Bambi would like to thank her friend Aline for sharing the TFI News documentary.
In this video shown below, you can watch Lebanese glass blowers (a Phoenician tradition, which is 3000 years old) recycling the MANY pieces of shattered glass from the surrealistic Beirut port explosion of August 4, 2020.
From products of destruction and death, they made Lebanese traditional water pitchers (called “Ibrik“) and creative Christmas decoration.
Although beautiful, it is moving as those shattered glass pieces have injured 6000 citizens, killed 204 others, made many families homeless, and scared so many more people in tiny, bankrupt yet always beautiful Lebanon.
One must say that it is very thoughtful of France to encourage those Lebanese artists by importing their Christmas decoration. As one Lebanese glass blower said, France has always imported their art products. Today more than ever in show of solidarity with the Lebanese people.
Bambi is thinking of her friend Jean from Sackville now. She asked back in August if such an initiative could be done in Beirut. Jean, if you are reading this post, you will be happy to have an answer to your excellent question on glass recycling.
After watching the TFI video below, if you wish, further below, you can hear a beautiful song from Corsica that two young Lebanese artists performed and dedicated to the victims of the Beirut port explosion. This production happened on September 21st, as reported by the Lebanese l’Orient Le Jour. Bambi discovered their talent only yesterday night before going to sleep. She was moved by the song, especially that she had visited the charming Corsica with her family. She loves the language and especially the music of this European Island. It always pulls on her heartstrings. Today more than ever.
To conclude this post, Christmas will always be Christmas, even when if it is filled with challenges or sorrow for our whole planet… and especially for Lebanon, which has more challenges before and beyond the pandemic.
Indeed, Christmas season is about hope and the joy of hope to the world, about love, about modesty too (check the way baby Jesus chose to come to the world…), about surprising a loved one with a gift or with a gesture of tenderness, and it is about knowing how to receive others’ love and attention. It is about gratitude too. Gratitude of being alive and of appreciating people’s kindness.
It is in this spirit that Bambi touched base with all her loved ones, seniors and younger, in Beirut on this Christmas to give them her best wishes for 2021 (sadly, not in person this year). It was hard for her to wish them a Merry Christmas, that is with the word “Merry” (many are grieving or just struggling), but she found her own words to express what she meant. They even managed to sarcastically joke, and remember to be grateful.
It is Bambi’s hope that Lebanon has reached it lowest point in 2019-2020. It is now time to begin its’ journey toward recovery! This being said, unfortunately, one must remain realistic, no new government there yet… and even if they will have elections sometime soon, they are stuck with the same corrupt and useless leaders. They are also stuck with powerful people whose ideology is larger than their love of their OWN country. They are also stuck in a tough geopolitical place. Without a political will to keep the country as neutral as it can be (i.e., at equal distance to all those sharks around it), Lebanon remains one of the most vulnerable tiny countries of our world.
To conclude this post on a more optimistic note, there is a French saying about how smaller people/entities must be “smarter” in order to survive (“le plus petit doit être le plus malin“). Please Lebanon, be that clever small country!
