Back to Beirut

My travel plans have changed a bit recently.  I decided to postpone my visit to India when I have a bigger chunk of time to really devote to that country, and when the weather is a little less intense.  The place that was calling back to me was Beirut, so I re-routed my ticket home and am back in my new favorite city!  This photo is from my first Arabic lesson when we first arrived back in February, on a napkin, just to get the basics down... Mark my words... I'm going to try to learn some Arabic during residency and hopefully come back to the region sometime in the next few years.

I don't feel like I ever gave the people I worked with at Bourj el-Barajneh their due attention and thought I'd write a little more about the experience at the camp in Beirut.

(photo is a side view of the ambulance outside the extrance to the Emergency Room at Haifa Hospital)

Our timing to go work in a Palestinian camp coincided with several events in the news that made our visit a little more suspect to some people.  One of the stories involved six Israeli spies who had just been arrested here, and the other one involved the assassination of the top commander of Hamas in his hotel room in Dubai by Israel's Mossad, who had used fake European passports to get in to the country.  So the hoops we had gotten so accustomed to jumping through in Kenya were all the more relevant here.  Each morning and afternoon when we'd walk through the camp from the main road, toward the hospital, we passed by a makeshift checkpoint that was housed by the PLO, so it was important that everyone knew who we were and what we were doing in the camp everyday - especially since we had video and camera equipment for our interviews!

(us with Mo who helped with lots of logistical stuff at Haifa Hospital)

The Palestinian camps have been in existence for about 60 years here in Lebanon, originally starting out as tents, and everyone (Lebanese and Palestinians) assuming it was going to be a temporary situation.  Fast forwards several decades and the Palestinians in Lebanon are not allowed to work in over 70 professions (doctors, lawyers, etc), they can't own land, they can't vote, they are ineligible for state social services, including health cara, and they have immense travel restrictions and trouble getting visas.  Not owning land is frustrating for people who have historically lived off the land, but imagine working hard enough to educate yourself and get a professional degree, and not even be able to legally get a job where you use that education.  On our daily walks in and out of the camp to the Haifa Hospital, you see tons of men in their teens/twenties/thirties who are just sitting around all day with nothing productive to get involved in.  Many young boys drop out of school early and learn a trade like auto mechanics, and open small shops in the camp (or start working in their family's shop).  Many of the young women are married and pregnant.

In talking to the docs that work at the hospital, they all want nothing more than to return to their homeland.  What complicates it, is that there are different borders now than when they left, and people living in their land that aren't keen on having them return.  It's hard to really grasp how it must feel to not be welcome where you are, to really want nothing more than to go back home, but not be able to because someone else has moved in.

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I found this interesting commentary from a pediatrician working in Texas who has done quite a bit of international health work in the middle east:
The Palestinian refugee issue is often pushed to the bottom of the political agenda. In fact, a large sector of the Lebanese population still blames Palestinians for perpetuating the bloody Lebanese civil war that claimed more than 100,000 lives, left another 100,000 handicapped, and displaced about 900,000 from their homes, according to U.N. statistics. In addition, integration of Palestinian refugees, who comprise 10 percent of the Lebanese population, would disrupt the finely tuned Muslim-Christian balance in Lebanese society by adding a large Sunni Muslim demographic to the country’s already complex societal tapestry.

Furthermore, if Lebanon did indeed grant Palestinian refugees ample civil rights, it would lay the foundation for their permanent residency in Lebanon. Political analysts say that would absolve the Israeli government of its responsibility to adhere to the Palestinian right to return to their homeland or to offer refugees compensation, as stipulated by U.N. resolution 194. This then paves the path for further Israeli settlements, with the understanding that Lebanon, or another Arab country, would be able to sustain the absorption of the refugees created by Israeli settlement expansion. Clearly, the expansion of Israeli settlements is not without far-reaching ramifications and infinite ripples throughout the Middle East.
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 (photos from one of the Emergency Room beds in Haifa Hospital; and view from the balcony at Haifa)

On one afternoon we met with a family living in the Shatila camp, who kindly invited us in for a cup of the traditional thick black Lebanese coffee.  For background (very simplified), the Shatila camp was set up by the UNRWA in 1949, and is home to mostly Palestinians but also some Lebanese Shiites from the south.  In mid-September 1982,the Christian president-elect of Lebanon (Bashir Gemayel) was assassinated.  This prompted the Lebanese (Christian) Forces to want revenge, after being told (by Ariel Sharon) that the PLO was involved (although a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party with no Palestinian connection later confessed).  With the aid of the Israeli Defense Forces who surrounded the Shatila and nearby Sabra camps, kept watch from key observation points, and used flares to illuminate the camps over several nights, the Lebanese Forces massacred somewhere between 500-2000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the camps over about 48 hours, depending on which source you trust.  See the movie Waltz With Bashir for one perspective on what happened.

Over coffee we heard stories about life during the massacre, life in the camps now, and hopes for the future.   We visited a memorial in the camp where several hundred bodies were buried, where they have an annual remembrance.  There are little-to-no mental health services available to the people in the camps, making the healing process for those who survived the massacre even more challenging, even nearly 30 years later.


The family told us about a Palestinian event at the UNESCO Palace later in the week so we all decided to go.   The show was a group of musicians and dancers who had traveled from Gaza to perform traditional song and dance, in traditional costume.  The spirit and energy in the hall was palpable and contagious.  It was amazing to see an even where people of all ages were all equally engaged, from toddlers sitting on their father's shoulders and clapping along, teenagers waving Palestinian flags of all sizes and singing their hearts out, young adults swaying their hips to the arabic music with their hands up in the air, and many of the older people holding up posters of Arafat. Everyone was so full of pride for their culture, it was beautiful to see.  I took video of the performance so if anyone ever wants to see it, let me know, I don't think i can post video on the blog.

Mountains, part six (Dhampus to Phedi to Pokhara, and Kathmandu...thank god.

I say thank god because of our plane ride, which I'll get to.

The owner of the hotel got a phone call at 4am letting him know that there was no strike on for that day, so luckily we would not have to walk the 8 or so miles back to Pokhara and could just catch a ride on a local bus.  That also meant that we only had about an hour to the bottom, which was exciting.  It doesn't sound like much, but when it's a super steep descent along a rocky path, with two black-and-blue toes, it's a lonnnnnng hour down.

We came across a grassy knoll that screamed "Sound of Music," so we instinctively broke in to song and dance.

 

On the way down we saw some local kids, one of whom ran up to me with his(?) cell phone and asked if he could take a photo, and since i'm used to that happening all the time in the U.S., i politely agreed.

The one part that wasn't that exciting as we climbed down the last set of steep stone steps was the honking of buses that we could hear.  It was so nice to get away from that for a few days!

Once we made it back to Pokhara we relaxed over some delicious veggie curry, mango lassi, and fresh mangos.

The plane ride home.  Wow.
Guna Airlines is supposedly a new company, but the planes are about 40 years old.  They hold about 14 people at a time, so you know you're going to feel every gust of wind.  There was a missing bolt on the wing, which thankfully Max pointed out to me after we landed.  It didn't help when everyone on the plane was visibly terrified as the plane took a nose dive toward the Kathmandu airport, including a French guy next to me who does paragliding for a living, he said he feels safer in his paraglide than on these airplanes.  Then there was the typical Nepali landing where you fishtail on the runway and everyone looks to one another with a desperately scared look in their eyes.  It almost makes the roads seem like a better option, until you talk to people who have done overland travel and would prefer to put themselves in the planes.

mountains, part cinqo (Landruk to Dhampus, 6ish hours)

We started out the day intending to make it all the way own to Phedi and take the bus to Pokhara (there aren't any places to stay in Phedi).  Unfortunately we got word from locals that there was a big protest that had shut down all the roads in Pokhara, so we decided to stay the night in Dhampus (the town before Phedi), and head to Phedi first thing the next morning, with the likelihood that we'd have to end up walking the 8 miles back to Pokhara if no taxis were running.

The day started out with a treacherous descent, river crossing, and steep ascent - basically crossing from the top of one hillside to a facing one.  It was an intense start to the day and took us about 2 hours with lots of breaks.  We passed some kids in their school uniforms on their way up to school, who put us all to shame since they do that walk everyday...  Granted we had been pushing it the last few days and were carrying bigger backpacks than they were darnit!

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The woman in purple was the cook at our lunch stop.  She's making another really traditional Nepali dish - Momos - which is a dumpling filled with either veggies, buffalo, or other options.  Her daughter, in the photo below, served the food and was so sweet.  Her son was a bit of a wild child but i managed to catch him in a quiet moment after he helped a farmer herd some cattle through the village (and by helped, I mean that he smacked the cows as hard as he could with an empty water bottle, while yelling at them to move).

 

This is the lodge we stayed at on our last night, in Dhampus.  There were two girls who lived there and go to school in town, who had picked these gorgeous vibrantly colored roses and put them in their hair. The taller one came up and held my hand and asked me all kind of questions in English about where I was from, and told me about her schooling as best she could.

 

mmmmmm, ginger tea!  With nice big chunks of ginger in it...

  

My feet are the smaller ones at the bottom of the frame, and you can almost see how purple my toes were, from repeatedly stubbing them, and after a few hours of toe-crushing steep downhill descent.  I got some pretty gnarly blood blisters under each big toe and haven't been able to wear close-toed shoes since the end of the trek!