Chickens after crisis

This is one of my most recent travel tails, from the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Northern Lebanon, where I'm currently working. For three months in 2007 the Lebanese army laid siege to the camp, in order to flush out members of the militant Islamist group Fatah Al Islam, who had established a base in the camp among the 27,000 Palestine refugees who had been living here for over 50 years. By the time the Government declared an end to the hostilities, over 95% of the camp, and large parts of the surrounding neighbourhoods had been totally destroyed. As such, UNRWA has begun rebuilding the camp, following a long period of removing all the rubble, which was made all the more challenging by the sheer number of unexploded ordinances and booby traps that lay in the ruins.

For the past two years, families that were displaced have slowly begun to return back to the areas surrounding the camp. There is little employment to be had, and the exam results for students are the worst in the country, due to the trauma and interruptions to their schooling during the conflict. On a visit to the camp one day, we stopped to get a snack, and this little boy was so excited to see some white people, and he wanted to show us his chickens. He tried to only open the door where they were kept a little way, but of course the chickens rushed out. He wasn't concerned by this at all, and spent a very happy few minutes playing with his feathered friends.