Need a break from work...

So it's a good thing it's christmas!!! Before I start complaining though, I wanted to share some pictures from Gibran Tueni's funeral of last week, which was a weird mixture between burial and festival. At first - we went there around 10 in the morning - the crowd was only moderately large and gathering in front of the An-Nahar building. A band was playing cheerful music. The man on the picture is obviously Tueni, and the caption reads "The difference between darkness and light...is the word", in reference to his very outspoken opposition to Syria. (That's right, I am asking you to note my improved Arabic skills(!), although I am not sure about the word 'darkness', I more or less made that up because it would be the logical opposition to 'light'... :) )
Then it got bigger and bigger though, and it was really quite hot waiting in the sun with a big crowd of people. Although the Tueni family and the families of the two people killed with him had explicitly asked for no partisan flags to be displayed at their funeral...people could not resist, obviously. Instead, some daring teenagers climbed to the top of this crane in order to wave their flags at the risk of death - Progressive Socialist Party, Kataib, Lebanese Forces were all there, basically the youth organisations of Lebanon's big sectarian parties operating at the national level. This is of course a somewhat sad metaphor for what is happening in Lebanon in general in terms of sectarian politics. I will come back to this in a minute with another example. This, however, is what I call an impressive victory sign:
As the morning wore on, the crowd grew thicker and finally it became obvious what everybody had been waiting for - the three coffins were taken to the An-Nahar building once all family members of the victims and a bunch of political figures had arrived. From there they (the coffins) were carried by procession to the nearby St Georges Cathedral for the funeral service.
Well, and since then everybody has been slightly on the edge, there were a few days of heavier-than-usual military deployment and of few people on the streets. Some people (the youth movements of the 'March 14'-bloc, i.e. mostly Christian and in opposition to Syria) were going to resurrect the permanent camp in Martyr's Square that had been set up after Hariri's death to protest the killings that are going on here, and to protest Syria in general. However, I go by there often when I go running and haven't noticed any major signs of it so far. Hmm...
The last weekend before Christmas was very intense in terms of work, we had a workshop in the mountain resort of Ehden, which is extremely popular in summer but almost empty during the winter.

Unfortunately the batteries of my camera died after this picture, so I cannot show you some of the more cheerful vistas of Ehden, which is really quite pretty. The next mountain chain after the one you see here is already all covered in snow, and that's were most of the skiing resorts are. Anyway, so this workshop was really exhausting but ultimately a great learning experience. We (i.e. my employer) were supposed to assist in the foundation of a new youth movement aimed at overcoming sectarian differences in Lebanon and the feudal structures that still dominate politics here. Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem: this youth movement is doing exactly the opposite, by perpetuating sectarian divisions (these people are really hardcore Christians and I doubt any of them have had a lengthy encounter with any Muslims - not a small feat considering more than half of the population here is Muslim) and employing the exact feudal family structures they claim to fight against. How this works is: whoever has the highest ranking within the family context (in this case, whoever is most closely related to or most friendly with the Moawad family) is king and gets to dictate everything everybody does (in terms of politics) without ever seriously being questioned. It was so depressing to witness this first hand, especially since this was a bunch of young people who could really try and change things if they wanted to. Well, maybe they'll do some good things for their own community, but I really have my doubts they'll be doing any of the other peacy stuff they're talking about.

Finally, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!