Nairobi

When I was visiting Kenyatta University I was around thirty kilometers outside of Nairobi. It was a little annoying (although I suspect also endearing) that the folks at Kenyatta did not want me to leave the campus for fear that I would get into trouble. However, because they were running a new fibre topic line the internet was completely messed up and I needed to get online so it didn't take long for me to ignore the warning and take off in search for an internet cafe. Later on Saturday, the day I arrived, I went walking down Thika Road back towards Nairobi because I heard there was an internet cafe down this dirt road. Suddenly the woman who ran the conference centre drove up with her daughter and scolded me (gently) for leaving. She had me get in her car and drove me to the internet cafe, which was actually located down a dirt road past a series of ramshackle tin roof shack stores. She volunteered to wait outside until I was finished. I told her that I was a big man and was OK. She smiled and replied, "Yes, but there is always someone bigger." I suspect their biggest concern was with pickpockets, which, to be fair, we have plenty of in the U.S. Anyway, she drove off and I then found out that the internet cafe had no connection so I had to walk back to campus with my tail between my legs.

However, I was not deterred. The next day Mungai, the head of the ICT department at the university (and a great guy) volunteered to drop me off in downtown Nairobi because he was passing through. He also gave me strict instructions on where I could walk - "Do not go beyond Moi Avenue on that side and do not go beyond Uhuru Highway on that side, and stay out of Uhuru Park." We then got into a big discussion about what taxis I could take back and if it would be advisable for me to take a matatu (the private vans that people use for getting around - they just wait until they fill up and then they take off like a bat out of hell - crazy, but cheap - a taxi from Nairobi out to Kenyatta would have been 1200 shillings while a matatu would have been 50 shillings). Finally, he just decided to pick me up on the way back through town, over my objections - and we agreed to meet in front of the Intercontinental Hotel in two and a half hours (although he said that was "Africa time" so it could be later, and after saying that he showed up right to the second). So, I actually had some time to walk around downtown by myself. Nairobi is a city of five million people, although it doesn't feel that big (at least on a Sunday - Nairobi traffic is insane and if you're caught in a Nairobi traffic jam it seems like the city has ten million). It ended up being a lovely walk although I was hit up on by half the grifters in Nairobi. My favorite was a guy by the name of John who tried to justify that he was not a grifter by carrying around a loaf of bread, as if he had just been shopping and ran into you. He worked me for an hour as we walked through downtown, just as an interested party, until he hit me up for a request for 3000 shillings to help bribe his son's tutor - he got 100 out of me because it had been an interesting conversation. When I shooed another one away later I was acused of being prejudiced. I ended up in Uhuru Park despite the warning and it was actually very lovely with a gazebo and lakes and food and it was packed. Eventually I moved to the back of the park and got in the middle of a religious revival meeting - it was all is Kiswahili, with the occasional "praise Jesus" thrown in for effect. Mungai showed up right on time and we went in search of a good cup of coffee and ended up at this insanely nice mall (complete with a water slide) next to the U.S. Embassy where we both had cafe mochas. An odd ending to a wonderfully odd day.

Reflections on Things at Hand: Women in Jordan

OK, just a couple quick anecdotes from my last day in Jordan (which seems like around three weeks ago). We've talked before about the unique position of women in Jordan, a mixture of western and traditional. These two things happened to me on my last day there before boarding a plane for Dubai - neither profound, but nevertheless somewhat enlightening.

First off, I had a meeting scheduled with a woman professor from the University of Jordan. We were to be joined by another female professor and then drive for a meet and greet at a nearby private university. The other professor had to drop out at the last minute, leaving the two of us to drive over together. The professor in question is this brilliant scholar with two Ph.D.s. She is in her 50's and dresses in traditional Jordanian attire. As she was firing up the car she was clearly nervous, and I asked her if everything was OK. She asked me what I knew about Jordanian society, to which I replied that some folks might not approve of the two of us being in the car alone together, especially with her driving, and I volunteered to call off the trip. Instead, she simply said, "No, it's a silly rule and silly rules only have power if you let them have power," and she took off. We ended up having a great trip but the whole time I wondered if that was the first time she had ever driven another man alone in a car.

Secondly, I was walking from one meeting to another at the UJ campus on my last day when I walked by a group of four young women in traditional Jordanian wear. One of them was staring at me (think of an Arabic Ricki Lake pre-procedure). As I passed she smiled and said, "very very beautiful." I put my hand to my chest and said shukran (thank you). She immediately blushed beet red and her friends started cackling. Society in Jordan is so much more comlicated than it seems on the surface, especially to a western viewer.

Africa

I've since left Jordan, blown through the United Arab Emirates, and am now at my second stop in Kenya. Sorry I've been so quiet - it's a combination of being really busy and also struggling with amazingly bad internet connectivity in Kenya. Guess I'll have to get caught up in bits and pieces. Right now I'm in Eldoret, Kenya, home of Moi University. I'm staying in the Eldoret equivalent of a luxury hotel ($40 a night, and for that I still get lousy internet connection, but it's the only hotel in town with even this - two computers in the lobby, one of which is continually in the hands of two Korean girls playing video games). My Kenyan contact was horrified that I was planning on spending this much a night - he had me reserved in a local place, pefectly clean and centrally located, although in a seedy part of town, for $10 a night. Before this I spent four days visiting Kenyatta University, which is right outside of Nairobi. I was one of two people staying at their brand new conference centre. The other was an Englishman named Peter who is a vegan, and the staff just didn't know what to make of him. On my last night there a couple professors took me to the Safari Park Club to eat and see the floor show. The floor show consisted of a bunch of dancers in "native" outfits doing dances to show tunes, not exactly what I was looking for. You sat at big tables and the waiters came around with massive slabs of beef on swords and they would cut pieces off right on to our plate. I had chicken, beef, pork, lamb - along with goat, camel, ostrich and crocodile. I ate until I hurt - now that the Kenyans understood.

Touring Jordan

OK, this is not a particularly accurate title because I've been too busy on this trip to do much sight-seeing. That said, if you come to Jordan, and you should definitely come to Jordan - in fact, I would love to bring some students over here on a cultural immersion trip - there are a million things to do. Amman itself is great, with loads of history (the Citadel is located right downtown, next to the Roman theatre, and it has been occupied over the centuries by Romans, Byzantines and Umayyads) as well as stores so modern you would think you were in Paris. Jerash provides some of the best preserved Roman ruins in the world. Umm Qais also has great Roman ruins, and is not nearly as crowded as Jerash because it is tucked away in the northwest corner of Jordan, but is also the location where Jesus is supposed to have driven the evil spirits out of the possessed man and put it in a herd of swing that jumped off a cliff - surprisingly, when I went there a couple years ago I felt fine. The Dead Sea is OK, mainly for the experience of floating in it, although it's way too pricey for my blood - it is a neat place to watch the sun go down over the mountains in Israel, partially because it looks strangely like the sun going down over the New York mountains as seen from Burlington. You can go to Bethany Over Jordan where it is believed, at least by the Jordanian tourist industry, that Jesus was baptized. You can also go to Madaba to look at more mosaics than you could probably stand, and get a shave if you want for on dinar. The desert castle at Azraq is great, especially if you're up on your Lawrence of Arabia lore. I had my ultimate nerd moment there, which is saying something because my life is one long unbroken string of nerd moments. On my first trip to Jordan I was reading Lawrence's Seven Pillars while riding around on the bus with a dozen others professors on a grant to study Middle Eastern culture. When we stopped in Azraq I read, aloud, to the other professors, Lawrence's account of the room he stayed in at Azraq in the very room - including his account of ghosts - in any other line of work I would have been beaten to a pulp, but the other professors were delighted. I had a really profound moment at Mukawir, which was a Jewish fortress on a hill that was eventually taken over by the Romans. It was where Salome danced and John the Baptist had his head chopped off. I was standing up there next to Roman columns while the sun was going down, and the lights of Jerusalem were starting to twinkle, and the Islamic call to prayer started at two different mosques on neighboring hills. It was really emotional. So, a million things to do, although that really wasn't an option this time.

The one huge exception this time was a return trip to Petra. It was a Saturday so university meetings were out of the question. It's about a three hour drive from Amman to Petra if you take the more boring modern road, as compared to around five hours if you take the king's highway. It only took about two and a half hours because the taxi driver was going around 160 kph, which, if you convert kph to mph, converts to really fast. When you think of Petra the first thought for most Americans is the end of the third Indiana Jones movie (and, actually, there is a little gift shop right at the entrance called the Indiana Jones Gift Shop). Certainly, travelling through the Siq and coming out to the Treasury is one of the most amazing moments that you'll ever experience. However, that is just the beginning - Petra is huge. You can walk around for seven or eight hours and still just be scratching the surface. At the end of the day you can walk up the 850 steps to the Monastery at the top of the mountain, which is even bigger than the Treasury. If you go a little further you come to the shop at the end of the world - these merchants carry their wares up to the edge of the cliff overlooking the Wadi Arabia, and it's almost a contest to who can come closest to the edge. Many of the merchants actually still live in the caves of Petra. There is also a massive temple in the center of Petra and endless Nabatean tombs. This time for the first time I climbed up to the High Place of Sacrifice which is on a different cliff. Exhausting, but absolutely amazing. Petra is one of those places that you see and then you can't quite convince yourself that you were there. At the end of the day I got the money shot - a Bdul riding a camel on a Roman road with Nabatean tombs in the background.

Real World Amman

ACOR really is a rather odd, albeit cool, place. There are more students around here this trip than there normally are, which gives the place a different feel. Several students are here taking intensive Arabic courses at the language center at the University of Jordan. They're all nice kids, although I was in the kitchen last night heating up leftovers when an episode occured that had sort of a MTV Real World Amman feel to it. One female student was talking to two male students and it turned into a major dish the dirt fest on another one of the female students - it was priceless. Apparently, as a forty-seven year old man, I was invisible anyway so they just went on talking as if I were not there. I was half expecting to see them later on being interviewed separately by the film crews as they talked about their deepest feelings while crying. Later on I was down in the computer lab working when the disher was coming to say goodbye to the dishee and it was full of "luv ya babes", etc. Pretty funny, all things considered.

Shuttle Diplomacy

Someday, I suppose, Champlain and the Global Modules network will be famous and we'll just be able to alert people when we're rolling into town and they will arrange their schedule to fit ours. Let me wildly paraphrase Uncle Tupelo and say that if there will be a time, that time's not now. Everyone is very nice and, once they've had a chance to really think about the GM approach, they usually become very big supporters. Still, we're a small school pitching a new educational paradigm so we have to work around everybody else's schedule at this point. Since I've landed in Amman I've had multiple meetings at the University of Jordan on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, today (Sunday) and will again on Tuesday. The only days that there were no meetings scheduled were on Friday and Saturday (weekend days) and Monday (I'll be down at the Dead Sea presenting at the LINC Conference, which will probably mean meetings, although of the more unofficial kind - as Michelle Miller always says, "heaven forbid you end up next to Scudder in a buffet line at a conference because you will hear about the Global Modules"). The meetings might be Powerpoint presentations to entire divisions or discussions with university presidents or planning meetings with professors where we actually sit down and discuss possible themes and readings or question/answer sessions with students. On Thursday I had a 9:00 a.m. meeting with a dean at Princess Sumaya University, an 10:00 planning meeting with an English professor at UJ, a meeting with a different dean back at Princess Sumaya at 12:00, and then another planning meeting with a different English professor back at UJ at 1:00. Luckily it is only around a twenty minute walk between the two schools.

Working Out in Amman

Finding a place to work out is usually quite a challenge. However, it's never been much of a problem in Amman. Whenever I'm in town I get a six-visit membership at the Madina Gym (it's embarrassing/resassuring when you're already in the gym's computer system). It is a short taxi ride from ACOR - just go down to the next roundabout (something Vermonters understand) and take a left - it's only a few miles and costs about a dollar. Taxis are easy to find, with the exception of Thursday nights when they are almost impossible to find. A couple times on Thursday nights I've had to walk the entire way to the gym, which at least got me out of doing cardio. You just tell the taxi drivers Madina or Sports City or do a pantomime of bicep curls or just point straight ahead and direct them with whirling hand motions when you get to the roundabout. The gym looks like any fitness center in the west and during peak time plays the same music - I heard a lot of Eminem and that song "I got 99 problems, but . . ." a lot. However, if you go in the morning you get the Arabic equivalent of easy listening.