Beqaa Valley II

It’s harvest time in the Beqaa Valley, and the agricultural day laborers are mainly Bedouin women. They are a little like gypsies in the sense that they wear very colorful clothing, layer upon layer. They often have golden teeth, spot large straw heads against the sun and smoke like chimneys. I’m not quite sure where they come from. Some say they are Lebanese, other say they are stateless Arabs that sort of move with the seasons from place to place around this part of the Middle East. You see their ‘tents’ here in the Beqaa, but also in the desert in Syria and in Jordan. They speak Lebanese but with a different accent. They are moved from Bedouin encampment to the fields in these pick-up trucks. A bit like cattle, not very elegant, this mode of transportation.

Hana checking out the museum in Terbol. It’s a house made of mud bricks, the traditional way with mud and straw, and covered with the same mud-straw mix, and then painted white. The roof id also mud, on top of wooden beams. Nice warm in wither, cool n summer, but the drawback is that you sort of have to rebuilt half of it every spring as most of it has dissolved during the wet winter. On the other hand, it doesn’t cost you anything but labor.

Adrian spent most of that day on the phone. He has the habit of turning it off most of the time in order to save batteries. So when you need to reach him, his phone is off. I mailed him a note that the High School Principal sent to all staff regarding cell phones. What it boils down to is that he doesn’t want to see or hear phones in the school building. Still Adrian walks around with it. We could have just gotten him a phone without SIM card, or even a non-functioning phone, the only thing he is doing right now is playing with the ring tones, composing new ring tones (there’s a D.J. device on it), enter contacts, en turn it on and off all the time. Cute though, this adult-imitating behavior.