But on to the more eventful part of my weekend. This year, for the first time, CIEE is working with an NGO (non-governmental organization) called Ideal to help fix a school in Ajloun (up north, about an hour and a half from Amman) called Usuraya. Pretty much every Saturday, CIEE is sending students up to Ajloun to help fix the elementary school (they'll be working on the high school next semester), which is in pretty shitty condition. I went for the first time today, and it was a pretty good trip overall, if somewhat frustrating.
Since I didn't go the first time two weeks ago, I'm not sure what it looked like before today, but it's not great. It's pretty dirty and sparse, and the tiny chairs are awful, and there are only four or five per classroom, with one or two tables for the kids. The schools I worked in in Guatemala five years ago were actually worse, but not significantly. FYI, the literacy rate in Jordan (according to the CIA World Factbook) is about 90%. Based on my observations while I've been here, I'd be willing to guess that most, if not all, children attend elementary school and high school in Amman. However, I think that significantly fewer kids attend school in the rural areas of Jordan, like Ajloun. The idea in fixing up this school is to make it more attractive to the kids in the area. At the moment, they ditch school basically because it's dirty and there's no where to sit.
This is the outside of the school.
One of the classrooms.
We split into three different groups this morning (had to leave Amman at 7:15, by the way, not cool), two for painting and one for planting trees. I was in the painting group, naturally. Yes, yes I did get paint all over my pants, go figure. My group was put in charge of painting hallways and classrooms inside of the school. This is where my day got frustrating. I hate saying this, but Jordanians have a tendency to be impatient and disorganized. This isn't always the case, mind you, but it's often the case and it really showed today. The phrase "slap some paint on it" is really applicable here. The people helping us seemed to be more concerned about the amount of wall space we covered than they were with how the walls looked. For example, I was halfway done with one wall when one of the workers came up to me and said "Kowayyes, hallas" (basicallly, "It's good, stop"), and then he instructed me to move to a different wall. So we got a lot of walls done today, but some are really shoddily painted, or only actually half-done. Also, the paint we were using was not the best, I'm not even sure what it was made out of, other than water. It was really watery paint. I was also given a duster at first to paint with, which didn't really work considering the bristles were made out of plastic. I got a roller eventually, and that made things a little better.
We also only worked at the school for momkin (maybe) three hours. Not enough to make a significant difference on the school at all. I know we're going to come back here multiple times, but I wish we could have stayed for longer and actually gotten something accomplished. With the Ajloun project, I feel a little bit like I'm volunteering so I can put a brush in my hand, take a picture, and feel like I'm doing something good. But volunteering isn't supposed to be about me, it's about making this school a better place for the students. So it's frustrating when we spend three hours in a place, slap some paint on the walls, and call it a day. I don't know, I'll definitely be going back to Ajloun, so maybe it'll get better once we get more paint on the walls.
But wait, if we only worked at the school for three hours, what did we do with the rest of our day? Had a fantastic lunch at a local family's house, visited the local Calligraphy House, and went to a (real this time) wedding, that's what. The house we ate at was gorgeous, as was the food:
A real garden! Not much of these in Jordan due to water shortage.
The school bus we took from Amman to Ajloun; also an olive grove.
I should really start taking more pictures of food here; it's all super delicious.
After lunch we went to the Calligraphy House, an organization sponsored by the EU, run by women. The Calligraphy House makes silk-screen T-shirts with Arabic calligraphy and designs on them, and other than that basically seems to exist to teach tourists a little bit about Arabic letters and calligraphy. We were given some ink pots and a pen to write our names with, walked through the gift shop, ate some figs, and then we left.
Writing our names in Arabic.
Also, note: Ajloun also has a place called Biscuit House. Inshallah, we will go there at some point, because by "biscuit," they mean "cookie." Cookie House. Oh man.
After the brief stop at Calligraphy House, we went to a wedding! Sort of. It was more like the pre-party to a wedding. In the rural parts of Jordan, weddings take a long time, and there is often a celebration/gathering beforehand where people dance and talk and party. These parties are gender-segregated, so we were in a tent filled with women and young girls, dancing and clapping and singing.
Wedding party tent.
Usually, the rest of the ceremony includes driving around the village with the bride and groom, basically announcing their marriage to the village. We were going to participate in this, but the bride was taking a really long time to get ready, so we had to leave before it got too late. However, we got to dance and some women got out some henna and henna-ed some of us. The girl, Khadija, henna-ing my hands kept asking me what design I wanted (I think), but my Arabic only goes so far as "Mabaref, asafeh" (I don't know, I'm sorry). The only things I could understand were "sho ismik" (what is your name?) and "meem" (the letter M). I told her my name is Meg, so she henna-ed two giant Ms on the insides of my hands:
Back at home now, sleepy, and going to go to bed. It is 9:30. Glorious.
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