Christmas in Beirut!!

Well, there have been major operations underway throughout December to bring Christmas to the boys and girls at Deir el Salib, Deir el Qamar and of course up to Chabrouh where we participated in a winter camp organised by the Lebanese Youth Committee of the Order of Malta; I hope you’ll forgive the contingent communication failure and take some comfort from this ‘double bulletin’...

December started colourfully enough with St Barbara’s day in Deir el Salib which Sr Menal and her merry followers organised excellently: the boys were costumed absolutely brilliantly, with especially wonderful outfits donned by Johnny (who I think was supposed to be a ladybird), Aziz (who was definitively a clown, complete with broken radio and a quite irritating whistle), little Elias as a quite reduced superman and one glorious Tony, perfectly sporting the traditional indications of Mexican dress. Whoever did the costumes deserved a medal, though I think it was a collaborative effort. A massive ghetto blaster had been set up and extraordinary Arabic music exited at gross volume, leaving little alternative but to engage in a quite crowded dance in the large room at Saint Dominique. Even Sr Menal joined the show, encouraged by a happy array of boys and carers. We got involved, having bought a pretty hideous selection of masks ourselves (some of which definitely conformed to the genre ‘horror’, rather than to the spirit of a saint’s day); still, that was great fun, though Tony was a bit unhappy with the felt-tip beard someone had given him and demanded its erasure with wall-shattering shouts and screams. The party was so good that patients from the higher floors began descending for the fun. It was all rather strange, to be dancing and singing in garish colours and clothes in this normally quite dour, plain environment with 70 boys, 6 or 7 carers, and two nuns....

And then to Deir el Qamar where the girls put on an entirely marvellous nativity play which I just wished could have gone on for ever and ever. They were so good, memorised their lines almost perfectly, performed with little, at times no, help from the lovely Diane (the carer who looks after us (and the girls!) when we come on Mondays), and the audience were treated to a superb dance show at the end, which gradually turned into an invitation for us all to dance as well. But the Caravan had come prepared with a small token of reward: Father Christmas arrived bearing confectionary goods for which the girls queued and clamoured. Sr Laina, the nun who runs Deir el Qamar, was sweet and gave us a great lunch, a yummy Christmas cake, and some knitted father Christmases which the girls themselves had made. So kind. A really lovely day, except that the Audi then broke (and has continued ever since to periodically break) which required Ann Sophie and Antonius to undertake a vast pick-up and repair effort. Fairly disastrous.

University continued (we are currently ‘doing’ Christianity), but Fr Nagy has not been well and so in the week before Christmas it was slightly more periodic. On our last day at Deir el Salib before Christmas we made an even better attempt at providing a Fr Christmas: Sr Menal produced an astonishingly good costume which (for I know not what reason) was given to the tallest, lankiest, thinnest one of us (I don’t know why I always have to do these things). Again, we issued bundles of comestible, sugared delights and chocolates to the boys who were delighted. Rachid basically attached himself to Fr Christmas and wouldn’t let go, Ayman went straight up to Fr Christmas and ripped off the rather sinister mask which was awkward for a moment or two... but we got some good Christmas music going, some predictably bad dancing and overall that was a great success, though of course I imagine more of the girls at Deir el Qamar actually understood what was going on.

Carl then took us to a charity dance competition at Jamhour which was extremely entertaining and much enjoyed. The next day, the Thursday before Christmas Eve, four lucky Caravanistas went up skiing with Yann and came back blushed with the joys of Faraya. And then came Christmas Eve...

Kelly once again extended her apparently unreserved pools of generosity and invited us to her house for Christmas Eve supper with her family. It was utterly superb and we can’t possibly pay sufficient thanks in this depressingly 21^st century medium, but it really was a lovely way to celebrate Christmas when we were all so far from home on such an important day in our year and culture. The food was first class and the atmosphere just perfect, so nice to meet so many of the family as well. We began the day with a Caravan breakfast which required all hands to the pump and which was a joy. There followed a slightly stressful shopping sessions in the afternoon to procure the ingredients for an enormous cauldron of Glühwein which was to be brewed up in the Winter Camp.

And then to Chabrouh: a seriously rewarding and awfully worthwhile four days. The excellent trinity of Carl (organiser-in-chief), Tatiana (the animateur de fun) and Serge (logistics) presided over a FANTASTIC show which undoubtedly gave the girls a really great time. By the time four days of theatre plays, fashion shows, dance competitions, Olympic games, top notch suppers and lunches and festival standard singing sessions were over, we sent back a bus-full of contented and happy girls back to Deir el Qamar – happy apart from those who were crying at the prospect of leaving. We hosted 23 girls in all, something of a record for the winter camps, and thanks really should be laid at Carl’s door for being responsible for the whole exercise. It was terribly good fun, there were some notable catch-phrases (“habibi Tatiaaaaaaana” prevalent amongst them) and, yes, there may have also been a quite invasive bug doing the rounds which sent quite a few volunteers to bed – but that’s a light complaint when weighed against the great joy which resulted from this camp. What a refreshing way to spend Christmas.

And I think that’s it for the December bulletin – we’re off to Syria next week and then we’ll file something about the first half of January before what will probably be our last blog at the beginning of February. Golly, that’s hard to believe. Apologies for the delay in posting some of this material and I hope you will be reassured that during our absence in cyber space, we have in fact had a great time here in Beirut with our lovely Lebanese friends and, of course, with the boys and girls with whom we were so happy to spend Christmas tide. We hope that wherever you were, your Christmas was also excellent, and we wish you a Happy New Year from the Levantine Coast.

New Years at Carl's

SilverParty

Reunited

The circle is squared, the fellowship united, Beirut rejoices and the Caravan flag flies at full mast: Simon has at last returned to Lebanon and was greeted at the interminably dull Rafik Hariri airport by an enthusiastic band of fans who just about managed to resist a rendition of ‘ah rum sam sam’ (spell it how you will...) and therefore avoid huge embarrassment in front of that evening’s passengers as the weary traveller arrived, bearing sartorial indications of Germany’s glacial temperatures. He came clasping our donkey cum mascot who has been under Simon’s care for the past two months. Both donkey and master are doing well, recovered from their exigencies and having enjoyed a very brief spell of heat are now coping with the sudden reversal of climate on the Levantine Coast. It is truly brilliant that our group of eight, forged in the Magnis-billowed fires of Bad Wimpfen and tested on the slopes of Faraya can now go fully armed into these final two months of the project in Beirut.

Talking of Faraya: we have just returned from a weekend in Chabrouh working with the Youth of the Lebanese Order of Malta to give a group of twenty children from broken families and/or poor backgrounds two days of pure, unadulterated fun. They were utterly spoiled with chocolate cakes, exceedingly good food (even the gourmands among the Lebanese Youth rose their eyebrows at the quality), a range of extremely well organised activities coordinated magnificently by the indomitable Fourad, and one glorious pillow fight in which even the most stuffy and ‘mature’ of the volunteers could not resist taking part. This all culminated in a present-giving session on Sunday afternoon which apportioned a spread of different gifts to the children to take back home, perhaps as a reminder of a fun weekend or maybe as just another thing to play with. Either way, twenty self-evidently happy girls and boys were bundled into their snow-beleaguered bus and sent back to Beirut with smiles and screams of joy, and lots of thumbs up. So I think that was a huge success and final expressions of gratitude should definitely be paid to Daniel Hochar who managed absolutely everything, put so much effort into the weekend’s smooth organisation and from the excellent food through to the summoning of a much-needed snow plough, he laid the groundwork for success and steered us around a number of salient crises.

Ah yes, the snow. Now there’s a minor catastrophe. We all knew the weather on Friday evening was pretty horrific, and there was little surprise that some snow started appearing on Saturday – after all we were practically in a ski resort; but when we woke up on Sunday morning to discover hefty amounts of white powder literally blocking the doors and windows, some who had doubted the tendencies of Farayan temperatures were more than a little taken aback. As mentioned, fortunately a snow plough was contracted to clear the roads and we all drove behind in convoy back to Beirut; but the poor Audi refused to obey its masters and remains (engine completely conked out by the look/sound of it) wedged into the side of a road outside the centre, awaiting recollection on Wednesday if the storm desists by then. The weather has been – by any conceivable standard – quite horrific over the past four days. Sheets of rain, blizzards of snow, winds which have ripped Beirut’s advertising placards to pieces, and, of course, heavy amounts of waylaid traffic have made have made a startling contrast to the odd December heat which has been causing a drought in Lebanon and the wider Middle East. We are now sitting in the flat wrapped in coats and scarves, trying to work out how to put the heating on (which we thought we would never ever need) and contemplating the expense of living without Mr Audi.

Our days of service remain great fun for all involved. At Deir el Qamar, we continue to have singing sessions (one or two of the girls even halted the session in order to perform their own solos, which were indulged with much curiosity by their audience), pictures are painted, balls are thrown and it is a rather satisfying feeling to know that the girls look forward with such anticipation to Monday afternoons. The crib has been set up at Deir el Salib which has inspired amazement from the boys, impressed by even the smallest changes to Saint Dominique’s quite dour and lifeless single corridor, let alone a full-on crib display complete with Christmas tree and lights. Along with Michel, Sr Menal and some of the caretakers we really have done well and the boys just can’t get used to how great it looks: Tony in particular, takes long breaks from his incessant laundry addiction to just stare at the crib. So happy faces there too.

Christmasdecoration in DeirelSalib

There have also been two parental visits: Cecily’s mother and father visited, shortly followed by Ann Sophie’s parents. They were very good and braved it through trips to Deir el Qamar and Deir el Salib, along with more leisurely rides to the Beccar Valley, Chabrouh and Beirut. We hope they enjoyed their respective stays and are moreover glad that they found the Caravan’s work and spirit so impressive: more witnesses to the worth of our project out here.

Repeated thanks to our Lebanese friends who continue to support us so generously: we hope that those of them who could make it enjoyed the ‘bad taste’ party last week which, although responsible for some downright bad outfits, was a fun evening for us all – we hope you enjoyed it as much as we all did and it was refreshing to have some slender opportunity to thank you for all you do for us.

The ‘Caravan Night’ has developed into a constitutional part of our week and ensures that we are all together for one evening. Last week we went down to a rather odd place called ‘Kaif’ which has a strange clientele but a good line in shisha, of which some of our members are fans. Simon, in a rather unpropitious second-week-in-Lebanon scene of mal-coordination, walked straight into a window which he mistook for a door, to the amusement of almost a hundred witnesses who looked as though they were going to spend the rest of the evening laughing about it. We quickly fled the scene (admittedly in fits of quasi-Schadenfreude giggles), seeking comfort in the arms of an Irish pub down the road. There were, in fact, few indications of Irish-ness, except perhaps for the pub’s name (‘The Dubliner’) and some token four-leafed clovers here and there. No Guinness – which presumably Eoin was happy about, given that he had prospectively offered to fund a round of Guinness.

So no complaints from Beirut – except I do wish the heating would turn on sooner rather than later and perhaps the car would be a useful asset to reclaim; otherwise we are bracing ourselves for the Lebanese Christmas season which is being executed in no half-hearted manner – the absence of real Norwegian Spruces is a bit of a black mark, but the weather is a comforting reminder of European Christmas standards. Aabla has even taught us a word or two to survive the season. Happy tidings from Beirut....

Bad Taste Party

New delights for the boys and girls

[Habitual apologies for another poor show on updating the blog, and thanks to the commentator below who has, rightly of course, accused the blog of ‘dormant’ behaviour. Dormant blog means hectic programme, so we hope we may prevail once again upon the reader’s forgivingness]

Tonnes to tell from Beyrouth: first and foremost, we record, mirabile dictu, the welcome news that Simon (Reiners, who took prime position in blog 1) has booked his flights and is rejoining us at the end of November, following the medical all-clear. The Levantine Coast has received these tidings with delight, rejoices wildly and waits with baited breath for the Caravan fellowship to be reunited.

All driving lessons are now completed and certified by Chamoun, who took tireless pleasure in the teaching (even if his students (Mareike, Ann-Sophie and Antonius) were more lukewarm at 8 in the morning); there’s barely a centre-metre of Beirut (and its vicinity) which they have not covered with the Chamoun School of Driving. Put positively, the car is a vintage (at a pinch “antique”), dove grey specimen of Audi which works. Conversely, bits of it are falling off/disintegrating, passengers are accommodated unglamorously on seats which feel as though you are about to fall through them... and the car now smells of soy sauce due to an unforeseeable domestic accident (thanks due to Ann-Sophie). The car has opened up a wide range of personal liberties, e.g. shopping and collecting rancid paper packages from McDonalds. Marwan, Finger-Charbel and Rashed (some of our boys from Saint Dominique) even had the distinct pleasure of hopping aboard the Audi for a “road-trip” around Deir el Salib, with Mareike/Ann-Sophie at the wheel. I need hardly describe the elation which resulted from this almighty adventure.

In fact, innovations of various kinds have been taking place in the homes where we work. At Deir el Qamar we have honed our programme to take account of the large number of girls with whom we were working: now we take two groups (around 10 each), playing games (not just volleyball, but versions of cricket/baseball, ‘blind man’s bluff’ (can’t imagine what the translation for that is, German-speakers) and other activities which make more demands on their cognitive abilities), singing songs (familiar to all who attended Chabrough) and every week there is a birthday party to devote undivided attention to one girl in particular – this week’s renditions of ‘happy birthday’ were downright bad, but we’re working on it, and Antonius the wandering minstrel even supplies some musical backing on the guitar. The main advantage of this arrangement is of course that we can provide closer, one-on-one attention to the girls.

The birthday party idea has also made it to Deir el Salib where now once a week we take a group of boys out into the garden and celebrate a birthday (regardless of whether or not it is actually their birthday; the scenario more often than not is that the birth date of the boy is inconnu). Raed was the lucky chap this week (who is almost permanently bed-bound) and the provision of birthday cake and songs in the garden made him, needless to say, extremely happy.

On the other side of life: we went camping up in the mountains, almost contracted hypothermia from a near enough glacial river, ate Stockbrot and had an interesting chat with a man and his mule who were passing through. The setting was very beautiful and thanks as always go to Michel who organised it all so well and chose such a marvellous place; nine people, two small tents was, however, a squeezed ratio, particularly given the odd sleep-talking and some quite possessive sleeping habits.

Michel (along with Dr Issa) also organised our latest adventure to the Valley of the Saints (Qadisha) which really was a treat: an enormous valley with on average one monastery every hundred metres; the place is dominated by a kind of holiness which is difficult to describe hors du contexte. We were fortunate enough to walk most of its length and stay in a monastery for Saturday night and even sup with a shepherd whose family (dressed rather incongruously in addidas sports gear and label clothing) prepared and served the most fantastic supper. The drive out of the valley was extraordinary, giving us the chance to look back over what we had walked and to observe this secluded, quiet part of Lebanon which was in olden days a place of refuge for Christians in trouble, the evidence of which still exists so powerfully in the form of caved monasteries and hermitages (one hermit in particular, a Colombian (don’t ask), was not/is never in a socio-interactive mood and seemed more than a little dismayed to see 10 hikers traipsing through his little piece of land; his “yes, welcome” sounded tired and ironic).

The weekend before, most of us went, as a result of Dr Issa’s continual generosity, to Sourat where the doctor has a ‘country residence’. He hosted us magnificently and the visit also gave rise to a lemonade tasting which was apparently top class. A bit of monastery-visiting the next day, mass in the evening at St Joseph’s Church and then Halloween was acknowledged in Gemese with a few tipples and some disgusting (if appropriate) face graffiti (which didn’t quite make it off everyone’s face by Aabla-time the next morning).

Hala Ghoryab very sweetly invited us round for a beachside party at her pad near Damour, just south of Beirut. Perfect sunset, wonderful setting amidst the banana trees, food excellent and, for some, the sea was forgiving enough to allow swimming. So kind, many thanks.

Another point of (dubious) local interest was my birthday last week (if you’ll forgive me for breaking my very ill kept authorial anonymity) which resulted - *completely* without my knowledge – in a surprise party. I am very grateful to be able to use this blog as an opportunity to thank all those who came (and especially of course my Caravanista comrades who organised it). I think I almost suffered a heart-attack when greeted by all those familiar Lebanese/German/Irish faces last Friday and it was a perfect, if unexpected, way to smooth the aging process as I begrudgingly slip into life as a 23 year old. Thank you very much.

That’s about it for this time, except to mention that we have now started at the Université St Joseph and have already had a series of lectures on Lebanese history, now comes the ‘religious bit’ starting with an already entertaining series with Ralph Sleiman (I particularly enjoy his use of ‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’ when answering questions). Nour (our history lecturer) took us on a historical tour of the ‘downtown’ area of Beirut which culminated in a fantastic ice cream session at Chocolat Milano and she also showed us the National Museum which was a joy.

Keep tuning in for more updates – I really must apologise once again for our dismal communications skills, but, in summary, all is going well, we are attempting different, more interesting activities with the boys and girls, our Lebanese friends remain exceedingly generous (this blog, due to constraints, does not even approach a full report of our evening-to-evening activities with our friends out here, on whom we are so dependant) and the weather is lovely. Over and out, for the time being.

Here we are - Better late than never

The Caravan approaches the end of its first month in Beirut: the days have grown shorter, the sea remains tepid, the air warm and close, and the locals even begin to speak of a ‘second summer’. It seems appallingly mismanaged that we have issued only three missives on this blog in that time and that we have to reiterate the apologies which introduced last week’s update. Anyway, apologies aren’t very interesting so let’s get on with what we’ve been up to since our last communication...

Our programme of service at Deir el Qamar and Deir el Salib becomes increasingly second nature. In the case of the girls especially we are now a regular, recognised (and positively received) part of their Monday afternoon. It is, admittedly, exhausting work as we commit ourselves to an (over)active programme of ceaseless volleyball, colouring pictures and, making its debut appearance this week, nail polishing. The girls who sustained this treatment paraded their newly decorated fingers (a seductive brand of Parisian pink), whilst others jealously looked on; their turn will come! The ratio is quite intense: 40 girls to 7 caravanistas, and this accounts mostly for the exhaustion. I keep on making the usual GCSE errors in French as I insist (don’t know why) on addressing each girl as ‘madame’, to which one girl gave (or rather, screamed) the pretty sensible response: ‘Ahh! Je suis mademoiselle! il n’y a pas de madames ici!’ [repeated 10x, as baffled nuns look on].

The main change in dynamic this week was that Nick’s mother and sister were staying in Beirut. They are now hugely impressed witnesses to the work and worth of the Caravan Project. They have visited both the homes at which we work; I took them up to see Sonia (my girl at the camp in Chabrouh) who, for the most part, remains in her bed for the whole day along with many others in their cots. Lydia (sister) found it especially meaningful that they recognise us, shout our names and gain such pleasure from even the most basic interaction. From overwhelming expressions of gratitude and wide-armed hugs through to the last simple, quiet ‘merci’, these are merely an acknowledgement of how valuable our presence is in these homes. Some, of course, cannot even muster a ‘merci’, but then it becomes even more necessary to understand what they are saying inside and perhaps what they wish they could shout out loud. So we send two impressed and admiring visitors back to England. Belinda (mother) simply said: “I am just amazed by all of you and what you do here”.

Our intensive Arabic lessons have now finished and we shift to one lesson a week to keep the language ticking over. Aabla has been a super teacher, delivering three lessons a week up to this point. We have now been introduced to (though few of us have mastered) most of the Arabic letters, have got as far as the past tense of select verbs and I think we know most of the vocabulary for food stuffs (Aabla is very keen to ensure that we can survive the restaurant scenario). Next week university begins and a carefully constructed timetable which covers Middle Eastern socio-politics/religions will begin to unravel.

Kelly Sehnaoui has been especially kind in the past weeks in hosting our ‘film night’ with her fantastic projector: Gosford Park (wonderful piece of English drama with the waspish Maggie Smith at the helm of a superb cast) was much enjoyed, as were the excellent chicken sandwiches and even an interesting pre-film viewing of a Lebanese wedding (Kelly’s elder brother). Very many thanks.

Michel Yanni unleashed the most active part of our programme to date last Saturday with a day of climbing, abseiling and caving up in the mountains, with a nice supper thrown in at the end. Utterly terrifying at times, though the alpha males were happy bunnies, some of the girls less so.

We were all extremely delighted, and moreover lucky, to be able to attend the closing night of Skybar, Beirut’s (indeed the Middle East’s) most popular nightclub. We are greatly indebted to Sheikh Whalid for his characteristic generosity; I don’t think any of us had seen anything quite like it before and the fireworks were astounding.

We have all just this minute returned from a trip with Chamoun (our tireless driver) around the Bekaar Valley, (re)visiting Baalbek, home to the tallest Roman columns, and the best preserved Roman archaeology, in the world and set in an entirely vast, beautiful flood plain (although Baalbek the town is a dump, complete with second-hand ice creams and bad smells), and exploring one of the chief joys of the Bekaar: wine tasting (at Ksara). Stunning views over the valley and Syria in the far distance. A jolly old day, even if the traffic was predictably dire at points.

So back to Deir el Salib tomorrow where we have are currently making such a difference in the ‘small boys room’ (where some of the most severely handicapped, young and near permanently bed-bound cases reside) by playing the guitar and singing: the atmosphere changes completely and one is greeted by those really wonderful, though rare, smiles. Life out here continues to be a really positive balance between uncovering more about Beirut and Lebanon, and working with the boys and girls, from whom we gain so much – and perhaps it is not too much to hope that they gain something from us.