The Sound of (Commerical) Airplanes

assaults on lebanon
Originally uploaded by marcynewman.

I never thought that I would notice and welcome the sound of airplanes (commercial airplanes, as opposed to the Israeli Occupation Forces F16s that I normally hear when I'm in Beirut). I was sitting in my apartment, writing up a needs assessment report for Samidoun when I started noticing that I heard airplanes flying overhead. I realized that I hadn't really heard any since I arrived in Beirut a few days ago. Then I looked at my clock and it was 6:20 PM or so. The Israeli-U.S. embargo was supposed to end at 6 PM today so this must be why all of a sudden there is a somewhat normal pattern of air traffic above. It's amazing that I even noticed this because my grandmother always seems to live directly under airports with heavy traffic. In any case, it was rather calming to listen to this and know that on those planes must be aid relief for Lebanese people.

And I've been thinking quite a bit about aid relief since I arrived. I spent the last three days compiling a report for Samidoun which has been doing an amazing job of dealing with aid relief since the Israeli-U.S. invasion began. Although I've followed the war and relief efforts on the Internet and in the respectable independent media it's different reading and writing about the details of each village in the south and all of the devastation there. The devastation of agricultural fields, which on top of the devastation from the bombings, has cluster bombs making it impossible for people to move without fear of being blown up, as have some children in some of the villages. The lack of water and electricity is the norm in the South. Here, in Beirut, we seem to have no water problems, although electricity is definitely touch and go. In the last twenty-four hours there have been six power cuts. Although these are fairly brief one never knows. It reminds me of living in Ghana where power was never certain, especially in the evenings. I haven't yet visted these villages, but I hope to do so in the next week with a reporter friend.

Salam--