Wow, I haven’t written in this in forever. Time passes by so quickly. Tomorrow is the last day of summer school for the kids, and this Thursday and Friday is our last campout. I am really, really upset about the last day of school because it only means I’ll be leaving Lebanon very soon. Next Tuesday night to be exact. I’m not exactly thrilled to leave but I am excited to go back home and see everyone again.
Tomorrow the kids have exams. I think they have learned just as much about America as they have English grammar, but I don’t really mind. I love, love, love these kids. I am really attached to them now. I am almost certain I will cry a river when I say goodbye to them after camp.
Camp last week was pretty good. The girls swam on Thursday. We played handball and football (excuse me, soccer) and messed around in the campgrounds. I was with the 6th grade girls on this trip. They’re a completely different group of people. Sara, Zohoor, Zahra and I were inseparable. Zohoor and Zahra aren’t in summer school but they just come along. We had a lot of fun with Zohoor’s brother, Hussein, whenever we got to see him that is. Hussein is the gym teacher basically. He rides the bus with me and we have become really, really good friends in the last few weeks.
I’m pretty sure dabke is a very popular pastime amongst the girls here. Although dancing is not allowed at the school, we do get around the rules sometimes with the teachers and start doing the traditional Lebanese dance.
The girls and I spent the night again in the Mobarrat school in Jwaya. The next morning I learned that this was actually a renovated version of the old orphanage because the original building had been bombed during the July 2006 war. Luckily, the orphans had been moved somewhere else so there were no casualties. It still hasn’t entered my mind though how anyone could consider an orphanage a legitimate target.
The next day the girls got a mini-tour of South Lebanon. We started with a morning of exercise. The kids woke up at 4:20 AM to pray, fell back asleep until 6, then got up and got ready for a small workout and breakfast of manaeesh and tea. The bus left Jwaya and passed right next to my father’s old town, Majdal Selm. We got to the Sultaniyyeh, the next village over, and I started begging the bus driver to take us to my grandparent’s house. Anyways, we got to Maroun al-Ras, the closest village to the Lebanese-Israeli border. There, Iran had donated money to the Lebanese government to build a resting place that overlooks the border. The view was spectacular and we got some good conversations going about the war and the effect of all the violence on the kids. I learned that a lot more people were displaced that I previously thought. The kids got hit hard. Amal, one of the nicest girls I know at the Mobarrat orphanage, recently moved from another orphanage in south Lebanon.
Words cannot explain the difference. Her father is dead, her mother is working hours and hours every day to provide some type of financial security, and none of her relatives will take her and her brother in to their homes. Her mother was forced to put her in an orphanage because she does not have enough money to support a family at home. Amal said that her mother would bring her biscuits or cookies whenever she would visit. Amal would hide them in her little cubby or closet but would not find them there the next morning. The kids at the orphanage were desperate—not to mention hungry—and not exactly happy. The headmasters would physically abuse them and there were certainly more kids than they could support.
Maroun al-Ras was a nice reflecting place. The sun was warm but the wind was plentiful. There were lots of games and swings and slides for the kids to play on. We went for a drive again after a couple of hours and passed through Bint Al Jbail, a large town in South Lebanon. Finally, we got to Tibnin, where we ate lunch of lahm bi aajeene (meat in bread) and laban (drinkable yogurt). The kids prayed on the grass and played on swingsets and climbed rocks and took walks through the towering snobar trees.
It was camp to camp when I got home. Within half an hour of arriving at my uncle’s house, my aunt Alia came and picked me up so I could spend the weekend with her. It was an amazing weekend…I got to see my cousins Jana, Lynn, and Safa and Marwa, the twins. We spent Saturday at a waterpark called Rio Lento, built in a valley in North Beirut. I couldn’t help but think how much fun the kids would have if they came to this water park. All of my energy and thoughts are towards the orphans now. I am addicted to them. I spent a lot of time with the Kabbanis that weekend, my mom’s side of the family. There was a lot of singing and dancing and argeileh…It’s not wrong to have a little fun :)
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