On the Road

Willows in rows

My dad is in town again. For those that read me regularly, yes, he is 102 now. And going strong.

It’s a family thing. His older brother died last year, and a few of his siblings have made it into their nineties. He does not believe in afternoon naps and he likes to go road tripping. The curvier the roads, the happier he gets.

A little bench to contemplate life on

He walks about 5 kilometers a day back home in Holland, but here he has had to adapt; he doesn’t get beyond 3 km.  He’s got a type of walker which helps him with his stability when he walks, but he complains about the sidewalks here in town. He wanted to walk from my house to the Corniche, but the pavement is so irregular, that he ended up carrying his stroller most of the way. I think all the ‘walkers’ in Beirut can relate to that. A stroll through Beirut is more like an obstacle course.  Yesterday we walked from Dar in Wardieh (beginning of Hamra) all the way to Caracas (end of Hamra). And that was after he had been walking for about 3 hours on his own. He tells me that when he was young (twenties) he’d bike home for the weekend,  and that was some 150 kilometers one way. I took him to the Tanaayel Monastery in the Beqaa Valley over the weekend, because he likes cows and farms, and the walking is smooth there.

The duck pond

I’ve written before about the monastery, but because I doubt any of you remember, I am going to unceremoniously cut and paste that bit.

Taanayel, a Jesuit Monastery with farmland and a small lake, is right along the road to Damascus, halfway between Beirut to Damascus. The land, some 200 hectares, was given to the Jesuit fathers in 1860 by Napoleon III. Originally it was a swamp (nice guy, this Napoleon, handing out crummy land for free), but the monks, with their proverbial patience of a monk (That’s a saying in Dutch; ‘monnikengeduld’), transformed the area into agricultural land. They established a large farm, a school, a seminary and a church.

It is nice to walk there, because the way it is set up is very European, and thus feels like home. The Jesuit monks planted poplars and willows, and dug irrigation ditches to help dry the marsh lands. Everything is in neat rows, and with little tree-lined lanes in between the fields and the orchards and the vines.

These days they have some 75 milk cows and a herd of goats. They produce milk and cheese, and cultivate wine, nuts and honey as well. The farm also serves as a teaching facility for the Faculty of Agriculture at the Saint Joseph University in Beirut.

Getting ready to feed the cows

There is an interesting story about how these Jesuits ended up with the land. Apparently, in 1857, they discovered that the Bekaa Valley is an ideal place for growing grapes and producing wine. Business was good, but somewhere at the end of the 19th century, a number of French priests were killed. The Ottomans, the rulers at that time, did not any problems with France, so they compensated for the death of the priests and offered the Taanayel property. (source)

The farm is still in Jesuit hands, and as such, nothing has changed much in the lay-out of the land. No trees have been cut during the war, no ugly buildings went up, and it was not used as garbage a dump. These Jesuits are old school, and very much into the ecological side of agriculture. A Dutch priest, Father Brouwers, was part of the agricultural team on the farm for a long time.

A field of Merlot grapes

The farm has seen its fair share of sadness during the war. I remember visiting them one December, and was told that over Christmas someone had stolen the major bull. “It’s probably someone’s Christmas dinner now,” said Father Brouwers, “but I doubt it’s very tasty. The beast was old. Why would you want to steal an old bull? It’s clear the thieves do not know much about the meat business.” 

Another year they got stuck up with a small trainings camp of young Palestinians which the PLO had set up on the domain. There was nothing they could do about it. It wasn’t anything really serious, more like a Boy Scout venture, but the Israelis didn’t want any of it, and dropped an airplane bomb on the 4 some ram shackle tents which housed the boys. This saddened the priest greatly. “They were just young boys; it wasn’t worth an airplane bomb.” An even sadder event was when another Dutch Jesuit priest from Taanayel, Father Kluiters, was shot twice, hanged and impaled during the war, in 1985. He’d been in Lebanon since 1974. 

On the road

These days are more joyful however, and the farm is open to visitors. You can rent bikes on the farm (go through the gate, park your car near the church and walk to the milk farm (laiterie), where they rent them in the courtyard), and bike all around the farmland. If you are around the milk installation around 4:30, you can see them milk the cows.