Beyond the Blues: Story of a Whole Nation
Tags: Beirut Explosion, Corona, Lebanon, Economic Crisis

Beyond the Blues: Story of a Whole Nation

My name is Zaynab, from Lebanon. This is my first story on Medium; and although I am more science oriented, I want to tell the world about the current situation here.

Lebanon is a small country in the Middle East that has been living the worst nightmare for the past year. COVID-19 pandemic has been a global concern since late 2019 affecting each and every person worldwide. The positive cases in Lebanon have been on the rise, with severe side effects and death cases going out of control. The medical sector is still striving to make it through; hospitals overwhelmed and medical supplies very limited with a staff that is overworking and underpaid. The tragedy however doesn’t end at the door of the hospitals; it reached our homes and workplace. The lock-down, despite being the most efficient solution at the moment, is tough on all of us. Whether jobs that became from-home tasks, or classes attended through zoom meetings and several other changes that are not easy to adapt to. Worse, are those who are left temporary unemployed with no income. The examples are countless. However, such misfortune is not exclusive to our lifestyles, it got our mental health at a stake. Fear, anxiety, insomnia, and isolation made our regular days feel like hell. A year passed already, and we are yet not able to handle the lock-down. After a whole year, we still don’t know how to spend our days at home, how to occupy our time. Being forbidden to get out of our homes feels like prison. Modern prison. It’s like living a nightmare that we can’t wake up from, at least not yet. Even with current vaccines reaching our hospitals, a lot of people refuses to get vaccinated, which leaves us questioning, how longer is this pandemic gonna last?

With all this, you think it can’t get any worse, right? But it actually did. At the same time when the virus was spreading, an economic crisis was hitting Lebanon. The Lebanese pound lost more than 80% of its value over the past year. Minimum wage that was equivalent to 450$ now dropped to 56$!! Worse than living with less than 60$ a month is the fact that everything became so expensive, even in-affordable for many. Food, housing, schools, fuel, medication, groceries, cloths, etc.. Everything that you can need/use on daily basis witnessed price increase in unreasonable rate. The significant fluctuation in the prices is left unsupervised by the authority. Up till now, no clear action plan or strategy has been adopted by the state to get out of this pit.

Living with the pandemic and economic crisis became the daily routine for a Lebanese citizen. When we were struggling to ensure our essential needs and doing the best we can to protect ourselves and beloved ones from getting the virus, Beirut blast hit us all on the head. On the 4th of August, 2020, the city witnessed one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history, which was equivalent to 3.3-magnitude earthquake. Beirut blast was felt across the neighboring countries and even heard in Cyprus. 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely at the port of Beirut exploded causing at least 200 deaths and around 5,000 injuries with property damages exceeding 20 billion dollars. Team from University of Sheffield estimated that the explosion equals 1,000 to 1,500 tons on TNT, which is around 10th the intensity of the nuclear bomb dropped in 1945 in Hiroshima. After this tragedy, the government resigned and till today, we are without a new government.

So where are we at as a nation? We are currently short in medical supplies and our hospitals are overwhelmed due to increased COVID-19 positive cases with very slow rate in the vaccination process. No action plans have been taken regarding the economic crisis and experts do expect things to get even worse if we are left without government. Eight months passed since the blast and still no one was held responsible. Several bodies are still not found, thousands were left homeless, and a whole country is still traumatized. How would it feel to live through all this? We live with fear, anxiety, and insecurity. We worry too much about the basic human needs that we forget to think about our future and careers. At the moment, our primary goal is to survive, just survive.