It's amazing how everything can change so fast.
Also, a shout out to @Jordan for hosting an amazing national planning conference this past weekend. It was truly one of the best conferences I've been to. Great sessions and a truly inspirational closing plenary...
India baby girl deaths 'increase'
 There is a cultural preference for male children in India |
The number of girls born and surviving in India has hit an all time low compared to boys, ActionAid says.
A report by the UK charity says increasing numbers of female foetuses were being aborted and baby girls deliberately neglected and left to die.
In one site in the Punjab state, there are just 300 girls to every 1,000 boys among higher caste families, it says.
ActionAid says India faces a "bleak" future if it does not end its practice of cultural preference for boys.
Girls 'condemned'
ActionAid teamed up with Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to produce the Disappearing Daughters report.
More than 6,000 households in sites across five states in north-western India were interviewed and statistical comparisons were made with national census date.
 |  The real horror of the situation is that for women avoiding having daughters is a rational choice  |
Under "normal" circumstances, there should be about 950 girls for every 1,000 boys, the charity said.
But it said that in three of the five sites, that number was below 800.
In four of the five sites surveyed, the proportion of girls to boys had declined since a 2001 census, the report said.
The research also found that ratios of girls to boys were declining fastest in comparatively prosperous urban areas.
ActionAid suggested the increasing use of ultrasound technology may be a factor in the trend.
The document says that Indian woman are put under intense pressure to produce sons, in a culture that predominantly views girls as a burden rather than an asset.
It says many families now use ultrasound scans and abort female foetuses, despite the existence of the 1994 law banning gender selection and selective abortion.
The charity also blames other illegal practices - such as allowing the umbilical cord to become infected - for the growing gender imbalance.
"The real horror of the situation is that, for women, avoiding having daughters is a rational choice. But for wider society it's creating an appalling and desperate state of affairs," Laura Turquet, women's rights policy official at ActionAid said.
"In the long term, cultural attitudes need to change. India must address economic and social barriers including property rights, marriage dowries and gender roles that condemn girls before they are even born.
"If we don't act now the future looks bleak," Ms Turquet said.
Some 10 million female foetuses have been aborted in India in the past 20 years, the British medical journal the Lancet has said.
Almost a year ago that I left for Delhi...and this issue is still what captures me the most. What makes me want to go back this second. A country with so many things going right...and so much going wrong.
Yesterday, I went back to Kafrein to continue investigating the status of the 30 loans we gave out. The rest of the day proved to be a real wake-up call into the world of development. We arrived in the village early in the morning and after asking some school boys where the home of our first recipient was, entered Nadia's small home. But we soon found out that it wasn't Nadia's home, and it wasn't really her loan either. Almost immediately after we walked through the door, Nadia's father-in-law started talking in great detail about a visit one of the Princesses made to his home more than 10 years ago. To him, it seemed as though it was just yesterday. Finally we coaxed everyone into sitting on the floor so we could actually discuss Nadia's progress with her shop, which rented supplies for weddings such as chairs, tablecloths, etc. Nadia and her sister sat in the corner of the room, and her father-in-law did the rest of the talking.
Apparently he had decided that instead of renting wedding supplies, the money should be put towards opening a grocery store. But soon he realized that 1200 JD was much to little to open a grocery store, so he sold his taxi and used that plus the 1200 JD to buy a new truck. He told us that he now uses the truck to transport vegetables and fruits from the Dead Sea Valley (where Kafrein is located) to sell in Amman, and is making a profit.
However, Nadia is 6 months late on paying back her loan. We asked her father-in-law why, if he was making such a great profit transporting vegetables (and how he is doing so with rising fuel costs in Jordan I have no idea), why have they not been making their monthly payments? As soon as Suhair asked him this, he stood up in a fury and started yelling and getting defensive, even storming out of the house to "look for receipts". He came back with a stack of papers, and sifted through them nervously claiming that he had been paying, and that he had the receipts to prove it.
We never saw any receipts.
During this whole episode, Nadia sat in the corner, saying nothing. Letting her father-in-law make decisions with her money. He wasn't even speaking for her- he was speaking for himself. It was known all along that Nadia's gender would be used to get that 1200 JD loan- and then he would use the money as he wished.
The loan is in Nadia's name, so it is she that has been called, bothered, and punished for not paying back the money.
As we tried to leave the home, the father-in-law began talking about his visit from the Princess, again, over 10 years ago.
After leaving, we tried to visit about 9 other homes. All told us that the loan recipient wasn't there, was visiting her parents in another town, or simply just didn't answer the door. One even lied to us and said that we had the wrong home, and no one by that name ever lived there.
Our system of giving out loans is obviously quite flawed- we basically set them up to lie. All applicants had to submit a business plan before the money was disbursed, but these were treated just as a formality. We gave them no training on how to run a business, and no support network to lean on. But once the money we disbursed, it was theirs- and they could do as they wished with it.
I hate to be pessimistic, but sometimes I just get so frustrated because status and name are so damn important in Jordan. The guy was visited by a princess
over 10 years ago- and that was the only thing he could talk about as his daughter-in-law and granddaughter silently suffered in the corner.
a bit about my job
I've been in Amman for almost a month now, and I realized I really haven't talked about what I do at my job at all. I work for an organization called JOHUD, which stands for the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development. JOHUD is the largest NGO in Jordan and is kind of an umbrella organization- we have a main office in Amman and then several smaller offices and CDCs (community development centers) around the country. Our basic mission is to promote sustainable human rights, by creating opportunities for the most marginalized members of Jordanian society. We especially focus on women, children, people with disabilities, and rural communities.
I don't work in the main office- I work in one of the smaller offices in Amman- Beit al Bawadi. Beit al Bawadi is one of JOHUDs projects to create sustainable development. Beit al Bawadi is a high quality, very expensive ceramics shop, where customers can buy beautiful handmade ceramics with intricate Arabic calligraphy. It caters to internationals and Jordanian elite, but the catch is that all the ceramics are made in the JOHUD factory by people that otherwise wouldn't have been given the opportunity to have a job.
I came into the company with a job description that included public relations and marketing, but what I've actually been doing has been quite different. My boss knows that I'm more interested in actual development than marketing strategies, so she's given me some pretty cool things to work on. Right now I'm working on a project evaluating the success of about 30 microfinance loans we gave to poor rural women in a small village near the Dead Sea. I went to the village, called Kafrein- about 20 minutes from the site of Jesus' baptism on the Jordan river- and met and talked to some of the women who had received these loans of about 1000 JD ($1300). I was shown three shops: a hairdresser, a clothing shop, and a shop that sold basic homewares. Of course, the problem is that I can only see the successful side of the project. We have information on the women who successfully started a business and have improved their lives, but the vast majority of the loans were not used for their original purpose. And it makes sense: anyone in dire need of finances isn't going to spend a large sum of money on investment, they're going to spend it on immediate needs like food and clothing. I've learned that this whole microfinance crazy is just that, a craze. Of course we hear the success stories, about the poor woman in India who rented out her cell phone to other villagers and is now a thriving business woman. But we don't hear about the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who receive loans and don't put it towards a business, eventually sinking even deeper into debt because now on top of everything else, they have a loan they can't pay back. And even when the money is put towards some kind of business, it's always the same thing: a hairdresser, a grocery store, a bakery, etc etc. This isn't sustainable. All of our loans were given out to women, and that brings an even bigger issue into light. Many of the women in Kafrein couldn't use the money towards a business because they simply did not have the power in their family to do so. To deny the fact that many rural Jordanian women have little to no say in their family affairs is simply ignorant. In many of the interviews I took, each woman was asked how much support she got from her husband in her business ventures. Almost all gave the same, automatic answer: My husband helps and supports me very much. But it also came out in many of the interviews that the husband didn't have a job, spent money on useless things in Amman, or wanted to use the money to build something relatively unnecessary (but status raising) like an addition to the house. In other words, they said their husbands were helpful and supportive, but their actions showed something much different.
What is needed in these situations isn't just money, it's a network. Many women in rural communities interact only with their husband, mother in law, and children. Any outside support and interaction often just doesn't exist. Of course, I am only an outsider, so I will always only see a limited part of the whole story. But what I've seen so far has probably taught me more about development than any sociology or anth class at U of I.
old friends in new places
I was thrilled when I checked my facebook last week and found a message from my dear dear friend Lindsey- my travel buddy, confidante, and everything else in India. I can't count the number of times that girl and I almost died together in good ol' Hindustan- whether it was (unknowlingly) almost crossing the border into Pakistan, having a firecracker go off 4 feet from our faces on a cycle rickshaw in the Chawri Bazaar, or most infamously, getting literally pushed off a moving bus into a crowd of men in Moradabad and having to hide in the women's bathroom until Parul-ji came and found us. We've been literally and figuratively everywhere together and I consider her one of my closest friends. She's the type of person that I could go months without talking to and then have the best conversation ever about random stuff. So you can imagine that I was really excited when she told me that her recent Israel-Palestine travels would also be taking her to Jordan, and that she would be in Amman on Saturday. I couldn't wait to see her.
She called me soon after I got back from Petra and told me she was waiting at 1st Circle in the Diplomat Restaurant- a restaurant that a friend of mine had just told me was a popular hangout for Russian prostitutes. And that is where our adventure started. We walked down trendy Rainbow Street for awhile, getting some shawarma and just catching up. Then we decided to head downtown- except I couldn't figure out how to get there. We spent about an hour just trying to find that magic staircase that leads from Jebel Amman to downtown, and it made me realize that this was actually the first time I had really just wandered in Amman. I've been here three weeks, and everytime I leave my apartment, there's been a clear destination. I missed that feeling of just walking and not really knowing where I was going. Even despite my brand new post-Petra sunburn, I didn't mind walking around in the blazing Middle Eastern sun that Saturday. Finally we conceded though, and asked the English-speaking staff in Wild Jordan. We got downtown and walked around for a bit, just as aimlessly. Finally after about 2 hours, we made our way to Jafrah where over the course of 6 hours, 2 margherita pizzas, 4 mint-lemons juices, and 2 nargiles, we just
talked. About everything.
Lindsey talked about Israel, and while she loved Jerusalem, she would never go back to Israel. She couldn't stand the "pity me" attitude that pervaded everything. I can't wait to go this summer and experience that myself.
I talked about Jordan, and how I feel safe here, but not comfortable. And about how in India, we felt the opposite. Comfortable, but not safe. I can walk around Amman and know that except for a few stares and the occasional annoying comment from some bored guys, probably nothing will happen to me. But I don't feel
comfortable. I don't feel at ease. I spend every day wondering what's going to come next, what I'm going to do when this person leaves, where am I going to live in a couple weeks, and what's going on with everyone back home. I have yet to really feel relaxed. My mind has been running on overdrive the past three weeks, and because of that I've (hopefully temporarily) lost that reason for why I'm here. I've never been alone before like I am here, and it's tough. I read blog posts and have conversations with friends in other countries, who live in these huge houses bursting with trainees, things to do every night, never alone. It's not like that here in Jordan. I'm sure it sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm really not. I'm jealous of my friends that are being constantly stimulated in other countries, but at the same time, I'm excited to finally learn how to entertain myself, read some good books, and really rely on myself. Because that's what it all comes down to, right?
But at the same time, there's no point in cutting off things from home. It's home for a reason- that's why it's there. People and places. If you cut off your relationships from home, trying to build a life completely separate from everything back home, those relationships surely will suffer, no matter how strong things were to begin with. That's just common sense, right?
About how both of us have a yet undefined, but growing trust and belief in something more powerful. I don't know if it's the constant calls to prayer, discussions about religion, books I've read, or just the environment I'm living in that has made me feel this way, but my faith in something really has been what's gotten me through the loneliness these past few weeks. And I felt it more than ever this past weekend at Petra: reaching the top of Jebel Harun maybe the closest to God I've ever felt, except only for the death of my grandmother this past winter. I haven't quite made sense of it yet, but I would like to.
About how much India changed us. It didn't change us as individuals as much as it changed our perspective on the outside world. About how both of us have almost become numb to seeing poverty, hearing those scripted lines from the kids on the street, etc, etc. Yet we both continue to study and be apart of the issue. Here I am working at JOHUD, the largest NGO in Jordan, yet I don't feel sorry for those people that I'm working to help. But for some reason, I keep going in this direction. Is that bad or good? Does anyone really need sympathy? I realize I've become quite jaded.
About how no matter what, things really will be okay. Uncertain futures, relationships, money, still not knowing where I stand on many issues. but it's okay. It's about the journey, not the destination, right?
two weeks down, 11 to go...
Decided to resurrect this blog, and hopefully it will be transferring to the nomadlife server soon...
This will be more of my rants and raves, as opposed to discussing what I've been seeing/doing in Jordan. So if this blog seems a little whiny at times, TOO BAD! :)
Nothing like a good chat (albeit, online) with someone from back home to make me feel a little better. The past two weeks have been quite a rollercoaster: combine stress at work (trying to impress the seemingly unimpressible Winkie Williamson, my boss), being bored in my apartment, desperately missing people back home, and still struggling to figure out this Jordanian culture, with beautiful weather, great food, one awesome random trip to the Dead Sea, one hilarious night at a gay bar, and a few other great conversations- and I feel as though I've turned manic depressive. One minute I'm so excited to be here, and I can't wait to experience everything Jordan has to offer, and the next minute I'm almost literally counting down the seconds until August 23.
Work has had similar ups and downs- either I'm on my laptop playing solitaire and gchatting, or I'm visiting a tiny village interviewing some of the most marginalized women in Jordanian society- to see if their loans financed by JOHUD are actually working, or if the current microfinance craze is just a trendy illusion (and from what I've gathered so far- it is unfortunately just that).
Last night, I went to a screening of a Syrian film at the Royal Film Commission with a couple of friends. The setting was beautiful- outdoors in the Commission's backyard, overlooking the rest of Jebel Amman and the Balad. At one point, there were even fireworks going off in the distance...if I would have been on a date, it would have been very romantic. Unfortunately, I didn't see much of the movie. There were three rows of people in front of me, and I had to crane my neck so high to see the subtitles that soon I had a horrible neckache and started feeling nauseous. That feeling of nausea brought back memories from those horrible couple of weeks in India- and since I still don't yet feel 100%, my brain immediately started racing with thoughts of the hospital, doctors, and that awful feeling that no one would ever figure out what was wrong with me. With all these thoughts running through my head, I didn't really catch much of the rest of the movie. Afterwards, everyone said it kind of sucked anyways :) But all in all it was a pretty good night in a beautiful setting, with cool people, free popcorn and pop :)
Anyways, after that we walked back to the MC place, where Abeer, Momani, Oksana and a couple others were hanging out with the new MC member (Saba's replacement) who had just arrived that night. Abeer drove us all home and I finally got back to my apartment at around 11:30- which for me, now seems veryy late. I've gotten into a routine of going to bed early and getting up early- I have to because of my job- but it still is quite different from the usual go-to-bed at 3am (usually not even in my own apartment) , wake up at 9 for class, take a nap at some point in the day in between work, class, and @meetings, and then do it all over again. So last night really threw me off my old-person schedule and I woke up pretty tired this morning. After pressing the snooze a couple times, I had a "screw it" moment and decided to sleep another half hour and go to work late. I knew I would get my work done, and no one comes into the office until later anyways...
And I was right. I'm sitting in my office right now, it's 11:15am, and there still is no one in the office. I don't understand this Jordanian work culture. Rand, my other boss, made it a point to tell me that while the JOHUD office has a very laid-back atmosphere, being on time is really important. That couldn't be farther from the truth- I'm supposed to be here from 8-4 every day and I'm almost always the one that opens the place up in the morning and closes it in the afternoon. Yesterday, Rand decided to leave work an hour or so early, told me she'd give me a ride home, then we spent the rest of the afternoon at the vet's office playing with cats. I'm not complaining- I'm glad the times are flexible, but it's just strange when I've been explicitly told one thing and the reality is the complete opposite.
During the past two weeks I really feel as though I've temporarily lost that
reason for why I'm here. There's been some good times and some bad times, but I feel as though I'm just living day-to-day and at the moment, I've lost that passion for why I do what I do. Why do I constantly leave my home, my family, and those other people that I love dearly and put myself in these often uncomfortable positions? Maybe I'm just burnt out- I only had a week off at home in between finals at U of I and coming to Jordan. But whatever it is, I just can't find that drive...
I've had multiple people tell me in the past week that I'm so strong for doing what I'm doing, but why can't I feel it?
I'm hopefully going to Petra this weekend, maybe a few good hikes in the Holy Land will inspire me.
