 5 of us into one and 6 into another. Consequently, I was pretty squished on the way to Mount Nebo. But, it was a hilarious ride, and this is how Rami and I felt when we got out of the car:
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| I think Rami had just made a haram (prohibited) joke. More like Ha-rami, right? Ohhh, Arabeezy (a blend of Arabi and Engleezy, the Arabic words for Arabic and English) puns! |
When we got to Mount Nebo, I noticed this funny sign on the way in to the touristy part at the summit. Only in this area of the world will you see not only a prohibition on eating/drinking and smoking in some tourist locales, but also a demand to "dress modestly." Awesome,
zay hake:
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| Dress modestly, or, according to the picture, don't wear shorts or...a Batman mask? |
The tourist center at the top of Mount Nebo was cool, and, per usual in Jordan, there were some neat old
fusayfusah (mosaics). But, I'll only show one picture here because I'm sure you've had your fill of Conor's mosaic shots by now:
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| Peacocks, man. Those guys would make anything into a mosaic. |
The views from the top of Mount Nebo were breathtaking. It is from here that Moses was said to have been able to see the "Promised Land." I'm not sure if the shot below is a picture of said "promised" land, or just other land that wasn't necessarily promised but was close enough that Moses probably saw that, too. Either way, it's land,
zay hake:
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| Mmm...landscape. |
Here's where the story gets interesting...
So, I had picked up a copy of Lonely Planet: Jordan from the Peace Corps library just in case I needed some information about a potential travel destination, and I didn't have internet access. Before leaving this morning, I checked out Mount Nebo in the Lonely Planet and found that it was also suggested for visitors to Jordan to see "Uyun Musa," which is a nearby area with a natural spring and small waterfall named after the prophet Moses, as he was said to have been here. People drink the water at the spring, and some think it has spiritual powers, I guess. In any case, if there was natural spring water with potential spiritual powers to be drunk, then I had to go. So, three other volunteers decided to join me, and we trekked to a sign,
zay hake:
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| A sign for Uyun Musa. Insha'allah, I will also see the Ma'in Hotsprings before leaving the Madaba area. |
The volunteers (Briana, Erin, Sarah L.) and I were skeptical of the several mile hike down to Uyun Musa and were lamenting the distance when, all of a sudden, a van pulled up next to us, and some dudes that Erin and Briana knew from their village were insisting that we hop in. So, of course, we made the logical move and jumped in. Hahaha...truth be told, it was quite a safe situation. The guys gave us a ride directly to Uyun Musa, which was where they were headed, too, to fill up a ton of jugs of Moses water. You can see them below,
zay hake:
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| Yes, the Moses water springs forth from that shady hole. Looks clean, huh? |
Now, I'm not about to visit Uyun Musa and be turned off by the fact that the environs suggest a dirtier-than-expected water. There might be spiritual powers, after all! So I drank some,
zay hake:
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| Well, not exactly zay hake...I did actually use my mouth. |
The water tasted fine, not unlike most water I've had in my life. After we had all quaffed (I think this means "drank"--I seem to remember getting it from Scrabble), we walked/climbed down to the other side of Uyun Musa, where the waterfall is.
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| Lots of green, which is unusual for this part of Jordan. Thanks, Moses! |
We went under the cavernous overhang and looked out from behind the tiny waterfall. It certainly felt like being in an oasis...despite all the trash. On second thought, it would have been oasis-like, if not for the trash. Luckily, this is a trash-free shot:
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| Phenomenal cosmic power! Itty-bitty waterfall. (Aladdin reference anyone?) |
Post-would-be-oasis, we found that our ride had taken off, so we decided to trek back to the road on foot. We took a "shortcut" at my suggestion, and we ended up a little off the beaten path. But, on the up-side, we saw this cool shepherd and got to pose with his goats! I took a great video of how attentively they follow him (which includes a donkey-and-dog caboose to the goat train), but I can't seem to get videos to play. One of these days I'll figure it out and just do a "Videos I've Promised in the Past" post. Anyway, goats and me,
zay hake:
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| Goats are enza in Arabic, and just plain awesome regardless of language. |
We passed the shepherd and his flock and kept trekking up the side of this hill, when we came upon a bush. It was too reminiscent of my mental image of Moses' own burning bush for me not to get a picture with it.
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| As you can see from my facial expression, I'm pondering all the wisdom I've received from the bush. Moments after this photo was taken, the bush burst into flames. Nah, not really. I wish... |
I don't have any pictures of the next phase of our saga, but it goes something like this:
We continued making our way up the side of this hill when we realized we were lost. I mean, not totally lost--we could see our endpoint, but we couldn't figure out how to get there since we had diverted from the road on my "shortcut." Haha. Anyway, we ended up on the outskirts of this
zeitoon farm, which we had seen on our way in. For a long time, we debated calling out to the woman who was looking down from her house high on the hill for help, until finally Bri just went for it. In broken Arabic, we tried to come up with a way to say, "Hey, we're lost! Could you help us get to the street?" It came out like this: "Peace be upon you! How we go? (gesturing) Like this?"
The woman came down from her perch and through the
zeitoon trees to help us. We opened with "We are all sorry. We don't know how to go," which she appeared to understand as she greeted us warmly and insisted that we join her for tea. Now, this is not an out-of-the-ordinary invitation. Everyone you see everywhere always insists that you join them for tea, but we've figured out that usually this is just polite, and it's polite for us to refuse. In this case, however, we all agreed that whether the woman's invitation was just polite or not, we were taking her up on the tea. We were all pretty thirsty and in need of a rest. She seemed happy to have us as guests.
We spent the next 20 or so minutes sitting on our host-and-savior's porch, which overlooked all of the valley that contains Uyun Musa and the like, drinking tea and smiling a lot to make up for everything we couldn't say in Arabic. The view was beautiful, and we told her so (something we could say easily in Arabic). The rest of our conversation was pretty piecemeal as she had effectively no English, and our Arabic is still, at best, toddler caliber. No matter, the whole experience was great, and our host and her son (who returned shortly after we had sat down to tea) were so hospitable and helpful. They pointed the way back to the main road, and we made it in no time!
The next dilemma was finding a ride from the road back to the Madaba city center. Given that today was a Friday (the beginning of the weekend here and a day that many Muslims don't work), we knew finding a taxi, bus, or
service (shared car/van) would be tricky and expensive if we did get one. Sure enough, our Moses juice kicked in again, and a man pulled up to us as we were walking along the roadside and offered us a ride. I asked him, "From here to Madaba, how much?" and he said, "It's finished," or "Don't worry about it." Now, sometimes this can be just polite, and I'm expected to say "No, no, I insist," but this man seemed genuine. And, we tried to give him money, but he refused.
As it turns out, he worked at the surgical hospital in Amman, and his English was great. So he talked in English, and we talked in Arabic (an altogether funny experience), and we had a great ride back to the city center. We thanked him profusely for his generosity. Immediately after touching down in Madaba, we got some falafel and shawarmas for cheap because we were starving. While we were eating in the restaurant (owned by an awesome Egyptian dude who gave us some free falafel), we got a call from Rami who reconvened with us to show off his new purchase...
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| His new purchase was the hat, not this goat-horn-turned-moustache that I found on our adventure today. |
Going under the pseudonym of Rami-ana Jones, our cowboy friend joined us while we ate and then took us to the secondhand clothing street to look for some new shoes (I had been wanting to get some new dress shoes). Erin and Sarah L. made some purchases (I couldn't find anything cheap or worthy enough), and we decided to keep walking down the street when we came up none other than...
buza!
Buza, which is Arabic for ice cream, is oddly in short supply around here. Tom and I have been talking about going on a
buza quest for some time now, but haven't had any luck. Now, with Moses water coursing through our veins, all the forces of nature aligned and plopped us unknowingly right in front of a new
buza place in Madaba. Too perfect. So, of course, we got some,
zay hake:
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| Team buza. Jealous? (This is funny because the word for "sit" in Arabic sounds like "jealous," and sit is exactly what we did next). |
I got two flavors, "Mars" (which tasted like a Mars bars) and some sort of raspberry cheesecake. Unreal. Thank you, Moses!
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| Zaki! (Delicious!) |
While in the ice cream place, a girl from the other table in the place came up to us and wanted to practice English, as she had heard us talking. She was in eighth grade, and her English was very good--we were all impressed. As it turned out, her coming over to talk to us had been merely a way of telling me that the group of girls thought I was cute. Haha! Then all of these little girls from the same group kept running up to me and saying silly Arabic things, like "I love you" and "So-and-so loves you" and the like. It was cute because they were so tiny, and one of them was still in the "I walk like a robot, and you can count on me to fall down every ten to fifteen seconds" phase. Rami and the other volunteers agreed that it must be something in the Moses water we drank that was again bringing positive attention to our group. Whatever the case it was flattering and harmless, and I smiled at the little ones as they shyly left the restaurant. Like clockwork, the youngest one wiped out right outside the door. Haha...oh babies.
We left the
buza joint shortly thereafter and headed home.
Wow...this whole thing was tiring to type. Not to mention the time it took to upload these photos. I'm pooped. I'm sure I left out a ton of stuff, but suffice it to say, that today was a good, good day. :)
Well, I love you guys, and I hope you enjoyed this little slice of my life.
Best,
كمال
P.S.
Theresa, you have no competition from my little admirers. Just thought you should know that I love you the most. ;)
