Lessons from Jordan & Musings of an Anthro-in-Training

Memorial to Moses at Mt Nebo

On Saturday after the Dead Sea, we stopped at some Christian holy sites on the way back to Amman for our final night in Jordan. First, we drove up to Mt Nebo, where God showed Moses the Promised Land (it must have been a clearer day, that day; I couldn't see much land for the haze). We also went to see the Madaba Map, at St George Orthodox Church in Madaba. It's one of the oldest portrayals of the area, and as such is an important map of Jewish and Palestinian sites.

Guard of the Mt Nebo mosaics

The Madaba map

After we dropped our suitcases off at our hotel, we returned our rental car with great relief and decided it was time to relax with a discreet cocktail at the Intercontinental. Jordanian rules about food and alcohol during Ramadan have been spotty and inconsistent, which means every time you ask if you can get food or alcohol during daylight hours you feel super awkward and vaguely like I imagine alcoholics feel. Our hotel in Petra didn't serve beers after Ramadan started at all (the day prior, we tried Philadelphia beer, a local brand - can't recommend!). The Movenpick resort only served alcohol on their roof deck, not at any of the indoor bars. When we had lunch in Karak, the Jordanian owner responded to my question "Are you open despite Ramadan" with an "of course" like my question was crazy. "Some people eat, some people don't eat, but all are welcome." And our hotel at the Dead Sea opened their restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner (after nightfall) but didn't serve alcohol. You could order food and alcohol at any time from room service, but you couldn't consume alcohol anywhere but your room. And at the Intercontinental Amman, you could order alcohol indoors or in your rooms but you couldn't take it to the terrace, for example. The Intercon served food regularly. I found this interesting - at some of the other places we ate, like the Movenpick and the Dead Sea, our servers were non-Arab, which makes sense why they would work in food service during Ramadan. But the places that were the most open or unrestricted were staffed by Arabs.

I had an incredible vacation in Jordan, thanks mostly to Rob. We learned a few tougher lessons, though. Before I share them, know that in Jordan, a dinar is the basic unit, and 1000 fils make up a dinar. So 500 fils is half a dinar. $1 = 700 fils, so each dinar is like $1.25.

Lessons from Jordan

1). There is no such thing as "too short to merge," "too steep to drive up," or "too intense of a hairpin curve" in the minds of Jordanian civil engineers. This makes for funny jokes afterwards, but a harrowing driving experience at the time.

2). Sometimes speaking Arabic puts you at a disadvantage. It doesn't always win people over. I think sometimes it makes you seem condescending.

3). In Jordan, you're ALWAYS negotiating. Even things like bottled water - which should be 350-500 fils - were quoted at 1 dinar (2-3x value) or even 2 dinars (4-6x). It was such a relief when gas station attendants scanned water bottles, and the price came up instead of having to haggle. Cab drivers would say their meters weren't working, and ask for ludicrous fares. For example, one driver asked
for 3 dinars, and our actual cab fare - with another driver - was 158 fils. That's 3% of what he asked! Then, that driver, who had agreed to the meter, argued that 158 on the meter actually meant 1.58 dinars, after I gave him 1 dinar to pay (and didn't ask for change). That means I gave him ~8x in tip what the fare actually cost, and he still pushed to cheat me me. The Lonely Planet, usually reliable, says that most Jordanians wouldn't dream of cheating you...but that wasn't our experience at all. It was incredibly frustrating. As an anthropologist, it's also really hard - in the US, I am always advocating for Arabs and and trying to tear down prevalent and crappy tropes about them. Westerners ask me weird and oftentimes ignorant questions about the Middle East, but I'd rather answer them than have people continue to believe in the stereotypes. In some way or another, by my profession I often serve the role of ambassador or cultural-explainer or advocate, whether I want to or not.

But when I come to the Middle East, and have experiences like some of the ones we had, or have experiences like that of being a woman in Oman, it's hard for me to negotiate...I can't lie and say that we didn't get cheated 80% of the time in Jordan, and that the only people who were really nice to us were those in fancy hotels or resorts. I can't say that it wasn't really hard to be a youngish woman in Oman or that it was comfortable to be in my own skin. But I don't want to contribute to these ugly tropes...which puts me in a really awkward position. Not all Arab men are creepers and cheats. These boxes don't contain the entirety of a culture, and can't...this is what anthropology is all about. It's about the realness and the messiness and the way things don't fit in boxes or do or occupy a space that straddles or overlaps or destroys or touches or talks back to stereotypes and accepted ideas about the world, often in ways that are difficult to comprehend.

I recognize that this is the messy part of doing fieldwork and being in this profession is dealing with people, and that social sciences is considered a "soft" science because the facts of life and human experience are too varied and divergent to offer comforting and consistent predictions or explanations. Lila Abu-Lughod wrote about the difficulty of anthropologists "writing culture," and how writing about culture can create a consistency that isn't there in real life. So here, I've tried to write an honest depiction of all of it, the good and the bad, and not cover up where the edges don't line up. It's not easy, but it is an honest portrayal of my experience and my understanding of it. That is a contribution that I can make.