Beach World Tour 2019: Aqaba Police

I had my usual problem of getting my cab driver to take me to the police headquarters. Aqaba, Jordon was a welcome port after four days of cruising on the Red Sea. It is a nice town of about 150,000 straight across the narrow end of the Gulf of Aqaba from the city of Eilat on the very southern tip of Isreal. In fact, with my ship docked in Jordon, my phone was connected to a cell-tower in Isreal.

Aqaba Police Headquarters
The young officer with the assualt weapon stepped back out of sight
when he saw me about to take a photograph.

My driver, Muhammad, at first told me the police headquarters was far outside of town. He told me the blue 8x8 street corner Dr. Who looking building was the police. I did not want to stop. I'd already checked things out as much as I could. That was the Tourist Police which is seperate and deals only with tourists issues. Later as we were driving along, he pointed to a building and said that was the police headquarters. He'd slipped and I had him turn around and head back to it. He relized his mistake and didn't want to go back. He ended up dropping me off in front and said he'd wait down the block for me to come out.

I was met at the door by a fierce looking 20-something dressed in black tact and holding an automatic weapon with purpose. He did not speak a word but, several uniformed officers approached me with smiles and I introduced myself. They were surprized and seemed genuinely happy to meet me. They invited me in and talked to more officers inside. Suddenly there were 10 or 12 officers gathered around smiling and shaking my hand.

When they heard that I was a Captain, they did a collective gasp and several ran to an inner officer. They came out and then ushered me back meet their Captain. He spoke English fairly well and cordially welcomed me and offered me a seat in front of his desk.

Once settled, he sat back behind his desk, with fingers interlased and said, "What can we do for you?" I told him I just wanted to visit and pay my respects. Two of his men sat in on the meeting to the side, leaning into the conversation. It reminded me of Carl and Landon sitting in my office when something interesting was going down.

It turns out the Captain had visited the U.S. on several occassions. He was at the U.N. meeting on training police and attended John Hopkins Center for Advanced International Studies in D.C. He had led a Jordanian Police detachment to Kosovo to train police officers there for the U.N. Here was an seriously educated professional police officer. We talked for about 30 minutes about crime in Jordan, Ramadan, and Kosovo. He seemed to appreciate the UP patch and I explained what the railroad police was. He sent one of his guys off and they came back later with one of their shoulder patches.

I tried to get them to let me take a group photo but, he said it was strickly against department regulations. I could take a picture of the front of the headquarters building, which is more than some countries have allowed on this trip.

My cab driver was still waiting and I had him drive me around the old town. For the first time since leaving the states, I saw something I wasn't quick enough to get my phone out to photo: a Popeye's Chicken. I almost had him turn around so I could get a 3 peice spicey with red beans and rice to take back on the ship.