We’d been told that breakfast today would be at 07:30. Wanting to continue my run streak meant that I was up at 06:30 so I could run 5K and get a shower before this. Everything had to be ready and in the lobby by breakfast so it’d be ready for loading the bus up whilst we would be heading over to Jadal to finish the community projects we started yesterday.

Of the projects, the Green house was the biggest but it wasn’t yet dry enough to fully varnish which meant it couldn’t be finished sadly. It felt an awful shame to leave it like that, but they would finish it off, and we’d got somewhere else to be. The weather was better than yesterday, so it was hopeful the wood would dry.

We left Jadal to get the bus from outside the hostel, and waited around for a while as the driver insisted anything flammable couldn’t go on. We’d carried paint, tools, and materials from the centre to the bus and it needed to get to the Al Baqa'a refugee camp. The solution was to unload it, and Yazan would take it by car.

Fifteen minutes after leaving out, the bus was having issues with the radiator, so the driver got out and looked at it. After another ten minutes we’d stopped again and this time it looked like we wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. The Impact crew were straight on it, and booked five Ubers as backup to get us there. Amusingly, as they turned up, the bus started working again.

The refugee camp wasn’t how I’d pictured it in my mind. I’d thought this would mean tents, and maybe ramshackle buildings made from whatever they could find. That’s not the reality of the situation though, and when you look at the history of the largest refugee camp in Jordan, it starts to make sense. This camp had started in 1968 for refugees escaping Palestine during the Arab-Israeli war. It originally had 5,000 tents for 26,000 refugees, but a UN agency had replaced those with prefabricated shelters. It was clear how our host felt about the hostilities between Israel and Palestine, and he felt Western media coverage of this didn’t tell the full story to avoid seeming anti-Semitic. He also pointed out Semitic is a range of languages that includes Arabic, and he’s not against the language, or even the people, he’s against the policies of the aggressor country.

I know a little about the history of the conflict, but I’m no expert on it. It does seem though that the rest of the world wants as little to do with it as possible, even though it could be considered to be the United Kingdom’s fault it started in the first place. Whatever the truth was, there were thousands upon thousands of people here now; generations who had never even seen the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

Our first job was to unload everything, and to take some bags of soil up to the roof. This didn’t take long, and was followed by lunch that a Palestinian local had prepared at a cost of around 150 JOD. It was an incredible amount of food on tables that stretched the width of the room. There was far more than we could eat. An abundance of food for guests seems a common theme in Jordan. Their hospitality speaks for itself, as everyone is so welcoming, and eager to please.

As soon as I’d finished eating I didn’t linger, I wanted to get started so went out and started preparing the railings to be painted. I worked on both lots outside the side entrance, and then the front railings. It took long enough to tidy these up that it was 15:00 by this time, and we’d not got that much time left. I went up onto the roof to help there with the soil boxes, doing various jobs. An hour later and we’d done everything we could do here today. We said our goodbyes to the ones we’d been helping, and headed back to the now-repaired bus. We were now heading to Petra.

It was a long drive, and after 2.5 hours we stopped at a service station. It was a welcome break, and had snacked on the way already so didn’t need any more food from there. It was nice to be able to walk around though. When we arrived at the Nomad Hotel in Wadi Musa it was 21:00, and I was ready to just go to my room, and sleep. I didn’t need more food. However, as it was there I had a light meal whilst they sorted the rooms.

That night I found my luggage had gotten very damp on the coach. My running shoes and socks were soggy. I realised that where my luggage had been was underneath a hose to the radiator on the bus, so perhaps that had leaked and was what had caused it to break down earlier. Hopefully they could dry out by the morning.