But first, an update on the birthday: Our company had a shared ‘breakfast’ (actually more like the middle of the day) where the kitchen ladies whipped up an middle eastern feast of hummus, oregano-covered flat bread, olive tapenade, pickled stuffed eggplant, soft cheese… you name it,we dipped flat bread in it! It was so good. The whole company gathered for the feast to celebrate the holiday as an extended family, at which point Samiera (the sweetest Jordanian lady I have ever met – I call her my Jordanian mom) announced to everyone that it was my birthday… so everyone sang to me. It was embarrassing, but sweet. Then I went home to Dan cooking a roasted chicken and veggies while I drank some local Jordanian wine… and dessert with flowers was brought by our extended flat-mates (we live in the same building as 5 AIESEC members/other interns), which we all shared as we drank tea.
I am pretty lucky - the birthday ended up being very nice, much better than I thought it would be!! Just goes to show it is better to have no expectations rather than high or low ones, because either of those belies the possibilities between.
On that day too, by boss informed me that I would be going to JOHUD for the week, to work on an upcoming conference for the Euro-Mediterranean Ministers concerning Water, that would be preceded by a civil society ‘town hall’ type interactive meeting to try and incorporate the feelings of society members into the Mediterranean approach to the water crisis in the coming years. The conference is happening on the 21/22 of December, so I was brought in to review the materials for the presentations, distributed background info, and correspondence preceding the event, and will be doing the reporting activities on the day of.
It’s a pretty exciting conference to even be attending, let alone being a part of the organization of it, so I welcomed the opportunity of transferring offices for the week. One challenge though is that I have started to take on more responsibilities at ZENID, so the funding proposals that have deadlines are going to be following me regardless of where I go!!
The office here is larger, and different, but already I am beginning to welcome the change. It is difficult to feel like the new person again so soon – you feel like you don’t really know whats going on and that it is hard for people to take the time out to explain things to you. Even in Canada, when people enter an organization as an outsider it can feel like everyone is speaking a different language… well, here, they ARE speaking a different language! The one thing I have going for me is that I am a native English speaker, so I am able to offer a desirable contribution in the form of reviewing and editing that doesn’t require a lot of knowledge about the subject matter.
Working on environmental sustainability issues (especially water) is a fairly provocative and timely part of the development process, and one that I am fairly interested in, so it is a good opportunity to be exposed for a limited amount of time to how Jordan fits into the regional dialogue on an issue that we, as Canadians, are very lucky not to have to deal with. Us and Sweden are about the only two countries that are not in the position of Jordan or near to it.
A background report I am reading states “currently, Jordan is fully utilizing its freshwater resources, and has no more resources within the country to develop. With present water use exceeding the renewable freshwater resources by 20% and options for non-conventional water resource development still under-developed, Jordan has reached a ‘water crisis situation’.” If it sounds dire, it is – Jordan, like so many other countries, are out of options, so it will be really interesting to be a part of this discussion about a solution – and being able to facilitate the civil dialogue in the first day, then reporting it to the ministers the second, really makes me feel like part of a democratic process to arrive at a solution, if there is one to be had, that will have global impact.
Being able to squeeze this in before the holidays is pretty good! I will be meeting Dina this evening though to go and brainstorm some ideas for a funding initiative with ZENID, so I am not too far out of the loop!
I am liking the opportunity of meeting more people here and broadening my exposure to all of the issues JOHUD and ZENID encounter – their shared and unique approaches are helping me to contextualize their mode of operation.
