Better Details

Ann skipped down the hall singing "Matchmaker" - she wanted me to meet her Arabic teacher's brother, a nice man who teaches math in the U.S. - just in case I wanted to meet a man while I'm here. Who am I to turn down a visit with a family and some coffee, right? And... after all that's happened in my life this year, why not let someone try and find me a husband too? We all sat in the living room and ate melon. I was asked about yoga... and that was about it for that adventure.

Walking back to the flat yesterday there was this little boy with an amazing bike. He had a feather duster on the front, all kinds of decorations woven into the spokes of the wheels, fringe and tassels hanging from the seat, and some super decorated 'jeweled' mud flaps on the back. It was awesome.

I went out on Tuesday night and felt like a big sister. It was a good adventure, but a really odd one. This boy started telling me about the three girls he was in love with... one of whom had told him she was gay, and he asked her if they could try anyway.

Earlier I wrote about our local trainers being only three people, and all being young women (one only 15 years old). The what and why of this has been settled... but illustrates an ongoing problem too. There would have been more trainers, but several have emigrated. One person in my training this week had his UN interview today and needed to pick between Texas, North Carolina and Colorado as relocation sites (All I could give was impressions of the places - I don't know how easy it is to transfer degrees in these places, what the dollar value of services is compared to anyplace else...). Point being - folks get trained and then leave (I supposed AVP has this problem in the prisons as well). The question, in my mind, is how to keep folks that get trained here connected when they go elsewhere.

I'm still having rumbling thoughts about 'conscientious tourism' of trauma and poverty that's non-productive to exploitive and harmful. I'm building up an internal rant on detoxification, mystification and othering of Muslim women that I've seen western folks do. A khimar is not a burqa is not a niqaab, a jilbab is not a burqa... they're different things, they mean different things, and women wear them for many different reasons. And, as an outsider - it's my responsibility to learn to read people in the way that works here - in this culture - not to expect that folks adapt to me or that they're bad at communicating or unwilling to do so because they don't communicate in the ways I'm used to. Oh, and - dressing in a religiously conservative way doesn’t mean that someone isn’t forward, assertive, intelligent or capable. Now I’m looking for some good, simple, loving ways to communicate those ideas more often.

It's great to be among folks who understand talking to the ceiling. Folks who understand that government surveillance is likely, and may as well be laughed at a bit.

There's a job I want to apply for back in Seattle. It's 30 hours a week... it's ridiculous... right? But it'd be an amazing job, and the kind of thing I'd stay in place for. Of course, this isn't a decision I want to make or even think about while here, but the application deadline is in a few days.

In my last outward adventure of the day I got to hear tomato vendors sing their song "red tomatos, from the country, three kilos for a dinar" it was great.

Tomorrow is, apparently, a trip to Petra, which I'm excited to finally return to. Right now, though, I smell popcorn and need dinner.