This post is of the first few days, and I know that it is out of order, but I never said that I’d make posts in chronological order. Come to think of it, I never said I’d make these posts at all! Regardless, I will try to make them on some sort of regular interval. Last trip to Jordan, I had 3 posts in total, and they occurred the first two days. I hope to beat that this time. So – this post is covering mostly the first few days of the trip, and the picture specifically covers Tim on the bus ride from Amman. Let me start closer to the beginning.
During our first day, we tried to get hold of Dr. Laila or Muntaha to determine whether we were able to have a practicum site at the hospital, or whether we should do it at the Autism Academy in Amman. This practicum, we have approximately 16 students per course (multiply that by two courses and you have ~32 students). Historically we have had no more than one cohort at a time at the center. In addition, the hospital has, at its disposal, a large number of well-trained behavior analysts that it is not using to its benefit. If we make significant impact to the hospital’s bottom line as well as to patient care, it is likely that they will pay more attention to the behavioral sciences and employ more graduates. A practicum at the hospital will prepare the students to better fulfill this role. Fortunately, I updated my facebook status to say “In Jordan now” and Maram (one of our first cohort graduates who is currently in the hospital employ) asked to meet up and gave me her raqm (phone number). So – our plan for the first day in Jordan was to meet with Maram and Mahmoud to determine whether the hospital would be a viable practicum site and subsequently meet with Drs. Laila and Muntaha to get everything prepared (bus rides, etc.). After speaking with Dr. Laila on the phone, we went downstairs to find our ride. A van pulled up, and we tried to get on it, a woman was getting off. We looked puzzled enough that she tried to help us, and after a brief exchange in which both sides were thoroughly confused and misunderstood, she said goodbye. I know that now, but did not at the time, and so I repeated it. She lit up, and pointed to the driver, so I turned to him, repeated it and suddenly he shut the door and drove off. I was confused until I realized what had just occurred. I’m sure it would have been quite amusing to watch, if the observer understood both English and Arabic.
At this point, we decided to walk – it was a nice sunny day, and we had been on a run earlier, and the buildings weren’t too far away. We walked down the road towards the large buildings, and I recalled that the nursing department was in building ‘N’. These buildings are laid out in sort of a honeycomb configuration, with each cell labeled with a number.
As we walked up to the building labeled “N” – my previous experience began to take form again. I confidently led our small group into the building, remembering the small platform that led up to the dean’s office, and glanced at the sign that should read “Dean of Nursing”, I realized it did not. Uh-oh. I was certain that the nursing was in building N. We began walking from building to building (these buildings are not small, and the sun was beginning to become quite hot).
Finally, we asked a student walking by who informed us we were in the engineering complex. I suddenly remembered why we didn’t walk to the nursing complex – the distance from the housing to the medical complex as a magnitude of orders farther than that to the engineering complex. My stomach sunk as I looked at the trusting faces of Melissa, Tim, and Molli. They had no idea the distance we were about to walk in the blistering sun. We began our trek up to the nursing department, and finally arrived to the correct building N – which was as I remembered, only an hour late. When we arrived, we found that both Dr. Muntaha and Laila were in lecture, and had been for a while, so our tardiness was mafi mushkila (no trouble). We received our contracts and made our way to the mustashfa (hospital) to meet up with Maram. Discussions went well, and we made plans to further support the integration of behavior analysis within the medical sites, but also recognized that a sudden influx of 16 students would be too disruptive and run counter to our goal of acceptance.
We made our way to Amman, taking a bus from the hospital to Irbid, and then another from Irbid to Amman. While in Irbid, we purchased SIM cards and minutes for our cellular phones, and also had a falafel sandwich. We then caught a bus to Amman, and began the visit to the Autism Academy with Mohammad and Fakrieh. That went well (and will likely be detailed in another post) and we also visited their adolescent sister center. They have their students doing some amazing work on looms!
After the meet and greet with the Autism Academy, we had a final coffee break with Mohammad in a shop on the side of a hill by the Sahara Mall. The view from the café was breathtaking. We spent a good amount of time relaxing and drinking tasty Jordanian drinks and then Mohammad took us back to the bus station, and the beginning of this post. By this time, we had all run quite some distance (my first time in approximately two years), were past our bedtime (due to jet-lag), had walked for almost an hour in the hot sun, navigated two bus-rides, and met with 5 different people about our upcoming practicum. Needless to say – while we may not all have such fantastic friends (like myself) who could photographically document our state of affairs, we all felt much like Tim looks in the picture on this post: mutab.
