I’m on my way to meet Rashid El Mansi in Sabra, one of the Southern suburbs of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Thousands of Syrian families have sought shelter in Beirut, many of them in the urban camps and settlements of Palestinian refugees established in the 50s and 60s. Rashid El Mansi is working for Popular Aid for Relief & Development (PARD), a partner organization of CARE International in Lebanon. We are assisting in a distribution of Hygiene and Baby kits to Syrian women. In this neighbourhood of only a few streets, PARD registered 525 Syrian families that desperately need support. With financial assistance from the Canadian Humanitarian Coalition, CARE and PARD have been able to support 180 households to improve their water supply, lead three cleaning campaigns, and conduct 36 health and hygiene educations sessions through a network of PARD staff and volunteers.
For Syrian refugees it is quite difficult to understand how things work here in this city that is so close to their homes in Aleppo, Damascus, Homs and others but at the same time so very different. “Back home we had two water systems in our houses: one for drinking water and one for other uses,” says Yousra, a young Syrian women who is receiving one of the kits we are distributing. “Here in Beirut we only have one water tap on the entire floor of the building – sometimes there is no water at all. How can we manage to get water to drink and cook but also to take care of our dignity?”
“Dignity” – a word, a value, a human state that one would not immediately associate with a toilet. But think about it: in my home country Germany, toilets are called a “Stilles Örtchen”, a small, private place. Some even have little heart-shaped holes in the door and a little sign “Do Not Disturb” … We cherish this little place often filled with comic books, various journals, sometimes we even listen to music and can read jokes written on the toilet’s wall. It has to be clean and nice. The guest toilet is the flagship of many homes. Here in Beirut amongst the Syrian refugees who have seen the horrors of war and displacement, having a clean toilet means so much more than just personal comfort. “Women sometimes consider it as a personal failure if their families are forced to live in an unclean environment,” empathizes Dalia Sbeih, CARE’s Liaison Officer in Lebanon. “I will always remember the Syrian woman for whom the worst part of being a refugee was the smell: ‘It always smells bad,’ she said. Cleanliness is a crucial component of human dignity in the region and you can go to a very poor household that has nothing but still everything will be perfectly clean.”
From a Palestinian Syrian-French family herself Dalia understands well the pressures on these Syrian women dealing with the challenges of keeping the toilets, kitchen, floors, beds and baby bottoms clean every day. In the overpriced apartments in these Palestinian neighbourhoods of Beirut with an infrastructure crumbling under the ever growing population this is a huge and often impossible mission. In many cases, the toilet is close to the kitchen, it is narrow, there is neither running water nor ventilation and everyone – children, women and men – have to use the same toilet. Sometimes more than 20 people are using the same toilet.
We are standing in a supermarket where Syrian families come to collect the Hygiene and Baby kits. They are nicely packaged and piled up in a large corner just besides the usual long shelves with food and basic household items. The shop owner has organized everything in a way that Syrian women will not feel ashamed when collecting them. “We want them to feel like they are shopping like they used to shop in Syria. They receive vouchers for the kits, some of them also have vouchers for food.” Rashid explains. “It is important for them to not feel stigmatized.” We check the content of the Hygiene and Baby kits: four rolls of toilet paper, two toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, dish detergent, bath towel, three packs with 20 sanitary pads for women, garbage bags. The kits for the babies contain diapers in different sizes (90 per baby), baby lotion and disinfectant soap. While we are checking the kits, a few Syrian women are watching us, smiling and giggling. They are probably not used to see men making so much fuss over these things which are usually a female domain. When Rashid hands over the kit to one of the women, Halima , she is still smiling, but more timid and humble. “Thank you” she says. “Thank you. Today I will get some dignity back for my family.”
There it is again this mysterious and often overused word: Dignity! A clean toilet, with a door that closes, with water to be able to perform the basic cultural and religious gestures, that girls and women can use without being harassed or ashamed, where children can learn the basics of personal hygiene … all that seems so normal – a non-brainer – for us. Here, amongst the Syrian refugees in Beirut, it is a symbol of a big step back to normality and dignity.
“I like my toilet spacy, painted in nice colours, quiet and clean.” Rashid smiles when I ask him what a toilet means to him. “A toilet is so much more than just a toilet. It is an important place!” I could not agree more.
To read more about our work with Syrian refugees, please click here.