Fields of Gold

“I want to stand with you on a mountain, I want to bathe with you in the sea. I want to live like this forever, until the sky falls down over me”.

Today I thought a small wonder occurred; after two weeks of diarrhea it seemed that the tenderloin steak from yesterday night really did its work. However, I celebrated to early. When I got out of the plane, my stomach turned to its old self again and we will have to see what my time in Cairo will bring in this respect.

I’ve been travelling for just over two weeks now and I’ve experienced an overload of impressions, which makes it hard to tell everything in one story. So I won’t.  The transition from Kurdistan to Jordan was not easy to make. Jordan is not as politically interesting as Iraq, the people are not so kind and daily life is orientated on tourism. We came from a setting in which we met very interesting people every day and lived to get to know a culture, to plain holiday. People who know me, understand that this was no problem to me. Birkenstocks on the feet, white 3/4 pants, camera attached to my belt, pink t-shirt, sunglasses and a blue bandana; I like being a tourist.  

Jordan has six million inhabitants from which most of them live in Amman. The country mainly exists of desert and there only a few big cities. However, its historical and touristic sites are incredibly  beautiful. We went to the holy Mount Nebo from which you can see Jerusalem on a bright day and to Kerak, a small town with a spectacular Crusader’s Castle. We had our own guide, but it was nice to have Jordy with us, who studies history and has a great memory for ‘anecdotal stories’, as he mentions himself. We spent a whole day in Petra and saw the sunset in the desert in Wadi Rum.  In Aqaba we snorkeled and experienced our own Hangover 3. We took some shots and set out for the Saudi-Arabian border at two o’clock in the morning. We never reached it. We drove back with a guy named ‘The Turk’, who just happened to be walking along the beach, one kilometer before the border. When we got back we paid our taxi driver with ten Jordanian dinar and five American dollar, because that was all we had. The next day we tried to get rid of our hangover in the Dead Sea and yesterday we spent the day in Amman. I find it hard to describe some of the beauty I’ve seen in the past week. I have posted some pictures on facebook to give an impression and will try to upload some more when I’ve a proper internet connection. The country might not have oil, but sometimes it truly feels you walk among the fields of gold.

However it’s not all ‘biscuit and egg’. After a week it’s been enough. Amman is not a very special city and throughout our travels there’s something that has been bothering me. It really upsets me how girls are treated. In Kurdistan this was better, although this could also have been the case because there were always boys around. We were walking in Aqaba in our beach outfit and the local guys were constantly looking and making insulting comments to the girls. We went back to our hotel, because we felt uncomfortable and didn’t find it appropriate to spend more time at the beach. It’s just incredible to see how girls are treated without any form of respect. Of course one might say that you shouldn’t project Western images about gender and girls on the Middle East, but this is just a simple matter of respect. I don’t believe religion is the cause per se, but it is clear that this is a very negative aspect of a man-based culture. I don’t judge, but I think mutual respect is always the minimum component that should be present in society. The people we have met certainly were very respectful, also to the girls, but in daily life on the streets this definitely was not always the case.

This morning I arrived in Cairo and I will write later on this, but I can say already that this is the most sloppy apartment I have ever stayed in. It is old, the kitchen is not suited for cooking, to use water a machine has to pump up water from the ground first and the table in my room functions more like a diagonal plank. I guess that’s just the beauty of it all and there is really no incentive to complain. 

Life is good.