Panic in the house; Maid Shortage

The war is over, but only now the shit seems to be hitting the fan. How do I know? I’ve had 7 Lebanese people calling me in the past week for help. And it is urgent, they say, really urgent! What’s the problem?

Well, the Israelis may have bombed thousands of houses, damaged the Lebanese infrastructure beyond belief, created an oil spill from here all the way to Tripoli, and caused thousands and thousands of Lebanese and foreigners to run away, but nothing, and I repeat, nothing, was as disastrous, as what they did to the maids! The maids? Yes! The maids!

This society is kept floating by the massive amounts of nannies, housekeepers and maids that come from abroad. Most of them are from Asia, with the majority being from Sri Lanka (80,000) and The Philippines (30,000), but quite a few come from Africa as well.
They clean the houses, do the dishes and the laundry, mop the floors, hang out the carpets, baby-sit the children, prepare and cook the food, carry the groceries, wash the windows and in some cases even walk the dog. They do everything! In my house, the housekeeper is king. Without her, the house comes to a grinding halt. No housekeeper = massive nervous breakdown.

And during the war, when the bombardments were at its heaviest, the embassies of these nationals were getting kind of worried. The stories of maids being stranded in conflict areas and left alone by employers who had fled but who had ‘forgotten’ the housekeeper, were abounding. So they decided to get their people out.
A lot of them heeded that call. Most probably left because things were really getting scary, and they – unlike most Lebanese – were not used to war situations. Some may have decided that this was the moment to leave a job they were not to happy with anyway. Whatever the reasons, there was a massive exodus of maids.
To make matters worse, the embassies of both the Philippines and Sri Lanka, decided to put Lebanon on the black list; no Phillipinoes and Sri Lankees are allowed to go the Lebanon.
Result: Maid shortages!

The first weeks went okay. But now that it is clear that this situation is going to last for a while, panic is in the house. No maid!
Clothes do not get ironed anymore, floors not mopped, bed linen stays on the bed for weeks on end, windows – forget about windows, who cares now? – and take-away restaurants are doing good businesses.
I just had a conversation with a couple of women, and they were comparing their nails: ladies with helpers versus ladies without helpers (ratio 3:4). And indeed, helper-less ladies’ nails were a mess. “I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown!” said one, “I don’t know what to do!”

And so they come to me. I’ve had requests of seven (7!) friends for a maid this last week alone!
Why?
Because I have two maids. Not because I am so rich; quite the opposite. It happened that one was supposed to leave, way back in July, to the States, and the replacement came in June to take over her job. However, things did not go according to plan, war and such, and now I have two. They decided to stay during the war (yes, they had their salaries paid, and yes, they had their passports in their pockets, and no, I did not lock ‘em up). They saw other family members staying, and not much happened in this part of town (West-Beirut) anyway.
It seems that the thing that scared them the most was when one early morning, they were walking in the neighborhood, and an Israeli leaflet bomb exploded right above their heads, covering them in thousands and thousands of white flyers. One will leave eventually, as soon as she’s got her paperwork for the States sorted out.

And so right now I am a popular woman. They want one of my maids. Part-time, full-time, an hour a day or a day a week, it doesn’t matter, anything. But they need a maid!

It severely hampers this society’s road to normalcy. So we can put the maid-shortage on the list together with cluster bombs.

On Rain and Lost Wallets

So I lost my wallet at the Hezbollah rally on Friday. In the women’s section.

Some of my friends thought that was exactly what I deserved. “Serves you well for attending things like THAT”, I was almost spat at.
Other said “Don’t worry. Hezbollahs don’t steal. You’ll get your wallet back. If they see the wallet belongs to a foreigner, they’ll even bring it to your house.”
That’s what you get when you have acquaintances on both side of the Lebanese political spectrum. I kind of like these opposites.
2 

Today was the first day of rain. I love the first rains.
Dust of many summer months gets washed down the streets.
The sky clears up. Fall is on its way.
We’ll have many more warm days,
but the summer is now officially over.span>

I have to hand it to the Lebanese. In the 16 years that I live here, nothing ever got stolen from me. I leave my car open all the time, but still have my cars stereo. In Holland, you lock your car, and you still end up without a car stereo. I’ve lost wallets and golden bracelets, I’ve left entire shopping bags in shops, and once I even forgot a child; but everything was returned to me. My hubbie’s Harley Davidson got stolen though, but that one ended up in Syria, so you can’t really consider that a local theft.

Now let’s see if I get my wallet back. I don’t mind about the money, but if you have an idea of how bureaucracy functions over, you can imagine how long it will take me (including the aggravation) to get all these papers replaced.

I’ve called the Hezbollah office like 9 times now, but they are very good at refusing to respond. That surprises me a little. I thought they’d be a little more helpful in this matter, it was after all at their rally that I lost my wallet. You're not going to tell me that these little ladies in chador actually pickpocket, are you?

So if anyone who is connected to Hezbollah, and reading this post, please be magnanimous, and look into the matter, will ya? They can keep the money. What am I saying? I will even throw in a $100, as long as I get my wallet back. It’s black. It has a permission paper from the Ministry of Information in it, that shows I can work as a journalist in this country, can't miss it.

The balance

Article can only be accessed if you pay. (pages 6 & 7, September 25, 2006) Sorry guys.

Different Rally, Same Stuff

Friday I did the Hezbollah rally in the south of Beirut, so today I went for some balance, and attended a rally on the other side of town and the other side of the political spectrum as well. I went to a Lebanese Forces gathering North of Beirut, up in Harissa, a cathedral build on a mountain top. No victory rally but a christian martyrs commemoration.

And was I standing out on Friday because I wasn’t wearing a veil, today I stood out because a big fat cross was missing around my neck. And they do not separate their crowd. Other than that, both rallies were identical. You could almost say that in the center of Lebanese society, there is this huge mirror, and one extreme basically reflects the other extreme.

Both rallies consisted of lots of flags, T-shirts with their idol, and people shouting slogans that involve God protecting the particular leader. Both leaders reminded the crowd how they had trashed a rather oppressive neighboring country. One leader told them how they had beaten the Israelis, the other reminded them how they had gotten rid of the Syrians. And that was it. Another non-event, you might say.

The LF crowd-control boys

What I do find significant is the underlying threat of their crowd-control boys. Hezbollah has them, and so does the LF. Young boys, 17, 18 years old, not much to do in life, and loaded with testosterone. These guys feel all-important, strutting around like roosters, chests up, trying to get the Clint Eastwood look right.
Other than the fact the Hezbollah crowd-control guys are wearing beards, and the Lebanese Forces crowd-control guys are sporting Ray bans, they are pretty identical; The black baseball caps, tan Timberland shoes, the kaki or camouflage trousers blousing over the edge of their shoes, military style.

And they love it. These are your future front-line militias. They have no notion of what happened in the past in this country, and they are eager enough to make the same mistake again. Rather unsettling.

Hassan & Andy

Nasrallah; Warhol style

I saw this 'Warhol'-isc picture with an article in the Dallas Morning News. This man is really becoming some sort of an icon over here. A bit of a Bashir Gemayel, shia style. Bashir Gemayel was Christian warlord that had quite a following with the Lebanese christians, but was blown up in 1982, a fate that quite a number of Lebanese politician share.

Hassan the Super Hero

The much-anticipated Hezbollah ‘Divine Victory’ rally took place today. My newspaper asked me to check it out. It was busy, but not that busy. They definitely did not reach their March 8th numbers (2005). With all Hezbollah events, there is always a male and a female section, as proper Islamic behavior stipulates that the genders be separated. And it is always a lot of fun in the women’s section.

For a female journalist, the female department is a bit of a relief. No hassle from ogling men, nobody touching you, no “are you Russia” remarks, and no “I am so important behavior’ either. It is also much easier talking to women in this part of the world, then men, and you get better information as well. The men in general tend to pull up a sheet, and tell you what they think is expected of them to say to a foreign journalist. So you usually get this aggressive shouting of how Israel this, America that and I don’t know what else. All kinds of stuff that may look good on the camera of CNN, but that is basically useless in a newspaper article.
The women are very curious, and find it perfectly normal that you are curious too.

Talking with the women is much more informative. They are in general much more sincere in their answers. And what I understood is that Hassan (Nasrallah) is pretty much a super hero for these ladies. According to one, ‘he lights up our lives’. They await him like groupies await Mick Jagger (Well, that may be my generation).

They were pretty convinced that the guy was going to appear in person. I was not so sure, he was last seen in public on uly12th, and since then the Israelis have pretty much bombed anything where he possibly might have been, but without much luck.
So when he finally did show his face on a large screen, the noise was overwhelming. I did not think he was actually there, but when I went down to the stage area in the evening (to look for a lost wallet, yup), I saw that he had actually been there. There was a nice glass cubicle. He could not be seen from the field, yet he could see the field from where he was standing.

And what did he say? Nothing really. He insulted some politicians, who, I am sure, all deserve it. But he is not calling for a revolution. A bit of a non-event really.

Hezbollah embracing Zen?

Curious thing was the zen-like approach to their bill boards. Fire, water, earth and air; all the elements are there.

You Want To Do Something For Your Country?

Alright.

So now the pope has put his foot in his mouth. And everyone is on his/her high horse again.

This whole religion business is becoming rather exasperating. Doesn’t anybody else tire of the issue? Cartoons that offend, a pope that upsets people, Crusaders and inquisition, holy war and what not all.

I myself am very much fed up with the whole religion issue, and I think my best contribution to this society has been to marry someone of a different faith. And when I think about it, all my good friends are mixed couples. We’ve got a christian-druze couple, a catholic-sunni, an orthodox-sunni, a shia-protestant, a shia-sunni, to name just a few. And these are all marriages of 13 years or more. They all have kids that are oblivious to the fact whether someone is a christian or a druze or a muslim.

You want to do something for your country? Marry someone from the other sect.

And make it fast. Time is running out.

NGO's in town

You know things are wrong when just about every NGO in the world is in town. They all got their stickers on their cars, and flags on the hood.

So now we get to my car (that’s what this story is about). I have had a very nice car for the past 6 years. It’s easy, not too fancy, so no one will steal it so you can leave it unlocked. It has a pick-up, so you can transport dogs and Christmas trees and wet kids coming from the beach. My friends wonder how on Earth I bought such a ‘cheapo’ car, but I dind’t, it was a gift, and you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Besides, I am very happy with my white king-cab pick-up.

However, both Sukleen (garbage disposal company) and the UN (in view of its usefulness) purchased a great number of them. So it seems these days I am associated with either Sokleen or the UN.

Like today. Today, as I was driving down Spears Street, I noticed someone two lanes away trying to get my attention.
At first I thought it was a regular guy getting my attention, so I ignored him. He was quite persistent though, so I started thinking that maybe it was somebody I did know, who tried to say hello. Then I did pay attention, but with a lane of cars in between, and each lane moving at different rates, it was kind of hard to get next to each other.

When finally we did get next to each other, I still did not recognize him. And then I understood what he was trying to tell me all the time.

“Do you need volunteers?”
“Volunteers? Volunteers for what?”
“Well, you know, UN or something. Since you work for the UN.”

Aha. It was the car that did it. With so many NGO’s in town, he assumed that a foreign face, in a UN-like vehicle, that must be somebody who can organize something,

“Ya habibi, I’m a housewife.”

Well, that did it for the rest of the conversation. He did wish me a nice day though. Quite friendly.

On another note, I went and got my meqaniue today (APK keuring in Dutch). That most be the most efficient and well-organized office. No, that must be the ONLY efficient and well-organized office in Lebanon

War? What War?

“How Do You Deal With War” can be read here (It is in Dutch). The link should work now. The Dutch title can be translated as "War ? What war?"

And now for something complete different

Dirty feet are a sign of summer

So How Do You Deal With This War?

I just got an invitation to an art exhibition on ‘siege art’. ‘To document the emotions and experiences we are currently living through, and historicize the moment' read the text. Is this a way of dealing with the war? Trying to merge it into daily life, to make it easier to swallow? How do Lebanese deal with this war? A question for you.

As I was talking to my editor in Holland about the fact that life seems to have resumed here as if nothing ever happened, and how it surprised me, we decided to do a double piece on how people deal with this war. A double piece, because our Jerusalem correspondent is going to show the Israeli side of the picture, whereas I am going to do to Lebanese take on the war.

I have mentioned earlier how amazed I was at the Lebanese’s resilience. They are like a weed, and carry on as if nothing has happened. But as I tried to dig a little deeper on this topic this weekend, it is clear that this is only the surface. You scratch a little, and a lot of anger and anxiety comes up. Anger, because a lot of people say they didn’t ask for this war, whereas others are saying that this war was planned anyhow, so the Lebanese were going to end up paying for this anyway. Anxiety, because very clearly the conflict is currently in pause mode; it has not been solved. The Israelis still have some beef with the Hezbollahs, the Iranians with the Israelis, the Americans with the Iranians, and on you go.

Right now the topic of conversation is; when will it start again? And who will start again? The question ‘will it start again’ is not even asked, people take that one for granted. How long does Hezbollah need to rearm and reorganize? How long before the Israelis have figured out where their mistakes in the Intelligence department were, and when will they have solved these? Estimates run between 4 months up to a year. But nobody seems to think that this was it. This was just a warm-up.

So how do you, the Lebanese, deal with it? Have you resorted to popping pills? Are you eating your way through it (as two of my friends have been doing). Are you partying like there is no end to it, or do you stay at home and play sudoka all day long.? A question for those Lebanese who lived through the war, and are currently trying to deal with it. All reactions are most welcome, as long as they are constructive.

The Last Thing on CLuster Bombs

Sorry, I cannot post the link, because it appears only in the paying section of the newspaper.

More on Cluster Bombs

I went today with several NGO’s to the south that deal with cluster bombs. One deals with the cleaning up, another with the making the people aware of the problem, one deals with supplying information for a data base that should eventually lead to a ban on cluster bombs, another one assists cluster bomb victims and on and on.

It is a very sad issue really, as more than 75 people have been injured (of whom 12 died) since the cease fire. I did not take pictures, as I am not in the market for the ‘poor victims in hospital bed’ strategy; their testimonies are enough. So we spoke to Ali (12) who is left with an index finger and a thumb on his right hand, after playing next to his house in the south, and Aliya (37), who lost three of her – incredibly long and beautiful - fingers while harvesting tobacco. Had she lived in the west, we would have said she had great ‘piano fingers’. And Miriam (60 something) who got hit in the abdomen while sweeping her garden path.
And the story goes on and on. I did two stories on them, hopefully I can publish the links tomorrow (but you better read Dutch).

For the moment some small details (as the participants told me) on cluster bombs:

* The south currently contains over 100,000 unexploded cluster bombs
* Unexploded cluster bombs act like mines
* The Israelis shot over 80 % of their cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the conflict
* Israel seems to have tried to get rid of their old stock. Most of the cluster bombs used were out of date. The shelf life of a cluster bomb is 10 years; these dated from 1973
* These cluster bombs seem to have a failure rate of 80 %
* Lebanon is one of only 21 countries where cluster bombs were used. Lebanon however, was the recipient in this case.
* Cluster bombs were used before in Lebanon, in 1982.
* These time, only the south seems to have been hit by cluster bomb, indicating that these were spread by artillery.
* Cluster bombs can explode as late as 30 years after the end of a conflict.
* Cluster bombs are bombs that release in mid air small bomblets (88 to over 600, depending on the type). You have anti-tank and anti-personnel bombs. The latter was used in Lebanon.

This information was retrieved through a number of reputable organizations, such an the UN,
Handicap International and MAG.

Priorities and Cluster Bombs

What a fantastic view these people had.

Tomorrow I am going to the South again on a Fact Finding mission with several NGO’s on cluster bombs. Cluster bombs are a complex problem in several ways, I found out.
The first problem is that they are currently disrupting life in the south, and will probably continue to do so far many months, if not several years, to come.
The second problem is that the understand cluster bombs, you need to have a highly technical mind. As I am interviewing people, I come across abbreviations such as EOD, BAC, MACSL, CMC, NGO, NDO, MAG, BACTEC, UNMAS, M26 and these are not even half of them.

In case you wonder where the 288 stands for, no, this is not the house number. This is house #288 on this village that is destroyed.

Oh yes, if you see UXO on buildings in red in the south, don't enter! It means 'UnExploded Ordenance" . I remembered that one. More than 12 people have been killed due to clusterbombs after the cease fire.

I saw this news program yesterday morning on Israeli TV (Yes, you can receive that here in Beirut) where a lady almost blew her top over the fact that the first words her grand daughter learned were “Red Alert’. And I was thinking, well, you know, you still have a grand daughter. In Cana 34 children died in one bombing. And her grand daughter still has a grandmother. I guess it is all about priorities.

And the cleaning continues

On Resilience and Humor

You got to hand it to them. When you are driving now through Beirut, it is as if nothing ever happened (except of course if you go to south Beirut). The beach (read; a piece of concrete with two pools by the seaside) was absolutely packed yesterday. Streets are busy, shops are reasonably full again. Admitted; not all the shelves in the supermarkets are full (milk is missing, among others, due to the ongoing Israeli blockade), and the restaurants are complaining that they do not have as many costumers as usually, but people are going out.
If part of Holland would be bombed for 33 days, and the level of destruction would be the same as in Dahiye and the south, Holland would be on its ass for the next five years. People would be displaying psychological problems from here to Rome, everyone would be at the shrink, and society would be totally disrupted for years and years to come. A little bit like the 9/11 thing in the States. I see on Discovery, or is it on NG?, that they are having a 9/11 week again, where the relive the whole event in detail, for the umpteenth time I think.
Not in Lebanon. The attitude is different. The Lebanese are like a weed. It’s like they want to say ‘Fuck It All, I intend to continue living. You can’t get me down.’ Amazing. All the foreigners I speak to display the same astonishment.

A lot of jokes have emerged about the war here in Lebanon. You can check them out here, here and here (among others). When you can’t laugh about yourself, you do have a serious issue. But the same is going on on the other side. The Israelis obviously need to vent their frustration as well, and here are some examples.

Israelis calling the Burger King in Beirut
The first one is from an Israeli radio show. Two Israelis are calling the Beirut Burger King and try to order hamburgers.
Catch Nasrallah
The second one may be offensive to some, so don’t click if you get easily offended. It’s a game where you have to try and catch Nasrallah.
Try Your Hand at Some Precision Bombing
Another one is a little nastier, definitely if you used to live in Dahiye. You can try your luck at some precision bombing of the neighborhood.

For those on the outside during the war, and would like to look in, check out these homemade videos made of the fighting: http://thearabican.blogspot.com/2006/09/youtube-killed-cable-news-star.html

Lukewarm Welcome for the UN

On the beach in Tyre

The Italians are in town. And to say that the UN forces received a lukewarm welcome in South Lebanon is a bit of an understatement. I went to the South Saturday and witnessed the arrival and deployment of the Italians. I knew they were coming on Saturday, but since they are a professional army, I had assumed they’d already be ready and in place by the time I would arrive. Well, I got there at 11, and things were going the Italian way. They had hoped for a glamorous beach landing, but that did not materialize for unknown reason, and now most of them had to get off the ship in Naqoura. All very unglamorous. Definitely not Italian style. But they took their time, organized time for a lunch and a siesta, who knows, and were busy with their deployment pretty much all of Saturday. Very few onlookers.

Italians driving through ElMjadel

Uncanny how different their attitude towards press is from the Lebanese army. With the Lebanese, everything is forbidden. You need written approval, acquired weeks in advances from different offices somewhere in Beirut, and all kinds of stamps and Lords knows not what, and you need to kiss just about everybody’s ass and make them feel they are mighty important. If you don’t, then nobody knows anything, nobody will say anything, you cannot get close to anything, and forget about taking pictures.

The Italians and the French deal differently with the press. They look at you.
“Press?”
“Yes.”
“Please go ahead, they are landing over there around the corner.”
The only time an Italian soldier told us that it was forbidden to cross a certain piece of tarmac was because we walked into the landing zone of an approaching helicopter. Little did we know. The Italian officers were very accommodating.

Ceci n'est pas un pont

The French are here also, they have an engineering company of the Foreign Legion working south of Beirut; building bridges over the many gaps in the highway. Big burly man with tattoos all over the place. These two French gendarmeries (policemen) at their side looked out of place with obnoxiously short stubbies.

The Lebanese army seems to be deploying themselves in the southern zone, although you have to look really hard for them. And once you find them, they – predictably – do not know anything. No idea why that building is cordoned off with red tape. No idea where there are houses with cluster bombing. No idea anything.

The inhabitants – on the other hand – do have an idea. It’s nice that the UN is passing by (like so many other UN contingents in the past), it’s also nice that the army is coming in and helping them out. But will it ensure that their will be no more shooting? No, that depends on Israel, they say. Will it ensure that they will be defended? No, that is Hezbollah’s department. So what are they doing here? No idea, they said, but it doesn’t do any harm either. So much for that.

Anyway, story will be published tomorrow. In Dutch, I'm afraid.

Rubble and Dust

An estimated 16,000 families lost their homes (Hezbollah estimates) in the Southern suburbs. 6,000 apartments have totally disappeared, another 10,000 are damaged. The cleaning operation is in full force, and everytime I come back from Dayiye (suburbs), my hair is like straw, and everythings is white and dusty. It must be hell on housewives in that neighborhood now, there's just no way to get rid of it. You can wash and mop and vacuum all you want; 5 minutes later it's back in the house. And this is not just now that they are cleaning up, which should last a couple of months, but when they start rebuilding, they're back in the dust for another 2-3 years. A lot of people wear little masks in front of their mouths. Boy, what a misery.

Doing Some Writing

I wrote a story on the initial cleaning operations in Dahiye. Since my newspaper decided to change its format tabloid, most articles are limited to 600 words, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it is mighty difficult to get the point across in 600 words without resorting to clichés. I’ve done an earlier piece on Nasrallah’s charm offensive. (But you’d need to have a membership on the paper to read it). When I was down there yesterday, I bought some ‘souvenirs’; A T-shirt with Hassan Nasrallah, some key chains with the Hezbollah logo. People in Holland almost gasp when you say you can buy Hezbollah flags on the street. They all want to have one. In Europe it is inconceivable that you could buy Hezbollah supporters stuff in the open.
I had an American colleague here who bought a flag for her brother in the States, but was looking for all kinds of ways to hide it in her luggage. “This will never make it through customs,” she said.
In the meantime, there still seems to be a pretty effective marine blockade in place, courtesy of Israel. Which means that food products not made locally cannot be imported. So we no longer have liquid milk, just powder, and we’re running out of that. Among others.
Tomorrow I’m going down south to do a piece on cluster bombs.