Sick of Irbid, and bored of our class, dinner, study, café routine, Brianna, Cassidy and I decided to explore downtown Irbid and get really cheap pedicures people had been telling us about. Akram, (our classmate and oftentimes translator), explained to our cab driver and we were on our way. Downtown Irbid is different than campus. More stores, hotels, fruit stands, people…dirt. We stopped at the post office and mailed postcards no one will probably get until we’re already home, then the adventure began. Our driver went to a salon that was closed, then another that only did hair. The woman working at the salon recommended another called Ms. Fensualahe. Or something like that, judging from how she spelled it out. We couldn’t find it, and instead saw a huge, new building called ‘Queen’s Palace Beauty Parlor.’ “Perfect,” we thought. But upon entering we were greeted with strange looks and a lot of running around. “Have a seat,” a man who I think was the manager told us and brought us in his office. “We can do it, manicures and pedicures…It isn’t easy, but we’ll do it.” Confused, we said yes we still wanted them, and were led upstairs. They sat us down and disappeared. The three girls that worked there kept staring at us, and we felt extremely awkward and unsure why after 15 minutes no one had started doing our nails yet. Then we looked around and realized there were no scissors anywhere, no shampoo, no nail polish. The place was bare except for mirrors and two chairs. “Oh my god,” Cassidy said. “I don’t think this place is open yet.” Then we realized they were out buying nail files and other supplies that very minute. We had to call Akram and make him translate over the phone, and sure enough they weren’t open, and were going to charge us JD25 for manicures and pedicures. That’s about $34 and way more than we were willing to pay, so we left to wrathful stares and whispers.
We wandered for a few more blocks, seeing salon after salon, but not Ms. F….. We asked people on the street, but they couldn’t understand us. It’s very frustrating trying to communicate here because we learn Fusha Arabic, which is very formal. It’s the form spoken on the news and in the government, but no one speaks it. Everyone here speaks ameea, which is colloquial and very different. The dialects of Arabic vary greatly. Egyptian Arabic is different from Jordanian ameea, and so on. This is problematic for us, especially because Cassidy is in advanced level Fusha, and could debate politics for hours, yet we could not find a nail salon. Just as we call Akram to have him ask someone for us, there are two guys behind us going, “We speak English, we speak English,” but we were ignoring them completely, because we’ve gotten used to ignoring the guys here and their usually rude comments. Finally, they got our attention, and did speak English very well. They pointed us literally two shops away, (if only we would have kept walking!), to Ms. Venezuela’s Salon. There is no ‘V’ in Arabic, hence the Fensualahe confusion. We felt like complete idiots.
Ms. Venezuela’s Salon was another adventure in itself. We had to go one at a time, meaning we were there for three hours, and all of the nail supplies looked old and like they were from the Jordan equivalent of Walmart. The women were clearly talking about us, but we don’t know what they were saying, and they seemed more concerned with doing their own nails and makeup. The only one who spoke English was the Filipino woman who scrubbed our feet. She was very nice, and kept making comments in English to us about the other girls and how conceited, lazy and stupid she thought they were. She also thought I was from England no matter how many times I corrected her. “Your friend Brianna, we understand her English because of her Chicago accent. Her American English is so easy to understand. We cannot understand your British accent very well,” she told me. “But I’m from Wisconsin! I live right next to Chicago! I am American!” I know I speak very quickly, but I was trying to speak more slowly than I ever have in my life. No matter what I said though, she had her mind made up. “No, no it is ok to be from England! I just don’t understand you as well but it is ok. England is nice!” Oh well. When Cassidy’s turn came the woman ended up telling us her life story. She was in nursing school, and only had one year left, but her son was born with leukemia and she moved to Jordan to work for two years as a nanny to pay for his hospital treatment. She signed a contract with a family, and she was to be paid very well, live with them, and have her own bedroom and bathroom. The contract was for two years, or if she wanted to end it early she had to pay them the $3600 they spent on her plane ticket, papers, etc. However, when she arrived she found she was sleeping in basically a closet, and was more of their slave than a nanny. They decided they wanted her to work in their salon, (the family she works for owns Ms. Venezuela), but she had never done nails before. She doesn’t get paid, and they treat her terribly. She was desperate and near tears telling us this. Her mother died two weeks ago, and her family sent her the $3600 to come home, but the Venezuelan family said no, she cannot go. They have her passport and visa locked away. She went to her embassy in Jordan, but they said they didn’t have time and this is a common problem and didn’t help her. Meanwhile, her son is in the hospital and very sick. Her sister’s husband is a lawyer, but it’s very hard for him to help her from so far away. From researching Jordan, I knew it had the best human rights in the Middle East, but was known for having this one problem. Indentured servitude, especially Asian servants, is common in Jordan. I knew this, but seeing it firsthand was heartbreaking. What made it worse was when we went to pay the owner, she raised the price JD8, (it is very, very normal for people here to try and rip Americans off). She didn’t know Cass knew Arabic and had heard the original price, so she had to end up giving it to us, but she was unhappy, and we felt even worse for the Filipino woman who had to deal with her all night. At dinner we were upset and felt so bad for this woman. We want to help her but we don’t know how! We thought about pretending we were some news organization that knew what the family was doing and going in with a camera and pretend to interview/investigate them, but clearly that wouldn’t work. Ideas anyone?
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