Stories
From Freezing Snow to a Cold Muddy Mess
We knew the snow was coming, we knew for days and everyone was on edge hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as they feared. Alas, it did snow and it snowed a lot, the most snow Lebanon has had in seven years.
After a few days of being snowed in, I was finally able to make it to the camps to check on some of the teachers who live in the camps. What a sight! I can tell you honestly I will never look at snow the same way again. A group of women that I passed kept asking me to take pictures of the conditions saying “We want the world to see this. We want them to see what is happening here!” I saw men working together to shovel snow into wheelbarrows to transport it out of the camp. No snow plows come to the camps.
The roads were piled high with snow! I had to traverse the large mountains of snow in the road just to get to one of the teacher’s houses. This teacher had asked me to lend her a pair of rubber boots so she could walk around her camp in the deep snow and sludge. She told me her kitchen had flooded and I could see that the snow was still piled high in her courtyard. There was no escape from the cold and the wet. Despite the snow, I saw many children running around without shoes. One teacher told me that she and her husband had to work all night on the roof of their tent shoveling snow to keep the roof from collapsing under the weight of the snow. Another teacher, a mother of 5 with newborn twins had her tent collapse on her entire family! They had to hurry to get the children and babies out and then propped up the tent with a plank of wood for reinforcement. The phrase I kept hearing was “I’m afraid of the snow”. I can now understand why.
Now, three weeks on, much to everyone’s relief, the sun has finally come out, the snow has mostly melted and people are hopeful that the worst of the cold is behind them. However, the snow left damaged tents, and roads full of water and mud in its wake. All this amongst a broken economy with soaring prices. One teacher told me, “I can’t afford to feed my family. My money goes directly to bread and fuel and then it’s gone in a few days.” My children are cold and they don’t understand why we can’t use the heat. One teacher told me she and her three kids had to move back in with her mother because she couldn’t afford to buy fuel to heat her home. Recently there has been some relief with the donation of fuel vouchers. One teacher recently told me that the fuel vouchers were provided the same day she ran out of fuel and did not know how she was going to be able to buy more. The timing was perfect. People are grateful for whatever help they can get. Everyone is now looking toward spring, praying it will arrive soon. —Bethany
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- Before: Directly after the snow
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- After: Snow has melted into a muddy mess
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