Divemaster Job in Aqaba, Jordan 16th November - 22nd November 2015

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Monday - SMILE FOR THE CAMERA



Today was an unusual day as I did a dive but the dive centre made no money! Basically today we had an event marking the 30th Anniversary of the Cedar Pride shipwreck sinking at the request of Abdullah the Divemaster but more commonly known as the King of Jordan way back in 1985 (it is a shame he didn’t sink a DeLorean). Turkish Airlines sponsored the event today that invited all dive centres to take part in showing off the shipwreck by taking down some VIP people, I am not sure about what organisation they were from but they were from… Somewhere. Around 60 or 70 divers were in the water looking for one of those small airlines that typically travel agents have on their desks with a curved support beam underneath the plane. But I was with 2 intro divers at Japanese Garden… BOOO. Whoever found the plane won 2 tickets to a destination of their choice in Europe with Turkish Airlines! How cool is that!? Unfortunately it was some other guy who won it so our dive centre didn’t. Mohamed dived at Cedar Pride with a woman who dives with us every now and again. She works for a local newspaper but did her Open Water and Advanced Open Water course with Mohamed this year.



The event began with an assembly and a bunch of people taking photos with other people. This would have all been fine but we all had wetsuits on ready to get in the water, so we were all a bit sweaty! There was one guest speaker who spoke for a little bit who I found interesting. She is a Turkish woman (that is not the impressive part) and she is a world record holder for free diving (that is). She managed to swim underneath the Cedar Pride wreck (about 24 metres) and then out the other side with one breath hold. Which is really something special, with full scuba gear on it descending underneath it and then ascending over the other side it would probably take me about 5 minutes. But of course that is swimming at a ‘SCUBA diver pace’ which is very slow. Even though SCUBA diving is considered sport it is a very lazy sport as the slow you swim the less oxygen you will breathe resulting in you being able to stay longer underwater.



Just before we started the dive they all wanted a picture of us with our wetsuits on so I complied. When we had all of our gear on (which bear in mind is heavy) they wanted another picture of us and then the French woman wanted someone to take some more photos on her phone! I was so hot! That was it surely? We got to the beach and spat in our masks. I felt the cool water trickle into my boots but I heard someone shout ‘Adam! Adam!’ and I was genuinely thinking to myself should I pretend that I didn’t hear them and just walk into the water? I didn’t and instead turned around to see a man flailing a large banner with the event details on it with all the sponsor information and stuff. I hope I become famous from all these photos.



The dive I went on to Japanese Garden was with a German man and a French woman. I was assisted by Ahmed and Belal to help out with assembling the kit, putting on their fins and have 2 more eyes on the two new divers. Before taking out intro divers one of the things that you must mention is to not touch anything under the water. I made sure that I told both of them this before the dive. Everything was going well until the end of the dive. On every Japanese Garden dive I finish it off by pointing out a green glass bottle than is slowly being absorbed by Mother Nature. I did the same thing on this dive. Now something that is a few centimetres behind the bottle is a sea urchin which is a big black spikey thing with the spikes about 10 cm long on some of them. They’re definitely things you would even think about touching because they just look mean. But oh no the French woman decided she was going to touch the prickly mess. I smacked her hand away like a granny to her grandkids hands about to snatch some freshly baked cookies. Firm but gentle. She looked at me with a cheeky grin and I signalled to her and the other three to the ascent/ descent point in order to finish the dive.















Tuesday – Troubling times



Although there wasn’t any actual diving today. I did have a very nice 20 minute conversation with Mo’s cousin about Jordan and the whole mess that is around the country (for most parts anyway). We were also talking about the fact that if your neighbour starts a fire eventually that fire will spread to your home. A good metaphor between Jordan’s ‘noisy neighbours’ and Jordan. He is optimistic that things will work out but he but he talked to me about democracy in the western world, how it cannot be bought or suddenly started and WW1 and WW2 among many other wars in Europe before those two we have now achieved political stability across my continent. The question he finished with was how much blood must be paid to achieve a similar situation in the Middle East. The only answer is too much.



Ok I admit that was a little deep for a travel blog but I can’t escape the fact that I live in a country that borders Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Egypt and Syria. If those countries were all people they’re not exactly the guys you would want at a dinner party to say the least. Talking of what is happening in the Middle East has become normal and an everyday occurrence because the situation now with how busy Jordan is… Or I should say how busy it isn’t, is clear to me. Mo’s cousin said that 7 years ago the low season of the year was more than twice as busy than it is at this moment in time and now it is the high season. For me it can be quite easy to distance myself from the realisation that Jordan could become a country like Syria one day because if I wanted or needed to I can just fly home to the UK where I have a bed and roof over my head. It is quite frightening that most of the people I have met and befriended here will not have that luxury if the madness escalates. Even if Jordan does stay safe and basically become like Switzerland in World War 2 (stuck in between chaos but remain neutral) but the conflicts continue until the 2020’s then inevitably hundreds of jobs will be lost in Aqaba as many jobs here are directly reliant on tourism, which consequently will have a ripple effect on thousands of other jobs across the country.









Wednesday - 1 dive wonder


Just one dive today but it was with a pilot and his technician who were a part of a group called ‘Equipe de Voltige’. There are Swiss stunt plane team but they are here to teach the Jordanian team some tricks! The whole team from Switzerland has actually been here before and they did their Open Water and some did their Advanced Open Water course here with Mohamed. They even left a photo with a signature on it from the leader and a message! The pilot was Open Water but was mainly here for his friend and technician who had never dived before. I took them out for the dives with Ahmed as he needs to get his dives up to 60 before he leaves here to become a Divemaster. But the technician had problems equalising and so we couldn’t go past 5 metres. The second dive was different though as the technician didn’t dive and so I took the pilot to see Cedar Pride. He loved it and so I hinted at him to take me up in his plane! Unfortunately however it only takes one person… Damnit! The two guys also left something for us which was 4 stickers and a leaflet (in French) about the planes that they fly with.

Mohamed has been talking to me and has asked me to write a letter to USAID in order to build a football academy for the many young people in Aqaba. $100,000 is going to be given across all of Jordan and even just a little bit can go a long way to build some facilities here in Aqaba. Mohamed said that himself and a few other people have already acquired the land but they need the capital to invest in making it into what it needs to be. English is my first language (and my blog no doubt 😉… hopefully) he wants me to write a letter to them so Mohamed can send it. Whether we will get the money remains to be seen! But I’ll keep ya’ll updated about any news regarding to matter.

In the afternoon I watched some more Game of Thrones with Belal and we are on Season 2! Ned Stark dying was not a happy moment for him or even for me in that matter as I had to relive the trauma.



Thursday – ‘’And I’m glad I crashed the wedding’’ - Busted



No diving for me today but I taught Ahmed navigation with the compass just outside the dive centre. I remember what Martin (Instructor in Tenerife) did when I was practicing how to use a compass and that is to have a towel over my head so I can’t see anything around me, just my feet and the compass. He then made me do a square formation following the bearings on the compass. On his first attempt he ended up doing a triangle but on the second go he successfully completed a square. GOOD JOB.





A little while later the Ahmed, Belal and Mohamed all left to do the dive and I was minding the centre. About an hour after they had left I stood up from behind the reception desk to find a bunch of cats chilling on the couch! I know the cats, they live just outside the centre and always swing by when we are eating. The mother of the 4 kittens has been here for years apparently but her new kittens are a few months old. I initially didn’t like the mama because of what she did to Mo’s bird… Basically Mohamed used to have a little bird in the centre that was free and wasn’t ever confined to a cage and it would freely fly around the centre and was even trained to land on people when they held their finger out! Mo would feed the cat and the bird in that order. But one day this summer Mo left the centre for to go to the shop next door and came back to find the bird in the cat’s mouth. So yeah that’s why I didn’t like the cat. But now she has cute kittens, I’m a nice to her. It’s not a purrfect relationship but I do give her some food every now and again because she’s super skinny and the 4 kittens rag her nipples when it’s feeding time.



Although I had no dives today in the morning or afternoon what happened in the evening made up for it. The four of us from the centre had a BBQ! The location of it was a bit odd though… We sat in the middle of the road… I don’t think they have any public parks in Aqaba where you can BBQ so we sat in the middle of a dual carriageway that had some trees and bushes and that. With lights from the flames of the BBQ and lights from the lampposts we sat there for a good few hours talking and eating. We ate lots of meat mainly and our flames attracted 2 guys over to us. We invited them to eat with us, as is the local custom here. Whenever you are eating and someone you know or even someone you don’t know walks on by you invite them to eat, we are very hospitable here in Jordan. They were talking about the Qur’an and the teachings of God. They were telling me stories that is in the Qur’an. I am a firm Atheist but I didn’t want Belal to tell them that because I didn’t know what their response would have been and the seemed like nice young guys. They were talking to all of us and Belal was translating for me. After about an hour of them talking I asked them a few questions like what do they believe happens to a Christian, Jew, Hindi etc when they die? They said something like if you only go to heaven if you follow Islam. Then I said well what happens if you live in a small village in somewhere in Asia and you haven’t heard of Islam, do you still not go to heaven? They said if you haven’t heard of Islam then you got to heaven based on how you lived your life.



They continued to talk about Islam and that Mohamed was the last Prophet sent by God a few hundred years after Jesus in the early 3rd or 4th century AD. I said what happened to you if you were born before Mohamed was sent by God, do you go to heaven or hell? They said that if you led a good life then you were granted access to heaven. I didn’t want to rock the boat even more with these guys I have just met because that would have been fricking awkward turtle especially with Mo, Ahmed and Belal here. So instead I just said thank you to them and they went on their way. I like talking about Religion because it really interests me about people’s different beliefs. But I have to find the right people to have a proper talk about the subject or are my friends. Belal knows I’m an Atheist and we occasionally talk about Islam and Atheism.



After the BBQ myself and Belal went to crash an Arabic wedding… No for real. One of Belal’s friends was friends with another guy getting hitched near to where he lives so we walked there. There must have been around 300 people at this wedding with a DJ at the front of it and a dance floor. It is probably the biggest sausage fest I have ever been to as there were only men as a traditional Arabic wedding is to have the men at one party and the women at the other. We went around saying hello to the people that Belal knew and we eventually said down at the sides of the wedding. I was the only white guy there except for one Arabic man who was ginger and he had white skin but had Arabic features on his face. Naturally I was getting stared at, so drinking the beer that I snuck in was almost impossible. After about half an hour I wanted to go up and dance with everybody at the dancefloor. Without a second thought one of the guys who was friends with Belal took me to the stage. Everyone was cheering for me and wanting to dance with me. The crowd then formed a circle around the groom and myself. We danced while Belal got some photos for me. After the song ended which was like 15minutes as they are really long songs here the groom gave me kiss of the cheek. He couldn’t be gay as this was the guys wedding! Belal told me after that it is a show of friendship and respect. So I sat back down to check out the photos that Belal took. But he didn’t take any photos! All he did was take a 5 second video of his hand… I wasn’t happy so I got back up again about 15 minutes after the second song started so that it would last maybe another 5 minutes. Clever Leslie.



The day after the party the bride and groom will be in a car driving around Aqaba with a convoy of their friends beeping their horns as they go to let everyone know that they are married. Another taboo in Britain that they disregard so joyously here in Jordan. Beeping the horn!









Friday - Dawdling about at the centre



Again no dives today but we started with Ahmed’s Rescue course with EFR (Emergency First Response). I didn’t have time to prepare fake vomit as was the plan to create a real life scenario for Ahmed (and also to see if it would make him puke, like when he puked after I gave first aid to the guy in the dive centre last week who was unconscious and vomiting). I did use some water to splatter on him when he was checking for my breathing as I didn’t have anything else at hand.



After EFR the three musketeers (Ahmed, Belal and Mo) went for a dive to practice some of the skills you need to complete to become a Rescue diver. These included bringing an unconscious diver to the surface, bringing them to shore and what to do with a panicked diver etc. Ahmed would be towing Belal back to shore and Belal’s a skinny guy. So instead of giving Ahmed an easy ride towing back someone light I told Belal to pack some extra weights to make himself heavier. I’m not evil, I just want to prepare Ahmed! I didn't have time to properly make my fake vomit for the EFR scenario, so this is probably the next best thing.



While the 3 of them were away I could hear some planes flying overhead and it was three of the stunt planes and one of them no doubt is being piloted by the guy who dived with us on Wednesday!











Saturday – Surprise Surprise!



In the morning on the way to the centre I asked Mohamed same question I always do which is do we have any divers today? He shook his head with an unhappy look on his face. About 10 minutes into our journey however he received a phone call and half way through the conversation Mohamed sped up the van in a hurry. Upon hanging up his hone he said that we have 11 intro divers from Palestine waiting outside the centre. LOL WHUT? It’s strange that a group that large didn’t pre-book with us as what if all the centres in Aqaba were too busy to handle that many? Fortunately (for the divers) because of the geographical location of Jordan with the ‘noisy neighbours’ and especially because what is happening to the north of the country, we aren’t as busy as Aqaba was maybe 6 or 7 years ago.



For the intro divers we had a 4 – 4 – 3 formation. The 4 who were first were pretty good and I didn’t have to wait back with any of them to practice breathing with the regulator or to calm them down. The second group were the same! No problems at all! But I knew that with 11 divers there had to be at least one problem.



The problematic divers came in last. All 3 of them had problems varying from equalising, breathing and not paying attention to Mo when he was rattling. One of the guys was just letting himself sink to the bottom on top of reefs. Mohamed was furiously shaking his rattle (a small metal device with a ball inside to make noise underwater… Not the other thing) but the guy wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to him. The second guy (who I was with) couldn’t equalise and so I was talking to him at the surface about taking it slow and if you need to ascend to relieve the pressure on the air spaces in your ears or sinuses you can do that as it will make it easier for you. The third diver was at this point at the surface with a fully inflated BCD, staying happily at the surface of the water looking down at diver 1 with Mohamed and Belal who was swimming to Mohamed for some reason.



Meanwhile I was watching diver 2 and 3, but diver 3 more cautiously as he was further away from me than diver 2. I could see that diver 3 was starting to play with his LPI and I told him to stop by rattling my rattle to get his attention and then like a metronome I would move my index finger from side to side. He did stop and I was moving with diver 3 closer to diver 2 as the sea was a bit rough today and was moving us apart from one another. I was swimming over to him and rattling to make him stop as he was sinking a bit because he let a small amount of air out from his BCD. I was above him and reaching down towards him by this point. He wasn’t very deep, less than 1.5 metres but for reasons that escape me (and without any logical fucking thought) he decided to take his regulator out of his mouth. WHY!? IS HE FRIGGING STUPID!? You can imagine what happened after that. He panicked but by this point I was already pulling him up to the surface of the water and holding his inflator button. He was trying to claw his way to the surface and even tried to use me as a flotation device. This is when my Rescue Diver training kicked in. I span him around by grabbing his right hand with my right hand. I put his tank between my legs so he couldn’t fucking drown me. I made sure the BCD was inflated fully and took him back to shore. What a wolly.



In the evening I watched the match with Ahmed and Belal in Rovers bar as I wanted a beer with the football and Eureka! Beer is my good luck! For anyone living in a hole (but with Wi-Fi to read my blog) Liverpool thrashed Manchester City 4-1 at the Etihad which is their home stadium. A brilliant result for us and now Liverpool is Belal’s favourite Premier League team as he only follows PSG and Bayern Munich but now he has three teams.







Sunday – A man date



Ahmed (trainee Divemaster) was teaching me some Arabic today and it was really useful! I don’t practice it as much as I should as I would love to have a full on conversation with someone who I haven’t met before in Arabic before I leave Aqaba next year. Only time will tell I suppose! Although I did get a chance to practice it a little bit in the evening with a guy who I met with at the wedding a few days ago. He is the manager at the KFC in Aqaba (notice I said ‘the’ and not ‘a’ as there I only one KFC in Aqaba) and I talked with him about my dancing at the wedding (which was great I assure you… I just think he’s jealous I didn’t dance with him) so me and Belal went on a little date to KFC. The KFC manager guy is a good man and he has been friends with Belal for a long time. He even gave me and Belal a free meal at KFC! But if you’re the Colonel reading this then I paid the full price for the meal. I wouldn't have went to KFC if the guy didn't work here but this was the first fast food I have had since I have come here (besides the hotdog and burger I have had once or twice but it's from a small independent take out place!) and it has been my first KFC in about 5 years as I usually don't like KFC but this was finger licking good!



In the afternoon I did go for a spot of shopping with Mr Ahmed Qatawneh (father of Mohamed and first Jordanian diver). We went to a dive shop that sold all aquatic equipment from surface buoys the size of David Cameron’s head after making a terrible joke in the House of Common’s. We didn’t buy too much as Mohamed runs the shop now and not Ahmed but there were size 38 boots which is about a 6 or 7 for 7.50 JD, more or less equivalent to £6 in Sterling… Speak of Sterling I would like my last picture of this blog to just be Raheem Sterling’s tweet in regards to the run up to the match yesterday in the 21st November! Oh isn’t it lovely? Buh bye caimans.

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Photos

The glass bottle!
With the sneaky sea urchin underneath it to the left...

Shoo?
'Shoo' means 'what' in Arabic

Ahmed walking in the road...
...Blindfolded with my Liverpool towel! #ThanksLFC

EFR training!
You can see my bike! (Mo's bike) The chain is broke on it so I haven't been able to use it D: