City Tour

For our last day (huzzah!) of orientation activities, we took what they called an "alternative" tour around Amman- basically, the kind of tour that nobody else does. We visited the richest parts of town- and also the poorest parts, the Palestinian refugee camps. Our guide warned us not to be terribly obvious about taking pictures, if we were going to take any, and we were told to keep all the windows closed in case anybody decided to throw something.

Parading through Baqa'a (one of the camps) in a tour bus was perverse. It felt wrong. Like they were some exhibition for us to gawk at, something that needed to be enclosed and separated from the rest of the world. The plight of others should not be a tourist stop for the wealthy. But they are, and it's wrong. I've been struggling a lot with the orientation activities that set us up like this- as foreigners, Westerners, tourists, there to objectify and appropriate the local culture- and I'm glad that orientation week is over. Refugee studies, or forced migration studies, whatever you want to call it, is my focus. And there is nothing to be gained from gawking at refugees from a tour bus while the tour guide warns us about the dangers of coming to the camps. Building dialogue and relationships, connecting through our own humanity- that is what I want to do.

We also drove through the richest parts of Amman, which were decorated with expansive mansions much like the ones you'd see in my hometown. Honestly, my first impulse was to be repulsed by the excess of it all compared to the poverty we had just seen- but compared to the United States, it was nothing unusual. Perhaps even subdued in comparison.

 

We stopped at the Abu Darwish mosque, a beautiful black and white checkered on the top of Jabal Ashfiyyah. I love the intricacies of the architecture here, especially on mosques. It's very easy to get lost in a sea of limestone, as buildings are required by law to have a limestone exterior, but if you take the time to examine the detailing, every building is quite unique- the doors are especially eye catching. We finished the tour by stopping at the Citadel and then walking down to the Roman Theater before trekking through Downtown to a restaurant where we ate lunch. There's not much to say about the Citadel or the amphitheater, the pictures all speak for themselves (check out the photoblog!). Definitely a must see if you come to visit Amman.