The winter snow melt has left the pine clad mountains surrounding
the city green and lush under a clear blue sky on this beautiful spring morning
as we head east away from Beirut and the Mediterranean and over the Lebanon mountain range toward the Syrian border. Once through the mountain pass we look down into a
stunningly beautiful green valley. This is the Bekaa Valley and it is here, at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon mountains (the border between Syria and Lebanon) about as close to the Syrian border as you can get, that hundreds of Informal
Tented Settlements (ITS) have appeared over the past four years.
Since the Syrian civil war started in March 2011 over 1.5 million
Syrians have fled from the bombs, the bullets and the death to settle in Lebanon.
Around 420,000[1]
of these people live in ‘tents’ in the agricultural communities of the valley.[2]
I arrived in one of these ITSs yesterday morning as a van load of
children returned home from school. As they poured from the back of the van
they were laughing, shouting and teasing one another – they seemed liked kids
anywhere, they were happy! But as I looked around and as one of these families shared
their story with me, I wondered why.
Omar and Anila[3]
and their 9 children came across the border from Syria 15 months ago. For over three
years they lived with the uncertainty of the war in their homeland, but then “the bombs began to be too many and too close” (Omar). Arriving in
the Bekaa, Omar and Anila joined 67 other families, (a community of 428 adults
and children) on a 1 acre property and built a 2 room shelter from wood,
cardboard and tarpaulin for which they pay a rent of $400[4] a year.
Today, as I sit in their lounge room with clean straw mats and
cushions bordering the tarpaulin walls, it is cool and quite comfortable. They serve me a cup of Arabic coffee - strong, thick and black it will keep me buzzing for a while. But only
a month ago there were floods here from the snow melt, and in the weeks before
that most tents were buckling under the weight of heavy snow. It must have been
unbearably cold and wet.
They have electricity, some of the time, but they pay $45 a month for that. Each tent is supplied with a 1,000 liter water tank and 1 voucher a week to refill it. (That's about 3.5l a day, per person for Omar and his family). They have access to a toilet for every 15 people, and 2 vouchers per month to have the septic tank emptied.
The oldest son is the sole income earner for the family, working for
about 6 months of the year in the surrounding farms he will make about $25 a
week. This, together with a World Food Program allowance of $19 per person per
month and a small allowance from the UNHCR is the entire income. Omar tells me
that due to visa issues (costing $2,000 per person per year) he is unable to work. He is frightened that if he
leaves the property he could be detained and returned to Syria.
The four middle children are picked up with other children to
attend a UN school a little way from the settlement and the three youngest
children attend a child friendly space on the property. The oldest boys, all
who were studying back home, now cannot attend school and have nothing to do.
One of her youngest uses her as a climbing frame whilst keeping a wary eye on this
strange man in her house, as Anila tells me that she fears for her children; if
one of them becomes ill there is no care available, even if she could afford it. Often there is not enough food and so they have to purchase food to credit.
Omar dreams of the day
that he can take his family home, “even
if our house is gone, I will build a tent like this and we will be home – but
for now what choice do I have? Inshalllah, one day soon, it will be safe to go home, but at the moment, even if I could go home I wouldn't because my boys would be forced to join the Army."
[1] http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=122)
[2] An estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their homes since March 2011. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), almost 4 million have fled to Syria's immediate neighbours Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. 6.5 million are internally displaced within Syria. (http://syrianrefugees.eu)
[3] Names changed.
[4] All dollars are USD.
