Hella Solutions blog: "Document. Share. Inspire."

I’ve completely lost track of what day it is. My time in Cairo has be fun but a little hectic but I chalk that up to the price for being part of a tour group. We just left the ‘poshness’ of the Conrad hotel in Cairo and now we are at the Palestine hotel in Alexandria. It’s a gorgeous place – right on the Mediterranean Sea – but the hotel is a couple of knocks down on the quality pole. Anyway, it seems a bit more sane here in terms of the number of people and we will have more free time to ourselves. So, I hope to get out on my own now. I have more audio and lots more photos that I will post tomorrow…must sleep…Zzzzzzzzz…

p.s. I look forward to getting back home for nothing more than being able to go into a bathroom and not have someone standing over you waiting to, uhhh, wipe your…okay, so I exaggerate but it feels pretty darn close to that here.

Unfortunately we are not going to be able to make a trip to Petra. It’s a 2+ hour drive from here and the tours are only on Tuesdays and Fridays (it’s past Tuesday and we leave Friday morning). Today we took a drive through Amman and to the Dead Sea. We made it about a quarter of the way there before the driver mentioned that we might need our passports to get past the two military check points along the way (none of us did so we had to drive back to the hotel). This gave me some extra time clicking pictures from the car window.

About half of the drive is through the city and then you hit a more “rural”/barren landscape with occasional houses and signs of much development to come. The temperature gradually increases as you get closer to the Dead Sea.

Like many Westernizing countries billboards are everywhere and the religion of consumption and capitalism is strong. Here’s a sign for water, a big commodity here, which is, however, a refreshing site while driving in 100 degree weather with no air conditioning…but still sad to see the comodification of such an essential element to life and where most people don’t have the access to decent paying jobs.

To get to the shores of the Dead Sea you have to go through one of the newly developing hotels (which means you have to pay). The one we went through is the MovenPick (two little dots over the “o”). It looks like a nice place to stay with more of a Spanish influence than Middle Eastern it seems.

Wading in the Dead Sea is amazing. You can stand in the water, without touching the bottom, and you will only sink as far as mid-way up to your chest. You really have to work to get your shoulders under before immediately bobbing up. The easiest position is to lay flat on your back with your hands behind your head. In this position you are basically lying on top of the water. May be this is where the whole Jesus walking on water comes from. May be the sea was just that more saturated with salt and it could actually support a man’s body wait. It’s really a cool excursion if you are ever in the area.

This is my fiance’s aunt whose name is Lamia (spelled phonetically until I learn how to both spell and say it correctly). She is 78 and has been living in Amman, Jordan for about 3-5 years. She was forced out of her Baghdad home under punishment of death by U.S. Marines. She is a retired school teacher and former head administrator of schools in Baghdad. In this short sound clip we hear her tell us what she used to like to do during her retirement back home and what she does now since the United States invaded Iraq. This gets at the heart of my idea for this project: How has the U.S. invasion affected middle class and professional Iraqis and where are they now? Stay tuned, I have some translated audio of her daughter, who is/was a prosecuting attorney in Iraq, and her thoughts on what has happened to her country.

Click here to listen…

p.s. i FINALLY got my luggage! phew! 3-days with no new clothes was getting a bit ‘sticky’.

This is my fiance’s aunt’s husband (whatever you call that) telling us about how the U.S. Marines smashed in all the doors in their Baghdad home and destroyed everything inside (smashing pictures from the walls, slicing open mattresses, and generally breaking things. The next day they apparently returned a computer, CDs and their daughter’s legal books (she’s an attorney…was)…but they kept the 1930s American revolver they “found”. Yeah stealing -sarcasm-. A short time after that they found a notice on their property stating that “the occupants must vacant immediately and if they return they will be killed.” Go liberty and freedom! -more sarcasm- I guess BushCo wants to rid the entire country of its educated masses and just leave all the lowlife fundamentalists to destroy the rest of the country. Yeah America! -even more sarcasm- Now Iraq can look just like Bush’s America…ignorant, fundamentalist, and violent as all hell.

“Our flight is being delayed because we have located baggage on board that belongs to a passenger who did not make the flight.” -foreshadow-

The flight to Amman, Jordan was lonely yet awesome. Lonely because I did not get to sit with me sweetie but awesome because I got upgraded to Business Class. Where is Business Class you ask? Well, it’s those seats in the very front of the plane where you are immediately greeted with water, orange juice or champagne. It’s that place where you can consume as much wine as you can, you are served steak, are given bottles of water whenever you wish, served mixed nuts in a glass dish, drink out of real glasses, get all the HBO and other programming on your own personal screen for free, free video games, and a chair that fully reclines and does everything in-between. Yes, it’s one amazing place. My first time, too. Wow, I don’t know if I can ever go back to coach?! Please, no one tell me what the cost of one of these seats is because I’m sure I’ll never be able to afford it. Anyway…it was a cool experience for a 10+ hour flight. Oh, did I mention breakfast before landing? (eggs, bagel and cream cheese, juice, fruit, and other beverages).

The only thing that would have made this flight better would be if my fucking luggage had come with me. Remember that opening sentence? Well, I’m guessing the geniuses at Delta did the ol’ “don’t ask the passenger seat switcheroo” and when I boarded with my new pass from Delta they figured, “Hey Noah didn’t show up we gotta take his baggage off.” Fuck you, Delta! Tomorrow will be my third day without luggage. All I hear here is that the Amman airport is notorious for “losing” luggage in these types of situations. Great, thanks Delta.

But all is not bad. I’ve been having a wonderful time and got in about 3 hours of interviews today with our Iraqi hosts. While most of the speaking is in Arabic, which I don’t understand, my future father-in-law was there to help with recaps so that I could get a feel for how answers where given. But for much of it I could understand what was at the heart of the words just by listening and looking into the eyes of these women. It’s really bad situation and I really hope that Bush and his Crew pay in a real way for all the harm they have done the Iraqi people and the world. I feel shame as an American.

Amman is truly a city built for driving. What little sidewalk space there is people still walk in the street. And the only way to get into many businesses and such is to drive into small front parking lots (no sidewalks really connect much of these city businesses). The streets are crazy dangerous to boot, as there are only faint to non-existent lane lines and people pretty much drive where ever they wish. May be some other parts of the city are different but so far this is all I’ve seen and it’s nuts.

I’ll post more on my audio work as soon as I can. But in the mean time here’s a sample of some sounds from outside our hotel room window. It is of one of the nightly weddings they are having here at the Marriott. Pictures will be coming shortly as well. Peace! Noah…

(note: the audio is very raw and some noticeable handling noise but you get the picture.)

http://www.hellasolutions.com/stuff/080622 Marriott Wedding Music clip.mp3

In about 24 hours this is the time zone that I will be in. Yes, I am so very fortunate and privileged to be able to go to Jordan to visit with my fiance’s Iraqi aunt. Actually, both my fiance’s parents are Iraqi but they’ve lived in the States for a long time. The aunt, however, stayed in Iraq but was forced to leave with her family because the violence became too great when America decided that whole WMD story…no need to elaborate, right? Anyway, I will be visiting and hopefully interviewing the aunt and getting some good audio and photos of the family there.

The story of the impact of the US lead war on middle class Iraqis is one that is not often told in the mainstream media. The New York Times did have a small story awhile back but there really hasn’t been much said (and that’s not because the story doesn’t exist). I guess our media/government would rather us think that Iraq is simply filled with the desert equivalent of Pigmie tribes. I get the feeling that they think it’s a lot easier to think that we are being of assistance if we think of the Iraqi people as helpless and dumb. Oy vey…the sad state of humanity. Oh well, we continue forward!

Stay tuned as I will be blogging photos, audio and words along the way…peace!

There’s nothing like working full time for a state bureaucracy to push you to do other things. I’ve been spending most of my time lately sitting in a cube working a job to pay the bills. Yes, a necessary evil for most of us at one time or another. Well it’s not all bad, one project is getting off the ground and that’s my contributing to a new blog called “Imagine 2050“. It’s a very interesting project looking at what it means to be American (with a focus on the projected demographic change in the U.S. from predominately white to…well…not). I’ll be posting audio pieces once or twice per month. This month is just a simple “podcast” style program I threw together. Check it out and tell me what you think.

Another exciting event is, this Saturday I will be traveling to Jordan and then to Egypt. I’ll be with my future in-laws who are Iraqi but who have been living in the States for about 40 years. My finance’s aunt stayed in Iraq, but not so long ago she was forced to relocate to Jordan while the U.S. spreads freedom and liberty in her country -sarcasm-. I’m hoping to get some good audio during the trip but in the least it is going to be an amazing experience.