The previous
evening, we had decided to take a trip to a wadi (valley) near the
Dead Sea called Wadi Zarqa Ma’in. The kids had the day off school
because of ‘labour day’ which is usually on 1st May,
but the government decided to change it to Sunday 30th
April at the last minute, to give people a three day weekend. The
school decided to give them the day off on Saturday 29th
April, since Sunday is a day off anyway at Christian-based schools.
It is a frequent occurrence here for the government or the school to
change things at the last minute.
It took just over an
hour to arrive at the wadi and then we started walking. We had not
visited this wadi before and straight away, we noticed that there
was a lot of water flowing down this wadi, compared to other wadis we have visited. We had to carry Jenson
through a lot of it, and hold Ethan's hand to make sure that he wasn’t
washed downstream in some places.
Along the way, there were small
pools we could swim in and the kids had so much fun. The water was
very warm because it originates from the Ma’in Hot Springs. Lots of
local people were also there, enjoying the warm water, but most of
them stayed in the lower pools or trekked further up the wadi than we
could manage with our kids.
We got back home
mid-afternoon and, in the evening, I (Paul) went to visit a friend. My friend is having
difficulties in his marriage and is now under pressure from his clan
sheikh to marry a lady who is available for marriage so that he can
bring her to clan events, where it is expected that he should bring his wife. There are about 10,000 people in the clan and my friend is
the official ‘clan advisor’ which is like being deputy sheikh. It is a difficult situation and marriage problems can be common here.
