It’s been a busy weekend. Dozan wa Awtar had me up early this morning to practice for a special performance tomorrow night at the King Hussein Cultural Center, hopefully to have the choir gain some more sponsors. It’s only a short, four minute show – more like a presentation than anything else – but it will be the first time since I’ve been with Dozan that we’ll be performing a true “show choir” like dance routine for one of the songs. Some of my friends in the choir are a little nervous about that, but of course I’m entirely in favor of this being the first of many! Hopefully we’ll be the smash event at tomorrow’s show.

Bishop Williams greets everyone outside Aheliya's main gates

Besides the morning practice, the exciting event of the day was a visit from Rowan Williams, better known as the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. As the primary church that I attend here in Jordan is Anglican, this is major event for my fellow congregants, both Arab and expat, and there was a large turnout of about 75 people at the Aheliya Girls’ School next to the church for a meet and greet with the Archbishop. This small amount of people were exclusively invited, there was no public announcement of this gathering, but Pastor Lex let us know a few days ahead of time. That morning, His Grace had held a service at the Baptism Site and placed a cornerstone for a new Gothic-style church funded by HRH Prince Ghazi, who’s apparently an appreciator of that particular type of architecture (who could blame him?). That service was attended by approximately 600, or so I’m told, and tomorrow morning he’s going to be holding a regular Sunday service for the Arabic congregation of the Anglican Church, in the same building that our English congregation meets in the night before.

The last time I had been in the Aheliya School was almost a year ago, when Whitman held the Fiddler on the Roof musical in the school’s auditorium. This is the first time I’d seen the place filled with so many students, high school-aged girls and boys in their best school uniforms to greet the Archbishop and his entourage of purple-robed Bishops from all over the region.

We were all milling about outside, enjoying the wonderful Jordanian February weather, when Bishop Williams appeared, wearing the traditional simple black robe with a purple sash. He looked similar to his Wikipedia pictures – yes, I did do the obvious simple research before meeting the man; I wanted to be able to know which gray-haired gentleman he was, after all – and he and the other Bishops glided towards us easily, chatting amicably and smiling for the half-dozen TV cameras and journalists that buzzed around them. His eyebrows gave him a somewhat owlish appearance, but his manner was immediately warm and empathetic as he greeted us, shaking hands and exchanging a few words with each person before Arab men in gray pinstripe suits gently moved him onto the next group of people.

Inside the building, servers flitted about noiselessly with platters of hot hors d’oeuvres and sweet tarts, as well as juice and the mandatory mouth-scalding Arabic “visitors” coffee. A friend of mine encouraged me to go up and introduce myself to the Archbishop. I replied nervously that I wasn’t Anglican and I wouldn’t know what to say if he suddenly quizzed me on the formation of the Church Doctrine or something!

Archbishop Williams stopped to have a little chat with me...

I shook the Bishop’s hand and introduced myself, saying that I was from America. He smiled and asked me what part, to which I replied Wisconsin. “Really!” he chuckled. “I stayed there a night in a seminary once while I was traveling through America.” Very neat that he’s been to our comparatively-unknown state. I asked him if he’d be able to stop by and visit our English-speaking service after the meet and greet. He shook his head somberly and said that he knew he was going to be in meetings and ceremonies for the rest of the night, but that of course he wished he could. I realized then that when you’re the Archbishop, or the Pope or something, your professional life is nothing but a series of meetings and ceremonies. He patted me on the back in a friendly manner, and then he had moved on to the next group of people waiting for him.

From left to right: the Mayor of Amman, the Bishop of Ireland, and Archbishop Williams

About forty minutes into the gathering, the Archbishop was joined at the front of the room by his traveling companion, the Bishop of Ireland. After being introduced by the principal of the Aheliya school and the Bishop of Jordan, His Grace gave a small speech about his love of Jordan (this being his third visit) and his pleasure that it was always a safe and welcoming country for all Christians, Muslims, and everyone else to enjoy. He made a momentary comment about how he and the rest of the church were very concerned with staunching the flow of Arab Christians leaving Jordan for the West, saying that these original Christians were incredibly important to the stability of the region. I loved listening to his voice, a deep, warm, and musical baritone which must be amazing to hear sermons in. Check out some of the clips with him on Youtube and you’ll see what I mean.

The last thing I saw before I left to go and attend my regular church service across the street was one of the Aheliya students singing a song in Arabic on the stage, of which I only understood the title, Wahtuhnnee, which roughly translates into “My Country.” As I approached the exit, I was passed by a group of black robed and cowled men; members of the Orthodox contingent of Jordan who kissed their Anglican counterparts twice on each cheek. Privately, I wondered why they were so late to the festivities; by the schedule of events the Archbishop was only going to be at the school for another fifteen minutes or so.

I know that the Archbishop is doing a tour of the Holy Land (it seems to be a primary reason for religious leaders of all denominations to visit) and that he’ll be entering Palestine today. I hope you enjoy the rest of your time here, Your Grace!

As my fourth training session draws to a close, I find myself at a large crossroads. As my business and personal relationships and friendships here in Jordan grow larger and wider, I also find my urge to travel and see new lands growing stronger at the same time. How can I reconcile the two? I swore to myself back in 2008 that I would only stay in the Middle East for a year, and now in two weeks, it will be a year and a half with no sign yet of a new place to travel to.

My schedule has never been busier, that’s for sure. I just finished the Training for Trainers (ToT) class last week, with much fanfare. I discovered that the Italian government was sponsoring the majority of the cost of the training, much in the same way the United States BPRM is sponsoring most of the regular refugee training. My students finished their one-month course on the 9th, and to celebrate, the Italians threw a gala at the fancy Meridian Hotel in Amman, a suit-and-tie affair to commemorate the graduation of our trainers into new and more challenging curriculum for their students back in Iraq. I had the tie, but not the suit, unfortunately…I was planning on wearing my dishdash like last time but I was nixed on that one.

The entire gala was excellent…several of the other EGT trainers showed up besides myself, like Talal the art instructor, Taher the mobile phone repairman, Imad the car repairman, and Abu Eid the plumber. Wamidh and I both were present as the dynamic Iraqi/American computer repairing duo, and of course the guest of honor was my colleague Jeff, the ToT program facilitator, who decided that he was going to go above the call of duty (giving a speech) and beyond it (giving a speech in Arabic). To clarify, Jeff is not an Arab. The car ride from work to the hotel had a lot more Arabic in it than usual.

The speech went amazingly well, in which Jeff neither sneezed nor panicked (although the provided translator missed a few jokes; I told Jeff that he should have brought Wamidh up there with him but of course that would have been a faux pas since we were guests), and the dinner was delicious. My four students looked their best, and Ali Habeeb (literally Ali the Darling/Lover) even insisted that I take his extra suit jacket and wear it for the occasion. I had told them in class I didn’t have a suit jacket here in Jordan with me, and Ali told me that he had brought an extra one. “Which do you prefer, the gray or the black?” he asked me the day before, and I told him that I didn’t have anything that went with gray, and he happily handed me the black jacket. It’s the Arab way, I tell you – become friends with an Arab, and he or she will literally bend over backwards to make sure that you have anything you could possibly wish for – or that you didn’t even know you’d need!

From left to right: Ali Habeeb, Ali Farouqi, Ashwaq, and Imad

In other news, training for the Dead 2 Red 2010 has begun. It’s going to be tough without Galen with us this year, but I’ve been rejoined by my two friends from last year, Omar and Rami. The two of them work for the Intracom company here in Amman, and not only were they able to find two new members to complete our team, but also single-handedly secure our sponsorship from Intracom. As members of the newly-christened Intracom Cycling team, we’ll be getting all of our entry fees paid for, a transport pickup truck to carry our bikes, a hotel down in Aqaba, and perhaps even matching red-and-white biking jerseys. What style! I’ve never worked with Intracom before, but let me tell you I’m more than happy to be biking with their sponsorship – you guys have got my vote in whatever tech support stuff you do! (and a link from me too!)

Introducing the Intracom Cycling Team 2010

Finally, the title of this blog post – “Yohm al-Huhb.” Literally translated, it means “Day of the Love” which of course is the common Arabic translation for Valentine’s Day. As far as I can tell from the past two years, it’s not celebrated here in Jordan beyond a small percentage. It was kind of a dual-personality day for me. I spent the first half of the day taking ICDL (International Computer Driver’s License) tests at the Baptist School. ICDL is the sole course that I teach over at Whitman, and my students have always found it ironic that I’ve never actually taken the tests that I’m teaching for (my employers figured that my decade or so of experience made up for my lack of certification for some reason) but I was given the opportunity to take the exams through Whitman’s program, free of the regular charge. I elected to take the first three of seven exams all at once today, and performed admirably – 100% on the “Information Technology” section (who would have guessed it), 94% on Microsoft Word (confusing questions that were probably haphazardly translated from Arabic) and 100% on Microsoft Access, which downright shocked me because I’d been spending the past 5 months telling my students to be careful on Access’ trick questions. The latter was the only test I had any worry about at all, and some questions definitely made me sweat. But apparently my diligent reading and re-reading of the questions before clicking anything onscreen paid off with a perfect score. I look forward to sharing my tactics and strategies with my students tomorrow on Monday.

I had purchased packets of Saudi cookies (the Arab-world version of Oreos, really) to give to my students for Valentine’s Day and thanking them for coming in on a Sunday to take a test. I had a few left over, and I walked the 3 kilometers back from the Baptist School to my home. I gave out the remainders of the cookies to random street cleaners and beggars that I saw on the road on a whim. I told them that it was a custom in America that people should give sweets to people they care about, and in my own clumsy way I wanted the less-appreciated people of Jordan’s society to be thanked for their thankless work. Most of the street-cleaners here are Egyptian, and my Egyptian-Arab accent isn’t too good but I hope my message was clear…I was just a strange guy on the street handing out cookies because it was Love Day or something. Not something they see every day, I imagine.

Now that the ToT training class is over, my schedule is back to “normal” which means relaxed mornings in which I can choose the exact time that I need to come into work. Feels good to be back to the schedule I’ve kept since August of last year when I finished my last BPRM/IRD class! Training for the Dead 2 Red is going to be of the utmost importance, though, and I went out and bought breathing filter masks to wear for training here in Amman over the next couple weeks. I’ll borrow Philip’s bike (unused and untouched for the past year on my house’s balcony) and bike to Whitman tomorrow, I think. Will I be able to make it from 3rd circle to 6th circle without either being hit by a cement truck or asphyxiated from toxic diesel fumes? Only time will tell!

Snow! In Jordan! Lots of it! Expect massive delays, stocking up on fuel reserves, and chaos and flooding in the streets! Also…school cancellations!

This is what we residents of Amman were treated to via word of mouth, newspapers, and radio announcements. With all of the talk, you might have thought that the second coming was about to take place. While it’s true any snow at all is cause for hubbub in Jordan, when I got the 6 AM wakeup call from one of the other Whitman teachers to notify me that school was canceled, I was expecting Wisconsin-levels of snow, perhaps piling up outside my window. On the second floor. I exaggerate my expectations slightly here, but when I looked out and saw nothing more than the same dreary drizzle that has been coming down steadily for a week, I had to chuckle a little. Primary schools in souther Wisconsin aren’t shut down unless the principal is knocked out with a hailstone the size of a basketball.

Just because Whitman was canceled didn’t mean that my training lectures in Ayn al Basha would be so lucky. I tried sending a text to Aaron, explaining to Aaron about how bad the weather was, and how I was worried I might step in a puddle and make my socks wet, and he texted back, “nice try.” As we drove north towards the training center, I caught a glimpse of snow on the side of the road and even stuck to the back of one car. It was the first time I’d ever seen snow in Jordan that hadn’t been in a grocer’s icebox.

Several teachers called in to fearfully tell Aaron and Jeff about how dangerous it would be for them to leave their houses now, but Aaron, having also grown up in the Midwest, wasn’t having any of it. Not that EGT could do anything about it anyway, even if we wanted to give the students a day off; we’re bound by IRD’s and ISG’s policies. As Wamidh and I taught our lesson on Windows Server 2008, the pounding roar of the rain on the aluminum roof above us was almost deafening and we frequently had to shout to make ourselves heard. I now understand why people in America use padded shingles on houses. However, we didn’t have to put up with it long. Only a couple hours into the lesson and just before lunch, Aaron stopped by our classroom, clutching a green umbrella to shield from the pounding rain and shouted that both IRD and ISG had made the call and that the students were to be sent home for the day.

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Soon after I returned to Jordan from America, I realized that it was odd that although I’d been in the country for almost a year and a half, I had not yet experienced a traditional Islamic prayer, or sulaah. For how much I’ve talked about trying new things, it should have been much higher on my list of ‘things to do’ than to not joined one of my numerous Muslim friends at prayer. Heck, I ate sheep’s brains for Easter last year before I’d been at a sulaah. I figured it was time to remedy that.

The Masjid (Mosque) minutes after completing the morning prayer. The timing is perfectly coordinating so that the sun’s first light strikes the building as prayer ends

Last week, I stopped by my neighbor Marwan’s supermarket and asked him if I could finally take him up on his offer to join him in prayer at our neighborhood mosque, Masjid Hira’a. His broad bearded face broke into a huge smile and he cried out, “of course you can, Mr Zach!” I sat down at his counter for an hour as neighborhood customers trundled around us, bundled against the January chill. He explained to me that the best “first time” sulaah would be the al-Fajr prayer, which is always timed daily to come directly before the first rays of dawn break over the horizon, wherever you may be. I chuckled inwardly at that; I think that everyone in Jordan, be they Muslim or otherwise, has intimate knowledge of that particular prayer when it’s blasted at the wee hours of the morning. He explained that it was best because it was the shortest; usually no more than 6-7 minutes long. “There is rohkta-tayn; two rohkta,” Marwan told me solemnly. “The other prayers in the day – and you know there are five – are either three rohkta or four. This one better for you, for the first.”

He got out a piece of paper and had me write down the exact method of al-Wudthu, the ritual cleansing that devout Muslims carry out before each of the five sulaah. Then he pulled out a battered old Qur’an with a seamed green cover, caressing it respectfully and gently laying it on a cloth on his counter. He smiled fondly at it, and told me that he had this Qur’an since he was a boy and his father gave it to him. As he opened it to the beginning (starting from the right-side, as Arabic is a right-to-left language), he frowned absentmindedly at some scrawls and scribbles in the margins of the first page that looked like a child had been doodling with a pen. “Is not good, this,” he muttered. “Not respectful to write in the Qur’an this way – I do not know where these come from.” I thought about who might possibly have marked up the Qur’an and then forgotten about it over the years…but of course I just nodded politely.

From his Qur’an, Marwan showed me, and then intoned the Surah al-Fatiha, the most important “chapter” in the Qur’an which the Prophet Mohammad (SAW)* instructed must be read before each and every prayer that is made. The first few lines of the surah, which start with “Bismillah al-raahman, al raaheem,” are a common utterance regardless of the situation, merely meaning “In the name of God, the all merciful and ever-merciful.” The rest was more of a jumble, but sounded quite pleasantly melodic. Technically, music of any variety was forbidden by the Prophet, so the humming chant of the sulaah is really the closest that it gets.

After giving me final instructions on how to carry myself, where to look, how to stand, and what to wear (the latter was pretty much the only thing that he said was up to me; the rest is fairly complex), I took my leave of the supermarket as Marwan happily told me, “As-salaamu alayk, akhi!” – peace be upon you, brother! However, because of scheduling issues and some mix-ups, I wasn’t able to finally attend until just this morning.

I rose at 5:15AM, when Marwan called my mobile and quietly told me to prepare myself in wudthu and meet him at his house gate next to the supermarket at 5:45. In the distance through my window, I heard the “waking adhan” calling all Muslims to arise and prepare, crying out dramatically, “Prayer is better than sleep!” I hadn’t eaten much the night before, and I was careful to avoid any alcohol. I was trying to take “purification” seriously in all things. Technically, even flatulence ruins the purity of wudthu so I didn’t want to take any chances by eating a big meal of falafel and hummous and fuul – three foods which are all made from beans!

The water’s hot and ready and I am awake far too early. Oh well…”prayer is better than sleep” after all…

I put on my blue dishdash robe (this makes the third use of it in a year, I believe) and went into the bathroom with my piece of paper with Marwan’s specific instructions clutched in my hand. I stumbled sleepily on the edge of my flowing robe and banged my caving-sore hip on the door frame – but successfully refrained from saying anything uncouth for the sake of the situation. I stared down at the paper at what I’d written down as the warm water filled the sink in front of me. I took a deep breath, and tried to perform the following as gracefully as possible.

1. Wash each of the wrists, first the right and then the left, with three circular motions
2. Cup water in your right hand, suck it into your mouth, swish it around three times, and spit it out
3. Suck water into your right nostril and then blow it out. Repeat three times. And then repeat with the left nostril (note: this one was really hard to do without coughing and choking)
4. Wipe downwards across the face with upwards-facing palms, from forehead to chin. Repeat three times
5. Using the left hand, wash the right arm from wrist to elbow, inside and out. Repeat three times, and then switch hand and arm
6. Taking some water into palms, run hands from hairline to the nape of the neck and back the opposite way, keeping hands tight to the hair
7. Clean out ears with the tips of each index fingers, from top to bottom
8. Taking some water into palms, run hands from the nape of the neck around to the front of the neck
9. Finally, use the left hand to clean the right foot from the toe to the ankle, carefully cleaning between the toes. Repeat three times, and then switch hand and foot

…I looked down at myself after I had finished this process and realized that my formerly-dry dishdash looked as though I had just purified it of its sins. I was thoroughly glad I wasn’t wearing a white robe instead, and that Marwan told me to just wear my usual leather jacket into the mosque to keep warm and cover the numerous splashes of water I was now covered with. I tried to review the words of the Surah Al Fatiha in my mind, and realized that I might need to a little help here, in case I was quizzed or something. I scribbled “Subhan rubi’ha al-aduheen x3″ and “Subhan rubi’ha al-3la x3″ in tiny letters across my left thumb, but I knew I didn’t have time to write anything else. I glanced at my clock and realized that one thing remained – Marwan had pointed specifically to the silver cross I wear on my neck and said, “You need to take that off when you pray in Masjid; take off all silver and gold.” He explained that it wasn’t because it was a cross, but just because almost all jewelry is forbidden for men. I slipped off the necklace and walked downstairs and and up the street a few meters to wait in front of Marwan’s dark doorway.

I don’t think this is forbidden, but I didn’t exactly advertise it to Marwan either!

I heard his deep voice intone above me from a window, “Zach” and then I heard the thud of sandal-ed feet on the stairs leading towards me and within another moment he was next to me, walking quietly and serenely in sweater, corduroy trousers, and a denim jacket. He smiled a quiet smile and asked me if I was ready for al-sulaah, and I shivered from the morning cold and nodded in assent. Without another word, we joined the flowing, shuffling stream of men next to us in the street and entered the warm glowing gate of the Hira’a Mosque, kicking off our shoes on a small footwear-barrier as we did so.

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Over a year ago, Pat asked Philip and I if we wanted to go spelunking with the boy scout group that he was a leader for. Neither of us had time at the first invitation, but having only gone spelunking once before, I was definitely interested and told Pat to keep me posted on possible repeat dates. Well, there was another invitation put out, but the date fell during the time I was in Tajikistan last year and once again I had to miss out. Although Pat and his family returned to America for the 2009-2010 school year, his legacy lives on through the Zubiya Cave Expedition of 2010.

My friend Joanna had already been to the cave with Pat and the scouts last year, and she told me and fellow spelunker Margie to dress warmly. I borrowed the car from Aaron and picked Margie and Joanna up from their house at about 8 in the morning, dressed in 4 layers of (old) clothes that I didn’t mind utterly destroying with mud and bat feces. We had our sandwiches, our Coca-Cola, brownies I’d baked the night before, and I had my Nescafé to keep me awake during the two hour trip. Margie tried to convince me that drinking Nescafé is the equivalent of drinking hot chocolate sludge, but I couldn’t bear to part with it. I’m no coffee thouwaq (gourmet).

It was almost exactly a two hour drive to reach the cave, and it was quite easy to find thanks to the excellent driving instructions that Pat had left for us. The only problem came at the end, where we weren’t entirely sure we should park. I turned the car around in a driveway, as two older Arab men and a similarly-aged woman gazed at us from the steps of a small brick building. I decided that it couldn’t hurt anything to ask for directions, and the three of them offered to escort us back in their car and then lead by foot to the cave itself. We certainly weren’t going to turn down an offer like that, so we waited for the three of them to pile into their old maroon sedan and drive at a stately pace back up the road about a 100 meters.

We piled all of our gear into backpacks as I introduced ourselves more properly to our new guides. Their names were Abu Haitham, and Abu and Umm Ali (Abu means father, and Umm means mother). They asked me with familial concern if we had brought enough food and enough lights, and after I tried to dispel their worry in my broken Arabic, the trio turned off the road and led us off the road into the dew-moistened and wonderfully green grass of a tree-lined meadow.

Messrs. Abu Ali and Abu Haitham amble along through their beautiful countryside

After a few minutes of walking – or sliding – through the grass and mud, we came suddenly upon the limestone maw of the cave. There were no signs, no guards, no rails – the only sign that this place had ever been discovered before were a few spray painted arrows and the ubiquitous small sacks of garbage. Margie dug into her pack and pulled out a third headlamp which she handed to me. Our guides looked reassured to see us all with lights, and me with my biking helmet (I’m paranoid about my height and pointy stone ceilings, okay?!) and together the six of us descended into Zubiya Cave.

I was pleasantly surprised that we weren’t immediately up to our ankles in water. On the way up we had voiced fears that because of the rains that had swept through the country during the past week, it might be dangerously damp in underground caverns, especially in the more temperate north of Jordan. There was plenty of mud, though, and I joked with the other men that I was going to be several centimeters taller thanks to the new stilts I was wearing on my soles. I noted that they were all just wearing sandals and figured that they certainly would know better than us about what to wear. All three of them told me that they had lived in the area all of their lives, but then admitted that they’d actually never been in this cave before, although they knew their children had been. I gave Abu Ali one of my flashlights and the three of them cautiously trudged behind us, muttering incomprehensible things as Umm Ali attempted to not step on her abiya robe and drag it through the mud.

Pat originally sent a black and white map to me, so I added some colors after we got back...

The first path we walked along was obviously well-traveled – wide and dusty, with many footprints. The light of the grated entrance vanished within seconds after we rounded the first corner, and instantly we became helpless without our headlamps and flashlights. Stalagmites, huge, brown and round, hedged our footsteps and deeper down into the darkness in front of us we could hear faint squeaking and if we stopped walking for a moment we could detect the softest rustle of wings.

Only a few meters into the cave, there's still enough light to make the flash get all confused

After walking what was probably 15 meters into the cave, we came to the edge of a small cliff that split into three separate paths. It was here that Umm Ali looked like she’d had enough. She took a tentative step down one of the cliff paths, stumbled a little, then straightened up regally and intoned, “khulaas” which means “That’s it.” The two men looked at each other, and then told me that they would go back now with her as well. I told Abu Ali to hold onto the flashlight and use it to get out. He thanked me and squinted into the unknown gloom while waving the feeble beam ineffectually at it. “This is a dangerous path, so I ask of you to take care,” he told me, his voice clearly telling me that he would like nothing more than the three of us to give up, turn back, and join him and his wife for tea and biscuits. I told him that Joanna was an extremely experienced spelunker who knew the cave very well (it was a good thing that she couldn’t understand what I was saying, or else the horrified look in her eyes may have given my white lie away) but the old man was mollified and smiled. He invited us to come back to the house when we were finished, and vanished into the shadows, waving the paltry beam of my 2 dinar flashlight in front of him.

All three of us were starting to feel the strain of coffee and Coca-Cola on our innards and indeed had been since before we entered, but we didn’t want to immediately follow behind our erstwhile hosts and heed nature’s call in the bushes outside the cave. We exchanged pained looks and debated on what we should do. “Let’s just follow along quietly behind them, not making a sound, and wait for them to away from the cave mouth,” I suggested as I started rapidly towards the entrance, which was followed by the sound of Joanna making “pthbbtth! pthbbbbbth!!” noises. “There are bugs flying into my mouth!” she retorted to my raised eyebrow.

We crept back (almost) silently to the main entrance. I motioned to the other two to stand back, and I went all the way up to the metal bars of the security door that has probably never been closed. I heard their voices up above us and I scurried back to my companions, and we stumbled back into the wider chamber we had just vacated.

Arabic Word of the Day: the colloquial word for bat is "wutwut" which is probably the most awesome thing ever.

Needless to say, “vacating” needed to take place and I’m not ashamed to admit that we made do like the bats obviously had been doing all around us. I heard one chittering above me and felt like I was being watched by a small, furry voyeur. There were plenty of tiny little alcoves and chambers all around us that it was like the cave was designed for that exclusive purpose. Feeling much better, we struck out towards the east of the cave, stopping to pile a small cairn of stones at the edge of the cliff as a marker. These rooms we were traversing now were extremely large, with ceilings at least 15 meters above our heads in some places. I could see the spidery ends of plant roots above us just barely in the glow of my headlamp, and I dug my remaining flashlight out of my backpack to use as an auxiliary light source. Between the previously-shown map that I was constantly annotating, my camera, the light, and a pen, I found that my hands were quite full most of the time! However, this part of the cave (shown on the map in light baby blue) was a cakewalk compared to what we were about to get into.

Our first steps out of the baby blue were in the northwestern section of the cave where things started to narrow on us for the first time. That entire section, as you may be able to tell by reading the fine print, is up on one end, and then a drop on the other into a lower chamber. I didn’t even try to lift myself up into the orange section on the left, as it was almost a foot above my head, I wasn’t wearing any gloves, and I didn’t really know what was up there. However, all three of us were able to shimmy down about 2.5 meters into the yellow-colored room marked “below” on the map. That room was quite small in all dimensions (I was barely able to keep from hitting my head) and filled with strange pits in a ring shape all around us. It looked unsettlingly like the site of numerous unfinished burials.

After we made our exit from the Up and Down cave chambers, the real fun started. That long orange path to the south was the toughest we’d done yet, about 15 meters of crawling on our hands and knees in a maze of stalagmites, the ceiling pressing down on us just centimeters above our heads. I was happy to be wearing my helmet! There was some confusion at first about where to go, because the map said “? Under here” and I was about ready to try to crawl under a pile of rocks like a trilobite before one of my companions stopped me and pointed out the small shaft above us. We never did make it back to that pile of rocks, and I still don’t know what “? Under here” really meant.

We reached our first major junction at the end of this long path, and came to something even more interesting in the red section. Yes, red does mean bad. As we crouched there in the pale glow of each others’ lamps in the wider yellow section of the map, I could barely see anything down the red path – there was nothing visible but a mass of stalactites jutting out at us like broken teeth. Without batting an eyelash, Margie volunteered to venture down this “path,” if you can use that term, and see if it got any wider or continued farther on. As Joanna and I shined lights down behind her, she reported some “tight squeezes” but didn’t sound alarmed. We ventured down after her. And this happened.

How do I manage to find myself hanging upside down between limestone columns all the time?

Yes, although it looks like I might as well be stuck between two mud blocks, these things really were stone and had the durability of it. I had to flop about, fishlike, kicking my legs feebly as Joanna and Margie watched with amusement. After my feet finally gained purchase on another pillar behind me, I was able to kind of squirm around until my newly-broken body dribbled out the other side. Both Joanna and I described it as “being birthed.” There was nothing in this little room to to the side though, but I used a key to mark “2010 الأجانب” which just says “2010 foreigners!” I was all excited at the thought of squeezing into an undiscovered location, but then peered into a tiny impassable crack into the farthest wall (on the map, it’s actually the farthest south east part of the cave) and saw more Arabic writing, Mohammad and Ahmad and realized that some tiny Arab child had already somehow squeezed his way in there. Better luck next time.

Before stopping for lunch, we tried the last chamber that doubled-back north again, and found a mysterious, miraculous pool that Joanna stared at for a moment before commenting that Pat told her that it was called the ‘Fountain of Youth.” I didn’t even see it at first; it took a minute of peering onto the ground before I realized that this puddle filled with bat poop was actually what she was referring to. “And then Pat drank out of it,” Joanna added. I thought of Pat and and his love of “roughing it” and outdoors experiences and realized I wasn’t actually that surprised. His immune system hardened after years in Egypt and Jordan, he had obviously survived his “miraculous” beverage…but none of us were going to follow in his footsteps.

I hadn't expected the Fountain of Youth to be quite so...chunky.

Food always seems to taste more delicious in a cave, perhaps because you really appreciate the fact that you’re enjoying a delicious flavor while you’re surrounded by rock, dust, and bat dung. We crouched under the low ceiling in the small central room that connected the previous two chambers, headlamps pointed inwards, and ate our sandwiches, chips, fruit, and the much-anticipated brownies. Thankfully for me, the girls had brought hand sanitizer to share; I didn’t want to even estimate what I had on my hands but they were kind of a greenish-white color.

After repacking our now-empty bags into our rucksacks, we connected back into the four-way intersection shown on the map, and were intrigued by what looked like a black gash on the wall, marked on the map only with the words “Narrow crack” and one of those maddening question marks. We all wanted to know what was on the other side of that question mark. And so began the most dangerous part of our journey.

Continue reading this post…

You don’t know how much you miss not being able to look up the location of CPU fabrication plants in Israel when the question strikes your brain…until it’s taken away from you. However, I’m happy to report that I’ve got internet at my house again. So long to Orange Telecom, widely regard as a flaky provider, and hello to Umnia’s “Double Turdo” service, which has a less-known level of flakiness! Hello to 20GB monthly limits instead of 10GB, and 2Mb speed instead of 1Mb (or at least supposedly). The internet in Jordan is neither America nor Korea, but it’s good to be able to use Remote Desktop again and look up questions like the aforementioned. (Qiryat Gat, by the way.)

The rant of the night is the lack of a standardized power plug in Jordan. This country has a ridiculous lack of standardization, and it seems to be the worse when it comes to just choosing a power plug to use. Check out this map:

Poor little Jordan has at least 5 listed

It’s one thing to have this entire country filled with so many plug standards I have to carry a sack of clinking adapters in my backpack to make sure I’ll be able to plug in my laptop where I need to work. That’s bad enough. It’s even worse when we have four different plug standards at the training center in Ayn al Basha!

When I first came to Ayn al Basha, the only building that had electricity (or even existed for that matter) was the lime-green administration building. All the plugs in there are using the Italian “L” standard; three prongs in a straight line. Then when we built the first classrooms in September and October of 2008, the electricians put in the German “Schuko” style plug. Now, after I returned from America on my vacation, I discovered that some numbskull had wired my new classroom with British “MK” plugs – my most-despised type of plug that’s used here. Then, just a couple days ago while I was with the TOT class in the assembly room, I saw that the plugs there were using some weird hybrid of the USA “A” standard, combined with widened holes to fit the “Europlug.” Supposedly, it’s some sort of Chinese sub-standard. You know what really gets me? Aaron told me that the electrician that did up my new computer lab was the same one who installed the “Schuko” plugs in all the other classrooms last year, so he should have known better than to just stick another random outlet standard into the walls. It’s just a coincidence that because of their complexity, MK outlets cost twice and cables cost thrice more as any other type, right? Hmmm.

The British MK outlet and plug are indeed the absolute worse, relics of the 1930’s with a plug that requires its own built-in fuse and an outlet box that usually has an utterly pointless power switch next to it. The pins on the MK are huge, ungainly, and if you are unlucky enough to step on one in the middle of the night you will beg for death. “They’re impossible to break, though,” some of my English friends here will say with a grin, and one even proudly showed me a thick ugly scar on his right foot where he drove an MK a centimeter through his sole while running across a room to answer a phone. The MK needs to die. Or at least, Jordan needs to stop using it – but it’s unlikely, seeing that it’s probably second after the Europlug in the number of buildings it’s used in.

The Europlug – a bland, non-grounded little weak thing. Most lower-amperage devices in Jordan use this style of plug, and mercifully it seems to fit into most of the outlets found here. However, because of its lack of ground, it’s useless for computers. Also, they also feel like they’re going to fall apart in my hand. Pass.

The “Schuko” plug would definitely be my favorite if the American “B” standard didn’t exist. Strong and sturdy with an ingenious way to add a ground wire to the system. Philip thought ahead when he had his house built and had each wall outlet contain two sockets – one using the Italian “L” plug and the other using the “Schuko.” The only problem with them is that they’re still too large for my taste. When I need to buy power strips (which is quite a bit), you can only fit four “Schuko” plugs on there, like the MK. If you tried to sell a power strip in America with only four outlets on it, you’d be tarred and feathered. By me, at least, if no one else would.

The USA “NEMA 5” plug is by far the best of them all, and after having to work with this bizarre hodgepodge for the past year, I don’t think I’ll find much resistance to that claim. Our plugs and outlets are like our citizens: a well-grounded combination of strength, size, and electrical amperage. It’s no shock that we invented electricity, really, and it feels good to be able to say for once that America is indisputably the best at something besides starting wars. Without further ado…

USA! USA! USA! USA!

Glad I got that out of my system.