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