In April I had the chance to visit Lebanon and specifically Akkar, a governorate in the North not fa
In April I had the chance to visit Lebanon and specifically Akkar, a governorate in the North not far from the border with Syria. A Lebanese friend who’s an aid-worker in the area took me to speak with several Syrian families she knows, many of whom have been living in Akkar since 2012, or five years. Some were living in small stores that had been converted into homes, often without windows or heat. Others were renting houses in villages, like the family above in Akkar al Beera. Two different families share the home pictured above in order to keep costs down, in total paying about $150/month. The wife of the man pictured here is in the hospital because of liver issues. The family has received assistance with the hospital fees to keep her on oxygen, but the aid organizations won’t be able to pay for an operation if it turns out to be cancer (which it very likely is, given her symptoms).The man has stopped working as a day laborer because he has to take care of the children while his wife is in the hospital. When I spoke with them, the family had also just been cut off from World Food Program (WFP) distributions. The WFP hadn’t informed them of this change though; they only found out when they went to use their ration card at a local store and discovered that it no longer had any funds.Unfortunately, there are too many stories like this in Lebanon and everywhere that refugees are being hosted. Often personal narratives are dismissed with statistics like “252,369 persons of concern in Northern Lebanon.” It’s important to remember and share these individual stories, whether they’re tragic, hopeful or simply everyday lived experiences. -- source link
Tumblr Blog : kpnorman.tumblr.com
#refugees#syrian refugees#lebanon#research