In Jordan, watching every drop

Peace Corps volunteer and 15 young filmmakers spotlight water crisis

(Jordanian Royal Film Commission photo)
US Peace Corps volunteer Susan Miller-Coulter (back row, fourth
from left) and some of her students made a documentary on the
scarcity of water in Jordan.

Susan Miller-Coulter, a registered nurse, returned in early October to her home in Holyoke, Mass., after a two-year stint as a youth volunteer with the Peace Corps in Deir Abi Seid, Jordan.

By Susan Miller-Coulter

On a sweltering Thursday in July 2006, a Peace Corps van deposited me and my three large bags at Deir Abi Seid -- a chokingly dusty town about 60 miles northeast of Jordan's capital, Amman. I was incredulous and barely this side of a panic attack.

Back home, I was a 63-year-old nurse -- not to mention a singer in Social Band, a local choral group -- and yet here I was, assigned to work at a government-run after-school center for girls. What could I possibly do to "make a difference," as the Peace Corps cliché goes? These teenagers glowed with enthusiasm, yet they radiated shyness like deer, sitting in traditional hijab coverings and ankle-length clothing. I could not have guessed that before my two years were up, some of my students and I would break conservative norms to undertake a filmmaking odyssey calling attention to a preciously scarce resource here: water.

In Jordan, this is the equivalent of sending girls into space.

Our start came by chance. A group of 12- and 13-year-old girls I worked with were invited to perform a few songs and the dubkha, a traditional Arabic dance, at a summer festival. I had taught them to sing "Peace Call" by Woody Guthrie. English is mandated in the Jordanian curriculum from first grade on, and students mostly regard English with the enthusiasm we reserve for geometry. They were thrilled to learn that English could be fun. While we waited our turn to go on stage, I struck up a random conversation with a man who turned out to be an official with the Royal Film Commission in Amman. He said: "Anything I can do to help with your girls and get them to learn film, let me know. That's my job." Hmm, the usual Jordanian graciousness, I thought, but meaningless most likely. Still, file it away. Ya never know.

Fast-forward a year to July 2008, and a different group of girls, this time a stellar bunch of 16-years-olds. (The school in my town is so good that Queen Rania herself dropped by in her helicopter one spring morning to say hi, good job, keep it up.)

During that year I'd become more aware and puzzled that the water crisis that pervades life here is not studied in the schools. It's seen as too complicated, too political. According to the State Department, Jordan is among the top four water-poorest countries in the world, alongside Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. In Deir Abi Seid, as in most of Jordan, water comes into a small rooftop tank once a week for every household. And the kingdom draws most of this water from nonrenewable resources. Because of the scarcity, you hurry to do your laundry; the rinse water is used to wash the floors, to flush down the Arabic squat toilets.

Well, my girls and I secured a small USAID grant to make a documentary about the crisis. Our goal was to engage other young people by going around to area schools, presenting the film and holding discussions to help instill responsible attitudes about water. And that's why one day my 15 girls, two high-definition mini-cams, two teachers, a professional filmmaker, and I boarded a blazing hot commuter bus to the souq, the huge outdoor market of stores on our town's main street.

Now, we hadn't considered the impact of 15 adolescent girls wandering up to strangers, all of them men, who beamed with pleasure and practically lined up to be interviewed. Then some girls entered a fruit and vegetable market. Hiba, a student who showed remarkable aptitude for filming, started panning on the produce. "What do you know about the water
situation in Jordan?" another student, Amal, asked the owner. Then we went to the supermarket, where we interviewed the janitor. Then off to the public health clinic, interviewing a niqab-covered pharmacist. The answers to our questions were pretty much the same: There is a crisis, but we don't know why, and what can we do anyway? Last, we went to the district office of the Water Authority of Jordan. We watched as the director endured barrage after barrage of angry citizens complaining about the weekly water being too late, insufficient, or being billed incorrectly. Finally, I leaned against the door so that no one else could come in, and our interview could proceed. His answer boiled down to "be careful with water,'' blah, blah, blah.

The film shows several possible solutions, including a model project for reusing wastewater, and how households can collect and safely store rainwater for drinking. The model reuse project required a trip to Petra, which is now the Second Wonder of the World, right after China's Great Wall. The town around Petra, in a very fragile desert environment, hosts an average of 6,500 tourists per day. The waste generated by this is processed in a giant plant and reused to safely irrigate plants eaten by sheep and camels, as well as for growing flowers sold to the tourist hotels.

Along the way to completing the film, major technical issues threatened the whole endeavor. If not for the great attitude of the girls, the project could have died. In the end, things came together in ways more astoundingly happy than a Hollywood scriptwriter would dare to propose. The Royal Film Commission, based on a year-old chance conversation, committed major resources to training the 15 students (young filmmakers) we assembled. The school, and one special English teacher, became my firm partners. My 29-year-old daughter came to Jordan from Holyoke, Mass., to visit, and fell in love with the English teacher's cousin, and now my colleague will become a part of my family when Carolyn marries Ahmad in a few months.

The culmination of my students' work came on a scorching night in late August. The filmmaking team -- along with their so-proud parents, school officials, and guests from the US Embassy and the Peace Corps -- watched the documentary's premiere under a star-lit sky outside the beautiful office of the Royal Film Commssion.

We called our documentary "The Last Drop" because of a moving statement from the assistant principal of our school. "As individual Jordanians,'' she said, "we know that we must conserve each and every drop of water because we will come to the day when we will long for even one more drop."

For more information on Peace Corps activities, go to www.peacecorps.gov. To learn how you can contribute to the Passport blog, contact the Globe's assistant foreign editor, Kenneth Kaplan, at k_kaplan@globe.com.