Blood, Tears and Broken Glass

August 7, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s a Friday night in down-town Amman, the streets are buzzing and Andrew and Mac are exploring an abandoned hospital. Yours truly chickened out of this particular venture. I guess that means I’m on lookout? Jeez, how lame does that make me sound…

It’s kind of creepy, sitting outside this tumbledown hospital with the sounds of breaking glass and echoed footsteps breaking the half-silence. Not to mention the dim light from Andrew’s phone flickering off the walls between the windows from time to time. Am I missing out? Very possibly. Will I regret it? Almost certainly. I’m not about to abandon my post, though. Call it a brush with foreign police once too often, but I’m calling shy this time. In the countryside, maybe, but not in the middle of the city on a Friday night. And especially not after watching As Above So Below last night. Not on my life.

We’re into our sixth week in Jordan. Three school weeks remain, and after that – who knows? I took out another two hundred and fifty dinars this morning. The goal is to make that last until the end. With any luck, that should just cut it, travel funds and all, although I have been known to be a little over-optimistic about this kind of thing. Jordan’s bus service may be criminally cheap, but the Amman taxi system is draining my resources at a ridiculous speed. And there’s no avoiding them either, and believe me, we’ve tried. Google Maps gave us an estimate of two and a half hours. We scoffed at that and called it one and a half. Turns out it was a three-hour job. We won’t be walking to down-town again any time soon – not when there’s shopping to be done. And I thought that living twenty minutes’ walk from any shops in Durham was problematic! Something to think about if you plan on staying in Amman. It wouldn’t be a problem if you lived down-town, of course, but up here in Tla al-Ali, it’s a different story. Please don’t buy my fervent dislike for the place, that’s just me and my city angst, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the cost of all these taxi rides – two dinars a throw – racks up fast. I’m looking forward to living in a town where everything is within walking distance.

Now that the end is in sight, though, it’s a lot easier to stay positive. I’ve got it into my head that I’m not coming back next year and that thought alone is keeping me going, no matter how hard I’m going to have to fight to make it so. Hence a slightly less bitchy, more reserved tone this time around. It’s a lot easier with the midterm depression out of the way. Any and all lingering ill tempers were successfully vented this afternoon with The Green Mile. Tears all round, as it should be. There’s no better way to get it all out than with the greatest tearjerker of them all. Next stop, 12 Years a Slave! (There’s a bit of a theme going on here…) Films aside, I’ve plenty of books to keep me going between now and then, thanks to the wonder that is iBooks and all the free material on offer. Best of all, I even stumbled across a book of Arabic short stories penned by none other than our very own Dr. Daniel Newman, which I simply have to get my hands on the next time I swing by Books@Cafe. For the time being, I’ve at least another twenty Henry Rider Haggard books to wade through, including the full Quatermain saga. Excellent stuff. Perfect travel fuel, too.

Although I’m swung to thinking that perhaps Ethiopia might be wiser than South Africa for potential backpacking. It’s just a hunch. Further research needed. BB x

Zulu Dreams

July 21, 2015July 21, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

We’re into the third day of recording this wedding present for Grace’s friend and that means the bedroom’s been turned into a makeshift recording studio once again. If that doesn’t raise a few eyebrows, try to picture it: we’ve opened the cupboard and rested the two mattresses against it, draping a duvet over the top as a mock-up boom and shut all the windows and doors. The result is actually pretty decent – as far as mattress-fort recording studios go. Grace is in the cupboard recording hers now so I’m in the next room with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade in my ears, trying to quell my recurring bouts of city angst. Replacing one noise with another can only do so much good, but I think I found a better solution.

Bit by bit I’m building a clearer idea of where I want to make my next adventure, and funnily enough it’s not a remake of Archie’s enviously-exciting Central American backpacking adventure. That ship has sailed. If the chance arises again one day, I’ll take it of course, but somehow I doubt it will. Lightning never strikes twice. As for me, I have my eyes on somewhere else, a place I’ve been orbiting, as it were, for the last seven years: South Africa.

Did that come out of left field? Probably not. The more you know me, the more rational a conclusion it is. For starters, this Cairo to Cape Town jaunt I’m so obsessed with was always going to end there. The only stage I’ve ever really been able to envisage is the last leg, cresting the veld and staring, at last, at the crystal waters of the Indian Ocean after a year or so on the road. I see myself throwing off my rucksack and racing into the water to fall, knees first, in the sand. That would be worth all the mileage, border bullies and nightmarish bureaucrats that’ll plague me along the way. It’s a scene that’s been playing on-and-off in my mind’s eye for years. That’s one reason.

I’d like to say Haggard started this. I’ve been reading one book of his after the other and I’m hooked. But it goes further back than that. My first girlfriend was half-Afrikaner. That’s where it really all began, I guess. Yes, it must have been; I remember talking to her aunt about her time as a game driver and falling in love with the place through words alone. Sure, that didn’t all pan out so well in the end, but like a flower in the ashes, I stumbled upon Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One (the film) a week after the breakup. No other film has ever affected me so strongly. It could have been the music, it could have been the red-haired heroine, or just as easily the people and the places. More likely than not, a combination of the lot – but especially the music. There’s something otherworldly about it. Amazulu – from the Heavens. How about Ukuthula, the Zulu spiritual that never fails to move me to tears? Or Miriam Makeba’s African Sunset, which is playing in my ears right now? Don’t forget the Circle of Life. I put so much of my heart and soul into the Zulu solo with the Northern Lights that I go weak at the knees whenever I hear that one, too. Fun fact: I was born just four days before The Lion King came out. It’s a sign, baby! At least, I’d like to think so.

I could point the finger at so many other reasons: a family connection to Steve Bloom; the film, Zulu; the Drakensberg; the Zulu language itself. Yeah, by this point I’m pretty damn-near decided. The main question is when and how. I reckon I should have saved up enough after next year’s teaching. If only I were going to Morocco and not Jordan next summer; I could save so much money towards it (quit complaining about Jordan and just deal with it, kid). It also means I can dedicate myself to learning Zulu on the side next year. I’ve always wanted to learn an African language. Arabic is just a means to an end. Zulu – now we’re talking. We’re talking Africa and talking Africa is the surest way to my heart. And it always will be. BB x

On Homeland and Missed Opportunities

July 15, 2015July 16, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I laid my hand upon his arm. “Ignosi,” I said, “tell us, when thou didst wander in Zululand, and among the white people in Natal, did not thine heart turn to the land thy mother told thee of, thy native land, where thou didst see the light, and play when thou wast little, the land where thy place was?”

“It was even so, Macumazahn.”

“In like manner, Ignosi, do our hearts turn to our land and to our own place.”

H. R. Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines (1885)

Last night I had a dream that landed me on a back lane somewhere in South Africa. Don’t ask me where, I’ve never been. I just had the feeling it was South Africa. Must be all the Haggard I’ve been reading. It’s doing no wonders for my Africa obsession. At any rate, it’s a decent distraction from the day-to-day, from all the work, and the world turning ever onwards miles and miles away.

I can’t remember which book it is, but I remember reading about somebody having one of those ‘if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?’ conundrums. You know, when you’re far away from home, out of sight and out of mind, and it seems perfectly natural that since you’ve been out of the loop, time’s been standing still back home. The fact of the matter is that it’s a delusion, obviously, but it’s a very easy one to fall into, ridiculous as it sounds. If not entirely, then out of desire. There’s a bit of you that wants it to be so, that wants everything to be just the way you left it when you set off, and it’s when travelling abroad that this little demon in the back of your head starts to play his games with full abandon. Now I’m not the homesick type, not at all – it’s only the state of quiet that I miss here in Amman, and that’s manageable here too, if you can get outside the metropolis – but I understand this FOMO vibe that some of the girls out here are talking about.

FOMO; it means ‘fear of missing out’. It’s a bit of a weak clause, especially out here – how are we missing out on anything when we’re in the Middle East, hightailing around Jordan’s sights every other weekend and generally having a good time? FOMO only makes sense if you’re doing nothing. Which is why it bothers me all the more that I sometimes let it get me down. Only a few months ago, before I found my way blocked and had to book two months in Jordan, I had plans to join a few dear friends on what promised to be the backpacking adventure of a lifetime across Central America, overland from Mexico City as far as Ecuador. That fell through with the British Council ultimatum. Then there’s the Edinburgh Fringe, which my dear companions at the Northern Lights will be performing at this summer; that also had to go out the window, along with my super fun well-paid summer job with the ELO team, in order to come out here. All three options had their ups and downs, of course, but in the end I never really had a choice. My course had to take priority and, like as not, here I am. And I guess sometimes I really do fear missing out.

But there’s no use in getting gloomy about it. Just because friends and family are having fun in lands far away from reach, it doesn’t mean you’re left out forever. People do amazing things all over the world every day. If you fear missing out on the cool stuff your friends are up to, you’re only really missing out on a fraction of all the wonderful things the world has to offer. And once you start down that road, you might as well be in a permanent state of FOMO as you’re missing out on everything by that logic. It’s not like you’ll never get another chance to try everything out for yourself at some point in the future, one way or another. And won’t it be so worth the wait? Smile.

I’m writing this in a hurry as I’ve class in a few seconds, hence the verbal scrawl. Besides, this is my message to myself, as usual, but you can take from it what you will, if you so choose. I just need to remind myself sometimes that there’s no use in wanting what you can’t get, if you can’t get it right away. The world is still young and there’s plenty of time. Allez allez! BB x

Man Cannot Live on Bread and Hummus Alone

July 8, 2015July 8, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Day-to-day life in Jordan rumbles steadily on. The haywire that was this weekend’s travel spree is over and we’ve been back to the five-hours-of-Arabic-a-day slog since Sunday. Sometimes I forget to breathe.

Here’s a snapshot of my daily routine. Woken up by the pneumatic drill outside at about half seven, if the sunlight doesn’t get me first. Breakfast of one of a variety of egg-based dishes that would make the creative minds behind Durham’s potato team sweat; fried, scrambled, thyme-infused green, veggie-packed omelette etc. Eggs, eggs, eggs. I thought I’d go full veggie out here, but at this rate I’m in danger of becoming a qualified ovivore. The fact of the matter is, eggs are the cheapest thing around. Fruit and vegetables, much as I’d like more of them, are frustratingly pricey in our neck of the woods. If you want variety in your breakfast, you have to go downtown. That’s like going shopping for your groceries in Central London. Barmy. Especially so when we’re paying $500 a month each for a two-room apartment in this ‘convenient’ district…

Class starts at eleven, but more often than not Andrew and I are in Ali Baba an hour in advance, if just to make use of the internet – a little slice of home. I’d use the excuse ‘I need to check my British Council’, but I’m not alone – we all do. The waiting game continues, almost eight months since application began. That’s usually a good time to review last night’s homework, too. Then it’s a two hour slog in Arabic until break at one, which lasts for twenty minutes – just enough time to rush home for a mug of tea and/or some sneaky hummus – and then back to work until three, with about two hours’ worth of homework on the books. We’d make a start on that immediately, of course, whilst we’re still in the zone, but at 3 on the dot we have our language assistant sessions, which means Arabic conversation for about an hour and a half. Once that’s over, we can finally get started on the homework… so by the time we’re done with the day’s work, it’s about six o’clock and the Ali Baba staff shut up for the night, at which point we split up and head home to collapse into bed for a well-earned two hour sleep – because by that stage of the day, we’ve little energy for anything else.

Wake up again at around eight thirty and read some Henry Rider Haggard. I’m into King Solomon’s Mines at the moment and I’m planning to bomb my way through his entire collection whilst I’m out here. Anything about Africa would do just fine for the time being; I’m still missing Morocco something awful, let alone Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. (If anybody knows any great fiction set in Africa, let me know – I’m on a reading streak like I haven’t known since I was twelve!) One or all of the girls might join us at around nine thirty, at which point we head to one of two locations: Doors Cafe, a shisha joint on the neighbouring street, or Downtown, where all the action is. It being Ramadan, nothing really gets going until about ten o’clock anyway. Even so, we’re not usually out that late, and like as not we’re in a taxi bound for home by midnight.

And so it goes, day to day. Amman’s not the easiest place to knock yourself out, so to speak, unless we’re talking in the literal sense, in which case it’s a simple matter of trying to cross the road; any one of the local drivers will do that for you. I didn’t expect much in the way of entertainment, it being a capital city – fun is what you make of it – but what this place lacks more than everything else is somewhere quiet and green. I’m glad I’m not alone in that regard; Eloise, also a country girl, is feeling the absence of it. After a costly bit of road-tripping last weekend, we’re going to take it easy this time around. If there were a decent park nearby, this’d be the time. In the absence of that, I think I’ll blow the dust off the novel and flex my writing muscles for a bit. I’m no athlete, so I guess I ought to be flexing a muscle of some description. BB x

A Distinct Lack of Bluebirds

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Two days until touchdown in Jordan. Officially speaking, that means my Year Abroad starts in earnest on Friday. Two words for that: country fudge. That sure came around fast. Two months in the Middle East yawning before me. A grey yawn rather than a black one, in that I don’t really know what to expect. I’ve done a bit of long-distance travel in Uganda and seen my fair share of Arab cities in Morocco – loved Fes, found Marrakesh over-hyped and absolutely loathed Casablanca – so I’m in the dark as regards Amman.

I’ve had loads of helpful suggestions from friends, friends of friends and their sixth-cousin-once-removed on what to see and do in the city, but if I’m honest, I’ve only skim-read most of them. Just once, I’d like to go somewhere without knowing the place inside out and back to front. That, of course, is more often than not down to copious procrastination, which requires you to have a lot of time on your hands; something which, for once, I don’t really have. Diving blindfolded, basically. It’s not the safest way to do it, but since when was the Middle East ever truly safe? (…nope, I’m not expecting you to follow that logic. I struggle with it sometimes) Of course, it’d feel a lot safer with all this outstanding admin tied up, over and done with, but I’m still wading through that. With a little luck, I’ll have most of it resolved by tomorrow evening. Fingers, as ever, well and truly crossed.

Fields of Gold

It’s good to be back in West Sussex again. I needed that two-day soujourn at home to see Dad and the bro – and the cats, one less than last time – but two days is barely long enough to settle in. It was more seeing like a snapshot of life back home: Dad out for work before eight, bro up and about on his bike a couple of hours later. I guess what I needed most of all was that long walk home along the cliffs. I’d forgotten just how long a walk it is: finding your way from Dover Priory station almost all the way to Walmer is a two hour effort at least. It’d be a lot faster if you could just walk along the road, of course, but the last time I tried that a police car ended up taking me the rest of the distance, with no shortage of suspicious glances. Never again. Besides, when the weather’s as fine as it was, the clifftops is the place to be on a summer’s afternoon.

Blue Skies over the White Cliffs of Dover

No place to be alone, though. In two hours and ten minutes of walking I never saw another lonely soul on the cliffs. But then, that’s nothing new. No shortage of families and lovestruck couples, however. And why not? It’s a stunning backdrop, once you get away from the noisy port down below. It was a little too hazy to see France clearly, but you could just about make out the shoreline on the horizon. Some of my companions – the ones who (wisely) stuck to their guns and studied French – are already working over there. I’ll be heading that way, too; only, a few thousand kilometres further. If only that flight could stretch just a little further and land me in Yemen. Bah, cut the middle man, just drop me somewhere in the Ethiopian Highlands. Gap Yah alert, but I’m having major Africa withdrawal symptoms right now. If I didn’t have this morbid disdain for cities, I might well have made a beeline for SOAS over Durham. Perhaps.

No regrets, though! There’ll be another time, I’m sure. In the meantime I’d better get packing, form-filling and brushing up on the Arabic; al-Kitaab’s gone neglected for over a month now. And then, and only then, will I try to decide between Ethiopia, South Africa and Cameroon as the next grand adventure… BB x