“Globalization at its Best”

The drive from Beirut to Wadi Al Jamus is quite a feast for the eyes. I had made the trip the day before with Burak, my traveling buddy, but our driver was more reckless than a New York City cabby on a hot summer day. One scarcely has time to enjoy the scenery while counting near death experiences on two hands. Once out of Beirut proper, you drive along a fairly straightforward coastal highway, whipping by all manor of roadside business my favorite being the casually sprinkled casinos with big gaudy signs and little Arabic coffee carts. The vendors of said carts serve their coffee in little plastic water cups. The rules of the road are loose, to say the least, and the familiar buzz of Vespas give the drive a bit of European flavor. As you zoom farther from the great metropolis that is Beirut, the buildings become more sparse and road offers amazing views of the crystal coastline on one side and mountains of the green on the other. When the road and its surroundings become increasingly more dusty, you know you are close to WAJ. You make a little turn off the main road and suddenly your ascending ever so slightly. You pass large covered fields and all kinds of old rusty cars, many of which have been striped and gutted for parts. The streets of WAJ greet you with some dodgy looking teenage boys. They kick around soccer balls, race round on scooters, and smoke cigarettes in that theatrical way that one only does as a teenager. Youth will be youth, and if they are the town ruffians then I know we are a long way from Brownsville.

Teo, reporting from Wadi al Jamus, Lebanon