فلوس قلوس فلوس

منذ وصولي إلى الأردن كان عندي سؤال ما وجدت جواب له عن “من اين كل الفلوس الموجودة؟” مثل ما قلت من قبل, الحياة قي الأردن غالية جدا لكل شي إلا المستلزمات (وليس ممكن أن أي شخص يعيش بقهوة وفلافل فقط) غير أنه يبدو أن معظم الناس لا يكسبون فلوس كثيرة. بنفس الوقت يبدو أن يكون موجود هنا في عمان كمية هائلة من الأشخاص الغنيين جدا ... أو على الأقل هذه كانت اتباعاتي الأولى حتى الآن فكمحاولة لتحسين فهمي عن الوضع الحقيقي قليلا, عمات بحث في الانترنات واستطلاع الرأي مع اكثر أشخاص ممكن حولي وحصلت على المعلومات والآراء التالية

الأردن ليست بلد غني خدا

تصنف الأردن في مجال الاقتصاد دولة دخلها بمستوى ادني الوسط أو سوق نمو, وبحسب إحصائيات من البنك الدولي قيمة النتاج القومي الإجمالي لكل فرد كان 3306 دولار بالسنة في 2008 – يعني275 دولار أو 245 جنيه بالشهر. تدعو دراسة أجرى من 2009 أن 29% من موظفين الأردن يكسبون اقل من 500 دولار بالشهر بينما 30% منهم يكسبون بين 500 دولار و1000 دولار بالشهر. أما المصادر الطبيعية في الأردن فمن المظهر أنها لا تمتلك مصادر كثيرة إلا البوتاس وهي تعتمد تماما على المستوردات للنفط وكل حاجاتها لأنواع الطاقة الأخرى تقريبا (96% النسبة الدقيقة) بينما الماء وبالتالي الزراعة اصبح مشكلة ضخمة كما ناقشت في مدوني السابق

الأردن ليست بلد حيث الحياة رخيصة

ممكن تظن أن هذا مستوى الدخل ليس سيء جدا, ولكن عندما نقرن الرواتب مع تكاليف المعيشة ندرك أن الدخل المعدل في الحقيقة ليس جيدا. إذا لا تصدقني فلقى نظرك إلى هذا موقع الانتربت حتى الأشياء البسيطة مثل الحليب والخبز نفس السعر تقريبا مع بريطانيا وتكاليف الإيجارات ليس جيد أيضا

Cost of Living information from Numbeo

ربط حتى معلومات عن تكاليف المعيشة

...

الأردن عندها عدة أشخاص غنيين جدا جدا

...

في الحقيقة, الأردن لا تنتج أشياء كثيرة

...

الزراعة Agriculture - 2.5%

الصناعة Industry - 23% of which;
Mining (potash and phosphate) - 3%
Construction - 4%
Manufacturing - 16%

قطعة الخدمات Services - 74.5% of which;
Telecoms - 13%
IT - 10%
Transport sector - 10%
Tourism - 10%

...

الآن أريد أن اقرن هذه الحقائق مع الآراء المتنوعة التي استمعتها في استطلاع الرأي عن مصدر كل الفلوس في الاردن

المساعدة المالية من الجارج؟

الفساد؟

الخليج؟

الاستثمار الأجنبي؟

ففي نهاية المطاف ما زلت غير متأكدة عن مصدر ثروات الغانيين هنا ... واكن بالتأكيد هي موجودة ومن الضروري أنها أكثر مشتركة ومنتشرة. ممكن الأردن جاهزة لاستخدام ضريبة الدخل بدلا من الضريبة بنسبة 26% للأكل والملابس...؟

During one of my recent nature trips, came across this slightly ugly thing - not really seen too much of the insect world here yet (it being winter maybe?), but this was an impressive specimen.

Don't know if this is a centipede or a millipede, but there were many legs involved and it moved pretty fast considering ... I love the way their legs move, so much less creepy then spiders!

Gorgeous gorges ...

As many of you know, I'm pretty used to impressive gorges, what with living so close to the Verdon in France, but last weekend Jordan once again literally took my breath away with a corker - Wadi Dana in Dana Biosphere Reserve. I'm trying to visit all of the nature reserves while I'm here and have been impressed by the efforts of the RSCN to make each visit a pleasant one, but this one really was something special ...

So we drove down on Friday, and after a long fairly dull drive down the Desert Highway (I've done it many times now) we reached the turnoff. According to the instructions I'd printed off, we were only a few kilometers from Dana and still all we could see was endless fairly flat desert and the odd concrete monstrosity ... and then we turned a corner and the world literally dropped off in front of our eyes. This was where we had reached the end of the desert plateau and hit the valleys of Dana Reserve - I nearly swerved the car off the road, it was so unexpected and breath-taking.



After a slightly hairy drive down to Dana village, the next joyous surprise was the guest house where we were staying - not only a lovely little place (and well heated, needed in this weather!), but with a location to die for ... perched on a cliff edge with views down into Wadi Dana valley (in photo above). Definately a great place to pause and watch the sun set, which we did with a bottle of St Emilion - and after dinner with the other people staying in the guest house we were even able to admire the landscape illuminated under a full moon. Lovely ...

But we really got to appreciate the view the next morning when the whole valley was lit up by the morning sun - check this out for a panorama (but turn down the volume, it was a tad windy!) ...



Dana is a trekker's paradise, and this is exactly what we did, following the winding path down from the guest house into the valley. The walk the length of the valley takes about 5 hours each way, which we didn't have time to do, but we did a good third of it and then the long slog back uphill - hard work, but so worth it!

There was also plenty of nature to enjoy - birds of many different kinds, including several types of raptor and these amazing electric blue birds with long thin slightly hooked beaks - I don't have a bird guide here, but possibly some kind of honeyeater? And down in the valley there were all sorts of plants and flowers too, including a kind of white and purple gorse which smelt gorgeous and these fabulous little pink flowers. It may be a bit colder at the moment (although it was T-shirt weather in the day), but the advantage of going into the countryside in winter is seeing nature here at it's greenest - we even saw grass! In Jordan!

So, for anyone planning on coming out, if nature's your thing let's have a break in Dana - I will be going back for sure ...

Food Pt 8

Thought you might like this - sugar cane, apart from being incredibly scrumptious (but also quite likely to give you an upset tummy) apparently has a whole host of other benefits ...

Cool is so 90s! Exotica is now!

I came across the following artice by Khaled Sedki, which I read on the local culture website www.7iber.com - I found it kind of strange and am not sure what I think about the idea of 'selling' culture to spread the word, so thought I would share it with you in case you have your own thoughts on the subject ...

Cool is so 90s! Exotica is now!

It is now official! Arabs are exotic, again! But while Edward Said tried to explain the first Orientalist hype as a distribution of geopolitical awareness on the grounds of Western domination over the Orient; this new ‘exotic’ craze is really all about falafel!

Falafel and Shirwal are exotic!

As the world is stripped out of politics in favor of a cooler, easily digested, commercial political celebrities, and as faiths and ideologies are narrowed down to slogans and differing lifestyles, other things seem to have an increasing value! That’s when Falafel and Shirwal became exotic!

Just a year ago I was struck by the sight of ‘blond bombshells’ walking down Taksim, Istanbul in shirwals! Months later, shirwal was re-adopted by the cool upper-bourgeoisie class in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as a fashionable summer outfit! Over the past few years ‘exotic’ has ‘out beaten’ ‘cool’ in many occasions, seducing lower to upper bourgeoisie in western societies as means of cultural consumption;

American pop music played oriental rhythms, celebrities started showing up in belly dancers outfit, falafel took over Marks & Spencers ‘traditional food’ section and Melissa featured on an Akon song!

Well there’s nothing upsetting about that, specially that one can now take a girl out to dinner at a terribly filthy place at Al-Balad and still remain ‘exotic’! But the irony lies in this counter-stream consumption approach; as political and military tension rises in the region, with restrictions multiplying and entire populations being placed under political and economic sanctions, curiosity towards these cultures increases, and as some realized: curiosity sells! It always has! It sold all sorts of things, from shirwals, to falafels, to Buddhist books, to ‘I love NY’ shirts, to an Exotic African-American son of Hussein as president of the United States to Guevara’s most consumed poster in history, to Edward Said’s “Orientalism” book itself!

All this seems to be quite different from the counter-culture model of globalization everyone made such a fuss about – as if culture never experienced evolution and remained locked and boxed since our ancestors first invented Humos!!

Culture sells, and Globalization is pro-market and not counter-culture!

And soon Falafel would be franchised and we would claim intellectual rights of our Falafel and whine like the Italians do over their stolen pizzas! (this already happened as the Lebanese made the biggest plate of Humos to claim it back from the Israelis!)

But either ways, since Fukyama announced ‘the end of history’, there’s no place left to ‘deliver’, but rather much to sell/consume! So it’s almost ‘wise’ if we could start branding and packaging all sorts of consumer goods starting with falafel and all the way to packaging values, history, culture and all sorts of exotic things, preferably in colorful textiles with Arabic calligraphy and sell at competing prices!

Made in the Orient!

12 Angry Lebanese

Went to see a fantastic documentary film showing in town a couple of nights ago, which you should really try and see if you have the chance - it's called 12 Angry Lebanese, and is about a theatre project in a Lebanese prison where they took 45 inmates and worked with them for a year to put on a production of an adapted version of the play '12 Angry Men'.



This film wasn't just interesting, it was inspirational - the filmn crew filmed the entire process as well as conducting interviews with the inmates during and after the project, and the insight into the personal journeys of these guys as well as the wider effects of the project was incredibly moving.

All of the inmates recognised that they were guilty of their crimes, but the process of gelling into a team and analysing the play (about 12 jurors deciding the fate of a young boy accused of murder) gave them the chance to think about themselves and how they have ended up where they are - aspects of their personality, the effects of hard upbringings, neglect and the like. They even included some of their own stories in the production, giving the audience a chance to think about how people turn to crime and maybe how this can be prevented through love and support. And this must have been particularly emotional in their last performance, when all of their families were in the audience - this was almost the last scene in the film, and there were a few emotional tears in the hosue by then!

The whole idea of having an audience of normal people from outside the prison was also amazing, giving the inmates a chance to feel like members of society again, and the members of the audience the opportunity to see the inmates not just as criminals to be forgotten, but people with talents and potential and humanity. The Interior Minister of Lebanon attended one performance, and there is an interview with him in the movie where you can see that he has been touched by the whole experience. He talks about realising the difference between the punishing inmates for their crimes by sending them to prison and continuing to punish and degrade them once they are there, rather than considering the possibility that they can learn and reform and grow into positive human beings. In fact, the inmates do a sketch in their production about a law that had been proposed in Lebanon in 2002 to allow inmates to to apply for early release, but which had not been implemented - the law was passed two months after the inmates' production.

And the person who pushes it all along and brings it all together is the director, the amazing Zeina Daccache. Not only does she get the project going and struggle with all of the obstacles and permissions needed, but also works day in day out with each and every individual and has the ability to inspire, chastise and get people's commitment to the project and themselves. It can't have been easy being the only woman in an all male prison, but she becomes accepted and respected to the point where they start calling her 'Abu Ali', a nickname that shows her being regarded as one of them and a strong person to boot.

Zeina was present at the showing of the film that I saw, and she is as impressive in real life as she was in the film; tall and full of energy that you can almost see sparking off her. We gave her a long ovation after watching the film, which she more than deserved, and although I couldn't really follow the Q&A afetr the film as it was in colloquial Arabic, I did get a quick chance to chat to her after and find out that she is still working every day with these guys and helping them continue their journeys, as well as trying to get new pprojects going.

It all reminded me that we cannot all be Ghandi or the Dalai Lama, but we can each in our own way recognise and encourage the humanity in other people, even in the toughest of conditions.

WAW4 - The Gift of God

"The Gift of God" or "Atah Al Allah" is what the Bedouin have traditionally called the camel (although they may use other names when a camel has decided it doesn't want to play ball!). I love them too for very different reasons - not my source of income or form of transportation, but they are actually quitelarge and do a highly amusing range of facial expressions. It turns out that they are pretty wierd and unique animals too, so here are some random facts and various photos of the camels of Jordan ...


Camels have the reputation of being bad-tempered and obstinate creatures who spit and kick. In reality, they tend to be good-tempered, patient and intelligent - as I found out after meeting 'the camel whisperer' in Shark Bay, Australia (worth the detour, I promise!). The moaning and bawling sound they make when they're loaded up and have to rise to their feet is like the grunting and heavy breathing of a weight-lifter in action, not a sign of displeasure at having to do some work. And the Bedouin do seem to take care of their animals and treat them quite well - this camel has some rope tied round his feet so that he doesn't wander off too far, but he was still roaming quite happily (relatively speaking!) and looked pretty healthy

Camels are amazingly well adapted to living in the desert - for example:

- During a sandstorm the camel's nostrils can close down to keep out the sand.

- A camel's ears are lined with fur to filter out sand and dust blowing into the ear canal.

- Camels have a translucent second lid that allows light to go through, but protects the eye in mild sand storms, while thick bushy eyebrows shield the eyes from the desert sun.

- Camels store fat in their humps. They can go for 5 - 7 days without eating or drinking. When they haven't eaten for a while, the hump shrinks in size and flops over to one side.

- The feet of camels are large, flat, and round. When the camel places its foot on the ground the pads spread, preventing the foot from sinking into the sand. When walking, the camel moves both feet on one side of its body, then both feet on the other. This gait suggests the rolling motion of a boat, explaining the camel's 'ship of the desert' nickname. Doesn't make them any better at crossing the road though ...

And how about this for wierd and wonderful - the camel has a unique body thermostat. It can raise its body temperature tolerance level as much as 6 degrees centrigrade before perspiring, thereby conserving body fluids and avoiding unnecessary water loss. No other mammal can do this.

To finish, I can't help but put in these cute mother and baby photos - this is a 15 day old camel calf that we came across in southern Jordan, who was still a bit unsteady on his legs and obviously found the whole business of standing a bit of a chore ... and look at the very protective camel-dog in the background - not sure how much herding or protecting he can do, but I guess he is perfectly capable of making a lot of noise ...