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