Ginger Without Borders

Recently I posted a photo showing Zouheir and I’s almost-trip-to-Israel. I thought ya’ll deserved the full story: (PLUS a bonus audio retelling of this story [complete with lots of nervous laughter], because the only way I could figure out how to audibly tell it was to tell it to myself – though, warning, it was really hard to explain this story so it isn’t my best quality).

So what had happened was…… We were trying to drive to the beach for the day. There is a beach that Zouheir really likes to go to, and this beach is close-ish to the Israeli border but he just didn’t really think about it (Lebanon is so small, pretty much everywhere you go is close-ish to a border). So we are driving along and we get there, (side note, it is currently the off season, and the place we were trying to go to literally doesn’t exist during the off season…but we didn’t know that) and it is basically just an empty beach – with some locals – but there is nothing, absolutely nothing. It is just a flat patch of land, a sand dune, and then the actual beach (plus some trash thrown around because, well, all of Lebanon has trash thrown around – still a beautiful country, though, don’t get me wrong).

So, we are looking around and looking around, and we are thinking ‘Well, google maps has gotten us wrong before, we nearly went to Syria yesterday (a story for another day), so maybe google maps got us wrong again.’ We decide that we can walk to the beach and see if maybe we see anything from there. At this point I desperately need to pee so all I want is to just find a place that I can pee.

So we walk onto the beach and there is nothing. Absolutely nothing. And we both look at each other super confused. But there is a town in the distance and in my mind I’m thinking ‘we are not walking to this town’ – Zouheir wanted to walk to this town and that was not happening – so instead, ‘why don’t we get in the car and we drive there, so then when we get to the town we will figure it out, we’ll at least be able to ask directions.’

We get in the car, we drive along, we keep driving because we can’t figure out how to get to this town, we keep driving and then we get to a military checkpoint. In Lebanon, military checkpoints are fairly common along roads (there is one super close to Zouheir’s house – its actually part of the reason that ISIS has never been able to take hold in Lebanon), but this one is more intense and we realize it is actually a military base type thing that was also connected to a checkpoint.

So we get through and we keep driving, and there are banana fields everywhere, and I look over and I see a UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) tent – and I’m a nerd, so I know exactly what they look like – and I’m like ‘ummmm, I don’t think I saw what I thought I saw.’ So we keep going a little bit further. I see another one. And then another one. So I say “Zouheir – we’re in a refugee camp” and Zouheir responds “Nahhh”, and I counter, “Yeahhhh, we’re in a refugee camp, we should probably turn around.” So he is like “yeah, well we are not really getting anywhere” – because in front of us is nothing, absolutely nothing, just banana farms.

So we turn around, and this is a very fast – what in America would be a state highway with one lane for each direction but cars going 60+ miles per hour (90km per hour), and no one wants to stop and let us turn around. And there is no actually place to stop and turn around. But there is no reason for us to keep going when we are like ‘we are driving into a refugee camp, this is a bad idea.’ So we finally turn around and go back through the check point, go back to where google maps had originally sent us, and we’re thinking ‘okay, we’ll go the opposite direction; we’ll go to the town right next to us.’ And it turns out it is a very beautiful town. It’s called ‘Tyre’, and it has a very resort-ish, beach front – (not as nice of a beach as the one we were originally going to) but still beach front -restaurants and hotels and walkway.

So we are driving along trying to find a parking spot and we see United Nations blue helmets – which is pretty much anyone who works in a peacekeeping mission, but these weren’t normal peacekeeping mission, this was military peacekeeping mission (because again, I’m a nerd and I know what they look like). And I’m thinking ‘ummmm, wait what? Why is the UN here? And military UN no less?’ Early we had seen a UN van, so my brain had already been on – ‘Where are we? Why is the UN here?’ We keep driving and we see another UN van.

So we have to turn around, and we have to go back by the Blue Helmets, and Zouheir is telling me ‘you can’t take a photo of them, like you absolutely can’t’ – which makes sense. Potentially there could be repercussions on the workers should there be photos of them out there. But I still have my phone out and I’m thinking ‘ahhh I how they don’t think this is me taking a photo of them.’

Finally we park, and we decide that we are going to go try to find a place to eat – because I still desperately need to pee, but all of the excitement has kind of put that on the backburner for now. So we are walking around trying to figure out where to eat, but I am intrigued so I want to walk towards the blue helmets. Because they are just chilling in their giant military van, just sitting on it with another van next to it (which I thought was the UN HCR people but we actually figured out it was Lebanon tourism people who were wanting to shoot a video but they couldn’t until the Blue Helmets left). So we walk by them – and we end up finding some beautiful Roman ruins. Only could not figuring out how to actually get in to the Roman ruins so we give up, turn around, and walk back to the restaurant area. Eventually we decide we can’t find anything good to eat so lets just each burgers (in Lebanon, because why not).

The restaurant was very nice. It has a terrace overlooking the beach, and it has wifi so we can google stuff while we are eating. So we start investigating. And we realize:

1. We are right by the Israeli boarder.
2. There is a refugee camp right next to us.
3. There is a UN mission that has been here for 40 years and that is what we saw.

But the reason we figured C out was that multiple UN trucks drove by while we were sitting, eating, and the license plate has the UN mission’s name and then numbers at the end of it. So me being a nerd, I knew when I saw ‘UNIFIL’, I knew exactly what that meant, so I googled it. So I’m like ‘ohhh, we are technically in a place that the UN thinks needs monitoring. That’s cool. That’s cool. Yeah that’s not…that’s cool.’ And Zouheir realizes something even better.

Technically in Lebanon Hezbollah is a political party, not a terrorist organization. So we are actually in a Hezbollah political area, which is also like ‘wait what???’ Because I’m still not getting used to that.

But yeah. So we didn’t die. We realized the actual area we were driving towards was Israel, and it was a good thing we turned around because we were coming close to being near that border, BUT (insert nervous laughter) when traveling with me…

P.S. Dad – I’m still alive. And I have some crazy ass stories to tell you.