It’s now been one month and two
days since I arrived and it’s been nothing but smooth sailing. (I’ll say knock on wood here, though I’m sure
there is an appropriate “God” phrase in Arabic that I haven’t learned yet.)
I’ve been racking my brain to come up with some juicy stories to
entertain my audience, but there are really none to tell.
For just over two weeks now, I have
been teaching at a private Christian high school in Amman. It’s only about 1.6 miles from my house and I
can walk there in about 30 minutes. I’ve
gotten in the habit of cabbing there in the AM and walking back in the
afternoon. I also have been bringing my gym bag (aka my new “Fitness First”
promotional backpack, thrown in as a perk when we signed up for the gym) to
school in the morning so I can stop off at the gym on the way home. It’s about
a 20 minute walk to the gym from school, then 10 minutes from gym to home. As
I’ve mentioned before I am so glad that my apartment happened to be in such an
opportune location. This happened only
because of chance, and I wouldn’t have understood the importance of location
before signing simply because I didn’t understand how difficult transportation
can be.
I’ve been told that both traffic
and population has been increasing rapidly in Amman over the last few years.
This proportional relationship is no surprise. People need to be where they
need to be, and without either reliable or widespread public transportation,
cabs and people’s personal cars clog the streets, highways and overpasses at
all times of the, and especially at morning and afternoon rush hour. And with little regard for things like lanes
and stop signs, Amman’s roadways provide a perfect visual definition of the
phrase “cluster fuck.” For pedestrians,
this means that 0ne does not wait for a light to turn to a blinking white stick
figure man to cross the street. Instead, one waits until the traffic in front
of him slows enough, or in some lucky cases, completely stops so that one may
cross the street in (relative) safety.
That said, there are traffic lights in some locations which people do
obey. But this is more the exception
than the rule. Additionally, I’ve heard
Jordanians themselves describe stop signs as “decoration only.”
Even in the places where traffic
does at least flow, taxis somehow are at a premium. I’ve waited up to 45 minutes looking for
taxis during rush hours. Some times it will take me all of 5 seconds to walk
out my door and hail a cab; other times I’ll walk out my door, down the street,
to the circle, to the main road, and beyond before I’ll find an open cab. Other times, I’ll find several open cabs, but
as soon as I mention where I’m going, the cab driver shakes his head and moves
on. (Most times, you tell the cab driver where you’re going before you hop in
the cab. Sometimes they have a job
they’re going to and your destination is the other way. Other times, who knows
what.) Sometimes, cabs will try to
charge a off-the-meter rate for even short trips during rush hour. You have every right to refuse this offer,
but sometimes taxis can be so scarce that you’ll even pay a dinar extra ($1.42)
for a 10 minute ride. (This would make
the ride double what is usually costs).
I’m sure foreigners are more often than not the victims of this cabbie
price hike phenomenon, but I’ve seen cabbies do it to Jordanians as well.
I was the victim of this scheme
just today, but I am proud to say that I talked (barely) my way out of it. It turned out that if I wanted to sign up for
the group trip to Petra this weekend, I would have to go straight from work to
Qasid (the language center where I’ll be taking Arabic classes). Once I got money from an ATM, I stood on the
side of the road with a finger out, my arm slightly lifted, yet still pointing
to the pavement, as to signify to the passing cabs that I was looking. After 5
minutes, a cab finally stopped for me,
and I told him “Mukhtar Mall” (the nearest, best-known landmark to the place I
was actually going). He nodded and I hopped in. After about one minute in the
cab and some slow moving due to traffic, the cab diver exclaimed
“It’s two dinar because of the
traffic” as he gestured to the cars in front of us.
I was pissed, but I did recognize
that there was a lot of traffic and I wanted to get to the school to reserve my
spot for the trip. I shot the driver a look of disbelief and asked in my awful
Arabic “Two dinar? Mukhtar mall is not
far. Two dinar is too expensive. One and a half. That’s it.” But as we drove
on, the traffic opened up so I pointed to the running meter (which was only at
about 60 cents) and said “Look here!”
Then I pointed to the lack of traffic in front of us and said “And here,
there are not many cars! 2 dinar? Shame on you!” And then I lowered my eyes to
the floor and I shook my head from side to side, clicking my tongue as mothers
do when their children are doing something naughty. ( I stole this from one of
the teachers I work with. Whenever a child is talking, she slowly turns to the
student, raising her eyebrows and clicking her tongue at this student’s
misbehavior.)
I continued to shake my head in
silence with a disappointed look on my face until the driver looked back at me
through the rear few mirror and said something like “I don’t want any
problems.” (Ma biddi za3lan? Any Arabic speakers reading this?) I craned my
neck and raised my eyebrows to indicate I didn’t really know what he was
saying. He translated for me “Ya3ni,
excuse me.”
“Tayyeb,” I told him, and shook my head in
agreement. We arrived at my destination a few minutes later and the fair was 85
cents. I put a dinar in his hand and left the cab in silence.
Perhaps I got carried away in
relaying to you this 10 minute period in my life, but I was very proud of this
moment in that I could understand well enough what was going on contextually
and also was able to use enough Arabic to defend myself. Mashallah. It’s a good
feeling.
Point of this aside on cabs and
public transportation being: I am happy to have the ability to walk to and from
work and avoid spending hours waiting for public transport.
And 2 Microsoft Word pages later
turns out that I’ve only touched on one of the five topics that I wanted to cover
in this blog post. Ma3lish. I have to run now to see a movie as part of the
Chilean film festival (I know, very important commitment). But coming soon: Teaching High School in
Amman, My Trip to the Dead Sea, Global Perspective on Arabs
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