Syria And Jordan

Despite the occasional little local misunderstandings - ten thousand people in Hama and the Lebanese Prime Minister for example – I love Syria.

The people have a warmth and simplicity often lacking in other Arab countries.
Here to do the budget for next year, it is also an opportunity to take part in the Teachers’ Training Course Diana is running in Tartous this week.

The ladies involved, at least at first sight, are not the sort you’d want to get into an argument with. Yet they have a sense of humour and a desperate longing to hear of the latest developments outside their own country.

We are able to make a major contribution, not only to teaching styles, but to curriculum development.

But it is still a pretty tough society. The Veterinary Clinic retains all the joy and glamour of a 1950’s Soviet Tractor Factory – nothing is ever cleaned or repaired or painted. In a tour of the building, heaps of builder’s rubble and dangling electric cables threaten to dismember the unwary.

The same joyous atmosphere includes the local management style – i.e. shouting abuse at any underlings.

One of our drivers was roundly attacked by the Director for parking the vehicle in the middle of a muddy puddle. Quite reasonable, you might think. Except the driver had been nowhere near the car – the parking had been done by the Director himself. No matter. That’s what underlings are for.

We went to visit the Marronite Archbishop of Tartous – genial old buffer.

I was introduced in the normal style:

“This is Mister Jermy from SPANA, London”.

“ Jermy? You’re German then! Du bist ein Deutsche! Guten Tag!”, quoth he, then proceeded to sing a little ditty about the Virgin Mary to the tune of Beethoven's ‘Ode to Joy’. Quickly embracing the spirit of the occasion, I felt an overwhelming need to join in, humming the chorus enthusiastically.

After a meeting with the Ambassador in Damascus, we left for Jordan by taxi, thus facilitating the driver’s thriving little cigarette smuggling business. As we passed through the border customs area, he had so many packets stuffed down his shirt the searchers must have thought he had some kind of interesting new skin disease.

But it was good to be back in Amman – still with no rain – which makes our little green gem of an environmental garden at the education centre even more stunning.
Our Patron, the Prince, regaled us with his memories of life at Millfield School in the sixties – although strangely, he’d never heard of the trick of running round the back of the group in the long panorama school photos and thus appearing twice in the same shot.

The mighty River Jordan After battling through the budget, we treated ourselves to a trip down to the Jordan Valley, visiting the Baptism Site, right on the edge of the river.

‘The mighty Jordan’ is actually only about ten feet wide, and it’s easy to call out greetings to the people on the other side, under another flag, but it confirms the old cliché ‘It’s an ill wind…’ – the scary security situation means there is a no-go strip about two hundred yards wide on either side of the river, and running pretty much the whole way up to the Sea of Galillee. Best nature reserve in the country – with otters, marsh cats, gazelle, deer, foxes, jackals and hundreds of wild boar. And of course some stunning birds – Azure Kingfishers, like luminous jewels, Palestinian Sunbirds, Tristrams Grackles (crazy name, lovely bird) and myriad others.

There is a welcome silence there, despite the political tension, and a wonderful golden evening light, bathing the leaves and branches of the tamarisk shrubs and the stands of phragmites reeds.

Welcome especially after following a group of our Antipodean Cousins onto Mount Nebo (where Moses breathed his last after being given a brief glimpse of the land of milk and honey).

‘Strewth’, says one ‘It’s f***g hazy. I’m bloody off.’

Shades of Sir Les Patterson, much loved Minister of Culture...

Jeremy Hulme