Singing by Manawel

This week went very quickly as usual. The office was very busy with students who are hastily trying to send out last minute items to colleges, or just now submitting applications. I printed out countless supporting documents to applications this week, including transcripts from all four years, letters of recommendations, Common App supplements, and then organizing them to then ship to various universities around the world. 

I feel like I am finally getting closer to the the staff, Junior Fellows, and students here at the school. Now that I know them all a little better, there seems like there is more to talk about which is very nice. Another positive to this week was the new table rotation. Faculty, including Junior Fellows, work as the head of a lunch table a few times a week. As the head we are supposed to initiate conversations, and get to know the students on a more personal level. The last table that I sat with were painfully silent. None of them were friends with each other, did not have any interest in becoming friends, and had zero interest in talking to, or let alone one another. I tried so many times to start even simple conversations, like “what are you doing this weekend?” to which one or two of them would simply look up at me, and then join the rest of the table in looking down, and pushing around their food with their silver wear. 

Now, the new table is a huge improvement, they still are shy around me, and do not talk to me much, unless I ask them something, but they at least talk to each other, and are friends which is so much better than the last table, where we all sat silent for half an hour. 

The week ended quickly, and soon it was Thursday night, and time to relax. Thursday night I went out to Madaba with two other Junior Fellows to hang out. We went to our usual café and stayed there for a while, making conversation with some very friendly Jordanian men who were very excited to meet some foreigners (Madaba does not get a tone of tourists). The café closed at 9, so instead of going home we decided to walk around the town. After more than a half hour of wondering the streets, we made our way back to the same café, but noticed there there was a restaurant still opened, and seemed busy right next to it, on the second and third floor. The sing read “Don’t Miss: Every Night – The Best Food - Best Prices - Best Songs – With The Singer: Manawel”. Since we had no other plans, we decided to give the place a shot. We walked down between two building to the entrance, up and exposed staircase, where a man opened a lard glass door for us, into a lounge area. A well dressed woman then directed us up a small curvy stair, that opened up into a third floor dining room. The room was low-lit, with with windows overlooking the main street, and the ceiling had exposed dark wood beams. There were multi-colored disco lights spinning around a table-less portion of the room where Manawel was surrounded by speakers and standing behind two keyboards singing upbeat Arab songs, and the three of us were the only ones who could not sing along. Manawel was a middle-aged man, with greased back, black hair, and had a casual suit on, he had one hand on the keyboard playing notes, while the other was on the keyboard above, playing beats and sound effects. The music was extremely loud, making conversation difficult, but making the whole night all the more perfect. Groups of young adults, and med were sitting at the tables around us filling the room with smoke. After twenty minutes or so, Manawel played what appeared to be a very popular song because everyone joined in on cue and a group of five or six men stood up and headed to to the area in front of Manawel. The men held hands, and the two on the end spun beads in the air, and they began to dubke, which is a traditional Middle Eastern dance. We stayed there for a few hours, enjoying the music, and watching groups of people dancing. 

View from the top of Mt. Nebo

  The next morning I woke up, and had a driver from the school take me around to a few of the tourist spots in Madaba that I had not yet seen. Our first stop was to Mount Nebo, famous for where Moses is said to have stood upon, and seen the promise land. It was about a twenty minute drive, and a less than a ten minute walk up to the top. About half way I stopped to look around, and a tourist police waived for me to come towards his direction. He told me that he could give me a tour, and I declined, but he insisted that he only wanted to show the right direction. He told me facts that I either already knew, or could have found out on my own, he managed to sway a group of Nigerian tourists into taking the tour with him, even letting them know that I was his “sidekick”. At the end of the “tour” he told us that the was a “bid” for the tour, and it was 5JD. Annoyed that I let myself get talked into having him walk me around just to make some money, I gave him a few Dinars so that I could enjoy the view in peace. 

Mt. Nebo Museum

       The view from Mt. Nebo is gorgeous. It’s endless miles of low sloping beige mountains, and some greenery. The day was sandy and cloudy, though I was told that on a clear day one can see Jerusalem, the Jordan River, and Jericho. After walking around the mountain a bit, I headed back to the car, and went to a mosaic shop since Madaba is famous for its mosaics, where the workers shoed me how they make the mosaics, and then tried to have me buy the mosaics. My last stop was that old orthodox church at the center of town. The church is small, with a lot of gold, and byzantine style paintings, but the true beauty of the church was the floors. Though the church is only a couple hundred years old, it was built on top of the remains of an ancient Byzantine church, and they kept the original mosaic floors. Much of the floor eroded over the years, but the remaining tiles were sectioned off to prevent further destruction. The mosaics are very famous, and are a map of ancient Jerusalem. That night we took a bus to City Mall, a large mall in downtown Amman, stayed there for a bit and then went out to dinner to a very swanky asian restaurant downtown. 

This weekend I was glued to the news. Although Jordan is very stable, it’s slightly scary to think that there are revolutions, protests and riots happening everywhere around me. Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and some have started elsewhere, however, I can’t help but think about what an exciting, and monumental time this is to be  in the Middle East. I’m stuck in the middle of what could be a huge social and political movement in the region, which could quickly domino to many other countries, it’s all fascinating.