Empowering Jordanian Women

This is a blurb from the proposal that I am working on while I am here in Jordan for the Synergos Arab Social Innovator program - http://www.synergos.org/socialinnovators/application.htm

The Story of Um Ahmad:

From a village torn by penury comes Um-Ahmad, an ambitious hard working lady, a fighter in her mid forties challenged by her visual impairment, striving to support her family of 7 children and a retired husband suffering from severe illness. Poverty has entered Um-Ahmad’s home in its brutal form, forcing her to get her eldest daughter married at a young age of 15 years old.
Struggling to earn a living in a village constrained by poverty, cultural limitations and lack of opportunity and guidance, API met with Um-Ahmad as she was providing assistance in bread making at one of the fund raising bazaars organized by IDEAL. Um-Ahmad from that point was determined to take on what she learnt and create her own little business, baking bread - “Taboon” - at the following fundraising events held. Her talent in cooking attracted IDEAL's team to employ Um-Ahmad in preparing meals for tourists walking through the different trails in Ajloun, stopping by Osara, where Um-Ahmad lives for a delicious home-made meal.
This simple stop became a turning point in the life of this family. Um-Ahmad now generates a steady income which enabled her to renovate the dining area at her humble house.
Renovations were also made to the washroom, the only washroom in the house, which previously was dysfunctional.
As you step out of Um-Ahmad’s house after the meal, you will come across her pottery work that is displayed for sale. Also for sale are packed and pickled olives that were grown in her small garden.
Um-Ahmad now aims at purchasing the land next to her house to expand her business in producing pickled olives.
The impact of this detour was also reflected on Osara village as a whole. The village has no site of any relevance for touristic attraction, and was therefore unnoticed. By introducing the “food tourism” theme and direct interaction with the local community in Osara, the stop became a must and a unique experience for both the tourist and the host.
Interaction with the guests, exposed Um-Ahmad and her children to the outer world, developed their communication skills to overcome their shyness, pushed them to learn few words in other foreign languages to welcome their guests and provide a warm and hospitable environment.
This impelling experience has brought a thrilling drive to Um-Ahmad, guiding her to constantly improve, and therefore become an icon in her village and an attraction point.
With a grateful heart, Um-Ahmad’s words could hardly express her immense feeling of gratitude for all the guidance and training that IDEAL provided, but one sentence came out sharp and clear: “you made me and my family visible in a community that was once ashamed to even look at us”.

This is representative of the type of work we are trying to do in Jordan and despite the government getting in the way from time to time a lot is getting done on a shoe-string budget.

Best Kept Secret in Jordan

One of the neatest experiences in Jordan that your tour guide will probably never tell you about is in rural, northwest Jordan near Ajloun. A lot of the work we are doing hear is economic development projects to help empower women in particular. The northwest part of the country is very "lush" compared to the rest of Jordan and has a bit of a Mediterranean feel to it.

A series of trails have been constructed that link several small villages together. The Al Ayoun(means the eyes which is also the Arabic word for springs) trail is a must do excursion if you are in Jordan or planning to visit. The group I am working with has done some amazing work in the area to help provide economic opportunities where they haven't existed before.

One of the neatest day trips is to walk with a local guide on the trails and then share meal with one of the local families. You can either make is a day trip or explore more of the area and have a home-stay with one of the families. I have had a lot of great meals in Jordan, but the breakfast I had yesterday blew them all away.

One of the other projects is the Soap House where local women make soap from olive oil and locally grown and harvested herbs. A great gift idea and even better way to help rural, Jordanian families!

Snoring and hopefully becoming an FSO

I never thought there could be any connection between snoring and potentially becoming an FSO, but if anyone is in need of personal narratives or cultural compatibility answers then I know just the place for you. My host family in Amman is wonderful and there are six of us in pretty tight quarters.If you have never experienced Arab hospitality, and Jordanian hospitality in particular, than you are missing out on an amazing experience.

The mother of the house is sleeping in the bigger bedroom with the three children and I have been bunking with the father, in a twin Barbie bed, in the small bedroom. The family has already made a huge adjustment in their daily routine to host me so the last thing I could do is to tell the father that he snores like twenty lumberjacks on speed, and to move out to the couch in the sitting room. He snores so loud the entire apartment shakes.

So I have been going to bed really early to beat him to the bedroom so that I can get a few hours of sleep before he warms up the band. The family always asks me why I am
going to bed so early and I have my random, culturally compatible answers down. The last two nights I have tip toed out of the bedroom to the sofa and set my alarm so I can sneak back into bed.

The apartment is so small and with the rest of the family being females, there really isn't a viable alternative. So if you are in need of stories I can give you the address of a wonderful, but very loud family in Amman.

Life With a Jordanian Family

The first thing is that I will be a candidate for a Weight Watcher or Nutrisystem infomercial when I get home. If I don't gain 30 pounds I'll be shocked. It is constant eating and eating and more eating. I am living in a small flat with a family with three kids. There is a lot of chaos for sure. I think the hardest thing has been having to adapt my American sensibilities to certain aspects of the living situation. So for those of you who are in need of QEP stories or SI responses then consider living with an international family for a while! Your cup will runeth over.

It is a very small flat and with my arrival everyone has piled into the parents room. Initially I was to share the one other bedroom with the the 10 year-daughter, but now she and her other two siblings are sleeping in the same bed with their mother. So the father and I are sleeping in two little Barbie beds and he snores like a lumberjack sawing wood on a freight train. So needless to say I am not getting much sleep.

I was thinking about inventing a trip this weekend so that I could stay in a hotel and just sleep and take a long, hot shower.

Amman

I have been here long enough to get over most of the jet lag and was only up at about 4:30 AM this morning. I asked for directions (in Arabic of course) from the hotel in Jabal Hussein to the Sports City where there is a bit of a forest oasis among the concrete jungle which is Amman. You don't find many cars on the road at 0500 and certainly not any other joggers.

I had passed by the Sports City before, but never knew that there was a track or path of sorts through the trees. The directions were not to difficult and made it there, but couldn't find an open gate at that time in the morning so just kept running since I finally found a spot that was reasonably flat. As I turned the corner I saw someone else running and followed him to the one open gate and then eventually found the path in the dark. So if you are in Amman and looking for a place to run and exercise this is definitely a good spot. Running on the streets, even early in the morning isn't the best, and with the huge curbs it almost feels like you are doing a steeplechase race.

I am definittely getting my feet wet on the NGO stuff here and the many obstacles to trying to help and empower the many less fortunate people in Jordan. The group that I am working with has done some amazing work in the Northwest part of the country in and around Ajloun. This part of the country is a little off the beaten path and not nearly as popular as some of the other more notable tourist spots like Petra, Mount Nebo, The Dead Sea, and others. That being said, there is a lot of very interesting history and lush vegetation that you will not find in the other parts of the country.

The group has done a lot of work educating, training, and providing business skills, mostly to women in that area and has had a tremendous amount of success. I am helping them write a proposal to receive additional funding to expand the current program. A lot of people who visit Amman make it to the Wild Jordan and buy a lot of the products that are produced in the area and the most popular is probably the soap made from olive oil and other locally grown herbs. The actual soap house is located on the trail network that interconnects several of the villages that have come together to build and administer the hiking trails through the area.

The local women have also received training in how to run and operate small B&B's from their homes and whether or not you actually spend the night you can hike the trails and the locals will open up their homes to serve meals and snacks as well as share some of the local history. It is definitely an area worth exploring and not on the usual to do lists while visiting Jordan.

In Jordan

The trip wasn't too painful since I got the upgrade to business class all the way to Amman. There were also some good movies on the flight which helped pass the time. Finally say The Social Network. I had put off seeing it out of pain and a lot of envy. I had been an investor in a company that while not exactly the same idea as Facebook, was very similar in a lot of ways and was one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley for a while, but it was the right idea at the wrong time. We wound up selling the company to another social media player for a less than satisfactory outcome, but those are the ups and downs of Silicon Valley. It was an interesting movie to see since I have had some interactions with some of the people portrayed in the movie.

I did several of the important things immediately after leaving the airport and that was getting my hummus, falafel, and kunaffa fix. I thought I had slept just enough on the trip over so that I could sleep when I got here, but was staring at the ceiling long before the morning call to prayer.

Off To Jordan

I don't have all of the details of my trip, but am heading back over to Jordan in two weeks. I will be working with an NGO in Amman to help a women's entrepreneurial group write a proposal to the European Union. Since most of my professional experience has been in start-ups and venture capital this should be an interesting experience. Especially, as a male working with women in the Middle East. I will be living and working in Amman for a month and will be doing something in Ajloun once a week as well.

Initially it looked like I would be in Ajloun the entire time which could have been interesting from a total immersion point of view, but am glad that the NGO was able to find a suitable opportunity in Amman. Ajloun is only about thirty miles from Amman, but can take almost two hours by bus. I have a few friends in Amman and I will be able to take a few Arabic classes at the school where I studied before.

I don't have all of the details on where I will be staying yet, but will be living with a family in Amman. My first order of business will be to eat at Hashim's downtown and I will probably fast on the trip over so I can also get a falafel sandwich at the Jerusalem Cafeteria on Rainbow Street, and maybe a Schwerma at Rheem's at the 2nd Circle. Then I will have to surprise my friend who runs a great restaurant in Abdoun near the US Embassy. So being in Amman is a definite plus.

The other cool aspect about this trip is that it is all tax deductible. So if you are looking for creative ways to learn Arabic or another CNL for the State Department this is a pretty cost effective way to do it. The program I am doing also includes some basic Arabic classes, but since I am beyond that not sure what that will entail. Having studied Arabic in both Amman and Cairo, I think Amman is the better place since you can actually speak Arabic. The most disappointing aspect of my time in Cairo was that you didn't really need to speak Arabic, and most people preferred to speak English if you were not fluent in Egyptian colloquial. That definitely was not my experience in Jordan.

Since I passed the SCNL for Arabic last year I am good for four more years if I am able to get back to the OA and pass it, but since I don't have any NGO experience this will be a great experience in a lot of different ways.