Saturday, July 2, 2011

Um… Duh?

Note: No new pictures yet… will post Tuesday or Wednesday.

Day by Day: 24 June – 2 July 2011

 

Sometimes when you travel, you think you’re all savvy and up on the right, proper, culturally-sensitive and appropriate way to do and view things. And you find that often, you’re at least partially wrong, or surprised, or just plain ignorant on some points. Here are a few examples of what me having some “duh” tourist moments.

Jews, BBQs and Ice Cream

Thursday evening, I organized a BBQ on the beach as a last hurrah for my Sar El group. The guy I worked for, Moshiach, brought a grill and tons of meat (chicken and beef). By the way, interesting side note, most Middle Easterners call chicken chicken, and everything else is meat. It’s a little disconcerting! Anyway, there were about a dozen of us there, gorging on deliciously marinated, herbed and coal-grilled meat and chicken, along with the sides everyone else brought. A friend of Moshiach’s brought his ice cream truck around and offered some to me. Being the friendly, sharing person that I am, I immediately took the handful of cones he gave me and started to dole them out to everyone… including Moshiach and Albert, both of whom are very obviously observant Jews. They graciously declined and about thirty seconds later, I realized: they had just eaten meat. Of course they wouldn’t then eat ice cream! For those who don’t know, Jewish kosher laws prohibit eating milk and meat together, and most kosher Jews tend to set a time limit between eating one after the other, usually a few hours at least.

Duh.

Bus to Eilat, with an IDF Guard Encounter

This one isn’t really a duh moment, because I’m fairly sure others were as confused as me at first. But it’s an interesting experience that I’d like to relate. Our five hour bus ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat was uneventful, apart from a brief incident that occurred ten minutes before arriving in Eilat. I was fast asleep until Diane nudged me. Once the bleariness left my eyes, I saw a stern, black IDF soldier with the usual gun hanging at his side. He was in the aisle of the bus hovering over the seat of a young black man, talking low and fast. I noticed that three other black passengers were standing outside, shoulders hunched a bit. The guard and the passenger he was speaking to got off the bus and then the guard had them all remove their luggage from under the bus so he could inspect it. He also seemed to take some time to review their papers. The bus driver seemed a bit agitated, although not quite belligerent. Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way, with the four black passengers on board and very quiet.

Later, when Diane and I were walking to our hostel from the Eilat Central Bus Station, we chatted with another passenger on the bus from America. He said he thought it had to do with Israel accepting Sudanese refugees but still maintaining a security watch on them. It was an unnerving experience and I’d like to learn more about that particular situation. The guard didn’t bother with any other passenger. Diane said that when he first stopped and boarded the bus (on a highway, mind, not a checkpoint or anything) he went straight for the four black passengers.

Fight in Eilat

Fights happen. In Miami I remember seeing fights in school and sometimes out in public. While Diane and I were eating at a little café near the Red Sea in Eilat, a fight broke out rather suddenly between a short, wiry, muscular and shirtless man who was maybe in his twenties and who seemed to be Israeli or Middle Eastern, and a seemingly white, fat, short-haired individual who I thought was a short woman but Diane thought was a teenage boy. The fight started with yelling and swinging fists on the part of the shirtless guy, but within three seconds expanded to include the throwing of chairs, tables, glasses and anything else immediately handy, like salt shakers and plates. The shirtless one seemed a bit out of his head, swinging even on his friends who tried to get him away. He spit full in the face of a blonde woman who seemed uninvolved, then went to bang on the glass windows of the store next door, seemingly demanding that whoever was inside come out.

Diane and I sat frozen in our seats until we realized that we should leave. All of this drama was happening within twenty feet of us. We quickly scurried to the next café over, which put a low wall between us and the events. I have no idea what was causing the drama, but the shirtless guy was overcome by rage and would see no reason, eventually being bodily removed by a small crowd of his friends.

A Public Beach in Jordan

Jordan is an Arab country and without knowing all the background and religious reasons, I know that women generally dress conservatively, to the extreme (in my view) of covering their entire bodies. Even at the beach. In Tel Aviv, it was common to see Arab women in full garb while at the beach, in or out of the water. Somehow, though, Diane and I skipped that realization and headed for the public beach just fifteen minutes away from our hotel in Aqabar. The hotel clerk recommended a private beach, but since we’d need a taxi to get there, Diane and I opted to go to the public beach. We had on clothes over our swimsuits – shirts and pants – but nothing can hide our white skin and Western looks. Once at the beach it smacked us in the face, though. No woman over the age of eight was in anything less than full sleeves, pants and closed-toe shoes. Young girls seemed exempt from this and run around in all manner of swimsuits. Men were shirtless, some in swimsuits and others in underwear. As we walked along the promenade, Diane and I got a lot of looks. Nothing rude or overt, but lots of looks and a few calls of, “Hello, come here!”

We pondered the possibility of at least wetting our feet, wading in the Red Sea, but ended up not doing so when we couldn’t see ANY other Westerners or ANY woman not full clothed to an extent we couldn’t match. 

Duh.

From Aqabar, Jordan,

--Z

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