friendly women

I'm sitting here in the internet cafe and just got invited someplace. Unfortunately she speaks very little English and I speak no Arabic at all (just thank you, which I say LOTS), and all I understand is "visit" and "very beautiful there" and now she's trying to get me to stay the night there. Um, yeah, but I leave Friday! I spend most of my time here just following people (usually Mahmoud) around and agreeing to everything, but at some point I need to just say no. I mean, on the one hand it would be fun to see more homes and more people at home here, but on the other I still have books to read because I have to leave them behind, and I am digging this quietude. Ahmed, who works the night shift at the hotel, insists I visit him more often because I must be lonely, but I wonder when I would have the chance to be lonely. I spend all day with people, so my late evenings are nice for aloneness. Which is not loneliness. But this liking quiet and privacy seems anomalous behavior in Jordan.

Roberta will be pleased to know there is now a swarthy hero in the form of an IT guy. He keeps hitting on me, touching me - I do no flirting, but want to stay on good terms. He looks sort of like Rudolph Valentino, and he smokes like a chimney. How did people ever find smoking to be sexy? Blech.

I just googled the hotel I'm staying at in Egypt - it's very nice and I did get a pretty good deal. It is my little luxury of this trip. I deserve it after the bucket showers of Awutu.

Yusef my travel agent here is trying to change my flights but his computer keeps crashing. I think I'll go with two weeks in India then a few days in Bangkok. I'm eager to get back - to get work, to get to work on my dissertation prospectus (my first goal: to read everything ever written about Liberia). Before, I couldn't wait to leave; now, I can't wait to get back. I'm goal-fueled.

My little crisis of the day is that I have to leave behind a whole TON of stuff. I must shed to 20 kilos all my luggage, and the things I wanted to mail home would cost $100 for 15 pounds which is too much. Goodbye, winter coat. Goodbye, guides to Ghana and AFrica and water filter and sleeping bag. Goodbye, skirts and sandals and other clothes. Sigh.

Oh, and Mamoon wants to hang out tonight, and I'm not sure I'm up for it. It's getting hard to understand everybody's English and not commit cultural gaffes and always be happy and eager and all that. Don't get me wrong - this has been an awesome time here and I wouldn't change anything at all. I recommend Jordan to anybody, and I've been extremely blessed to know Mahmoud and him to be here. I could not have asked for a better time here.

But it's also tiring, and I'm hunkering down like I always do before I travel again. I'm a better visitor than a traveler - I like to be places, not to get there. I should keep that in mind when I plan my next trip. But Egypt will be fairly easy - no scrounging for a place to stay, though food might be scroungeful especially since Ramadan begins and restaurants aren't open during the day - and the place I'm staying is probably quite expensive for food. And back in Amman I'll just take day trips. India will be very challenging - just emailed Karthik, whom I met briefly in Ghana (a volunteer who left the day after I arrived) because he's from Chennai and asked his advice about things.

OK, I'm meeting the friendly woman tomorrow at 4 pm. Beyan I think she said her name is. Am I a crazy person because I go home with everybody who asks me? Her English is really limited, and the other woman here in the room got frustrated and finally just translated the meeting time and place for her. Hopefully I don't have to stay the night with her - I know buses don't run too late. I'll take enough money for a taxi, and I'll muster up the nerve to say, "I'd like to go home now" - something I haven't said in all the time I've been here, even when I was thinking it.

My Rudolph Valentino guy said last night I have "such a nice face." Apparently this face can open all sorts of doors for me. I'm not sure Beyan's reason for instantly befriending me, but I'm exotic. I met nice woman from Syria in the hotel - she has a couple sisters who live in Rowland Heights (LA). Once she started talking to me, suddenly she got very friendly. I think it's just crossing that threshold into talking to the crazy woman with the exposed head, and then they see I'm not a crazy monster and it's all good.

I guess one of the biggest things I've really learned here is that people are all the same everywhere. Not exactly the same, but really no difference. Sure, I always knew it, but now I'm living it. I've gone to Africa and the Middle East, places which should be the most different, and they're not. I mean, it's totally cool that I have seen the Golan Heights and castles built against Crusaders, to see the castles in Africa where slaves were kept before the journey across the ocean, to see West African dancing and culture and beaches. I have experienced amazing things and I'm extremely lucky for this trip of a lifetime.

But exotic? Nope. Nothing's really exotic or foreign or strange to me. Maybe I'm too much a cultural relativist, but I adapt alarmingly quickly to whatever is presented as the norm. Even things like polygamy don't strike me as strange until somebody wants me to partake. I wanted to go to the most exotic places possible, to challenge myself and expand my horizons ... but it seems my horizons were already as expansive as they'll get. I know that I like clothes dryers and running water and smog tested cars and pizza - but they aren't required for my happiness or fulfillment.

As I've explained before, I suffer culture shock in southern California on a regular basis. It is a world away from where I grew up - but where I grew up is a world away from the values and norms I hold now. As much as I love much of living in Riverside, it often strikes me as very strange. As strange as a west African refugee camp, or a Middle Eastern town. Discussing female genital mutilation doesn't strike me as stranger than discussing the desire to buy a new car every year - both are foreign to me.

Ah, I just heard Kenny's voice in my head - we used to have such long conversations, and he always felt that when I said things were strange and foreign that I was implying a value judgment that what is known to me is somehow better. Of course I don't. It's just arbitrary what is known and familiar to me - my values are not inherent or better. I'm happy to still have my clitoris, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't, and if I grew up that way it would seem normal probably. I'm not a huge fan of "western values" but I don't despise them either. They just are.

So, I guess what I'm saying - I'm tired of traveling. Not because of things being exotic, but because they're not. I'm not going to find Truth in India, because it's not more there to find than anywhere else. I may have found Truth in Africa, and that is Love. But I could find that anywhere - the stresses of a refugee camp just make things more intensified, more concentrated. And I'm nothing if not intense, so it was all a perfect match.

And maybe I'm tired of traveling because I gave myself a year to find The Meaning of My Existence, and it only took a couple weeks. I can help people in west Africa with education and development because I have skills and my heart is in the right place. Now I have to get my ass (which is growing daily with these wonderful desserts) back to Riverside and do what I have to do in order to go do what I really have to do. Whether I end up with Dayton or not, I feel a very strong pull to west Africa, and a responsibility.

I hear the voice in my head of a man I met at the Library of Congress last year. Charles Mwalimu, I think was his name. He said, "Everything that needs to has been studied and researched in this hemisphere [about education]. You must go to Africa because there you are needed."

And it's not like I think of myself as the great white savior - it's more, I've had incredible opportunities afforded me and I have a responsibility to use those opportunities to help others. Because it's interesting and gives my life meaning.

OK, I'm blathering on and on, while searching and organizing my impending travels. But I'm hungry, and need to go spend quality time with Yusef changing reservations (hopefully the computer works again), and have seven more books to read before Friday. Haha. (Gomez would believe I can do that, but I am not THAT fast of a reader.)