Beirut, Lebanon 07 Aug 2006 - Maya, who is seven years old, sits despondently on a dirty mattress in the corner of a stark room that is now home to her, as well as four brothers and sisters, her parents, and her grandmother. In spite of the bleak situation her family now faces, she breaks into a beautiful smile when members of the International Rescue Committee’s emergency response team arrive to assess humanitarian needs. The visitors provide a welcome distraction from the monotony.
Maya is one of 94 people now living in the dank basement of a decaying apartment building in Baabda, a town four kilometers east of Beirut. Four storage rooms and a space housing the building’s generator were offered to the families who fled fighting in the southern Lebanese town of Srifa 24 days ago.
The basement has a single toilet that they now share. The families try to keep it tidy, but they don’t have any proper cleaning materials. Water flows from the bathroom tap and from a sink in a small shared kitchen area. But the water isn’t suitable for drinking. Everyone has diarrhea as a result. A local bank is now bringing them bottled water every day, but they wonder how long that generosity can last.
Maya and her siblings are also suffering from skin irritations. Maya’s mother thinks it’s because they are sleeping on dirty foam mattresses without sheets in extremely humid conditions.
She’s very worried about her children. Last week, while they were playing in a basement area just outside the storage rooms, chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling. Luckily, no one was injured, but the incident, so soon after the shelling of their town, stirred panic and fright. Now the kids prefer to stay in the confined space where their family cooks, sleeps and lives.
“The day-to-day lives of these children, what was normal to them, was violently destroyed in an instant,” says Stephen Hanmer, an IRC specialist on children in conflict who is responding to the crisis in Lebanon. “Suddenly they’re in an alien world, and are understandably sad, scared, confused and angry.”
Hanmer is working to bring back some needed routine in their lives. As part of the IRC’s emergency relief effort, he’s forging links with local groups to establish structured activities in spaces where kids can play and feel safe again, and at the same time, provide needed support to their caregivers.
“The IRC’s experience in aiding children in conflict around the world is that it’s vital to create places for children to be children; where they can regain a sense of normalcy, control and comfort,” Hanmer adds. “So, that will be a focus of our work here.”
The IRC is also working to improve water, sanitation and hygiene in sites like this one where displaced families have found shelter.
