I was planning to blog about our transition from Da Nang to Hanoi with a beautiful stopover in Huế. But that is going to have to wait. Because right now I want to vent my frustrations with something else.
I'm sure all my readers know that the United States is at war with Iran right now. But what you may not all know is that our daughter is doing a study abroad this semester in Amman, Jordan. Or perhaps I should say she was. Right now she is in an airplane over the Mediterranean Sea. But let me get to that.
The last few days have been very frustrating for my daughter, my wife, and me.
To start at the start, even when the war broke out, Alrica and I were not afraid that our daughter was unsafe in Amman. At no point did we feel she was unsafe in Amman. Jordan isn't at war, and the city is far from any legitimate military targets.
I suppose there is always some risk. Jordan has a long-standing policy that they shoot down any missiles over their airspace. It doesn't matter who launched the missile. It doesn't matter who the target might be. If it passes over Jordan, then Jordan shoots it down. Geographically, if you are stuck between two countries, Israel and Iran, who like to lob missiles at one another, this is a pretty smart policy. Don't use our airspace for your conflicts. It's not taking sides, it is just protecting what is theirs. But what this does mean is that sometimes sirens go off meaning everyone needs to get indoors. It is possible that shrapnel from the exploded missiles could land somewhere.
But this is pretty normal for the Jordanians. At least once a year, Israel launches something at Iran that goes over Jordan and Jordan shoots it down. And regularly things go the other direction too. So the Jordanians don't freak out about it. It's just part of life. Sirens go off, you get indoors for awhile, sirens stop, you go about your day.
Our daughter was not scared at all. Neither were we.
Then the frustrations began. How the U.S. Government can be so incapable, so incompetent, is unbelievable. On Monday, in the evening Eastern Time, some undersecretary in the State Department tweeted that Americans needed to get out of Jordan on commercial flights. But that was it. There was no confirmation anywhere. Nothing on any State Department website said this was the new policy. No one else in the State Department pipeline was given this new policy either. And then the State Department went quiet. It was after business hours, maybe they figured, "Ah, no one will be confused or need clarification. Why bother having anyone around to answer questions?"
Of course there were going to be people who needed clarification! One of them was Amideast. Amideast is an educational organization that organizes study abroad programs in the Middle East and North Africa. Universities generally don't organize their own study abroad programs, but contract out to organizations like Amideast. This includes Syracuse University (where our daughter is a student.)
When this tweet went out, it was around 2 AM in Jordan. Immediately, Amideast, as well as other similar groups, started asking for clarification. But the office which had tweeted was closed. Their other State Department contacts had not been told this was the policy. It was chaos and confusion for hours. Never before has the U.S. Government declared that Americans must depart a country through a tweet and nothing else. So no one knew was to do. That was frustration number one. We had no idea what the real policy was and what it meant for our daughter.
Finally, then next day in the U.S., the State Department sent word that yes, people really did need to get out of Jordan and they announced it properly this time. However, they told Americans to leave by commercial air travel. At the time, Jordanian air space was closed! How was anyone supposed to leave?
Amideast, to their credit, came up with a plan. They moved classes online and asked the students to attend from the homes of their host families. They decided that when flying out was possible, they would move the students in the Jordan program to the Morocco program in Rabat. That way they could continue with Arabic classes. As for the subject classes (the ones that were not about learning Arabic) they would continue to offer them online for the rest of the semester. Amideast would get the kids to the airport in Amman, and they would pick up the kids at the airport in either Rabat or Casablanca. But the kids had to book their own flights out.
Air Jordan was planning a flight that would go from Amman to Casablanca on Thursday at 2:20 AM Jordan Time (assuming air space was open at that moment.) Our daughter wanted to get that flight. But then the bureaucratic inefficiency that is Syracuse University happened. Our daughter is the only student in the Jordan program from Syracuse University. The other students are all from other schools. And their schools contacted them immediately, told them to book whatever they could find, and then they would reimburse them later. But no, not Syracuse. They had to make it so much more frustrating!
The Study Abroad program at Syracuse comes with travel insurance which is for this exact thing. If you are forced to deport for various reasons (including a war breaking out next door) the insurance will pay for your flight. But our daughter had to call them. No one at Syracuse reached out to her. And the Syracuse insurance wouldn't just let our daughter book her own flight and reimburse her. They said they had to book it. So she waited. And waited. And waited. Twenty-four hours later, there was still no update about whether or not they had booked it. Our daughter tried calling again and again, put on hold, told there were no updates. Finally Alrica decided to play the parent card. That too was frustrating. Alrica would explain the situation, be put on hold, and then get disconnected ten minutes into the hold music. We were unable to get anything resolved.
One of the times Alrica was on hold (probably her fourth call to them), someone from the insurance company called our daughter. They hadn't booked anything. They weren't sure if Casablanca was her final destination. And they waited over a day to find out?! She said, yes, that is my final destination. The insurance company's response was that now she was in the queue for them to book something for her.
Our daughter got a scholarship for her study abroad from the Gilman Foundation. They were on top of things. As soon as they were told that Americans had to leave Jordan, they reached out to our daughter. They followed up. She told them how she still didn't have flights booked. The Gilman Foundation, which works through the State Department, had the embassy in Jordan calling our daughter to check on whether or not she had a flight. They wanted her out of there. But the machinery of bureaucrats cannot be rushed.
Finally, hours and hours later, the insurance company confirmed that they had booked the 2:20 AM flight. Great! Assuming the air space was open at that time.
As I said before: Alrica and I were really not afraid at any point while she was in Amman. We honestly believe she is safe in the city. But I, for one, was very frustrated. I was even quite impatient and snappish with my parents when trying to explain what was going on to them. And that was unfair since it wasn't their fault.
The only thing I feared was the flight itself. Our daughter on the ground in Amman felt safe. But being in the air over Jordan, that felt like the most dangerous part of the journey. That was where the missiles, if any were being fired, would be.
As I write this, our daughter is in the air. But she's already over the Mediterranean Sea and I can breathe more easily. The plane couldn't fly over Israel, so it had to go south across all of Jordan. Then it flew over the Red Sea and entered Egypt's air space. The plane also can't fly over Libya. So it had to fly back north over Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea. Now it is heading west toward Casablanca and it should be well out of the area that missiles are being fired.
So if I have seemed impatient or tense over the last couple days, I apologize. (I will apologize directly to you, Mom and Dad, when we next speak.) It isn't really that I thought anything bad would happen to my daughter, but to be left in Limbo, it just gnaws at you. Or at least, it gnaws at me.
Thanks to all who reached out to check on her. And (if you made it this far) thanks for letting me rant.
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