Last week I visited a few of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians living in tents across Lebanon for a piece I’m working on for Al Jazeera. These are people who are used to living in normal homes, like Zahira above, who is 23 years old and has three infant kids.
But now she and her family live with 1,000 people in a dirt field in the West Bekaa town of Jeb Janeen. There are few bathrooms and little to no food. All this misery is made worse by the incredible downpour we have seen over the last 12 hours–the first major rain of the season.
As you can see above, Zahira and her small family have barely any walls other than a few pieces of canvas held up with sticks. Her floor is a thin concrete slab, but it is only a few inches above the dirt ground.
So you can easily imagine how her tent and the hundreds of others across the Bekaa are totally flooded right now:
I met Zahira on a hot day last week and she was complaining that she didn’t have any sheets or blankets for the cold Bekaa nights. That was a dry day. I can’t imagine how much she and her children have suffered on this dreary soaking night.
