First Month Back in Amman!

Returning to Jordan was a bittersweet moment as I longed to be back in the Middle East and be amongst my friends again, but leaving family in Sunderland is always hard, especially considering I’m now not returning to home until June. It also doesn’t help that nearly every member of my family lives in Sunderland. Like just about all of them.

However, what I did not expect when arriving in Jordan’s Queen Alia International Airport at the beginning of January was that the weather was going to be the same as that of around 18 hours earlier when I was stood in Newcastle Central Station waiting for the train. We’d been informed that Jordan was cold in the winter, we just weren’t expecting it to be that cold.

An adventure awaited and we, myself and two friends who had travelled together, were eager to get back to Amman life. Little did we know that life in Amman would be very different on our return.

Bouts of COVID-19 cases amongst our friends and students we study with ensured that our flats were now occupied 24/7, with one of my flatmates isolating for much of January. We have tried to not let this get in our way, and have had our studies online for much of the month, and we’re all hoping for a healthier and freer February.

Despite this, some days (and even half-weeks!) have been COVID-19 free for myself and some of my friends. Before our first isolation began, myself and two friends took the bus to the nearby city of Madaba, which is about 30km south of Amman, and the capital of the governorate of Madaba.

Now, don’t be deceived by what you find on Google about the time it may take to get you to Madaba. Google says 47 minutes, and if you go directly from Queen Alia International Airport, your journey may be short. However, if you’re travelling from a bus station within Central Amman, expect your journey to take up to or even longer than around 2 hours as traffic in Central Amman is dense just about all of the time.

Madaba is filled with religious trinkets, from the Islamic King Hussein Mosque to the Greek Orthodox St. George Church, or the Christian Shrine of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist and the cities archaeological finds. Once in the city, the Tourist Centre is handy for information on where is best to see and visiting times, and isn’t too long of a distance from the central bus interchange.

Words can’t really describe the sight of the Madaba’s mosaics, and it is no surprise that that’s where the city found it’s fame. The Madaba Map can be found in St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church, making up most of the floor of the church. Although covered for particular masses and congregations, the map is visible most days for tourists. The Map contains the oldest surviving original depiction of the Holy Land in the Middle East, most notably the city of Jerusalem. Despite the religious tourism attached to the city, a notable 60,000 people call Madaba home, and it is the cultural home of the Christian population of Jordan.

Mount Nebo is just outside the city of Madaba, and needs to be reached by car or taxi. The views from the top of the mountain are beautiful, and on a good day, you can see as far as Jericho and Jerusalem. Mount Nebo is said to be the place that Moses was granted a view of the promised land before his death. Some bribing may be required here in order to get a taxi driver to wait for you as you see the view, or if you speak enough Arabic, the friendliness of Jordanians may work in your favour to get back to the main city.

Anyway, that was one day, and as a side note, cash is definitely needed in Madaba, if not the whole of Jordan. Most of the churches and religious sites do have a fee of normally JOD1 or JOD2, so cash is definitely easier, if not the only way of paying.

Café culture is one aspect of Amman that I have missed dearly, and is something I haven’t managed to get enough of over January thanks to the continuation of isolation periods, and, probably most bizarrely, the snowstorm that hit the country in the last week of the month. Yes, a snowstorm. In the Middle East.

Working at a newspaper enabled me to see the press releases of the local authorities, which closed down all public institutions for around a day and a half. Cars weren’t permitted on the roads past a certain time and I’ve never seen my local Carrefour Supermarket so busy. So busy in fact, that there were no trollies left.

The snowstorm really took us by surprise, especially as overnight Amman turned from a sunny paradise into a winter wonderland. We headed out into the street late at night to snowball fight for our lives before being quickly ushered back in by our security guard. The next day our studies were back to being online, whilst the snow beckoned us to enjoy ourselves.

Many of the roads in Amman were still closed and covered in feet of snow, with the highways being a new destination for people to build snowmen and fire snowballs from a height. As Amman is so hilly, snow was deepest high above, and around our flats the snow was just about up to our knees.

I guess sometimes the unexpected comes along and, as it's unexpected, makes for the most fun you’ve had in a while! If you’d like to check out some of my other work, I wrote an article about the snow in Amman for The Jordan Times, which you can find on my ‘Writing’ page.

Hopefully next month will bring sunnier days and some more day trips, so that February’s instalment of my blog will include more to chat about!