Trip to the south and Olio on visit

Tuesday I finally got down to the southern part of Lebanon, for the very first time. Early in the morning we got into the 4WD of Anne-Kathrine, who`s the head of the IFRC Delegation in the country. (The IFRC is the umbrella organization of all Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies.) It was a good thing that we had a solid car, since parts of the road felt a lot like bad Norwegian countryside roads with their large holes and sudden “floods.” We drove the beautiful route by the coast down to Tyre, with the sea and the shoreline on the right hand side, and the green hillsides with the typical arabic brickhouses on the left. In Tyre we just had the time to stop for a glass of juice and fresh bakery products. The Lebanese hospitality also granted me some extra sweets in my hand as I left, as a greeting for the visit. We continued our journey through the Lebanese landskape, and then stopped by a school, where we attended a theatreplay about taking care of the nature and the environment, performed by the Red Cross Youth. We also visited a Red Cross clinic that provides medical and social services. Both the school and the clinic were partly rebuilt after the bombs that fell over Southern Lebanon in 2006. We found the time to stop for a short, but sweet private visit as well, and here we were treated with fresh almonds from the garden trees and tea in tiny glasses. On our way back we were surprised by a rain- and hailstorm that dewed the windows and filled the road with water. Again I was happy about the choice of car made earlier in the day. Back in Beirut I could feel that it had been a long day, and by then we had also been out on mission for more that 10 hours. However, I still had enough energy to talk Anne-Kathrine into letting us babysit her little Jack Russel puppy the same evening, and just like that we suddenly had a wonderful and very energetic little Olio snooking around in the apartment. It was a new experience to walk a dog in the middle of a city like Beirut, and neither is it a common view in these streets. But, we did good, all three of us, and back in the apartment little Olio fell happily asleep on his blanket, after several rounds of jumping up on the couch and lifting down again. No matter what, there`s a lot of joy in a puppy, and I hope Olio will visit us again:)