Jordan

Old Habits

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

One month down. One month to go.

Life rumbles on in Amman. Compared to the whirlwind adventure of the last three posts, I’m afraid this one is a rambler, but I promised to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so it’s just as important to remind yourself that things truck on in distant lands in much the same way as they do back at home. Eloise mentioned yesterday that it was sometimes hard to imagine that other people – even our own classmates – are already taking their own year abroad in France, Italy, Cuba and the like. If you thought Durham was a bubble, jeez, you should see Amman. It might be a capital city, but the Ali Baba crowd is a select one, to put it lightly. That, too, is divided along the same lines as the kind you might expect to find in college, even amongst so few (uh-oh, Ben’s got his social goggles on again – watch out world).

Whoah, too much introspection. I blame yesterday’s class. We took an hour or two on discussing personalities in Arabic, which turned into a pretty intense therapy session for me (my apologies Andrew). What makes you angry? What makes you sad? If you could change one aspect of your personality, what would it be? Do you even like your own personality? Questions of that sort. It could drive a man crazy, especially one still struggling to pull together all ten aspects of his personality into one tangible construct. Maybe I’m thinking this one through too much. Introspection. I did warn you.

In other news, we decided to do something vaguely cultural the other day and took a trip to the Royal Cultural Centre to watch a Jordanian film, Theeb. All in all, a pretty fancy affair for a cinema outing; guards at the door, a full-body scanner in the entrance hall and men in traditional dress stepping out of chauffeured cars. Not exactly your regular Vue jaunt. The reason became clear as the film drew to a close: it turns out that the entire cast of the film were sat just two rows in front, for whom the organisers had set up some kind of awards ceremony in the most eloquent classical Arabic I’ve heard out here yet. Classy. Almost as classy as Andrew and I sipping from orange mirinda all the way through the film. Theeb itself was a seriously good film. You might have heard of it; that 2014 award-winning film about a Bedouin boy who loses his family in a raid and ends up befriending his brother’s killer. Heavy stuff.

But perhaps I should tell you about the Jordanian cinema routine which, I should point out, is a very different kettle of fish. To kick things off the national anthem play and everyone stands in solemn salute – just about the only moment when nobody is talking in the whole affair. Once the film’s under way, it’s a free-for-all. The hero did something impressive? That’s a round of applause. The villain got his comeuppance? That’s always applause-worthy. A tense moment? Yeah, a bout of hysterics from the audience will stop that right up. Oh, and why not add to the soundtrack with that made-for-frustration smartphone whistle ringtone whilst you’re at it? I don’t get it, Jordan. I don’t get it. Or maybe the British are just too hesitant when it comes to the movies. Haven’t you ever felt the need to applaud midway through a film?

Jamie Woon’s Lady Luck is playing in my ears as the clock hits 11:00 on the dot. Class. I’d better get going. BB x

  

Sunstroke

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

I’ve never felt so spent. More than once today I felt myself on the edge of what I could stand. Dana almost defeated us all, but it was the Sun that dealt the coup de grace.

I find myself collapsed in the shade of a fir tree halfway up the mountain on the winding path back to Dana. Andrew’s gone on ahead to get water. He’s been a real hero, egging me on up the mountainside, but I’ve slowed to such a dreadful crawl that to keep him waiting would be nothing short of torture, what with the Sun enacting merciless fury upon us all. I can only hope he doesn’t think too little of me for my lack of staying power. Working out may be a new thing for me, and true to form I’ve been none too quiet about it in my usual late-to-the-party mode, but this is something else. I can’t even see where the others have got to; MacKenzie shouldn’t be all that far behind – he was trailing us by just one bend a little while back – but there’s no sign of Kate and Andreas. I do hope they’re alright.

My heartbeat has slowed to a beat every half-second; it was pulsing like a war drum when I crumpled under the tree about ten minutes ago. Before that I’d been desperately seeking shade like some kind of wretched insect, curling up head-down behind woefully inadequate slabs of sandstone to dip my head beneath a foot or less of cool shadow. Frodo’s climb of Erebor might not have been too dissimilar; in my dehydrated insanity I even considered crawling some of the distance, when my legs felt like they might give way and my head started spinning. It’s not even the sweat that’s the problem, I’ve gone beyond that. Even here in the shade, it’s the lack of water that’s choking me. I’m drowning in hot air. Every breath feels like sandpaper in my throat. You can’t see it, but the air is full of dust, thrown up from the desert rolling out to the horizon at the foot of this canyon, some six or seven kilometers to the southeast. The mountains take their own prisoners, but desert mountains are in an especially villainous league of their own.

McKenzie just passed by. He’s still soldiering on, despite having free-climbed the cliff wall with Andreas just over an hour ago. How he has the strength for this I’ll never know. Christ, I’m out of shape. And to think that the original plan was to strike out for Petra from here. It beggars belief. I suspect we’d need a lot more than just two bottles of water to keep the five of us going. Ugh, water. It doesn’t bear thinking about. My mind can only picture two things at the moment: intense heat or gushing cold water. Both, as you can imagine, are tortuous in the extreme.

But this heat, though… It must be pushing forty. What could drive a man to seek adventure in this merciless heat? It’s dizzying enough without the climb, and there’s precious little cover, what with the Sun bearing down with unfettered ferocity on this face; just a couple of boulders and trees on the way up are tall enough to offer fleeting sanctuary. I’ve never been so exhausted, spent in every way, from my toes to my eyes. If I could put a name to it – other than a very bad idea from the outset – I’d call it sunstroke. Thick wooly walking socks and a swollen toe from this morning’s roof-jumping escapades didn’t help matters. If it weren’t for Andrew’s breathing exercises, I’d have just about given out, I reckon. Again, the man is a hero.

I hear footsteps in the distance, running. Ah – here comes MacKenzie again, bottle of water in hand. Salvation! The five thousand weren’t more grateful for all that fish and bread than I am at this sight. Enough, cruel Sun, I concede defeat; I’d quite like to return to Dana alive, if just to put an end to this despondent surrender. Over and out. BB x

Multiple Personalities

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

My stomach hurts from laughing so hard. The view of the night sky from the roof of the Dana Tower Hotel is really something special, Milky Way, shooting stars and all – and yet I’ve spent the last two hours face-down on my mattress choking on laughter. And all because of the wonderful invention that is Psychiatrist.

Today has been, without a shadow a doubt, the most ridiculous series of adventures yet. I’m all fired out from the mind games we’ve been playing, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg – the last of a long sequence of madcap antics since waking up at Nancy’s this morning. The family rustled up a wonderful breakfast for us in much the same line as the night before: energy food galore. Andrew and I crept away to write the family a thank you letter and packed our bags into a corner of the room to go. The family came in and served tea, and there we were, in what can only be described as a hospitable but highly awkward state of siege. We wanted to get on our way, but at the same time we kept being denied the opportunity; on our second attempt, just as we’d reached a decision, we were invited to join them for mansaf, which we couldn’t really deny, seeing as they’d already started. Then followed several rounds of ‘the Moon is in the Spoon’, which only the father of the family could get his head around, and he didn’t even play a single round with us. Another hour and a half later it was pushing three o’clock and they looked to be after a second night, which had to be postponed if we should ever get to see Dana at all. We had four oranges we could have given them as gratitude but it seemed more awkward a gift than none at all, paltry as it was. So having got them out, we packed them back into the bag and made our broken farewells before finally crossing the threshold and striking out for the road, though not before receiving another invite should we ever be in Tafileh again.

The next half hour was a world away. From the almost entirely female household of Nancy’s world we moved on to a minibus carrying half a platoon of Jordanian soldiers on their way to a wedding party, though it could just as easily have been a stag night, for all I know. It certainly sounded as much. The ringleader tried to press cigarettes on us all in turn whilst a guy in the row in front of me kept slapping his chest and yelling “sniper, sniper – best in Jordan”. Climbing aboard was a bit of a rogue move, since we didn’t really know where it was going, but it ended up to be heading our way, and it was totally worth it for the experience. When we were finally dropped off in Ar-Rashādiyya, we were well and truly worn out. The following minibus ride to Dana was notable only in that I lost any and all feeling in my legs; the driver loaded the five of us plus one of the grunts into his ride, kitted out with a very inconveniently placed sub-woofer, so that I had to endure a twenty minute drive sat sideways with my legs crushed between the dashboard, my bag and the grunt’s physique, with the driver ramming the gear stick into the small of my back every few minutes. By the time we got to Dana I felt like I’d been amputated.

Dana is beautiful, though. Maybe it’s because we’re here in the lowest of low season, but it was almost deserted. Not a modern construction in sight and plenty of scrambling opportunities; almost stone for stone the way I wanted it to be. We scrambled up the mountainside for a killer sunset over the canyon before dinner, which was well worth the extra dinars, though being stuffed to the gills with Nancy’s mansaf we were hard-pressed to do the chef justice. So to kill time (and an unusually full stomach) I introduced the team to Psychiatrist. Chaos ensued, as it invariably does with that madcap thinking game, but at least I saw it played properly for the first time. The lack of alcohol really does help.

Sounds like everyone’s kipped out. Andrew and Andreas stopped talking a few minutes ago. I guess I’d better follow suit. Early start tomorrow. My walking boots are so ready for this. BB x  

Beautiful People

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Dear Jordan,

If I doubted you before, I must apologize now. I judged you by the opening couple of pages and now, as I look out across the golden hills of Tafileh, I see just how wrong I was. There’s no constant rumble of cars here. No horns, no screech of brakes. Not even the sound of the megaphone call to prayer. Just birdsong: roosters crowing at the dawn, sparrows chittering away in the scrub and that oh-so African call of the mourning dove. And this isn’t even Africa.

We were supposed to be waking up in Dana Biosphere Nature Reserve this morning. For all intents and purposes, we might as well be. I’ve seen more kinds of birds in the last five minutes than in the last three weeks in this country; from my post on the edge of a rise just in front of the house, I can see finches, wheatears, larks and doves in abandon. There’s even a rather gorgeous sandy-coloured shrike that keeps coming over for a look-in; I’m not sure what she is, but I’ll bet she wouldn’t be averse to a breakfast of one of the little scorpions I’ve seen lazing about. Oh, and here come the bulbuls, like the coda to the symphony. I’m in seventh heaven. Forgive me the nature nausea for this slice of paradise, as I intend to get very drunk on it.

A little back-story; I have some explaining to do. After all that sirri-mirri at the police station yesterday, we hurried back to the flat to grab our bags and hit the road. Five of us – Andrew, Andreas, Kate, MacKenzie and I – decided to spend a night or two at Dana, a nature reserve in the mountains to the south. Most everyone else had an afternoon spent lounging at the Dead Sea on their minds, and I don’t blame them for even a second. We got to the bus station in time for the second-to-last bus for Tafileh alright, but it was pretty packed, so the driver put us on the next. This turn of fate, and having the ever-resourceful Kate Brocklesby with us (read about her experience here), contrived to produce the miracle sitting before us, and I’m not talking about the kettle of piping-hot tea (although I could, and at length). During the three-hour bus ride out of Amman, where we all had ample opportunity to practise our Arabic, Kate got practically ‘shotgunned’ by a group of young women who were keen to try their English, one in especial, Nancy. I don’t know how, but as we pulled into Tafileh and braced ourselves for a tough search for an ongoing minibus to Dana after dark (there are no places to stay in this town), Kate told me that we had an invitation for dinner from her new friends. I’d also had a streak of luck with the driver who had arranged a very cheap minibus for us, but sometimes you just have to decide between two good offers and, after a few seconds’ thought, the answer seemed pretty obvious.

That’s how we ended up sitting around the garden a few hours after sundown, discussing animal noises with the hookah bubbling away in the background. I’d imitated owls, doves, monkeys and gazelles before the night was up. I haven’t had a more entertaining evening in ages. Nancy, the oldest daughter of the family and an aspiring tour guide, served us tea and coffee before treating us to a feast of a dinner: bread, labneh, tomatoes, olives, cheese, and even an omelette or three. But, at last, no hummus. I could have cried for the beauty of this change in repertoire. Seven they were in total: three daughters between nineteen and thirty, two younger children aged five and ten, the mother-in-law and the father of the house. For the first time, a very woman-orientated homestay. And a homestay it was too, for when they learned of our plans they offered to put us up for the night and even help us on our way the next day. How could we say no? How could anyone say no? Even if I did have to serve as Andrew’s flak-shield/reverse wingman for the first half of the night. Year Abroad Leaderboards aside, an unexpected marriage proposal would be a very awkward, not to mention inconvenient affair (mudhik, just kidding!).

Nancy said her sisters thought me wasīm, which apparently means handsome (but don’t ask me why, as I haven’t shaved properly in weeks and have this weird DiCaprio goatee going on). Worse, I’ve been selected as the ‘most beloved one’ (whatever that means) because of – would you believe it – my blue eyes, my nose (arrrrghhhh) and the fact that I look like “both a boy and a man at the same time.” As Andrew put it, I was “complimented and emasculated in one sentence.” As for why I took the fire, I don’t know, but I suspect it may or may not have something to do with Andrew breaking ranks and talking volubly about his girlfriend; the final line of defense. They, at least, are beautiful people as far as I’m concerned, inside and out. White-hearts, as a woman in Morocco once put it to me. Here’s that true Arab spirit I’ve been searching for for so long. As ever, you simply need to put a few miles between yourself and the capital. Tafileh may be the butt of many a yokel joke in Amman, but I’d back this place over the capital any day. I had the chance to meditate last night – much to our hosts’ amusement – beneath a canopy of stars in a silky-black sky and I feel so much the better for it. Here is a family I will try to remember in case I should return; such silver generosity is hard to come by and I should like to repay the favour some day, as I promised myself with dear Abd el-Rahman Rajji, the Berber. My faith in this country and its people has been restored and not before time, too.

All my love,
BB x

Bureaucracy is a Terrible Beastie

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Go to the Police Station over in Sweileh, they said. It’ll be a simple procedure, they said. Simple my arse. This is more old-school bureaucracy than an entire flotilla of ICPCs.

If I didn’t appreciate the orderly British queueing system before, I certainly do now. Arabs, it must be said, don’t do queues. It’s a total free-for-all here in the visa extension office of the Sweileh Police Station. Behind the crush for the three front desks, of which only one is currently manned, a Syrian woman is snoozing in one of the chairs whilst two of her excitable children race around the pram of a third. That Sudanese guy who keeps pushing in front is wandering about with a cheeky grin on his face. Half of the staff behind the glass look as if they’re somewhere far away – Fiji, perhaps – and Andrew is at breaking point, cussing and swearing at every wrong turn. What with the amount of wrong directions, backtracking and blue-stamping we’ve had to go through to get here, I don’t blame him. No, you need the blue stamp, right corridor, last door on the left. Yes, we need to renew our visas, not buy exit ones. No, you don’t need to wait. ‘You just have to keep asking,’ says Samir, an electrical engineer turned maths teacher with flawless English. He, like almost everyone else in this room, is waving a passport that is most certainly not Jordanian; in his case, it’s Kenyan, though I’ve seen examples of Thai, Philippine and Tanzanian as well. Immigrant labour, I don’t doubt; I’m told that cheap household workers are often brought here to pitiful salaries. What a world…

Yalla yalla yalla. At least the guy in the back of the room is actually looking at our passports now, albeit with just about the same interest a five-year old might show to an issue of The Economist.

Gah! Just as it looked like we were done here, our visa guy just dropped the passports face-down on the desk behind the glass and sauntered back to his desk. Very helpful of you, bud. Samir has left us, leaving us to face this sulky crowd of office workers and timid maidservants-to-be on our own. Come to think of it, we really are alone; everyone else seems to have concluded their affairs. The last African woman left the room a minute ago. It can’t take more than five minutes or so to sign a form or two, right? Especially when we’ve already filled out half of it… What the hell is taking our guy so long?

My bad. Our passports have been ready to collect for the last ten minutes. Turns out all we had to do was ask – just like Samir said. No papers, no waiting, not even any additional stamps required – just plain human interaction. Oh, bureaucracy. BB x

Zulu Dreams

/ 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

Humdrum

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

‘Hope you’re having a lovely time, I know Amman has been less than ideal.’

I tire of city living. I guess having my three-day escape to Egypt pulled out from under my feet threw me off target, but I seem to have sunk back into one of those despondent ‘I could be doing something so much better with my time’ moments. Maybe if I set a few things straight, the affair might make a little more sense.

I never really wanted to go to Jordan. I didn’t have much of a say in the matter – you can blame international politics for my limited options – so I just went along with it as a necessary next step in my language degree. I had my eyes on Syria way back when I started my course, before al-Assad, the civil war and the chaos that ensued. I then turned my attentions onto Egypt, and then there was all that palava was Morsi and the army shooting people on the street. One more magical destination to be crossed off the list. I guess I fell in love with Morocco shortly after that, it being the only other feasible North African destination; doubly so after two weeks’ travelling in the kingdom over the Easter Holidays. So when I was told I had no option but to spend four months in Amman, bookending my assistantship with the British Council, it was a bit of a bombshell. In my department’s defence I didn’t put up much of a fight – what could would it have done? There’s not a lot I can do to solve the political cat-fight of the Arab world, if just so that I could spend a couple of months in a country of my choice. Whatever the weather, that’s all I have: two months apiece. So it’s not so terrible a loss.

The primary concern is the apathy that this place instils me with. Had I been able to go to Damascus, Cairo or Fes, places I’d hungered after for years, I might have been able to overcome my city angst – maybe. The trouble with Amman is that I just find myself wanting to be somewhere else all the time, and that does no wonders for my Arabic. I can’t even say it’s a general problem either, since it doesn’t seem to be affecting Andrew, Kate, Katie or Eloise in the slightest. Maybe they’re just hardier human beings than I. But I’m seriously feeling the absence of a green space. Andrew asked an hour ago whether I knew if there was anywhere outside we could go and sit to read/study in peace. The truth is, there isn’t. The cars are always blaring. Music’s always playing. People are always shouting. The peace I’m looking for is to be found far out of town, and at this time of year, that comes at the price of dry, dusty emptiness. That’s the biggest problem of all; the countryside around Amman isn’t even worth escaping to because it’s a dust bowl.

Whinge whinge whinge. Andrew’s right, I’m not exactly in the best of moods today. I want to be in Spain already, settling into my job in a location that’s not more than a stone’s throw from open country and mountains – mountains. Rivers. Life. None of this city nonsense. Town mouse, field mouse, remember? One of the main reasons I set myself to the study of languages was to challenge myself to overcome one of my greatest fears, and that’s talking to people. In retrospect, that was a very costly challenge. I could have done an all-essay subject and come off the better – perhaps. Similarly, I tried to console myself before coming out here that maybe a couple of months of city living might cure me of my disdain for that kind of environment. In truth it’s only consolidated my belief that, whatever happens to me in life, I will never be living in a place like Amman – by choice or by force. Somewhere that can sap me of even my desire to travel can be doing me no favours.

On the plus side, I’ve discovered that if I sit on the end of my bed with the window open, I can access the WiFi from the school across the road, so I won’t need to pay to go to a cafe to send emails anymore. That’s a plus.

Chin up Ben, life’s not so bad. I just find myself wishing, as ever, that for something as important as the year abroad, which is supposed to be a life-changing chance to throw yourself into the culture of a different part of the world, I’d had a hand in the throwing part, rather than being sent out here.

But there’s a silver lining to every cloud. All of this has convinced me (along with all the reading I’ve been doing of late) that I want nothing more from life than to be a writer, and I’m arming myself at long last with the reading to better my craft. Per ardua ad astra, and all that jazz. BB x

On Homeland and Missed Opportunities

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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

Deliverance

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

My heart’s soaring. Not least of all because I’ve got my Africa playlist on full blast, but that’s not the real reason. Eights months and x days after submitting my paperwork to the Year Abroad office at Elvet Riverside, I finally have a destination. Next year has a name at last and it’s VILLAFRANCA DE LOS BARROS.

I’d love to dive right into an entire evening’s worth of trawling, if just to get a real feel for the place and its environs, but that’s easier said than done with a murderous-looking Arabic comprehension in for tomorrow. Even without that, Ali Baba shuts at six o’clock, at which point Andrew and I go necessarily radio silent until ten o’clock the following morning. (It’s a liberating existence, being completely out of contact for half a day, every day – I highly recommend it). So no aimless surfing tonight. But according to Wikipedia Vilafranca de Los Barros is known as the City of Music, which means the wizards at the British Council know what they’re doing. I owe them that much. It’s also in a very decent spot indeed, in a town large enough to have most convenient amenities, a lively atmosphere and possibly a good range of accommodation options. It might not be as small a town as I wanted, but that might not be such a bad thing. At least it’s smaller than Amman. At any rate, it’s close enough to a serious mountain range to keep me satisfied. As expected, Google Images isn’t swimming with material, even in a town of some 14,000 inhabitants, so Villafranca de Los Barros gets to keep a little mystery from me for the time being. And that’s no bad thing either.

Andrew zoned out a couple of minutes ago. He’s still waiting for the Versailles branch of the BC to get back to him with similar details. Trust Spain to jump the gun for once and beat France to it! We’ve been working flat out as usual (and working out flat to boot, every morning – my limbs are getting mutinous) so he’s taking a well-earned nap. The air con’s on and it’s going to stay that way for a little while longer. As for me, I’m going to spend the next hour or so finishing King Solomon’s Mines and then learning as many animals and birds in Arabic as possible after finding myself at a loss in this morning’s Arabic Alphabet game. Sure, osprey might not exactly be a word you use everyday, but who wouldn’t want to drop iqāb nisārī (essentially, Judgement Hawk) into a conversation? They might not have been very inventive at naming the swan, the cormorant or the manatee, but the Arabs sure knew how to put a name to a bird of prey. BB x

Thick as Mince

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The beginning of another week in Amman. I’m sitting in my usual spot by the window, watching the cars racing by and recovering from four straight hours of Arabic before this afternoon’s language assistant session. My guy’s a professional photographer, which means we have at least one common interest, but he’s also a race car whiz – in his own words, the smell of diesel and the sounds of screeching brakes are two of the most beautiful things in the world – so in reality we’re sitting on opposite sides of the fence. But he’s keen, so I’ll give him that. I just might not be chomping at the bit to go drifting at the city racecourse anytime soon, much to Andrew’s chagrin (though I’ve told him he’s more than welcome to go in my stead).

Compared to last week’s whistlestop tour of northern Jordan, this weekend was more of a sequence of minor misadventures. We got to the citadel at last, timing our arrival with the middle of the day (not my idea). The agamas were loving it, sunning themselves in their droves atop the crumbling ruins of the Temple of Hercules and the Umayyad Palace, but the heat was a little too intense for us. I found a relatively quiet spot in the heart of the ruined palace to sit still and meditate for a bit, but if I could find a nearer spot that doesn’t have an entry fee, that’d be grand. We also ended up in a five-star hotel in downtown Amman which was a strange experience indeed, and one that I don’t think I’ll be repeating anytime soon. There’s something about luxury that I’ve never been all that comfortable with. Oh wait, here comes Adnan. I’ll be back in an hour, folks.

Taxi rides are getting a lot more entertaining than usual, the clearer ‘Amia becomes. Most of the drivers are Palestinian, and if you can get by their thick accents, you’re in for more than one ride. On the way into town in search of reasonably-priced vegetables, we get talking about the difficulties of travel in Jordan and beyond, and because I’m in the car, talk turns to finding a way into Syria. The driver takes his hands off the steering wheel mid-speed and wields an invisible machine gun at Andrew. ‘Takka-tak tak. You die. You go Syria, you die.’ That puts an end to that matter. For now. I’m not giving up on Damascus that easily.

As for the vegetables, we found ’em. Two dinar for the lot: carrots, aubergines, tomatoes, onions, garlic, courgettes, ginger, pepper… You name it. Health in a bag and doesn’t it feel amazing! Time to rustle up something decent that doesn’t contain eggs, and none too soon neither. I wonder why everything’s five times the price in our neck of the woods?

Also, Arab DVD shops. I’d plum forgotten just how jammy they are. Seven films for a couple of quid. If we’re still uncomfortable with the idea of video piracy in the West, the Arabs got over their scruples long ago. The result? A monstrosity of a Nicholas Cage film, so indecipherable that it was actually really quite entertaining – in a watching-Inception-whilst-drunk kind of way. Still, it’s about time we had a mascot. If Dolly Parton was our Ugandan celebrity, why not tout Nicholas Cage for Jordan? (I should really get out more often…) BB x