Monday: Beqaa Valley Pt. 1

This is a panorama taken from my balcony at the convent. On our first morning there, we discovered that in the convent compound, besides chickens, there were also doves. As my roommate and I walked around the grounds before breakfast, she commented, "Doves and olive trees! How Middle East can you get?!" Indeed, connecting our convent to this beautiful region in which entire civilizations have risen and fallen really helped me realize that I was not in Indiana, much less the United States. 

Photo Credit: Katie Ito

After walking the grounds, we ate breakfast with the rest of the group. Breakfast in Lebanon is a delicious affair. Always consisting of flat pita bread (most of the pita bread that I had in Lebanon was thin and floppy...more like a crepe than pita sold in the US), 3-4 types of soft cheeses (usually feta, goat cheese, etc), laban (basically Greek yogurt), fresh vegetables, and honeyed figs or dates. And don't forget the Lebanese coffee (which is fairly similar to any coffee one might find in the Middle East region): thick, strong, and as strong as espresso.

After breakfast, the group boarded a Heart for Lebanon van. Our two guides told us that we were going to go to the warehouse in the Beqaa region, which is a valley in Eastern Lebanon. So off we went through the breakneck traffic into the mountains towards a valley. I was sitting in the far back, so I only heard a few snatches of the conversation from our guides, but I got a lot of beautiful pictures (as beautiful as one can get from the back seat of a car.

 We got to the Warehouse and the leader there explained what Heart for Lebanon does in the Beqaa region. They distribute food to refugee families, have a school for 1-3 grade levels, and provide spiritual support for families who have lost everything.

The first thing we did was drive out to a school. In each class, there was about 15+ children (about 3 classes total). Each and every child was proud to show off their English skills: through singing and through asking questions. One of our team-members asked one class what they wanted to be when they grew up. One boy answered, "I want to be a police-man so that I can go back to Syria to arrest and punish the wrong-doers."

I later found out that most of these 45 students had either lost one of their parents or both to Daesh.

After the school visit, the group was driven to one of the many refugee camps in the Beqaa. Once there, we split into three smaller groups and visited one tent. The tent my group visited was on the edge of the camp, next to a goat pen. When we walked in, our guide immediately pointed to a baby lying in the middle of the floor. "Look at what the mosquitoes have done to this baby," he said, as we noticed the red swollen spots all over the infants arms and legs. The rest of the family sat down as we settled in. The mother brought us hot sweet tea. The father answered the guides questions and told us about life in the camps as well as where they came from (Homs, Syria). We also learned that one of his sons was epileptic and it was hard to pay for medication. A bit later, the grandmother also came into the tent. She had many complaints: the current living situation, work opportunities, etc. At one point, while the father was talking about how hopeless he was, she just buried her face in her hands.

The father just kept saying that there was no hope.