Christian here again.
It has officially passed the one-week mark since I "officially" left Beirut.
I can't believe it.
It feels like just yesterday that I would leave my house in the early evening, take a walk down the winding, narrow streets of Gemmayze/Achrafieh/Mar Mikhael (no one's been able to tell me exactly where I was staying), enjoying the tiny fruit and vegetable stalls, the clusters of old men leaning over tavli boards, the mopeds zipping down side streets, walk under Jisr Al-Hadid and into Mangia Pizza to order a slice of pizza in broken Arabic.
It feels like just yesterday that George came to my house in the morning with a steaming pot of delicious mamounieh for us to enjoy before our day got started.
It feels like just yesterday that I was in the old VW bus with Datev, driving stick shift through the very cramped, narrow, crazy streets of Bourj Hammoud, dodging mopeds and humans and killer cars trying to hit us.
It feels like just yesterday I was stumbling, half-awake, into the morning leader devotionals at Kchag, ready to devour a Choco-Prince.
These are memories I'll never be able to forget, ones that have been seared into my brain forever. Of course, they aren't the only ones. There are a million memories, most good, a few bad, all swirling around in my head like a tornado. These were just the few that I pulled from the storm.
Since I've been back for a week and have now once again settled back into my routine at home, I've had lots of time to sit back and reflect on my trip (the train to work is my favorite place to reflect).
The first (and most obvious) thing I noticed when I got back were the differences between Los Angeles and Beirut. After coming back, the differences were much more pronounced.
For example, after I landed and got home, I drove to the grocery store to buy a few essentials to eat. As I was driving, I looked around at the wide 3-lane streets with barely any cars on them, with beautiful bright stop lights telling people when to stop and go and lanes indicating a clear direction of travel.
I just smiled and shook my head.
For the last 3 weeks, I had grown accustomed to blaring horns at every intersection, cars weaving in and out of lanes that absolutely no one stays in, terrible traffic on every street, narrow one-way streets suddenly turning into two-way streets, and packed freeways where chaos reigns.
This was a nice change of pace.
I loved having a REAL address again, you know, the type with numbers and a name that you can type into your phone and find on a map.
In Lebanon, although some places seem to have "rough" addresses, no one uses them. They just direct you based on landmarks.
A sample exchange with our pizza delivery guy on Friday night went something like this:
Pizza Hut: Ok, where are you guys located?
Levon: We are at CMC, the old hospital.
Pizza Hut: I'm sorry, you mean Clemenceau?
*George whispering to Levon that he is an idiot (in the background)
Levon: No....uhm, never mind. Actually, we are fifty meters down the road from Geitaoui Hospital, if you are driving down the street it will be on your right side.
Pizza Hut: What is Geitaoui Hospital?
Levon: It's the big hospital near us. Just go down fifty meters, our building has a white gate. I'll be standing outside with a yellow shirt. If you get lost, just call me.
Pizza Hut: Ummmm.....okay, thanks.
Needless to say, I'm happy to be back to a place where it takes 30 seconds to give an address to someone rather than 30 minutes.
On a more serious note, Beirut taught me to seriously appreciate the littlest things in life.
I came home, and I realize how blessed I am that I can switch on any light or appliance in the house at ANY time of the day or night and it WILL come on. There will be electricity, and everything that I want to work WILL actually work.
In Beirut, the electricity cuts off every day for around 3 hours, a different chunk of time each day. That means that for 3 hours every day, your A/C (priceless in Beirut's hellishly bad summer weather) cuts out, your cell phone cannot be charged, your wifi stops working, lights don't turn on, refrigerator stops working, clothes washer stops working, and so on.
I would wake up many mornings soaked in sweat because the A/C had been on and off all night and wasn't strong enough to reach my bedroom from the living room. The rest of my building did not have A/C and the only wifi signal I could get was 2 floors down, so I would go sit in the lobby to use my phone and within 5 minutes the sauna-like conditions would have me dripping in sweat.
I would be showering and suddenly the bathroom would be pitch-black because the electricity shut off.
I stumbled around blindly for my towel, banged my head on the shower rod, stubbed my toe on the bottom shower step, and on top of it all, I cut myself shaving because I was using my iPhone flashlight instead.
A great article to read regarding the electrical problems Lebanon is facing can be found here. The article is almost a year old but it seems that many of the same problems remain.
In addition to now being grateful for electricity (something most in the US don't even think about), I also realized how grateful I was for water again.
In Lebanon, I was strongly warned from drinking tap water and told to stay away from it at all times. Because of Lebanon's previous trash crisis, pollutants had to some extent penetrated the groundwater supply and caused unsafe drinking conditions.
Even to brush my teeth, I began using my bottled water to clean. My showers had to be kept to a few minutes, not because of the tap water issue, but because the water pressure in my shower was literally nothing: it would be a little trickle at some points and I would get excited.
In Beirut, as soon as I stepped out of the shower, I would be hit with the heat from inside my house and would already start sweating again. It just turned into a vicious cycle.
It was a great feeling stepping into my Dubai hotel room shower and feeling jets of warm water on my body. It felt like my first REAL shower, like I was washing all the dirt, grime, and sweat of my 3 weeks down the drain then.
I'm grateful now for the US rating system for restaurants. In Lebanon, you never know if you the meal you are going to eat is your last because you could die of food poisoning.
I'm just kidding, that's definitely an exaggeration, but lets just say the sanitation standards aren't up to par.
I like to know what type of restaurant I'm walking into beforehand. You can walk into the dumpiest-looking restaurant in Lebanon and they can end up serving you the most incredible tabbouleh and hummus you've ever eaten.
Or you can walk into that same restaurant and see a rusty knife on the meat cutting board, which for all I know could've been used to kill someone earlier, now cutting through the kebab I ordered.
It makes every meal an adventure, shall we say? ;)
But in reality though, jokes aside, this is a big issue in Lebanon and many other places around the world.
I remember being in the car with one of my friends Lori a few days before I left and asking her if she enjoyed living in Lebanon.
She said no, and then there was a pause. I figured she would go on to talk about how there was too much traffic, or it was dirty, or something like that, but her answer was really surprising.
She told me she doesn't like living in Lebanon and doesn't know if she wants to stay, because this country can't provide even the most basic human rights to its citizens.
She spoke of the same electricity outages I had experienced, but also talked of full-water cuts (no water at all), not to mention citizens lack of protection from attacks (terrorist or other) is not at all guaranteed. I was constantly told in Lebanon that "you just never know; anything can happen at anytime and could end up sparking real violence."
In addition, women and women's rights seem to be actively discriminated against, although Lebanon seems to be making more rapid advancements in this field than the rest of the Middle East.
This combination of crucial issues going untouched and unsolved has caused much frustration and stress for not only Lori but also for most people within Lebanon.
The answer I received most often when I asked why no one seemed more disturbed the by the condition of country, was a simple dismissive "Eh, we're still living. We're living without too many problems, we 're used to it, we've adapted."
Being dropped in first-hand to experience these same problems alongside everyone else really makes you examine your own life and see how relatively spoiled you are compared to the rest of the world.
It certainly did for me, at least.
I am happy with so much less now, especially after seeing how joyful and glad the Lebanese people always were, even with the problems plaguing their city and their country.
They are a testament to enjoying the simplest things in life: family, friends, church, and fellowship.
Their constant joy, happiness, smiles and good humor were a huge encouragement to me in times when I was struggling there.
I love and miss them all (you're probably reading this now), and I don't just miss them because they were nice people.
I miss their resilience, determination, their fight and their desire to see change. I miss their desire to stand up for their values and not back down from what is right. I miss their passion in defending the morals and values that matter most to them. I miss their genuine passion for life.
That is definitely something we need A LOT MORE OF here in the US.
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