Lebanon´s mountains
I´ve just come back from Manta Rota and I´m pissed:
other beach is being rented grain after grain to private companies!
There were five years I dind´t go to that small
village —a real Eden when I discovered it— and now the whole of it is extremely
focused to the tourism. Yes, dear reader, we have to bear that the public
services are managed by sidekick businessman and filling his belly with what
belongs to everyone.
On the one hand it´s true that dunes and the Ria —the camomile scent captived me— have
been conserved by the town council but, on the other hand, many activities are
subcontracted: sand is sowed with renting parasols and deckchairs forcing the
less wealthy families to vie for two square metres of soil where placing the sunshade
in. What about car park? Formerly you could arrive to a totally free area, now
there are private parkings which cost a fortune.
So I get home, I have a shower and eat a sandwich and
I look at the newspapers.
What am I with? with that if in Portugal
(and of course in my country) they rent the sand, in Lebanon they sell them,
they take the stones from the quarries, they cut the forests and they sell it
to the highest bidder, leaving a desolate landscape where once sacred trees
grew. And for what? to build new neighbourhoods for
tourists. Some Lebanese believe that at this rate, soon the only remaining
cedar will be the flag of the country.
And you, reader spare me, you will think that Lebanon
has more and harder problems, and you´re right, you´re right; what the matter
with a quarry more or less.
Maybe you´re right, however, as long as there are
people like Elias Saadeh and his companions, I will be with them.
Save Mayrouba!
If you´re thinking that that money is allocated in
order to improve the citizens lives, their education, their health, the
cleaning of the beach… perhaps you forget there are other many ways of getting those
revenues and that it is not those who have more money who benefit the most.
We live in an extremely polarized society and often we
forget that the virtue is in the middle. The town council, the state, must care
so that the social gap doesn´t grow. In my opinion, the privatization of
commercial activities should be done with the utmost care and there should be
the rulers as incorruptible guardians to control abuses. But if in the same
governments are those interested in bribes, frauds and marmeladas…
It could be that people like Elias Saadeh and the
majority of neighbours from Mayrouba and Tarshish don´t like to loss an enclave
which belonged their parents for generations in return for a bunch of tourists.
In the real case of Lebanon, the church has a lot of power and parishioners and
non-parishioners would be grateful that this institution had an accurate
decision.
Meanwhile, hundreds, thousands of trees will fall downed
by saws.
From my Borstal.
LDR
No comments:
Post a Comment