More from the Jordan of 2001...
I would really like to post pictures here, but haven't gotten my account from SIT yet. Until then, here's another slice of Jordan, slightly edited to protect identities...
"A short ride away from Irbid you find a small town called An-Ni'ma, home of *name deleted* who invited the other Wisconsin student and me over to dinner a couple of weeks ago. He lives next to his mother and paternal uncle, the latter of whom is irritating the former with his plans to marry a third wife, though he defends himself by pointing out that he's technically entitled to four. (Though I don't think polygamy is that common right now in Jordan.) The mother, a woman who appears to be approaching 70 mainly because of her weathered old face and missing teeth, was worried because the youngest of her eighteen children is getting ready to go study medicine in the United States, and while our host obviously made it through, she is quite a bit worried in this day when you hear such terrible things on the news about school shootings and the like, and just prays to God that everything will work out. She definitely liked us, apparently crediting the entire city of Madison with giving her son a degree. The paternal uncle's major curiosity was a bit more amusing; he had apparently heard that in the U.S. sibling marriage is quite common, a notion of which we readily disabused him. We also met two the the professor's sons, both engineering students, or "Technos," from the Jordan Institute of Science and Technology which made a previous appearance as YU's aborted engineering program and the campus to which is visible from the house we we visiting.
"Small towns like An-Ni'ma dot the Jordanian countryside. After our rather invigorating run-in with the police in Madaba, we wound up riding with a farmer named Issa. He has a brother in Ohio he hasn't seen in twelve years because of the problems involved in getting a visa. The United States is a hard country to enter simply because we're so paranoid that people will stay and use social services. Hence, before you get a visa, you must prove you can leave, as well as demonstrate such things as comprehensive health insurance. As you might imagine, this closes the country off to a lot of potential students whose families might sell their lands just to get one son an education, only to dump them into a poor job market where people who have a degree in computer science from Boston University now drive taxis in Irbid.
"Despite these economic problems, Jordanian hospitality continues unabated. Issa stopped on his farm to give us tea in the middle of his crops, and later at his house in a small town for juice and coffee. He also gave us a tour of his farm, of which I unfortunately don't remember much. His major crop is dates, and the small date trees are planted in neat rows next to the pasture where some Iraqi refugees in his employ herd goats and sheep. Jordan is in the middle of a bad two-year drought, which is why food costs are up this year. I can also say I've now had dates straight off the farm from both Jordan and Oman, and I still give the edge to Oman even though they had to go on an airplane ride first.
"We also wound up having tea with a guy who runs a rest house by the Dead Sea and who knew *name deleted*. He studies law at the University of Jordan. Professional schools are hard to get into here; just to apply to medical school you need to be in the 96th percentile on a standardized test, with the exception of the children of professors who need only rank in the 85th percentile. This guy, Issa, and the hotel seemed to have a semi-legal thing going with getting tourists to the Dead Sea more cheaply than the regular taxis, etc., but hey - it's all good."
"A short ride away from Irbid you find a small town called An-Ni'ma, home of *name deleted* who invited the other Wisconsin student and me over to dinner a couple of weeks ago. He lives next to his mother and paternal uncle, the latter of whom is irritating the former with his plans to marry a third wife, though he defends himself by pointing out that he's technically entitled to four. (Though I don't think polygamy is that common right now in Jordan.) The mother, a woman who appears to be approaching 70 mainly because of her weathered old face and missing teeth, was worried because the youngest of her eighteen children is getting ready to go study medicine in the United States, and while our host obviously made it through, she is quite a bit worried in this day when you hear such terrible things on the news about school shootings and the like, and just prays to God that everything will work out. She definitely liked us, apparently crediting the entire city of Madison with giving her son a degree. The paternal uncle's major curiosity was a bit more amusing; he had apparently heard that in the U.S. sibling marriage is quite common, a notion of which we readily disabused him. We also met two the the professor's sons, both engineering students, or "Technos," from the Jordan Institute of Science and Technology which made a previous appearance as YU's aborted engineering program and the campus to which is visible from the house we we visiting.
"Small towns like An-Ni'ma dot the Jordanian countryside. After our rather invigorating run-in with the police in Madaba, we wound up riding with a farmer named Issa. He has a brother in Ohio he hasn't seen in twelve years because of the problems involved in getting a visa. The United States is a hard country to enter simply because we're so paranoid that people will stay and use social services. Hence, before you get a visa, you must prove you can leave, as well as demonstrate such things as comprehensive health insurance. As you might imagine, this closes the country off to a lot of potential students whose families might sell their lands just to get one son an education, only to dump them into a poor job market where people who have a degree in computer science from Boston University now drive taxis in Irbid.
"Despite these economic problems, Jordanian hospitality continues unabated. Issa stopped on his farm to give us tea in the middle of his crops, and later at his house in a small town for juice and coffee. He also gave us a tour of his farm, of which I unfortunately don't remember much. His major crop is dates, and the small date trees are planted in neat rows next to the pasture where some Iraqi refugees in his employ herd goats and sheep. Jordan is in the middle of a bad two-year drought, which is why food costs are up this year. I can also say I've now had dates straight off the farm from both Jordan and Oman, and I still give the edge to Oman even though they had to go on an airplane ride first.
"We also wound up having tea with a guy who runs a rest house by the Dead Sea and who knew *name deleted*. He studies law at the University of Jordan. Professional schools are hard to get into here; just to apply to medical school you need to be in the 96th percentile on a standardized test, with the exception of the children of professors who need only rank in the 85th percentile. This guy, Issa, and the hotel seemed to have a semi-legal thing going with getting tourists to the Dead Sea more cheaply than the regular taxis, etc., but hey - it's all good."
posted by Brian Ulrich at
4:42 PM
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