Mr. Hakel Goes Dancing With The Stars

Blog 12 July 15, 2010

I’m sitting under the stars. I’m listening to a Bedouin man whose name I cannot pronounce, let alone spell, playing the traditional music on the lute. I’m going to stop blogging now, but I’ll tell you the rest when he’s done. I promise.

Ok, he’s done but nowthey are passing around the fresh camel’s milk. I’ll be back. I promise.

Alright. Yes, I drank the camel’s milk. It tasted like…well…milk. I was prepared for worse. For far worse, actually.
So, back to business. The Milky Way is pretty bright tonight. The stars are twinkling. No shooting stars tonight yet, or should I say “Shouting Stars” as our guide, Ibrahim, calls them. Somebody is seeing one and is shouting, “I see one!” and everybody is looking at him instead of the stars. Anyway, there are a lot of stars.
This morning we visited with the Ma’an Education Directorate, which is the equivalent of a county board of education. I wish I could tell you it was fascinating, but to be completely honest…it was occasionally mildly interesting. Good enough.
We returned to our campsite here in the desert. The idea was to eat a quick lunch and then take cover in the shade to let the worst of the heat go past. I stopped by my wool-sided tent to change out of my slacks and walked into what could charitably be called an incinerator. Then it was off to the “shade”. Technically I was in fact out of the sun, and it did help, but not a lot. The heat is just brutal.
At 4:00 we loaded up the trucks and headed out into the desert. The features here are just amazing. Craggy red rocks that appear to be growing out of the desert. The rocks can be large enough to be considered a mountain. They can also be quite small. Even more interesting is that as you descend from one area to another the whole desert changes color. We started in an area where all the mountains were red; therefore, all the sand was red. As we descended the mountains turned from sandstone to limestone and the sand went from red to a lighter tan. We descended again and it went from a light tan to an off white. It was pretty stinkin’ cool.
Two incidents worth reporting on the jeep ride. First, our jeep would not get out of gear, for about a half hour. This left it stranded on a dune side for a time. The other two drivers walked back and we eventually got it going. A few minutes later, in a wide open desert, mind you, we got rear ended by another jeep. Those of us sitting in the back all saw the collision coming and were braced for it. Both jeeps were able to continue and we headed back to the campsite.
When we got back it was finally time for the football game of the ages. Jordan vs. USA. We played in the hard-packed sand and rocks in the enclosure of our campsite. We knew we were out of our league, but I can report that you can be proud of the effort, grit, resilience and gusto with which your country’s representatives played with. You may have noticed I did not include the final score in that list. I quickly appointed myself goalkeeper, because I know how to play the postion and I am still, after all, the oldest person in this place. (Which is kind of a bummer, because that includes the Jordanians here too.) The Jordanians first goal was an own goal on our part, but we could tell that our otherwise stifling defense was bothering the opposition as the Arabic got louder and more insistent. It was a blast, but we fell 4-1.
Dinner was pretty amazing too. We had pretty much the standard side dishes, but the main course was chicken(again), potatoes and onions. The cool part was when the cooks started clearing sand from a pile and then lifted out a three-tiered rack with the main dish arranged on each shelf. The onions were amazing as was the rest. It had been baking under the sand for one and a half hours, maybe two.
The last portion of the evening was spent listening and dancing to Matab play the lute with accompaniment by the trabokka, or drums. The music was amazing as I said at the beginning.
Big day tomorrow, we start early, we must leave here at 5:30 to go catch our hot air balloon. Scratch one item from the bucket list!
Salaam,
Mr. Hakel/Dad/Lane