The war in southern Lebanon, on the border with Israel, has displaced some 95,000 people to safer areas of the country. Some of our aid workers have also fled their villages affected by the war and are now experiencing the same traumas as the people they help every day. This is the story of one of them.
When I became an aid worker, I never thought that one day I would find myself on the other side, that I would have to play the role of a displaced person.
As much as you can try to empathise, to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, when you’re the one who has to leave your home, everything is different: during the displacement I felt for the first time that I was not part of the community, and suddenly people started to treat me like an unwanted refugee. I was verbally harassed by many people, some refused to let me rent the house until they made sure that I had an identity card and that I was Lebanese, and when I introduced myself and said that I was from South Lebanon, some were suspicious because they were afraid I might be associated with a political party.
I left my village alone with my two children. My husband, together with other men from the village, stayed in the south to guard the houses, to prevent anyone from looting them or using them as a hiding place. Being a single working mother is a constant challenge, I feel responsible for everything and I am constantly worried: I think about my husband who stayed in the south, I think that at some point the money might not be enough, I think about how unhappy my children might feel. Every day I see the children in the building going to school, while mine have to stay at home and do nothing. They have the right to go to school.
In the beginning, every week I booked a different flat, in three months I moved 14 times. I tried to find a silver lining: since we had to move so often, I thought I would take the opportunity to explore new areas and so I organised little tour visits, for me and my children, but the negative thoughts always took over in the end.
I deal with people’s distrust every day, but I have noticed that some people are different, they show their support for the displaced people. Once it happened that I had to leave a house by 11.00 am and I couldn’t find another one right away, so I went to the playground for my children to play until I finished work. The park was closed, but I told our story to the people who were cleaning and they allowed us to stay there until late afternoon.
Meanwhile at home…
In my village, 70% of the families are displaced. The remaining 30% are the men who guard the village and those few families who, unable to afford rent or to lose their jobs, have stayed behind.
The families that have remained rely on food distributions and donations from people in a better economic situation. There is a lack of everything from medicine for the elderly to formula for babies. Pregnant women are afraid that they will not be able to reach the hospital, and even that the hospital will be bombed, now that the one in Bint Jbeil has been dedicated to the war wounded. To survive, the community has become more united than ever; there is only one goal: the safety of the village and the people left behind.