Beirut and beyond

I started these musings whilst staying in downtown Beirut but during that time had two glorious days out of the city, one up in the mountains, and the other by the sea. Whilst my wanderings in downtown were done on my own, the excursions were with local folks who I know through the organisations I am working with over here, and so some of the following reflects the conversations had on those days.

From an architectural perspective, downtown is an eclectic mix of smart and stylish new buildings – apartments and office blocks alongside each other. Nestled in amongst them are small and very old churches and mosques of yellow sandstone which have a lovely warm look in the sunshine, as well as little older houses that were built to withstand the heat before AC was an option.

In the middle of downtown, overlooking Martyrs Square, is the big Mohammad Al-Amin mosque which is also known as the Blue Mosque, due to its prominent blue dome. Alongside it are the Maronite and Orthodox cathedrals, so that in one central space, all three of the main religions of Lebanon are represented.

In the area near to the Port, the devastating impact of the explosion of 2020 can still be seen. Some buildings stand as shells only, with everything gone except for the stone skeleton of the structure. Two big derelict concrete silos stand in the port as a reminder of the explosion, and there are still some bits of twisted metal visible that comprise road barriers on older bits of road.

The shops are a mix of Western brand names and local Arabic shops – high-end and low-end and everything in between – just like you’d see in many cities around the world.

And once outside the city: well it depends on the direction that you take. Directly north and south its all coastal, with some beautiful coastal villages and towns, beaches, harbours, and places to swim in the Med. And if you go inland the topography becomes hilly and then mountainous, plus the flat Beqaa valley in the east of the country.  The views are so big from up in the mountains, with little towns and villages clinging to the sides of the hills, zig-zag roads winding up the valleys and over the ridges, and groves of cedar trees adding their majesty to the overall scenery. It really is a beautiful country in many ways.

But against this beautiful backdrop, the Lebanese are living life with a sense of uncertainty, waiting, and wondering what next? Given all that has gone on in recent Lebanese history, and given their precarious position with neighbouring countries who are far from peaceful, and given the presence of Hezbollah within their own nation, many of the younger adults feel unsure about the future. Do they make their future here in Lebanon, or do they seek opportunities in other, safer countries, where there is more stability, where there is more hope for the future, that might be a good place to raise children?

These are the issues that swirl around, and that so many are wrestling with. But amongst all this, life carries on - Beirut 10k run around the centre of the city, sea swimming, music gigs, coffee with friends, evening strolls, meals out, celebrations of births deaths and marriages …

It was when the conversation turned to the future of the country that the passion and pain really showed through.

The Lebanese are so proud of their nation and of the opportunities that they see could be available, if only things weren’t as they are. They are frustrated at the way in which Western governments are demanding that Lebanon ensures the disarming of Hezbollah but without any support to do the disarming. Just to be clear, many Lebanese agree  that the disarming is something that absolutely has to happen, and they want rid of the corruption, uncertainty and terror that came with Hezbollah, but they also know that the members of Hezbollah would prefer the ‘martydom honour’ of dying whilst fighting than to allow the opposition to disarm them. And as a result, many have fears of a civil war that might erupt.

Added to that are the fears that Israel is just waiting for Lebanon to fail to meet the disarming deadline, and then they will use that as an excuse to attack as well. So fears of attacks from within and without.

How to disarm a terrorist group without ending up with lots of bloodshed - this is the current massive challenge that the Lebanese government is facing, and people are struggling to see any hopeful way forward.

Lebanon is such a beautiful country, the people are so welcoming and generous, their food is simply delicious, and they have a wonderful, hard-working, and entrepreneurial spirit. I pray that, despite all the odds that seem to be so stacked against them, there can be a way forward that brings hope and security to the country and to the wider region.  

Lebanon trauma training part 1 complete

 I’ve had a fascinating time delivering trauma-informed training to Triumphant Mercy, the first of the organisations that I am working with here in Lebanon. Their focus is predominantly supporting Lebanese children, women and families from disadvantaged and vulnerable backgrounds for one reason or another. The discussions that have come from the training with regard to issues of trauma in Lebanon have been very insightful, and below are a few jottings relating to these conversations, which help to show the range of challenges that are faced. Some of them are similar to traumas experienced in other nations, especially those ‘hidden traumas’ that are being lived out behind closed doors. But when set against the bigger picture of the national traumas that are part of Lebanon’s recent history (quite apart from those associated with their longer-term geopolitical history), the issue of resilience to deal with the range of traumas becomes a massive challenge.

Recent events that Lebanon has experienced as a nation:

-            - Civil war

-            - War with Israel

-            - War with Syria

-            - Port blast explosion

-            - Financial collapse

-            - Refugee influx

-            - Covid pandemic

-            - Living with a permanent mindset of ‘what next’ as the recent history feels like a litany of national traumatic events ie living on permanent state of waiting for next trauma.

o   This is having a particular impact on young adults, who just don’t know if they can plan a life in Lebanon in the long-term

o   Also an impact on starting new businesses etc, as some nervousness about the feeling of instability and unpredictability

Also, at a more individual or family-based level

-            - High parental expectations regarding education achievements

-            - Verbal abuse – especially adults to children

-           -  Physical abuse – often normalised re cultural norms

-            - Emotional abuse

-           -  Mental abuse

-           -  Chaotic family situations and relationship challenges between husband and wife

-            - Body image issues amongst Gen Z, and competitively high pressure and expectations from peers regarding achievements and image.

Trauma for the children

-           -  Abuses as above, plus watching their parents struggling as a result of so many pressures that are outworked in family-based traumas

-            - Critical and high expectation parents putting undue pressure on children

-            - Parents talking about the war in front of the kids, so traumatising the children as they hear about past wars, fears of wars etc.

Generational difference:

-       - older adults = ‘it’s just how it is’ – talk about the concept of trauma is taboo with older generation, and they just don’t talk about it. They tend to be much more emotionally disconnected as a result.

-           -  younger adults and teenagers = ‘everything is a trauma’. Very switched on re trauma as a result of being more globally connected and consuming perspectives from different parts of the world. This then can lead to perhaps interpreting a much broader range of experiences in the context of trauma.

-            So, a big mismatch between the two generations and they struggle to communicate with each other about it. Therefore, a big gap in emotional support and understanding between the two groups.

Religion-related trauma: in some churches and religious groups there is a lot of teaching that trauma is an indication of sin and or failure to be a good Christian. Therefore, all are urged to pray more and be a better Christian and then they won’t suffer the trauma. This then results in further guilt, shame, and sense of failure etc, which exacerbates the trauma. NB this is as relating to personal traumas not national traumas.

Romania trauma reflections

During my time here in Romania, I've been delivering the 360Life training to a group of staff and volunteers who are all involved in prison ministry in various different penitentiaries across the country. At one point we were even joined by the director of education for all of Romanian prisons, as the authorities have identified trauma as the biggest issue that needs to be addressed in the prisons. Apparently she was very impressed with the training (phew), and hopefully it has helped open thoughts on how the prison system can best address the issue of trauma in a way that helps those who so much need support to overcome all sorts of traumatic past experiences. Here follows just some of the issues that have come up in the discussions with participants of the 360Life trauma-informed training here in Romania. It’s been a fascinating, and intense time here, but what a privilege to be able to speak into the lives of this wonderful group of people.

NB: the following is in no particular order.

-            Post communist issues between the generations: parents bottled everything up cos couldn’t complain about anything. Now still find it hard to express emotions, or talk about how they are feeling. And equally find it hard to provide emotional support for children, which the younger generation find hard to cope with as lacking the role models for them to draw on as they become parents of the next generation.

-            Lack of trust by older generation, as never knew who was an informant for the communists, so still find it hard to trust, and again this overflows into not talking about things. Knock on issues for children who have never been taught how to trust, and so also find it hard to put into practice.

-            Being a Christian in communist country – lots of persecution: bullying (peers, work colleagues, teachers), denial of privileges afforded to non-Christian kids (at school and at work), not allowed to preach so if churches expanded then in trouble, trouble if caught with a Bible etc.

-            Lack of understanding about the concept of trauma, as so many of the hardships in communist times, that we might now say were types of trauma, at the time were considered just ‘how life was’. This included lots of fawning and appeasing just to keep the authorities happy, poverty, standing in line for food due to scarcity in the shops, as well as others already mentioned.

-            Post communist period: latch-key kids: parents at work from 6am – 6pm, so only saw the kids in the evenings. Those who were the kids left at home remember crying as the parents went out in the mornings, and they had to sort themselves for school etc. Trauma of abandonment.

-            Trauma of not being able to talk to their parents about things, the emotional neglect as parents found it so hard to process or show emotion

-            links between Romania as a nation having big T trauma of being under communism, and individuals having complex PTSD from million tiny paper cuts of personal life under communism;

-            Transgenerational traumas of various types due to the impact of communism on previous generations, and how they then pass on those traumatic ways of living and behaving to their children. Cycle slowly being broken as younger generation are turning to Europe and USA for videos, podcasts, books etc that show an alternative way of living life, and being more engaged with emotions etc. But there is still the struggle of not being able to discuss with own parents, and feeling a disconnect that many find it hard to overcome.

-            Traumas relating to the Romanian orphanages – both the traumas experienced by some of being in them, and the trauma of abandonment and neglect by family members resulting in social orphans. Those who were orphans at the time of the fall of Communism are now young adults, and still are experiencing post-traumatic issues.

-            Also due to abandonment – lots of children ended up in gangs, which are very dominant in some parts of Romania now, and leading to much crime of various types.

This list isn’t exhaustive, but gives insight into some of the issues that Romania is struggling with as they journey forwards.

all the delegates, looking extra smart in the presence of the government official (front row, 2nd from left)

 

Moldovan trauma

 My visit to Moldova has been brief, but what a wonderful visit it has been. From a few touristy wanderings, to church in an ex-KGB building, to delivering a workshop on secondary trauma, burnout and self-care to some incredible Christian women who are involved in ministries supporting abandoned children and single mothers. I have also had the privilege to chat with some women one-on-one about their reflections on trauma from a Moldavian context, and it is some of these insights that I share here.

The main headline is that all the references to trauma from a Moldova perspective can be traced back to their recent history related to the fall of the Soviet Union. This is not particularly surprising, considering how massive that was, but it was interesting to hear all the same, especially as some of the women I chatted with had not even been born when Moldova gained independence.

There is a very clear divide between the older pre-independence generation and the younger post-independence generation. The older generation remember how they were expected to be grateful for everything, even for just one type of ice-cream, and not wonder if there were any other options. An outworking of this nowadays is the tension between this accepting attitude of the older generation and that of the younger generation who are used to having so much more choice, and appear not to be grateful for the simple things. They also remember how they were instructed to question nothing, and grew up being instructed that Communism was the best and that everyone was rich and safe and provided for. The trauma of discovering that this was not the case when the Soviet fell, resulted in subsequent floundering and difficulty in trusting others as all of the building blocks on which their lives, ways of thinking, and views of the world had been created, crumbled before them. They grew up having to hide any troubles from the outside world, and as a result there is a lot of bottled up trauma in this generation that has never been worked out, or talked about. This shows up in a lot of alcoholism across the country (apparently Moldova has one of the highest rates for alcoholism per capita in the world).

According to the younger women that I chatted with, they recognise these struggles in their elders, and they try to be sympathetic to them, but clearly there are tensions at times. Several spoke about difficult times growing up as children, when their parents were more newly navigating life in a recently independent country that hadn’t really worked out its identity, and as a result there were several citings of the unresolved trauma of being raised by angry, unpredictable parents who didn’t know how to show love.

Please know that this was not the case for all, but they were recurring themes that I heard, both from personal testimony and from anecdotes that they shared of the experiences of others.

Following independence, financial hardship was significant, and many parents went overseas to try and find work in order to send money home. Apparently this was particularly so amongst women, whereby they went to Germany, Italy etc to seek work, and left the children at home with the father or wider family. Sadly there were many occasions when the father or wider family didn’t have the ability to care for the children, and as a result they were abandoned to orphanages as ‘social orphans’. So there are many young adults who grew up in institutional care and still bear the trauma of abandonment and neglect in their formative years.

Meanwhile, the men, who lost their jobs when the Soviet fell, struggled to find work due to few or no qualifications, and turned to drink, living off the money sent home by their wives. And the wives kept on working overseas, unaware of what was going on at home, and when eventually they did return home, it was not to the family situation that they had left, or expected to return to. So tough, so tough. Behind it all can be seen a desire to do the best for the family, and a demonstration of sacrificial love, but sadly it all turned out to be so different for so many. Yes, for some it worked out, but for the majority apparently it definitely didn’t.

A big cause of trauma in Moldova, especially for the children, is cited as being abandonment and neglect. These tie in with the many children who felt abandoned by their mothers when they went abroad to work, and then were often neglected by fathers who were struggling with their own issues as mentioned above, and by wider family who didn’t have the financial or emotional capacity to take in another child. So the child resorted to living on the streets, or got taken in by an orphanage as a ‘social orphan’ where various abuses and further neglect was rife. Many children born to single mothers living in the villages were also sent to orphanages, as the stigma against being a single mother was so strong that the girl was often abandoned by her family and had no means of providing for the child. As Moldova pursues membership of the EU, the number of orphanages has now fallen dramatically, and children are being fostered instead. But many children don’t have legal documents and so don’t officially exist - another form of trauma.

Alongside these traumas, the country still struggles with its identity - does it identify more with Romania or Russia in its allegiance? The national language is Romanian, but there are also many Russian speakers, and the attitude to the war in Ukraine is also divided. As a country that has had an identity of servitude to a superior empire or nation, it is still working out the reality of not having that identity anymore.

There is much more that I could share about trauma from a Moldovan woman’s perspective, but I will stop here. I hope that this gives you an insight into some of the issues that this beautiful country is wrestling with. They sound a lot, but there is hope – hope in their female president who is bringing about great change, and hope in the younger generation who want to pursue positive change within this country.

 

After 24 hours in Chisinau

This is my first time in Moldova, and I’m staying in Chisinau, visiting a missionary friend who is based here and in Ukraine for a charity that focuses on projects for children who are victims of war. More on that another time maybe, but for now I thought I’d just share a few reflections based on my first 24 hours here.

From an architectural perspective, there are throw-backs to the communist era which reminded me of some of the other ex-communist cities I’ve visited: old, identical, somewhat crumbling blocks of flats; very big government buildings with a square in front; rows of shopfront buildings (very little evidence of any of the usual global brands though); communal parks. The visible churches are predominantly orthodox, and very ornate and gilded inside they are too.

Talking of churches, the one I went to this morning was a wonderful charismatic church – lots going on, with community outreach, children’s work, and lots of young adults. They’ve recently opened a coffee shop on site, with the strap-line ‘making community, one coffee at a time’. And a fab extra bit of info is that the building that they have bought for their church is an ex-KGB building that was designed and used for spreading communist propaganda. How beautiful is that – a building built to spread the darkness of communism has been repurposed and is now spreading the light of Christianity, what a wonderful outcome!

The parks are very well sorted with activities for all ages – play parks, multiple basketball pitches, table-tennis tables, adult outdoor gyms etc – I guess given how many live in apartments, these parks are the garden for many residents. They are also great places for going for an early morning run, as I found out today!

And like any city that has reliable warm weather for a good part of the year, there are lots of outdoor eating spaces as well, and some very delicious-looking street food options (sadly not so many that are gluten-free, so I’ve had to skip trying them).

The languages spoken here are both Romanian and Russian. It seems that the older generation are more towards Russian speaking, whilst the younger generation are more towards Romanian. Indeed, at church today, a Russian speaker was speaking from the front, and so older people were translating from Russian into Romanian so that the younger ones could understand. The younger generation also seem to have a better command of English, and so at one point there was a 3-way translation going on around me: from Russian to Romanian to English, and very grateful I am for that.

From what I’ve picked up there are a mix of attitudes towards the situation regarding Ukraine and the war. Some Moldovans support Ukraine whilst others prefer Russian. Again there appears to be a bit of a generational angle to this. The older generation remember being part of the USSR, and some of the perceived benefits of that time: accommodation, job for life…. That, plus the fact that Ukraine gained some land that was previously Moldovan, leads to an anti-Ukraine tendency against their larger northern neighbour. Others recognise that if Ukraine falls, Moldova will become very vulnerable, and so have a more pro-Ukraine stance.

All these reflections are just based on my first 24hours here in Chişinău. In summary it has a fairly standard post-communist European small city feel, albeit from about 15-20 years ago. But out in the villages, from what I hear there is more poverty, and the communities are less developed, and more run down. But this is just what I hear, not what I’ve seen. It’s a joy to be here, and to be welcomed by these lovely people. 

 

 

 

When the world prefers coffee to tea

 

One of the places that I visit every time I come to Uganda is the vocational college set up by John Nj which is situated in rural Mityana, about 2 hour drive northwest(ish) from Kampala.

The area is renowned for its tea plantations, and once you leave the tarmac road and enter the properly rural area, the fields on either side are a vibrant green as far as the eye can see, full of tea bushes, and interspersed with groves of trees, often eucalyptus as they grow quickly to keep providing the fuel for the drying machines in the factories.

Tea workers will be seen in the fields, clipping the leaves and throwing them into the big baskets that they wear on their backs as fast as they can – they are paid by the basket load, so the more they pick, the more they earn. And every now and then there is a factory and workers houses. It’s mainly just the drying and sorting stages of the process that are done in Uganda, so the factory isn’t huge. And the workers ‘cottages’ are very basic, not even running water or electricity for most, but all are situated together in a sort of little community, with a borehole nearby.

The lack of production process that occurs in Uganda has an impact on the amount of money that Uganda makes from tea exports. There isn’t a lot of mark up on the basic tealeaves – that is made by the big brands when they do the final stages of the process. So it’s not the most lucrative of incomes, but it has been present for many years, and it has always seemed to be a given part of Uganda’s export economy.

But, in the past couple of years, I’ve noticed that the amount of land that was once given to tea is reducing. Where once it was all tea bushes, now there are swathes of it that have been dug up and are being rented out to farmers to grow other cash crops – maize seems to be particularly popular. Trees are also being chopped down and not replaced. I asked John about this, and he said that the tea companies are struggling to sell their tea as the market seems to have shrunk, and so in order to pay their workers, they have had to rent out some of their land to diversify their income stream.

Some of the workers cottages have also been left to disintegrate, as the number of workers that the tea companies need has reduced, and I came across one little area that felt so sad and abandoned with only a couple of homes that still seemed to have anyone living in them.

We wondered about the background to the shrinking of the market, and what might be causing it. I reflected on the massive increase in coffee shops that can be found in UK high streets, and the upsurge in the coffee culture generally. In Thornbury alone there are at least 10 such places, and that’s not a very big town. Presumably this is being accompanied by a decrease in the number of cups of tea being drunk (although I do have a few family members who are doing their best to keep the industry afloat between them!!!!).

There will still be some parts of the world where tea wins against coffee – but I suspect those countries grow their own tea so don’t need to import from Uganda. Certainly, Uganda has its own share of tea drinkers, and so some of its tea is for home use. But here also the coffee shop culture is growing, and the middle classes are often preferring the draw of a flat white or a latte to the traditional African tea. As I walk through the plantations and note the increased ratio of maize to tea within the tea plantation boundaries, it brings home to me the impact that the growth in coffee culture is having on the lives of individuals hundreds of miles away, most of whom can only dream of ever having enough money to be able to afford the luxury of  a ‘double-shot vanilla latte with oat’ or whatever your preferred cuppa happens to be.

This field used to be all tea, now the maize is winning!

 

 

 

lots of derelict homes in the tea-workers residential area

the hillside used to be covered in trees to fuel the factory - not any more