When I left lebanon a few months ago things were bad, the economic crisis was only getting worse
but now an entirely new crisis has emerged. We cannot work, we cannot go to our jobs and
act like everything's fine, you know, i might lose my jobs if things escalate, and it's not up to
me it's not because of my performance or anything it's because it's a shitty situation and we cannot
do anything about it. I work in sports so we close the gym due to the power issue we're facing. The
situation is very bad in lebanon because there is no electricity no water... We paid like
four times the amount of the usual tank of gas it's crazy it's been affecting my mental health so
the best decision for me now is to take the first opportunity to leave the country.
People have gotten used to it in a way and it's kind of sad. The water is freezing i
can't even like take a shower because the water is freezing and there's no power. War at least,
we had our basic needs you know it was hard it was scarce but we had them we could find ways
to get bread we could find ways to move around we got fuel you know now it's like it's like
a slow burn. Lebanon is facing a huge economic crisis but recently the crisis has become much
bigger and much worse some parts of lebanon are dark going without electricity for 20 hours a day.
Now it's experiencing severe diesel and petrol shortages. This doesn't just mean
hours of long gas lines and extended blackouts but unfortunately guns knives fights and even
a fight that broke out causing a gas tank to explode with dozens dead or injured.
This story is about so much more than waiting in line for gas for two or three hours it's about a
country in limbo. It's about patients who can't get medicine, hospitals that are threatening to
shut down because they don't have electricity and a young generation who can't really work
or go to school even online when the lights are off. Are you- are you waiting for gas right now?
Yes. How long have you waited?
Two hours. So you actually park your
car here the night before you walk home and sleep and then you come back to your car in the morning?
In the morning yeah. Three times a week?
Yes. Wow...
For like about two three hours every day you have to wake up in the morning
and search for a gas station and it depends on your luck either they will open or they
are closed and then you have to search for another gas station around two hours and half.
What i did not expect this morning was to see military and police at the gas station and we're
actually kind of hiding because they don't like that they will grab phones if they see people
filming they don't want commotion they don't want chaos just to make sure that there isn't like
too much chaos and fighting going on because as you can imagine if you're waiting in line
every day for a few hours just to get gas just to do something that you used to do within five
ten minutes people are angry people are really upset they're paying more than they've ever had
to pay they're waiting for simple things that they used to not have to wait for
businesses in lebanon are very quick to adapt so much so that restaurants now even regularly
deliver food directly to your car as you wait in line to fill up your tank we are in the head.
if anybody can help really when it's people relax them in any way and it's it's not we can't live
like this you can't survive in this way. It's depressing man it's depressing... like
total shit. We don't have a solution we don't have anything those are depressing lebanese
people are used to everything. Is that bad or good?
Bad..what should we do? Out of all of the people i've interviewed not
one person has even mentioned the word kovid which just goes to show how low on the list of concerns
that is for people here in this country right now. I left my husband at the hospital alone,
he's in a very critical case. I left him alone because i have to to fill my car.
Your husband is in the hospital? Yes, and all the night I didn't sleep.
Aside from basic transportation turning into a nightmare basic electricity has also become hard
to come by here in lebanon the government entity was never able to provide 24 7 electricity so
lebanese have been using generators for decades this means many people here often essentially
pay to electricity bills but now even generator companies aren't able to offer enough electricity
that would fill in the gap for its customers Hello darkness my old friend...
So I'm in this area of beirut called Burj Hamoud where you have a lot of working class families.
I'm about to go into this spice shop which surprisingly i'm feeling a nice flow of air
conditioning lighting and i just want to see what it's like for them right now given the situation.
The situation is very bad in lebanon because there is no electricity no water there is
nothing. It's so bad. there is no gasoline there is no no medicine there is no milk for children.
No life. No what? No life. We can't say anything you know?
So it hurts business? Of course! It hurts everything you know,
for example for a couple of days i came by bike, my son's bike. You know the song 'Hello Darkness
My Friend' that's for the lebanese people and there's another song 'Hotel California':
we can watch out anytime we like but we can never leave we can watch through youtube facebook
instagram but we can never leave we are all hostages here, we are prisoners here.
It sucks I've seen people waiting for five, six, seven hours trying to get gas then the guy walks
out and said there's no more gas I'm a baker i shoot to come at the
morning time five o'clock there's no electricity how i can work believe me it's very very real
problem this one we don't have any other choices. All of this is only adding to what the country is
already going through which is a massive currency crisis so just to give you an example a kilo of
meat used to cost 16,000 lira just two years ago. Today that will cost you almost 200,000 lira.
Today in Lebanon, almost four and five people are estimated to be in poverty but way before the
gas crisis the country was already in trouble so how did this all get so bad in less than a year.
The Lebanese currency dropped a lot for decades it was one dollar equaled 1,500 Lebanese lira
but it's gone off the rails. That value no longer really exists and what's now used is called the
black market rate which fluctuates like crazy even going to 20,000 lebanese lira for every one dollar
all this means. That this 100,000 banknote used to be worth more than 60 dollars, and now at times
is worth less than five dollars. While wages of course didn't change this drastically so everyday
items like bread or milk have surged especially compared to spending power because of all this
the Lebanese government has been subsidizing the price of fuel to ensure that it continues to have
it but now the government is running out of money fast so those subsidies are ending so now on top
of a currency crisis and gas shortages customers have to pay a lot more just to fill up their tank.
I'm walking through Mar Mikhael right now which is a area in beirut that's notorious for restaurants
for cafes for bars it's the nightlife hub of beirut and it's already been challenged because
of the explosion in 2020 and now many of the businesses as you can see are completely without
power not even generators are working for them for most of the day so imagine being a business owner
and not being able to have a refrigerator not being able to turn on lights or internet or music
for your customers. I'm actually really curious so I'm going to go try and talk to some of these
local business owners and see how they're coping we're seeing less customers because of the
electricity and no fridges no freezers you have to open it seven because i know what's it been like
as usual dark. We don't have electricity
we can't do anything we can't prepare my bar and no clients... Yeah it's difficult it's not good.
I just talked to some people who work at this bar and it traditionally would open
at four o'clock you would see a decent sized crowd but now it can't open until
seven because they have no electricity I'm gonna go check out one of my favorite
dessert places in beirut let's see if it's even open. Wow there's actually people in here
a little bit of light
Wow they actually ha.ve ice cream how do you have ice cream but no electricity
So they actually just have electricity especially for the ice cream the only things
that have electricity are the freezer for the ice cream the music and I guess the cash register.
Pretty much right on cue right at 7pm the lights turned on it was really quite interesting to see,
but some people tell me that on some nights the lights don't actually come on until 8 pm
so imagine trying to run your business thinking you're finally going to get electricity
at 7:00 pm but it actually doesn't happen until 8 or maybe even later.
I don't know if it's ever going to go back to what it was honestly.
Just give us electricity like that's all we want electricity and gas.
This is Nahlan. She's an entrepreneur based in Beirut who owns several bakeries throughout the
city it's really really really tough running a business right now in Lebanon. Like as
hard as we're pushing they we reached a point where it's just it's suffocating
honestly but she's had to completely shut down operations as a result of the electricity cut.
This is usually filled with creams and fillings and as you can see they're it's empty right now
apart from your production say okay you get electricity here and you're producing
then you have drivers with no fuel to be able to deliver orders so you have orders being stacked
up orders being laid customers cannot come because they don't have fuel either it's like
you're playing a video game and you're like on the hardest level like that's where you are in lebanon
honestly because you cannot focus on progressing your brand you cannot focus on creating new stuff
you're just focusing on problems with electricity problems with drivers so you're not focusing on
growing a brand here anymore it's literally just survival mode in this country despite
everything going on she said she's going to stay open I worked so hard to reach where i am I was
a girl in an arab country I defied everything, I did not let anything stand in my way so whatever
I'm going through now i'm not going to stop . I had many dreams like I will build a company in
this country or a startup to have a small impact on my country but right now my only dream is to
have a Visa for outside of this country. Nader is a university student in Lebanon.
My dad is jobless, my mom doesn't work and my sisters are like younger than me.
In addition to being a full-time student to support his family he works at an internship
and full-time at a call center he even does video editing which pays the best of all
but he's recently had to turn down the work because of the electricity crisis.
So if i want to have an extra job or like a freelance job i can't edit my videos my photos
it may like break my pc or like we have like two days ago our tv was burned.
Now he mostly thinks about how he can leave the country. My only wish is to unite
to fight this corruption. But fighting the corruption
has been tried and tried again despite protests and riots little here has changed.
I do want to leave I'm OK. I have a nice job, I can still survive
but I always think about leaving as well. One of the hardest parts for me is
having to watch all your friends leave, they're all leaving and I don't know if I
will be one of these people leaving soon... I have a French passport, I'm privileged
enough to have a French passport, I can leave Lebanon whenever I want, but I stayed here
so much longer than what I should have and it took a huge toll on me with my mental health I think.
And you know you fight for your country in every possible sense you try to give
hope and positivity to people. Do you think it will get better?
It will get better but it will take time so all I want to do is graduate and leave. KHALAS.
The lebanese have been through a lot just look at history today they're known for being resilient
they're known for adapting but many people here tell me that those qualities are no longer
something to be proud of. It's kind of scary the way we adapt,
I'll talk about myself we just adapt and we keep on going just
accommodate somehow and we try to do our best. What do you think happens next?
I don't know. But we are praying about the situation and the
government doesn't care anything about people. There's this metaphor when you throw a frog
like a boiling water: this frog right away is gonna jump off this this saucepan you know
but if you put the if you put the frog in a warm water and you start
raising the temperature and the water starts boiling the frog is not going to jump out of the
out of the boiling water because it's harder you get used to this this boiling heat and you
don't realize that it's getting deadly to you you know and lebanon is like that just going downhill
little by little and there's no solutions no there's no there's no one giving any solutions