Week 5: We are all family
“كل عيد وأنت بخير”
The phrase signifying the end of Ramadan and Eid rung throughout the halls of the Ministry and across the city in the CITIES office. Co-workers and friends embraced and kissed one another on the cheek wishing each other health and well-being to come.
A ministry employee from one of the neighboring offices knocked on our office door. She had a paper coffee cup in one hand and a packet of Nescafe mix in the other.
“Can I take some hot water?” she asked, pointing to our water heater. It was the first time since I had arrived that anyone had ever come into our office to get something to drink.
In CITIES the kitchen was stalked with falafel, hummus, pita bread, and labneh. Everyone had spent the four days of Eid holiday celebrating with parents, children, siblings, aunts and uncles but now it was time to celebrate with the USAID family. Boxes of mamoul cookies sat on the desks of many, waiting to be offered to office visitors and any passersby .
But once the celebration is over and I sit at my desk to begin the day’s work, I realize this week is not only the midway point for my time here in Jordan but it also marks the beginning of my acquaintance with a post-Ramadan Amman where work days are longer, returning to the normal 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM schedule; deadlines and expectations become solidified; and also, in response to the protests at the Fourth Circle, a new government takes its seat and begins its work for the Jordanian people.
The Secretary General of MOPIC lead the new Minister of Planning, Mary Kawar, through the halls of her new Ministry. As she stepped through our doorway, Ahmad, Ghaida, and I leaped from our seats and welcomed her to the office and shared with her a little about our work. She looked around the office and jokingly commented on the apparentness that we were a USAID office due to the room’s appearance. However, not all Ministries across Amman were experiencing a similar change in leadership. When the list of al-Razzaz’s government was published some Jordanians were furious at the appearance of several familiar names on the list. However, there is still a sense of willingness amongst Jordanians to give the new government a chance to prove they have been listening to the people’s demands.
***
Ghaida and Lamar were at the whiteboard discussing the work plan for the remaining three years of the project—ending just before the next elections take place in Jordan. He stopped and put the marker down and turned towards my temporary desk at the back corner of the office.
"I think we need some sort of template from you on budget preparation based on whatever you have."
"Now?" I asked.
"By tomorrow," he answered.
I looked to the chart I had made comprised of nearly five weeks of documented Tunisian, Moroccan, Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian decentralization laws, regulations, by-laws, and instructions on project planning, implementation, budgeting and monitoring by localities. It was the first time I had really reflected on all the legal frameworks I had found. In terms of budgetary frameworks alone, the overlap was significant. All codes spoke of the same types of resources that comprise the budgetary fund and a similar series of steps including consultations with local citizens and approval by regional bodies. But now that I have organized the compilation of codes into these similar categories, it falls under my discretion to pick the best practices in order to form the template. Ghaida jokes with Lamar and I of the daunting responsibility placed before me. She is right. It would be impossible to not feel a great sense of pressure and responsibility with such a task—and this is just the beginning of what is expected of me in the next five weeks.
As I sit writing this template, I think about how I have never really been treated like just the intern here. While that reality can be intimidating, the amount of responsibility and trust placed in me is also what motives me each and every day—not only to fulfill the promises I have made to Lamar or even Mark, but also to fulfill the broader, implicit promise I have made to the Jordanian people when I took on this role.
There is a fear in the back of my mind though: do I really know what is best for Jordanians as I work on such a template? Of course it is just an initial step and in the end it is a recommendation to the ultimate implementors, the Jordanian government. But still, I cannot get this thought out of my head. But then, perhaps coincidentally, that fear was silenced by the words of a Syrian refugee artisan.
In the middle of downtown Amman in celebration of International Refugee Day UNHCR Jordan was hosting a bazaar where refugees were selling their handmade artisan crafts. As I walked up one of the aisles of tables, I saw a table with beautifully crafted boxes. I called over a friend to come see them and the man behind the table noticed my Lebanese accent.
“You’re Lebanese?” he asked.
“Yes,” I responded.
“From where?” he continued.
“Al-shouf,” I replied.
His eyes lit up and for the next 45 minutes I sat with him at his booth listening to his story. He is a Syrian refugee and we sat and spoke of mountains of Lebanon where he had first escaped to. He spoke of his happiness in hearing my accent as it reminded him of his time in Lebanon but also of his home in Syria as these two dialects are nearly identical. He spoke of how we are one people and should always remember that above the politics and the history. He spoke of how we were now family.
That’s the thing with Arabs, after all. We are connected by much more then a shared language. We are all family.
So I sit in my chair at the office and as a Lebanese woman, I know I have something I can contribute to my Jordanian family.
Disclaimer: This blog reflects my own feelings and thoughts and not those of USAID or USAID Jordan CITIES Project.