What a month October has been.
A whirlwind of excursions, academic inundations, and copious sugar, I have developed significantly as a result of my experiences this month. Beginning with my badiyya homestay.
Badiyya, an Arabic term loosely defined as desert, is more appropriately denoted as “rural.” Jordan is divided into three badiyyas: northern, central, and southern, each possessing individual topographic and cultural idiosyncrasies. However, uniting them is both their relatively rural nature and traditional way of life. Individuals from the badiyya, quite proudly, are called bedouins.
As part of my programme, we spent five days in the Southern badiyya. Each student placed with a homestay family in a different village. Blessed are the powers that gave me my village and my family, for my coincidental placement here gave me what I anticipate to be my most revelatory experience in Jordan.
I traveled by bus the four hours to my village in South Jordan, called Rajif. Immediately apparent is the huge topographical diversity of Jordan. It is easy to forget how mountainous Amman is, in stark contrast to the flatlands of the desert highway connecting it to Rajif. On the otherhand, Rajif exists in close proximity to Petra, therefore placing it quite high in another series of Southern mountains.
Immediately, it is necessary to dispel common misconceptions of bedouins. They do not live in tents. Women are not severely subjugated. They do not hate America. They will not trade 50 camels for an American wife. As absurd as these statements seem, these are the very questions I have been asked by friends in the United States and want to dispel such suspicions.
I lived in a concrete home, sleeping on the floor atop a foam mattress, as did the rest of my family. Conventional couches do not exist, commonly at least, in Rajif. Rather, everyone sits and congregates in the living room with foam mattress cushions upholstered in beautiful designs lining the perimeter floor and wall.
I ate with my hands, my diet consisting heavily of grain and rice products. Every morning and evening, I kneaded dough to bake outside, atop an open flame, that I and my host brother erected.
My experience was particularly unique for two reasons. The first, my heritage. As a male, Muslim, with a beard, who speaks Arabic, I was able to very easily assimilate into the bedouin culture, opening doors and affording me insight into their culture quite a bit easier than some of my peers in the programme. This ingratiated me headily into bedouin masculine culture, a culture that is more traditional than it is Islamic. Prayers, 5 times a day, were conducted at the mosque only by the most religious of males, all at least 40 years old, in the village. I was regaled with stories of living in tents, migrating from the peaks to the valleys of mountains as the weather dictated, with flocks of sheep in tow. All of this occurred just a short 25 years prior, making Rajif a regularly young town, in terms of being settled permanently. Nevertheless, I was introduced to the farm animals, owned quite proudly, by my family and the men in my extended family.
Furthermore, my immediate family consisted almost entirely of women. The exception being my two host brothers whom both left back to their positions as soldiers just two days into my experience. This left me with a distant host cousin who slept in the living room with me at night. However, he was quite busy with work, therefore leaving me often with my host sisters and cousins, all living in one house, with me. I cooked, I cleaned, I played with children. Immediately clear was the high position women occupied in my household and in general. While indeed, segregation between the genders existed (a cultural, not religious remnant), the women in my household were extremely powerful. In particular, my host mother dominated. Anything and everything she dictated was followed, no matter the gender of the listener, nor the age. Furthermore, all the women I met were leaps and bounds more educated than their male counterparts. My mother herself, while not completing a college education due to marriage, worked diligently to start her own business and educate herself.
Finally, the bathrooms. There were no toilets, just simple holes in the ground. I took two showers during my stay, both using buckets. I did not use toilet paper, I wiped with my left hand, I squatted to relieve myself. This concept seems repulsive and indeed it was quite different from the norm. However, it also explains the incredibly sanitary nature of my home. It was always clean, hands were always diligently washed, soap was constantly and copiously available. Frankly, I found this method of relieving myself to by much more quick, efficient, and most importantly, cleaner, than standard “French” toilets.
In summary and in brief: where I lived was different. Not worse and in many ways, much better, than the experiences I have had. Even using the bathroom, while different, had its own rationale and justification.
I loved my badiyya experience so thoroughly, I intend on returning in a few short weeks.