Here it is, my long-awaited and sure-to-be-controversial (in a good way) blog, live from Beirut! This blog is a totally original idea and was in no way inspired by
another lesser blog, pun emphatically intended.
About this blog: I'm going to be terse on this because I want you to actually read it! I'm not going to pull a Minh Vy Ly or a Wally Forman here. It's just straight up Stephen Dewey, which is a good thing, darn it! This first one is a bit long because I have 2 weeks to fill you in on!
If your name is Josh Barro or your goal is to replace the hole he left when he graduated: Yes, I know that "kasbah" is usually spelled with a "c," as
popularized by The Clash. However, because it is a transliterated word "kasbah" is an equally valid spelling, "casbah" was taken, and most importantly, The Clash really suck.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Sometimes I may say things that on first read may seem disrespectful, such as, "I would rather drink my own vomit than drink Lebanese Arak again" (which is true). I would like to emphasize that no comment, however flip, should ever be read in a xenophobic light. I wouldn't be here if that were the case.
MOST IMPORTANT POINT OF ALL: I want your comments!!! This is not a one-way street. There's a link at the bottom to comment on any given post, I think.
ON TO MY RANDOM OBSERVATIONS
Now that I've been here for nearly two weeks a lot of things have stopped surprising me, but some continue to blow my mind. In no particular order:
- Walking down a Lebanese street since their elections is like a scene from 1984. When Americans think of election placards we think of something relatively small and containing the names of the candidates and maybe a slogan. But Lebanese election placards are just these giant facial portraits of the candidates, sometimes smiling but usually somber and focused, as if they were trying to decide whether or not to declare war on a country or execute a criminal. In actuality it's probably more likely for them to have to decide whether to spend a million dollars on trash collection or water purification (both of which are desperately needed), but that doesn't stop the Lebanese political parties from trying to create a cult-like following for their chosen leader. Think the personality-based campaign of Bush-Cheney '04 and then multiply it by 20. Some of the posters were 8 by 10, and a few along the highway were 4 times that size.
- Lebanese chicks are hotter than the flaming coals their grandfathers walked on to earn money. Pictures to follow.
- MCDONALDS HAS A VALET SERVICE. I am not making this up. They also deliver. I haven't eaten there though because I want to live like the indigenous people (look how culturally sensitive I am!).
- Getting back to point #1 - maybe politicians put up posters of themselves because they have no record or vision to run on? We went to Tripoli on Saturday and the town was extremely dirty. A river runs through the center of the city and people just throw all of their trash in it. The trash stays there because the river has an artificial bank to prevent flooding, and people sometimes pile up the trash and burn it to reduce the volume. Sick.
- There is no need to pay more than $2-3 for a meal. If you pay any more you're getting ripped off. I've gotten used to declining $5 meals because they're a "rip off." In Tripoli, which is super cheap, you can get a meal for $0.66. It's nice to not have to spend much money, but on the other hand it's evidence that many of the people here live in deep poverty by any standard.
- That said, Lebanon is neither poor nor rich. One of my classmates referred to it as a "2nd world country," but that's a misnomer because the "2nd world" was the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Lebanon is a developing country. Their are people in the country who do well for themselves, enough so that you can speak of a "Lebanese middle class." Many people own internet cafe's with tens of thousands of dollars of capital invested, and a sizeable number drive new cars like Lexuses and BMW's. The Lebanese economy seems to be diversifying (for example I have seen two graphic design shops), but it's still very tourism-heavy, which means it gets hurt whenever it has political turmoil, which for Lebanon is frequent. And then on the other hand you have a large lower class that can't make much more than $5-15/day.
- We saw a Bush-Cheney sticker on a car up in the northern Lebanese mountains yesterday! It probably wasn't ironic because the Lebanese take their politics very seriously. I think it was in a Christian section though.
- For those of you who don't know (read: are ignorant), Lebanon is appx 70% Muslim and 30% Maronite Christian (1% Druze, other). The Muslim part is divided into substantial Sunni and Shiite sects... Rafiq Hariri was Sunni and so is his son. Hizb Allah (Hezbollah) is Shi'ite. The Christians are in communion with the Roman Catholic church, and in the Christian towns you can see posters of Pope John Paul II intermingled with the election placards. In the mountains where we were yesterday we saw a great cathedral in the middle of the slope... it looked like something out of Lord Of The Rings.
Practical things I probably should have expected but didn't:
- Most of the people here speak some English
- Most of the signs here are in English
- My classroom knowledge of Arabic doesn't help me much because people here speak Levantine dialect. I'm pissed!!!
- The humidity is much worse than the heat. We traveled to the mountains the other day and I felt *happier* as soon as I got off the bus. I couldn't tell why that was for a while until somebody suggested it was because the air was drier. They got it right.
- 5 times a day, the minarets sing the Muslim Call to Prayer. I'm used to it now but it was weird at start. Most of the introduction consists of "Allahu Akbar" (God is the Greatest). I'm going to try to go to a mosque soon to check it out.
Pictures of my abode coming soon...
