The Huffington Post – Staff Writer
“On the surface Beirut is a modern, vibrant city. On a Saturday night it would be easy to imagine yourself in Paris or Barcelona as you wander the dusty streets. Travelling here for the first time it was hard to prepare. I managed to find a guidebook for Syria and Lebanon from 2008, but a lot has changed. Ancient monuments have been destroyed by decades of conflict that are the all too repetitive beat of the region and the landscape is punctuated by halted construction often indistinguishable from the scars of conflict. But little could have prepared me for the refugee camps. Less than an hour from Beirut nestled in the Bekka Valley lie dozens of makeshift settlements. Smaller than I had expected, they are groupings of around 50 tents, each housing 10-15 people. Camps like these have become such familiar wallpaper to the sporadic news cycles highlighting the plight of refugees, that at first it felt a little like walking around a Hollywood film set. Only instead of an empty film lot, the rocky paths that intersperse the tents were filled with children, running around and playing in the dirt and the filthy streams that run through the camp.”(more)