You Can Ride My Donkey...But It Will Cost You

Tehva is the dirtiest child in the developed world.

If the theories on asthma and allergies are correct, and if they do in fact develop in some children as a result of an overly-sanitary environment, then Tehva will never develop these types of health issues. And neither will her children. In fact, I am currently questioning our decision to have had her immunized at all as I am pretty sure that she has been exposed to and developed immunity to all varieties of the pox and all major parasites. She is, in short, a mess, and nothing has brought that out more strongly than Petra.

We arrived in the cowboy town of Wadi Musa in the evening as everything was just coming alive. Poorly spelled, hand-painted signs were at every turn—“Highly Recommendeb Coffee” and “Enjoy You Tim Here” and “Wel Come to Petra!”—optimistic to the end, it felt like we had truly arrived at Jordan’s premier backpacker grotto. We parked the car, called our hosts, Vale and Ali, and then settled in to wait for one of them to turn up.

Tehva wandered over to a tree and summarily began stripping it of pine cones, alternating between shoving them in her pockets and tossing them cheekily at a group of Chinese tourists trying to flash photos of her endeavors. When she came back to us, she had a scalp full of pine cone bits, bulging pockets, and a scowl on her face. She growled at Silas but deigned to allow Tony to help her into the back of Ali’s pickup truck for the trip through town to their place.

The next morning we dressed all three kids as tidily as we could manage after a week on the road with less than a week’s worth of clothing and headed to Petra. After selling a kidney to pay for the entrance fee (“Well, at least it’s cheaper than a day at Disney Land!”—I really tried to put a positive spin on the price of admission) we entered into day one of, well, Petra. Really, I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than to pay a fortune for admission, to become dehydrated, and to be harassed endlessly by little boys with donkeys.

The donkeys minus the little boys

We wandered down through the Siq, which is a long, narrow rock corridor that stretches about 800 shaded meters 

and terminates here:

The Treasury, minus Indiana Jones

It is the answer to why the ancient Nabataens put their city where it did--nobody can get in or out of Petra without being seen and heard coming through the Siq. 

Within minutes of entering the Siq, fifteen people had asked Tehva if she wanted to ride their horses. One boy offered with a wink to have Tian ride his monkey. Tehva’s clothing went from clean to dingy by virtue of the fact that she was stroking each pack animal as we passed by, but by the time we arrived at the The Treasury, we had lost Tehva.

Not to worry, though, we found her here:

With her BFF, the Treasury-side seller

  

Now that we were in front of the Treasury, we had to contend with offers of camel rides, postcards, carriage rides, jewelry, Bedouin tea with sage, and tiny carved animals with even tinier carved animals inside. At the same time our attention was drawn to Russian touristas wearing high heeled shoes (how is it they haven’t fallen over yet?), Chinese tourists snapping thousands of photos with rapid fire, high-tech cameras,  Korean tourists demanding that their travel companions take another photo over here, and hundreds of Arab League nationals filling in the blanks. We never noticed Tehva bathing herself in the fine dust that drifts down from the stone walls.

The distraction of watching the world watch Petra

Even the locals enjoy the show

We walked further into the ruins and into an area with a coliseum carved from the rock itself. In the confusion of the open marketplace that has evolved in this area, we lost Tehva completely, found her again, discovered her jacket was gone, found her jacket, and then lost her again. She was in her element—in a half-cobblestoned, half-dust strewn confusion of color and motion. Within an hour she was completely camouflaged by the reddish-brown dust. Having smeared herself with handful after handful of the soft, cold stuff, she looked like any one of the Bedouin children who were prowling the area with pockets stuffed full of trinkets to pawn.

Here's a taste of Petra Day One--Find Tehva

What, you can't find her? Neither could we.

She disappeared completely for an hour and Tian found her trying to sell rocks for a dinar a pop (about a dollar apiece), standing next to the Roman ruin of a nymphaeum. She ran off again and then turned up at the very back of the ruins, near the Crusaders’ castle. She was on the back of a donkey, accompanying two boys named Omar and Abdullah. She had struck a bargain with the boys, promising them that she would help them attract tourists to ride their donkeys through the ruins. She had proposed a 30-70 split of the profits, with them receiving the larger share since they were the ones supplying the transportation.

Guiding the people in Petra

I gave up on Tehva for the rest of the day, abandoning her to the siren call of a life spent selling overpriced rides on pack mules. By the end of that first day, she had befriended the majority of the Bedouin children working within Petra, or at least manipulated them enough to allow them to think that they had been befriended. 

Tehva and her new BFFs, Rami and Monika the Mule

By the end of the second day she had her own puppy and was inexplicably riding a donkey named Layla through Petra freely, without a guide. When asked whose donkey it was, she just shrugged and said, “It’s my friend’s. If you want a ride, I will give you one but you will have to pay me 7 dinar.”

Her new best friend, Rami, had invited her to come live with him in the Bedouin village, and we considered sending her. After all, a trip there might allow her to find a new home for her puppy, and the possibility of a dowry loomed large in our minds. It just might help offset the cost of admission to Petra! But in the end, Tehva chose to come back with us. She even submitted to a shower, and sleeps at this very moment, clean and smelling sweet, across the room from me.

So I guess I should have started out by saying that Tehva was the dirtiest child in the developed world. However, she is also one of the cleverest. She managed to spend two days in Petra doing exactly what we all wanted to do—she spent 80% of her time on horseback/muleback/donkeyback and never paid a penny for the privilege. She ran with the Bedouin children, spent the entire day drinking sweet sage tea, and was indulged at every turn.

There is something to be said for being dirty. And for being Tehva.
 

On the Road to the Valley of the Crescent Moon

We arrived in Wadi Musa (that translates roughly as Moses’s Valley River) after two days in the warm but pricey embrace of the Dead Sea. Staying in a five-star resort was the big splurge of our trip and we had to half-starve the kids to afford two nights there. I thought, therefore, that they would be relieved to go, but the hunger must have gone to their heads because there was much gnashing of teeth as we left the Dead Sea resort strip.

The Dead Sea cost such a fortune that we were left to scavenge for salt crystals

We had just stopped at an over-priced shop for a bagful of dry goods to keep us in eats for the trip away from the Dead Sea and back into the mountains, and were pulling away from the store when Tian sighed and said, “Silas, what was your favorite part of the trip so far?”

He sighed in response and looked out the window. “I loved the Dead Sea resort.”

Tian’s tummy rumbled (because she hadn’t eaten much in the previous 48 hours—no outside food allowed past the X-ray machines and the resort charged five-star prices) and then she sighed. “I also loved it. It was my favorite part, too.”

Ah, the medicinal mud

They sighed and reminisced for most of the first hour of our drive, while we followed the wide, two-laned King’s Road. “Do you remember when we floated in the Dead Sea? That was amazing.”

And the medicinal waters

 “Yes, and the mud scrubs we did? Those were great. My skin still feels soft.”

Lovin' the mud

Along the road up toward Petra

Looking back at the valley we had climbed. Sheep ahead...

They continued like this until we finally saw a small brown sign directing us off of the main road and up into the mountains. The road took us past a collection of canvas tents stamped in faded blue ink with UNHCR. “Refugee camp?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” These tents were another reminder of what we kept running into here—Syria and her plight. Tourism was down, the Jordanians said, because of Syria. Fewer jobs were to be had in the country in general because of the Syria. Food prices were up because of Syria. In the Dead Sea resort we had been insulated from this reality, although only barely. Just before we were waved through the final security checkpoint that guards the Dead Sea from the rest of Jordan, we had passed a ramshackle sprawl of UNHCR tents. 

Syria and the collection of refugees we were passing at that moment quieted everyone for a bit, but just a bit. Tian fell asleep. Silas gazed out the window at the mountains, and the rows of tomato plants that were ripe for harvest. Tehva listened to a book. We snaked further into the mountains and into a tiny village. And then another tiny village. None of these villages had names. Were we going the right way? I was once again reminded that we were without a map in an Arabic-speaking country where none of us spoke enough Arabic to get past, “Where is the toilet?” and “Give me the red ball.”

And then Tony brought the car to a screeching halt.

Oh crap

A sea of goats and sheep surrounded us on a crumbling road hanging off of the side of cliff. We sat like the Americans we are, unsure of how to react to a flock of livestock in the middle of road. Should we honk the horn? Turn around? Sit patiently and wait? Step out of the vehicle and flag the nearest shepherd?

“Silas, will you get out of the car, please, and get the sheep out of the road?” It came out of my mouth almost before I could conceive of the brilliance of my solution.

Instant shepherd

Silas jumped out, did a few “Yah”s, and the way forward opened, like the parting of the Red Sea. And how appropriate that this parting landed us very quickly in the town of Wadi Musa, Moses’s River Valley, and in the town that abuts Petra. You know? Petra.

Yes, you know. Petra.   

Madaba

Madaba is the city of mosaics as it sports, well, I am not sure of the exact count, but there are a hecka lotta mosaics. 

Some are in dismal shape, having been destroyed by tourists, raiders, or the church itself. Some are in incredible condition having been restored by trained mosaic restorers. Some were found and protected from the beginning. All are surrounded by a city familiar with tourists and their quirks, and it was into this city that we launched ourselves this morning, but only after Tehva realized she had no underwear, Silas came to the shocking realization that he had grown an inch since leaving Muscat four days ago, and Tian resolved to become fluent in Ibo language (think Pig Latin on steroids). As a result we were delayed getting down to breakfast since Tehva had to have a breakdown about her lack of undergarments, Silas had to ponder the implications of life with cold ankles, and Tian was repeating, “Okay, I want to say ‘I am ready’…I-bo ibambo ribo-eddie. Is that right? No. Okay…again.”

Breakfast came in spite of our late arrival—buttery hummus studded with whole chickpeas and green chili and drowning in olive oil, scrambled eggs cooked in enough olive oil to allow for dipping after the eggs were gone, sliced fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, a plate of whipped labneh, and coffee and tea. This made Silas feel better about his cold ankles as the coffee warmed all of his bits and it gave Tian something to practice besides “I am ready.” Now she could say “C-i-bo-off-ee. Is that right? No? Okay…again.” And Tehva could also break down about something other than her bare bum. The tea was too hot, the eggs were too plain, Silas was too annoying, and the cups were too slow in coming from the dishwasher.

In spite of the moaning and whining, we were out the door in time to see Madaba come alive with the morning. We passed vegetable vendors setting up next to their blue pickup trucks and ooed and ahed at the vibrant colors of the produce as well as the leafy greens picked fresh from the fields. We passed children running through the streets with change clutched in one hand and fresh flat bread clutched in the other. We passed stalled traffic, with cars blaring their horns at the delay, and minibuses parked to block two lanes of traffic, waiting for locals and tourists to board for destinations near and far. Haze and diesel fumes hung in the morning chill.

By late afternoon we had seen all bazillion mosaics to be seen in Madaba, drawn water from the rain water cistern deep in the bowels of the St. John Church (shrine to the beheading of John the Baptist--EWWWWW!), bought trinkets and baubles from half a dozen vendors, enjoyed a cup of tea or two, chit-chatted with fellow American tourists, apprenticed with a sand-in-a-jar artisan, been tailed by a young Jordanian who introduced himself with “Hi-I-am-not-dangerous-I-just-like-to-practice-English-with-yes!”, translated for a Chinese couple, and shattered a snow globe on the floor of a shop. And one of us also cried over that, but I won’t say who he was. But I will tell you it was not Tony.

The sand artist--loved him

The rain water cistern deep under St. John's Church/Shrine

Surrounded by art of the ages and he turns to Games magazine

The embodiment of threatening

As each of the days has passed here, I have been impressed by the easy manner in which real life integrates with the past in Jordan. It is especially impressive in Madaba, where the stuff that surrounds the people here has evolved to spark countless wars, but has also encouraged people everywhere to be good and right. And I think we are all endlessly happy to be here, in spite of the broken snow globes, frigid body parts, and general whininess. 

Umm-Kay...I mean, Umm Qais

An overseas trip to a developing country will teach you a lot of things about your children. Their intolerances and discomforts surface first. Their deepest desires surface next. And of course there is always the reconfirmation of the things that you already know but manage to ignore most of the time when living in the relative comfort of home.

Silas’s discomforts surfaced right off of the plane. The person who so kindly rented us a car without a deposit or credit card number picked us up in his 1969 Land Rover. We rocked through the area surrounding Amman’s Queen Alia Airport, driving the wrong way on one way roads, trying to escape the airport without paying for parking, and attempting to conjur enough English to make small talk. I was doing the same with my very lame Arabic. If someone wants to talk about their green balls or oranges they bought, I am game, but plunk me in a car in Jordan and I am lost. I was so involved in my contemplation of the conjugation of “to like” that I failed to notice Silas nearly in tears.

When we finally met up with our rental car, in a parking lot that looked like the apocalypse meets the Mojave Desert, Silas wandered off. When he returned to us he lamented, “Why do I feel so…outcast?” Of course we laughed at him (mistake one) since I have never encountered Silas using this word in conversation. This made him feel even more outcast. Then we asked for clarification (mistake two) since Silas does not clarify. Ever.

But we finally managed to squeeze from him that he was less than impressed with the general state of Jordan’s architecture. Even a brief history of Jordan’s recent history explaining the reason for the look of things did not cheer him out of his outcastness.

 Once we hit the Roman ruins at Umm Qais, though, he perked up a bit. Masha’allah.

Still not thrilled about this Jordan thing

But the Roman toilets made everything better

Tian on the other hand was Miss Chipper from the moment we hit the ground in Amman. After I pointed out how people were greeting one another at the airport (smooch other person’s hand and then press hand to forehead several times, then kiss on one cheek once followed by two kisses on the other with a pause after the second, and then a third kiss) she went wild with the observations. And she persisted in observing all the way to Umm Qais, which was an inexplicable distance away from Amman. According to my phone’s GPS, Jordan Lonely Planet, and the Jordanians we had spoken to, Umm Qais was just 100 km from Amman—an easy 90 minute drive.

It took us about 3000 hours to get there. And I swear we drove through Israel, Lebanon, and Syria on the way.

And for all 3000 hours, Tian was making observations, satisfying that deep-seated desire to know everything about the world RIGHT NOW. “Dad, I think we are going in circles. Look, there is another Flower Petrol Station!”

“Tian, it’s a chain.”

“Oh. Oh wait! Look! There goes another Flower Petrol Station. Dad! Turn around! You’re going the wrong way!”

“Tian, chill. And buckle your seatbelt.”

“I don’t have a seatbelt. I wonder if all cars in Jordan lack seatbelts? Does it smell like cigarettes in here to you? I wonder if lots of Jordanians smoke. Dad, did you notice that there are lots of little stands on the side of the road here? I love this! And look at all the trees. Look! There are pine cones! Oh wow…look at that. Can we stop there? Dad. You are going in circles. When will we get there?  Oh! Look! Another sign for Umm Qais. Oooo, I think we just turned the wrong way…I just saw that Flower Petrol Station again.”

Miss Perky with the guide

Miss Perky staring into catacombs

Miss Perky with a centuries old bead that a mole unearthed and left behind on the Roman road

And Tehva has been continuing in her search for the perfect family that will take her in. The only condition is that they not be us. Other than that, anybody will do.  In Muscat we are able to ignore this because she has polled all available families and, sadly, no one can accommodate her right now. But Jordan is a whole new country with a population not yet immune to her charms.

Tehva...pretty typical of her first day in Umm Qais...outside of the Grotty Hotel

We arrived at and checked into the Grotty Hotel (name changed to protect the grotty) in Umm Qais and Tehva started working it right away at the falafel shop out front. She managed to score a handful of falafel fresh from the deep fryer within seconds of hitting the pavement and, within an hour every shop keeper on the Main Street knew her name. But no one offered her kinship and so she remains with us.

Yes, travel teaches much—especially travel with children.

The Star Party

“Do you have a GPS?” asks Srey as she climbs into the car.

“No, you are it.”

“Oh, well do you know where you are going?” Srey asks.

“No, but you do…don’t you?”

Srey pulls the door shut and nods authoritatively. “It is easy to get there.” Srey doesn't mince words when it comes to adventure. So off we go, me hoping that it is actually as easy as she has said, for I have neither a clue nor a contact number if we are to get lost. 

Srey scopes the course

The road to the desert, it turns out, is a straight shot, with the exception of one left turn off of the highway, which we take with the able guidance of Srey the Human GPS. 

The girls sit in the back and wear down my cell phone’s battery with trivia games while Srey and I gossip (mostly my job) and navigate (mostly her job), simultaneously keeping our eyes peeled for produce stands on the side of the road. What else do you do on the way to the desert?

After we leave the highway and start to curve our way through the stubby mini-mountains, the terrain melts into monotony, broken by the occasional camel and prickly shrub, until two hours into our trip when we come to a screeching halt in the middle of the town of Ibra.

Oh no. Juma’a prayer. 

It is just after noon and we have ground to a halt in front of the only mosque we have seen in miles. Friday is the Muslim equivalent to Sunday—the holy day. And what we have just driven into is the equivalent of the after-church lunch rush, where all of the well-dressed and recently- churched head to the local diner to cash in the church bulletins for 10% off the Sunday special. 

Except in this case no one is headed to the local diner. They are headed back to the labor camps.

Headed back to the labor camp at a turtle's pace

And they are not in a hurry.

We sit and watch dozens, hundreds, thousands of men stream out of the mosque and climb into trucks or slide easily into SUVs and 4x4s. Then we watch them sidle their vehicles up to one another for a chat. 

After their chats, they pull out in front of where we sit in the road and they also sit, engines idling, still chatting. A few of them smile and give us the “just wait” signal, which always reminds me of a stereotypical Italian gentleman gesturing to make his point clearer. They pinch the fingers of their right hands together and point them straight up in the air, shaking their hands toward and away from their heads.

We sit and sit and sit, wondering how far we are from the Mintrib Roundabout. 

And then, as if the Red Sea is parting, the traffic parts and off we dart to Mintrib, sliding into the meeting point just in time to be, well, extremely early.

This is the meeting point for the monthly astronomy tour which is in the desert this month. For just

5 OR per trip, we are allowed to follow the Astronomer Guy, we will call him AG, into any of a dozen far flung locations around Oman. This monthly adventure usually comes at the new moon and includes hours of star gazing, both with and without telescopes, laser pointers which shine beams that seemingly touch the stars, and a varied group of people to chat with for an evening.

We pull into the Shell Station and AG comes stomping up to the car. Since we are the only ones present, he can take the time to instruct us in tire deflation (“No more than 20 psi in the desert!”), sand driving (“Keep those tires straight and don’t stop moving no matter what or you will be stuck! And we don’t want that!”); following distance (“No closer than about 200 meters please”—as an American I am still somewhat metric challenged and thus fail miserably at trying to visualize this distance, resolving instead of follow a really long way behind everyone else); braking in the sand (“DON’T!”); and red light use (“Be sure your lamps have a red light setting—white light will destroy our night vision—set the lights on red please.”)

People begin to trickle into the meeting point--Belgians, Sri Lankans, Brits, Emiratis, more Americans, Australians, Canadians, Venezuelans, Colombians—and then, after an hour of tire deflating and gassing up, we are off. 

The "road"in

I am white knuckled into the first kilometers of the desert. I let the others drive so far ahead that they look like nothing more than puffs of dust in the distance. I NEVER touch the brakes. But then I realize that driving in the sand rocks! The orange sand is fine like no beach sand I have ever seen but is also supportive of the Santa Fe, and as the desert cools the chilly temperatures cause the sand to compact and become even more solid under the tires.

Who would fuss at these cherubs?

We stop in a particularly solid spot, on top of a massive dune, to have AG yell at us for allowing the girls to hang out the windows.  Okay, in truth they were actually sitting with their bums on the windows and their upper bodies nearly slung across the roof’s luggage rack, but they were channeling their inner Bedouins and loving the feel of the wind in their hair and the grittiness of the orange sand in their teeth. 

They grumble and groan and pull themselves into the car but are recovered enough by the time we reach the camp to good-naturedly set up the tents. 

The evening is an astronomy feast with views of Jupiter, the stars, nebulae, constellations, and even the Andromeda Galaxy, followed by the sun the next morning.

The solar scope revealed more sunspots than AG had ever seen before 

And sand...lots of sand. In the morning the wind picks up a bit and carries it in curls off of the dunes. 

There are many places in the world that have deserts and dark empty spaces where the stars look close, but I would bet that there are precious few AGs walking around with telescopes and an interest in explaining celestial bodies to absolute strangers. And even fewer who will tolerate teens hanging out windows as they cruise through the desert.         

  

See, There IS an Omani Christmas

Some of our well-meaning but more neurotic friends get extra neurotic at this time of year because it is Christmas and, well, this is not considered by many as a Christmas kind of place. And, although we do have Christmas church services and masses that run through the season at the Church of Oman, it seemingly does not exactly meet the Christmas criteria laid out by Bing Crosby et al. many a moon ago. We are missing the snow, the mistletoe, folks wrapped up like Eskimos, blazing fireplaces, the pink cheeks, and the fresh pine trees that shed needles all over the living room.

However, take heart! What we do have is the other stuff that goes with Christmas.

We have the Christmas displays in the hyper malls which feature an international assortment of chocolates, advent calendars, made-in-China ornaments, plastic Christmas trees, and tinsel galore.

Okay, so the color scheme is a bit off--pink Christmas anyone?--and last I checked, Frosted Flakes were not really considered Christmas fare, but we must fill in the gaps with something, and why shouldn't that be a tooth-rotter?

What the stores do very well is start up with this Christmas thing well ahead of the event. Tony was outraged this year when the Christmas stuff came rolling out before the Thanksgiving turkeys even had finished flying out of the Al Fair deep freezers. “What is the world coming to?” he complained, “When Christmas starts before Thanksgiving is over?” 

Really? What is the world coming to when people thousands of miles from the US and not even of the US know that Thanksgiving is even happening?

I swear.

We have the pop-up Christmas bazaars that have been surfacing with increasing frequency in the expat enclaves of Muscat. This year, Tehva’s Girl Guides troop swore to honor and protect the Queen even at Christmas and then carted their loads of crafts to sell poolside in a bazaar at a gated community which houses primarily British military families. The Brownies walked away with nearly 160 Omani riyal (about $400 US), all grossed through the sale of clothes pin reindeer ornaments and flip notebooks.   

Durn.

The church cranked the A/C to the max this year, putting everyone in the Christmas spirit, and  threw their own bazaar complete with choral music, orchestral pieces, overpriced coffee and snacks, and a stunning raffle away from which we walked with...nothing. 

The church bazaar

Christmas concerting for the church bazaar. None of these belong to me. As a matter of fact I have no pictures of my children performing that day because this seems to be my lot in life. Missing the big stuff is the name of my game lately.

We also know it is Christmas because every organization and high-end hotel here on God’s brown earth hosts a Christmas dinner, Christmas party, Christmas concert, Christmas play, or Christmas event of some sort.

Check this out and keep in mind that the exchange rate is $2.50 = 1 OR. Don't let the sticker shock bowl you over.

Even our own three children have been swept away in the Christmas madness, participating in Christmas caroling, Jesus birthday parties, Advent-themed beach barbecues, Christmas movies, and gift swaps.

Because we are too poor to attend those Christmas dinners at the swank hotels (and because we spent all of our money on that church bazaar raffle), we instead threw our annual cookie exchange, which was much more fun than hanging at the Hyatt. Except at the Hyatt they have a chocolate fountain, which is pretty fun.

 Nancy, Katrina, Claude, Lasandika, and Heather, clearly swept away by Christmas!

And we also know it is Christmas because it is the season in which we trek out into the desert with 70 of our closest friends and attend the Hash House Harriers Christmas feast, which includes a table decorating contest, a festive Ho-Ho run, and meal complete with a Yule log, professionally catered by Oman Air.

No, this is not our table, although that might be our car in the background

This is not our table, either...we actually forgot to bring a table this year and so had a very Bedouin Christmas by sitting on a borrowed mat adorned with a half dozen also-borrowed votive candles

So see, we do have Christmas in the desert! Be not afraid.