lebanon

this past weekend my cross-cultural group traveled to Lebanon. we left Damascus early Thursday morning for Beirut. during our stay there we: wandered through downtown Beirut, walked along the Mediterranean Sea, visited Biblos, Baalbek, the northern Cedar grove, and saw a whole bunch of churches (Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Latin Catholic, Meronite, and Protestant).

my experience of Lebanon was overwhelming. Beirut is completely different from anything we have seen so far in the Middle East. it feels European; there is extreme wealth in the country that overshadows the poverty lurking in the margins. walking just a few minutes from our hotel, we passed a Caribou Coffee, a Starbucks, a Hermes shop, several clothing stores that looked super upscale (although I didn't recognize the names)... and while there were mosques throughout the city, you were as likely to hear a thumping bass line in a passing car at sundown as the call to prayer. Actually, at least once I heard both at the same time.

the most interesting thing about being in Lebanon this past weekend was the fact that we were in Beirut just days after their government collapsed, and at the same time that Egypt was beginning to descend into chaos. it is so odd. i can't quite find the words...I really wish I knew what the newspapers at home are saying about this area of the world right now. From where we saw things, life just seemed to keep on moving. People still sat with their newspapers at starbucks, still prayed at their mosque or cathedral, taxis still honked at pedestrians in the streets. Even the military presence on the street didn't seem much out of the ordinary. Only a few roads in Beirut were blocked off, and the protests happening in the country were entirely out of our sight.

and yet it was clear that there was tension. our tour guide, a Meronite Christian, said that because of the Lebanese civil war, many Muslims and Christians have grown up without knowing each other at all. In the center of the downtown, there is a church built within spitting distance of a mosque. Right now the church is undergoing renovation from the most recent war, and they are in the process of constructing the bell tower. She said, "I think it is going to be very tall...they want it to be higher than the minaret." So that is the attitude...

Today as we left the country we drove north to visit Baalbek, the site of one of the best preserved Roman temples in the world. Just outside the town, which is almost entirely Shia, we saw pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plastered to walls and telephone poles. As we exited our tour bus and headed to the ruins, some men started following our group hawking Hezbollah t-shirts. It was crazy. Some of us contemplated buying a shirt, but realized we would have some trouble getting them through certain border crossings...

another interesting moment from the weekend was when we visited the oldest protestant church in the Middle East. The pastor of the church has a son who spent a year at EMU (I actually had a class with him - small world). It was so American - but for about two things; 1.) how mennonite it seemed, with the pastor talking about critiquing power and Christianity outside the Christendom context and 2.) the fact that he called Christian Zionism a heresy. And wasn't that interesting! I could probably write a whole post on that...it might have to wait until another time.

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Over the weekend between our tour finishing around 4:00 and supper at 7:30 we had free time. A lot of my free time all weekend was spent seated in front of the hotel's television watching BBC or Al-Jezeera (English, of course) for news of Egypt. It was unreal to be watching the riots knowing that last year on this date the EMU cross-cultural was in Egypt, maybe visiting the (now looted) National Museum, maybe touring the pyramids, maybe wandering through Cairo. I was able to be part of or overhear several interesting discussions over the weekend about democracy, freedom, and the surprising benefits of oppression (namely: stability). On one hand, it was thrilling for our democracy loving hearts to see poor and ill-treated people realize that they have the power to throw a corrupt politician out of his lofty seat. On the other hand, it was, and continues to be sobering to realize that there will be a severe vacuum of power and knowledge in a post-Mubarak Egypt. The people there are mostly poor, mostly uneducated... it is sort of likely that the country will end up in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, and who knows what will happen then?

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To close my post, I guess I'll say that I'm still loving it here - although to be honest I am missing some small comforts like the freedom to sit on the floor or cross my legs in public. ;)