K's work

No “glamour” of working in a refugee camp… I’ve never even been there, and have only been near it two or three times!

A year ago last May, the small (less than 50 acres), dense camp of 33,000 people was destroyed = levelled = reduced to a pile of rubble that will take 500 dump truck loads a day five months to remove. And only last month was access to the site finally granted by the Lebanese Army. A UN/NGO team quickly moved in to conduct a risk assessment and survey, and determined that of the five areas in the camp, 2 were considered “green,” or safe to enter, 3 were “amber,” and 1 “red,” or known to have quantities of unexploded ordnance and/or mines. De-mining and rubble removal will be conducted simultaneously, sector by sector. All that work needs to be complete before reconstruction can begin. Photo is what is left of Nahr el-Bared Camp.

Meanwhile the 5,449 displaced refugee families are living in rented accommodations (approx. 3,600) with host families (560) mostly in the other nearby refugee camp that was already way overcrowded, and in very basic temporary shelters built by UNRWA (430, including 220 in double stacked metal prefab units that are proving to be very hot and noisy).

UNRWA provides health and education services to the refugees in all 12 camps in Lebanon, but for the Nahr el-Bared displaced refugees it also provides emergency food and non-food items, rental assistance, water, electricity, solid waste service, and as many emergency shelters as we could find land to build on. We are also going to rebuild the old camp, assuming donor fatigue hasn't set in and donor countries will respond with the needed funds. Something like $52 million was donated last year; much more will be needed for reconstruction.

The UNRWA office compound at the camp won’t be rebuilt for many months either--it will be the first site cleared of rubble but then will be used as a rubble sorting site for the rest of the camp. Since the crisis, UNRWA offices in the north have up until now been in a tired conference room (with too few outlets) at the Quality Inn. In a couple of months we will move to Ye Olde metal prefabs to be placed on an unused fair ground behind the hotel, some 10 miles from the camp. But K actually spends most of her time at the Beirut office. Her boss is there, not by choice but trapped by meetings with the director, other staff, the government and donors, and also by the bureaucracy that threatens to strangle us all.

The Lebanon Field Office is a faded, three story structure inside a walled compound on the highway to the airport. From the third floor you can glimpse the sea. Office hours for some unknown reason are 7:15 - 2:45, though many international staff and some dedicated locals work much later, K's boss among them. Buses ferry Palestinians from most of the camps in Lebanon each day to work. The vast majority of people who work for UNRWA are Palestinian, something like 22,000 to 150 (not all in Lebanon! HQ is in Amman and Gaza, and there are also offices in the West Bank and Damascus). Working at UNRWA is the only place in Lebanon where they may take any job; Palestinians in Lebanon are forbidden from working in most professions. Only recently were they allowed to get work permits for manual and clerical jobs. They have lived here for 60 years! (While Israelis wer celebrating the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel, eslewhere took place the commemoration of the 60th year since Nakba--the day of catastrophe).

So, while I work with refugees, I rarely visit the camps. I travel to Tripoli usually twice a week, and spend my time there in the office at the Quality Inn. We don't even take lunch breaks or come up for air. I sit in meetings and seek out the different people who lead the water and sanitation team or the education team or the health team, and put together progress reports. Occasionally I get to tag along to the adjacent area of the camp, where almost 2,000 of the displaced families have managed to return, or to Beddawi Camp, where 500 more still live. Sometimes I stay overnight at the hotel. Soon I may be staying instead at an apartment recently rented by UNRWA for a Swiss architect and a Danish Technical Advisor.


Snippets:

• Last night, in the hotel, I heard a number of explosions and feared the worst. I peaked out the hotel curtains and coould only catch the occasional flash of light. The barrage continued. I dressed and went across the hall to look out the window on the other side. Fireworks. Red, green, white fireworks. Later I learned it had nothing to do with the new president or the country, but the success of a local basketball team.
• Today I rode back from Tripoli in an armored vehicle. It was a Toyota armored in the Czech Republic--apparently a big business there. You don't roll down the windows because they are too heavy to roll up.

Election ! and beach cleanup

It actually happened, on the 19th try. Lebanon has a new president: someone all the parties and factions could agree on--Michel Sulieman, until yesterday the head of the Lebanese Army. We heard he went out and bought 6 suits. It is odd to see him in civilian dress. His photo has been displayed all over the country for months; but now we see him minus the uniform, in a tie. There is a wonderful, festive air in town. And Lebanese really know how to party... The outgoing Prime Minister invited all the MPs including the opposition which had closed down parliament for the last 18 months, to dinner. And a popstar s hosting a party tomorrow and has invited all of Beirut.


*****

We did our fist volunteering today--picking up trash from a beautfiul beach in Byblos for a Mediterranean clean-up day involving 21 countries! There was to be a contingent on the Beirut beach front as well, but the election festivities meant no groups could gather, so that part had to be cancelled. But two beaches outside Beirut were cleaned. There were 80 people at one beach near Beirut, mostly high school students. At Byblos we were a group of just 6 people--from the NGO we hike with. We chose a small beach only about 60 yards long. I thought we would be done in 15 minutes, and wondered why the leader had chosen such a small place. Three hours later we had filled between 40 and 50 large trash bags full. Worse, we could see more stuff coming in on the tide. It's terrible--trash heaps along the shore slide into the sea, and poeple just toss things--most people have no consciousness about litter. Maybe now that there is a functioning government some things will change. Another beach feature are globs of sticky black oil, left over from the Israeli boming of Lebanon's power plants in 2006. It sticks to the pebbles and is impossible to get off your hands or clothes. It will never wash away.

White balloons

Six days of talks in Qatar brought Lebanon's politicians to an agreement. People are happy, and a bit amazed. The Hezbollah encampment that had killed downtown commercially and socially for 18 months is being dismantled. White ballooons were released there in celebration. An election, postponed 18 times, may actually be held on Sunday. We are going to wait and see if it really happens before unpacking the evacuation suitcase...

They are talking

The port and airport are open, the roadblocks removed, and representatives of all the parties have jetted off to Qatar for talks mediated by the Arab League. I never thought it could be so wonderful to be stuck in traffic in Beirut--a sure sign that things have returned to normal.

Now we all wait to hear the outcome of the talks. Some give it a 50-50 chance of success, others are more hopeful. I am working on unpacking the evacuation suitcase.

On an overpass near the airport, a group of people in wheelchairs held banners in Arabic, English and French for the departing politicians to see:

"If you don't reach a solution, don't come back!"

"Fighting Ebbs in Lebanon"

That is the headline on the local news feed we get, and we hope it is true. K heard gunfire near her workplace today for about an hour. But there are no reports of major fighting anywhere in the country. The army seems to be slowly taking over. Tom witnesssed them entering our area, and seeing the Syrian Socialist members who had claimed our neighborhood scatter like rats into the shadows... And an Arab League delegation is scheduled to arrive tomorrow--presumably they are clearing the roadblocks from the airport for the occasion.

Here is more on the power of spin, a remarkable story that apparently appeared in the Syrian press:

"The Americans launched a pre-emptive strike against opposition nationalist forces, starting with the [Hizbollah] resistance, and attempted a Washington-planned coup but were taken aback by the opposition, which restored order in Lebanon."

It goes on to say: "The recent events in Lebanon showed that the coup carried out by the Americans and their men in Lebanon backfired."

Interesting, given the fact that we didn't see any American soldiers in Lebanon and the fact that it was Hizbollah who started the fighting.

Spin

Some media portray it as an opposition takeover of the Shouf, but that is simplistic as best. What we saw was a decision made by those in power in the region—two Druze leaders who themselves oppose each other—to jointly agree to withdraw in order to avoid more bloodshed, in favor of having the army move in to maintain the peace. Again, a wonderful thing, that the army is respected by all and has managed to stay neutral.

The Prime Minister called for a minute of silence Sunday at 12:00. We were at the health club at the time (so grateful it had reopened so we could burn off some steam) and asked them to turn off the music, which they did.

Other positive: The cabinet is to meet today and presumably will reverse the decisions it had taken that set off Hezbollah. If Hezbolah stands by its word, the fighting should stop.

Other negative: The US has sent its warship to hover off the coast and add to the tension and the perception that the current government are US puppets.

Other inscrutable: The Arab league is sending a Sunni delegation to mediate this Sunni-Shiite conflict.

Heavily weighing on our minds: the idea that we could leave, but the people we have come to love, these beautiful generous Lebanese souls, along with the thousands of Palestinians trapped for 60 years in a world in which they have no control, have no such choice to make.

Sunday news

It has been quiet in Beirut today, but there was fighting in both Tripoli in the north and in the Shouf, south east of Beirut. Both seem to have died down now, and the army has moved in to maintain order. The airport is still closed, blockaded by Hezbollah. Things seem volatile, but not hopeless.

In our area, in West Beirut, there remained a few armed guys on a couple of street corners, flags of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party flying here and there, and spray painted party logos had appeared on many buildings in the neighborhood. They are a small group allied with the Shiite Moslem Hezbollah, but are Eastern Orthodox Christians...and Nazis. Reminds me of the sign Tom has outside his office that says "If you think you understand Lebanese politics, no one has explained it to you properly."

So the "flight" bag remains half unpacked, a barometer of current conditions. When the violence ratchets up, I throw a few more things in. When it looks like life is returning to normal, things go back in the drawer.

Meanwhile we got some clarification on emergency evacuation. The embassy had sent a disturbing email saying that it was our responsibility to plan for evacuation. The email informed us that the airport was closed (well, duh) and suggested that we might charter a boat to Cyprus. With Hezbollah controlling the port and there being very few boats in the Beirut harbor, this was not a comforting thought. But we later learned that there is indeed an evacuation plan, and that it involves going north out to Syria, which sounds reasonable.