Wadi Rum

We had a shortened work week last week because it was the end of the semester, and students were taking exams. I’ve been working on this project for over two weeks now, and I am getting really frustrated with it because it’s taking so much longer than I thought it would. Basically, my boss is running a college tour over the summer for college counselors from international schools all over the world, and I am putting together the booklet that goes with the tour. This booklet includes an in depth profile of every university the tour will be visiting, as well as a schedule, map, and trying to find a charter bus to take the group around. The more I work on this the project the more bored I get, and so it’s taking me a lot of time to finish it. 

Finally the week ended on Wednesday, and I headed back to my room to pack for the long weekend. I had a good night of sleep and Thursday morning I boarded the bus and set off for Wadi Rum - a mountainous desert of Southern Jordan inhabited by Bedouins. Along with a small group, we were off to spend the weekend there in a Bedouin camp. It was almost a 4 hour drive south down a single highway. It’s very interesting to watch as the landscape drastically changes the further south you go. From Madaba it’s pretty green, with dark red soil, olive trees, and farm land, you drive a little south towards Mt. Nebo, and the rocky mountains came into view, the land at this point is very rocky, with large bouldery mountains. Further south again the boulders become less frequent, and sand drifts over the mountains. Later on the sand changes to a terra cotta color, and massive jagged mountains spring up in the distance. We finally arrived at Wadi Rum in the afternoon. We passed a small village, and turned left onto a path leading into the desert towards the mountains. 

The landscape of Wadi Rum is breathtaking, it’s unlike any other mountainous area that I have ever seen. It is not a mountain range, that is to say, the mountains are not connected by high ground to one another, instead, the desert is all at ground level, with slow sloping dunes of red sand, and then massive jagged mountains rise at extraordinary heights in random spots in the desert. 

We got off the bus at the camp that sits right underneath a mountain and went straight to an open air tent. The tents in the camp are all made of black wool with one large, and two thin horizontal stripes of white. The open air tent had many layers of thick, colorful rugs and many stiff patterned red pillows of woven red wool centered around a metal fire pit. We sat there and met an American woman who helps oversee tourists at the camp, and she used to work at King’s as well. We were served typical, delicious Arabic sweet tea with a hint of cinnamon for the winter. We quickly picked our tents for the weekends, and went off to walk around the desert to find a spot to watch the sunset. I walked barefoot through the sand, it was like walking through silk. A few of us climbed up to a ledge on the side of a smaller mountain and sat there, waiting for the sun to set behind the mountains. Shadows began to creep onto the mountainsides, and twilight dyed the mountains red. Before it got to dark we headed back for the camp to eat dinner. It was absolutely freezing when we went to bed at night. The desert is so cold when there is no sun! We only had one blanket each because we didn’t think to grab more before we went to bed. I slept horribly that night. The next morning we got up and had breakfast, and shortly after along with a teacher who was on the trip as well, I got on a camel for a two hour ride through the desert led by an old Bedouin. After an hour we stopped the camels, and the sat in the middle of the desert, at which point the Bedouin began to dig a shallow hole into the sand and place sticks which he had collected on the way. He made a small fire in the sand, put water in an old metal teakettle and made us tea, right there in the middle of the desert, it was wonderful. When he poured the tea, and the ashes were still hot, he placed to pieces of pita and warmed them up for us as well. He spoke only a few words of English, and often said “Bedouin!” and smiled. However, with his few words of English, and my broken Arabic,  we all managed to have a conversation. Surprisingly, he knew all of the U.S. presidents in order since Eisenhower, and after he said each name we would all do a thumbs up if we liked the president or didn’t. “Kennedy!” we all put our thumbs up, “Nixon!” we all said “Noooo!”. It was unreal, there I was in the middle of the Jordanian desert, talking U.S. presidents with a Bedouin. We saddled up once again and rode back to the camp. 

For lunch we met with some young boys from the village to discuss some potential community service projects between King’s Academy and their school (the purpose of this trip was actually for students to form a link with the school in the village and start some community service projects, but I was just there to enjoy Wadi Rum and “supervise” a bit since I am technically a faculty member). In the afternoon we drove to Aqaba to spend some time at the beach, which was filthy. The first time I went to the beach we I was at a resort, so it was beautiful, but this was a public beach, and it was just gross, and a fight broke out at one point as well. 

We were off in the car once again back to the camp for the night, this time we grabbed plenty of blankets so that we would not freeze again. We played games under the moonlight, and relaxed in the cool, grey sand. We woke up early the next morning, and boarded the bus for King’s once again.