The ice cream truck is a lie. This is very important to anybody traveling to Jordan, and I repeat, the ice cream truck is a lie. Instead of peddling the dairy products of your dreams when you follow the trucks playing happy tunes you'll find a truck bed full of propane. These trucks circle through neighborhoods producing false hopes in the hearts of any innocent American with a dream of a cone full of refreshing ice cream.
As sad as I am that ice cream trucks are not actually ice cream trucks the propane they serve plays an important role. Energy consumption in Jordan is a hot topic. Jordan is one of the few countries in the region that has to import most of its energy sources. Importing energy has not been easy for Jordan. Because energy is vital to economic production Jordan has had a long policy of trying to subsidize energy production to help both the consumer and producers in Jordan. There have been multiple different projects, one being a pipeline between Egypt and Jordan. This pipeline was subject to attacks from the Islamic State, and other extremist groups, so now Jordan relies on other forms of energy imports. Jordan is also part of many renewable and alternative energy projects in order to decrease their dependence on crude oil from other countries. In fact there is a center for renewable energy that's part of the campus where I go to school, and I spent a day shadowing the son of the man who runs in. It's because of Jordan's great investment in the energy sector that there are many regulations, laws, and tariffs surrounding energy consumption. The regulations make household turn off their central heating for most of the day, leaving them feeling like a meat freezer. This took some time to adjust to for me, and rolling out of my mountain of covers in the morning was always a challenge. Despite this, the propane trucks always provided the fuel for alternative heaters in the house. These heaters fueled by propane are kept on more often than the central heating, and they always provide a nice place to warm your hands when the cold becomes a bit too much to bear.
Another popular import to Jordan is electronics. Computers, phones, and other electronics generally garner a high import tariff from the Jordanian government. It's because of this that the latest Iphone, which usually can go for upwards of $800 in the US, can go for the equivalent of $1,100 in Jordan. In fact, Jordan has been ranked as one of the most expensive places in the world to buy an Iphone.
I've never been a huge fan of smart phones, I was able to even hold off on the fad of owning one until this summer when it was time for an device upgrade through my family's plan. Naturally, in a very short time I have become very dependent on this handheld computer. I quickly become addicted to games, I enjoy the ease of taking photos at a moment's notice, and it's really nice to have something so tiny and portable to carry around while I'm Skyping family and friends. My Iphone is my biggest crutch over here. Any moment that I feel like retreating from the culture I've been placed in I can just whip out my portable device of distraction and ignore the passing of opportunities to do something different with my time.
Despite the upsides and downsides of having a Iphone it's interesting to watch the reactions of people when the learn I have an Iphone. Sometimes people don't understand the hype around Iphones in America. Despite their popularity, Iphones aren't really known as the most impressive smart phone. One day my friend here spent about 10 minutes going through all the different gadgets he had on his smart phone and explaining how much better his phone was than the phone I had. At the end of it all he asked me why so many Americans owned smart phones. I explained to him we enjoyed the familiarity and the ease of navigation on the device. He gave me a weird look that let me know he would never understand why I had gotten an Iphone and we moved the conversation to something else.
Whether it's what smart phones are being used, or how the consumption of energy happens here, often times I'm left searching for the pieces of how things work here. Even though it's really easy to fall into the trap of my comfort zone and ignore the different ways of doing things. The good news is every so often I'm able to put away my Iphone for long enough to listen to the sound of the ice cream truck that isn't an ice cream truck, and to do enough research to find some information about what's happening around me.
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