Amy’s Journal

For anyone who feels like experimenting with the Lebanese mail system, try sending something to our building. I am curious about what will happen. Most people use P.O boxes, and I have sure never seen a mailman, but I read somewhere that there is mail service.
Try:
Amy Campbell/Ethan Holda
37 Yamout Street
Sidani Building, Hamra
Beirut, Lebanon 1103

Definitely only send something like a postcard where it won’t matter if (when?) it gets lost.

We sent postcards for Jill, Katy, and Keith’s birthdays, but I don’t think they have received them (?) so maybe they never will.

Today I swam in the sea and the pool. The sea is really salty here; I was surprised. I went to the same “private beach” that Ethan and I went to last week, which is called Long Beach. It’s basically a huge cement slab jutting out into the water with a couple of pools, 2 thrown-together open cafes, and a bunch of chaise lounges. It’s not fancy, but you still must pay $7 admission. Why do I do this? Because women don’t really swim at public beaches, and if they do, they do so fully clothed and with their families.

At some point, I am going to go to one of the ladies-only beaches, just to see what it’s like. These are for the truly modest and devout, and I sort of have this image of all of these pious ladies throwing off veils and leaping naked into the sea, but I am pretty sure it’s nothing like this.

I’m having my usual breakfast of labneh (which is a very creamy, sour yogurt) with olive oil, tomato, and cucumber. Ethan has trudged off to Starbucks to do some work, since overnight our IP once again blocked the port he needs to use VPN.

Yesterday I went on a field trip of sorts with the preschool/kindergarten that Association Najdeh runs. We went by bus from Chatila to a river (creek?) at the edge of the Chouf. Naturally, the river bank had been cemented in for maximum leisure access. The bus was crammed full with kids piled on top of each other, but no one seemed to mind. The bus driver blared Arabic pop music all the way there.

I had a great time, but it certainly would have been more rewarding if I spoke more than a few words of Arabic. There were about 6 teachers and at least as many mothers there, and only one spoke English. The kids never really understood that I don’t speak Arabic, so would just talk to me anyway. When I would speak to them in English, they would just kind of look at me. I think a few of them just thought I was weird. Most of them waded in the water, or had an adult carry them in deeper. None of them could swim, not even the older ones who were along, but they really loved (and were simultaneously terrified by) the water.

At one point, a kid had a grasshopper-esque bug on his neck, so I took it off and showed it to him. He was completely freaked out, and soon a crowd of kids gathered to look at the insect and marvel at the fact that I was holding it in my hand. They were shrieking with delight and wouldn’t get too close to it. I put it on a tree and a few of them stood watching it for a long time. Then the mother who spoke some English asked me if it was a frog that lives in the river.

Several of the mothers and one teacher swam, fully clothed, most still with the headscarf. They eventually enticed me to come in as well. It was such an interesting bonding moment to swim and joke around with these women who were so accepting of me without being able to speak or know anything about me. It’s amazing how much you actually can communicate without talking.

On the bus ride home, about half the kids passed out, music still blaring. Two of the teachers stood up and danced together the whole way back to Chatila while the rest of us clapped to the music.

Today I met with staff from an organization with which I am planning to volunteer. The organization works with women and children in Palestinian refugee camps, of which there are many in Lebanon. The camp I will be working in is called Chatila (also spelled Shatila)- the site of Ariel Sharon’s first war crimes back in 1982. I’m not entirely sure what I will be doing- the organization seems a bit disorganized (yet well-established, it has been around since 1976). What seems most likely is that I will be volunteering with school aged kids in a summer program (I’m thinking summer camp, more or less) for a few months, picking up an English class (the students are adult women) later in the summer, and working in the preschool/kindergarten in September, when school begins again.

Though I have the feeling that this all could change. It also seems possible to come up with ideas of my own, so I am pretty excited about it.

I got to tour the camp and see the organization’s vocational center and kindergarten. The camp is depressing, people living in squalor, more or less. No electricity is provided, so people are forced to buy sporadic generator service or go without. There is no running water, and people must purchase water for about 65 cents a gallon. The Palestinian inhabitants are prohibited by the government from working all but the most menial jobs. There is one doctor who services the camp’s inhabitants (somewhere between 13,000 and 20,000 people crammed into a couple of square kilometers), though sometimes Red Crescent provides some services. The shadow of massacres that happened here during the civil war still looms. I was shown a mosque where 800 dead are buried in the floor because there was no way to get them out of the camp for burial during the Amal siege (also known as War of the Camps). Still everywhere we walked, I saw people (so many children) carrying themselves with dignity and at least some amount of hope.

The preschool/kindergarten was cramped but lively. Tomorrow is the last day of school for them, so I am going to go on their end of the year field trip to a river in the Chouf.

Just back from Saifi Market, which is a lot like a US farmer’s market, with little stands where people sell their organic produce. We bought a rosemary bush and also some organic black beans (!) for the bargain price of $2.50 for 500 grams. Saifi Village is a strange place. Sort of a planned but very fancy “artist” community.. not sure what sort of artists could afford to live there. It kind of looks like a fancy urban development in Florida. It’s a Solidere project, which is Rafik Hariri’s company, tasked with rebuilding the downtown. The Solidere projects are very ambitious, and on the one hand it is really great to see that Beirut is rising from the ashes, but on the other hand, most Lebanese cannot afford to partake in what it has to offer-upscale dining, shops, and residences. Last night we had drinks with some new friends, one of whom just opened an art gallery in Saifi Village. She said that business was good initially (back in December), but after Hariri’s assassination and the uncertainty that followed, business has really slowed down- people are not making big purchases right now.

We have learned that we are going to have visitors in August. Ray, Geoff, Bridget, and Russell have all bought plane tickets to come from NY. I’m getting excited about showing Beirut and Lebanon to those guys. And Syria, if they want. I’m hoping to get to Damascus soon. We actually really need to go on some day trips and maybe an overnight trip. Soon.

It is dawning on me that we now sort of have to start planning the wedding. We finally know where it is going to be (the Salt Lick, in Driftwood, TX) and I am now looking to charter a school bus or similar vehicle to take people from downtown Austin to the wedding site and back again.

We are about to head to a restaurant in the neighborhood that I have been meaning to check out. I was doubly intrigued when I read an article in the Daily Star about how it is a “Leftist establishment”.

Another sunny, breezy, humid morning in Hamra, Beirut. I’m drinking coffee, listening to Ethan swear at his internet connection, and trying to get ahold of an organization for which I am hopefully going to do some volunteer work. A little later, we intend to go swimming for the first time since we have been here. Apparently, the beaches in Beirut are all totally polluted, but we are going to do it anyhow.

Yesterday I went and wandered around Bourj Hammoud, which is the Armenian neighborhood. I want to go back and look further, what I saw was just a shopping district with narrow streets and a lot of low-quality clothing stores. I didn’t get to see any churches or talk to anyone. I’m starting to get to know the city better and better, and yesterday had a couple of “aha!” moments when I figured out how a few different neighborhoods are connected. Afterward, I met Carrie, the journalist, for a drink during happy hour. Happy hour is not very popular with the Lebanese, but it seems to be the only way to have a nice cocktail for $5 or less. Carrie has a lot of interesting stories, as she just spent the past year in Abidjan, working for Voice of America.

Quite a few people have asked me about Hezbollah winning the elections in the South. It seemed to have been really big news in the west, and people seemed surprised. But Hezbollah has been a political party for years, and has had representatives in parliament since the early 90s. The election was not too surprising for people here, but it does demonstrate how divided this country is. Beirut overwhelmingly supported Hariri’s coalition, The South overwhelmingly supported Hezbollah’s coalition (not all of Hariri’s coalition is anti-Syria, not all of Hezbollah’s is pro-Syria, or even Hezbollah). While the US does claim that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, not everyone else does-most of Europe has refused to give this label to the political wing of Hezbollah. There is a fine line between resistance movements and terrorist groups, and unfortunately, the US government seems to base that definition entirely on which side the US government is on. Hezbollah has remained popular here, largely because they were able to drive Israel out of the South (Israel occupied South Lebanon until 2000), but also because of its humanitarian work- building schools, hospitals, etc.

Anyhow- the upcoming elections will be more interesting because the seats are more hotly contested.

A word about domestic help in this country. Many, many Lebanese have live-in domestic help, even people who are not particularly wealthy. Very, very few Lebanese are interested in having such jobs, so the vast majority of domestic help are brought in from abroad. From what I have read, the help is brought almost exclusively from 3 places- the Phillipines, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia. You typically go through an agency to find these women and you pay a fee of $1500 or so, which includes their airfare, work permit, etc. Wages are usually set, are very low and vary by some sort of bizarre and presumably racist class system – Phillipinas are paid $200 a month, Sri Lankans are paid only $100. For the first 3 months or so, you are not even required to pay them anything, as they are expected to work off part of the fee that you paid to acquire their services.

So far, I have already heard a lot of tales about these servants working long hours, with no days off, and some of them are not permitted to leave the home unattended. I’ve also heard stories about Asian residents (maybe tourists, too) being met with many racist attitudes, as the locals assume they are maids and therefore below them.

It goes without saying that the many Palestinian refugees who live here are discriminated against. They have few rights and are not legally allowed to work– many have been here since 1948, or have lived here their whole lives.

But about the maids, the Sidanis told me that we could use theirs whenever we want, we just need to pay them a $5 tip. $5 to clean the whole apartment. It’s actually kind of fun to clean here, in a way. Most places here use the (in my opinion) genius innovation of having drains in the floors. So you can dump a bucket of hot soapy water on the floor and use a squeegie type mop to push all the water down the drain.

I’m sure it will get old pretty soon, cleaning is cleaning, in the end.

A bunch of friends have asked how close we live to the place where the journalist Samir Kassir was killed yesterday morning. We don’t live very close at all .. Ashrafiyeh is about a 30 minute walk from where we live in Hamra. Our new friends Matthew and Mary Ann live very near, though. I’ve only talked to a few people here about it, and they seem unsurprised .. the Syrians again. Our landlord’s son (who is, by the way, possibly disturbed) told me, “Well, things like that happen here.”

Yesterday, the son in question came upstairs to our apartment, bringing me a big packet of Indian spices. He seems to think that I love Indian food, because he was here one day when I was making chili. He also thinks that people are following him and plotting against him and seems genuinely agitated whenever he talks about it, which is every time I see him. He showed me pictures of some of these guys which he took with his cell phone. Somehow this all started when he began hanging out with a guy he met at Starbucks who later turned out to be a Saudi prince. He complained that no one believes him, not even his parents.

Me: Why do you have pictures of all of them?

Him: So I can document this. I also have locks of their hair.

Me: What? Where did you get it?

Him: From the barber.

We finally got a table for our terrace, so we can start eating all of our meals out there. This is very exciting to me. It is one of the things I pictured when I imagined living here.

I went to the post office today. It costs $1 to send a postcard to the US, so I guess we won’t be sending much mail. Also, I’m not sure that we will get a PO box, which is what we would need to receive mail.

I also met Ibrahim, who runs the extremely small music store across the street. He mostly sells (assuming he ever has any customers) very old cassette tapes. He practically dragged me into his shop and then ran to the corner store and bought me a beer, then told me his life story. He seems a bit sad and bitter and longs for the days before the war when Hamra was bustling.

Right now, Ethan is at our the office of our IP provider trying to sort some issues out. I was there briefly. The office is a tiny, hot, windowless room above a tiny, smoky internet cafe, of the sort where there are only teenagers playing video games for hours on end. It’s Friday, so we might go have a beer in the neighborhood.

June is here. The weather is still pleasant- upper 70s, but the sun feels stronger here and it is a bit humid. At night it is usually cool and breezy. Whenever we are home we have all of the doors and windows open and it is quite comfortable- apparently this will not be the case in July and August.

So Beitedinne is actually closed on Monday (oops) so we had a rather pleasant drive into the mountains, but didn’t see the museum. The Chouf is quite close to Beirut, we drove there in about half an hour. There are a lot of ancient cedar trees there, though we didn’t drive that far. We passed through some Druze villages, which prompted the taxi driver to explain that the Druze worship female calves the way that “we” worship God. While this seems to some sort of wild rumor, there must be many wacky things being said about Druze beliefs, as they themselves are not allowed to know what their religion says. They are an off-shoot of Shiite Islam, but I think that many people today consider it to be something more cult-like. They believe in reincarnation and that there are a fixed number of souls, so you can’t become Druze.

I sort of wanted to stay in the mountains, as it was so sunny, cool, and breezy, but we headed back down to the coast and went south to Tyr. We visited some Roman/Byzantine ruins which are right on the blue Mediterranean-really stunning, the crumbling pillars against the sea. Later, we headed to Saida, where we bought some olive soap and wandered around in the souk. There is a lot of renovation going on of the old medina, and it was very pleasant. We went into the Khan there (a khan is a sort of old hotel for travelers where you could leave your animals in the courtyard or on the first floor, and people stayed upstairs). They seemed to have renovated it for shops to go in, and one place seemed to be a performance area, as there was a stage inside.

Back in Beirut, we went to an Armenian restaurant that was truly delicious. I definitely want to go back. There are a lot of Armenians here in Lebanon because many fled here during the genocide in Turkey.

Ethan remains frustrated with all of the internet issues (mainly with VPN, but also because of the slowness) which have been interfering with his work. We have internet service in our apartment now, at least. Today he plans to go to Starbucks and see how service is there.

I found a really excellent DVD rental place around the corner – they have all kinds of great stuff. The owner told me that he has the third season of “Six Feet Under’ on order, but that it will still be a few more weeks because “customs sucks here.” In order to get a membership, I had to tell him my first and last name and give him our cell phone number.

I’m not sure if I have mentioned how excellent the produce is here. Really delicious tomatoes are everywhere for about 30 cents per kilo, a big bunch of cilantro or parsley is less than 10 cents. Everything is fresh and delicious, and as long as you stay away from imports, you can feed yourself very well for very little. Alternatively, a pint of Haagen Dazs is something like 8 dollars. And I am going to have to learn how to make tortillas, because I haven’t seen them anywhere.