Dahieh and Bourj el Barajneh

Big day today. Started at 9.30 for me with Jed and Andrea already up and well into breakfast. Twenty minute rush to get a cup of coffee and some biscottes before the taxi arrived to take us to our first appointment at the Assabil Library by the cemetery. There we meet the lovely Maha. She's looking very tired having been working hard in the south of the country for the last few days. She's in a couple of villages where there are still cluster bombs lying among the rubble and in the fields and of course kids are going in their and getting blown up. But if we want to go it will be safe. All the roads have now been cleared and as long as we don't stray off the beaten track we'll be ok.

She comes with us to our next stop: the library in the Christian part of town. A beautiful tranquil spot in the middle of a park. Here Assabil have, with much blood sweat and tears, built a haven of glass and wood flooring and light. And after mostly indiffernce from the municipality, the mayor turned up in all his finery to claim credit.

Later we go off to meet the Samidoun volunteers. This in a house with a garden behind it. But also a building site somewhere behind that. It's very noisy. All of Beirut is noisy. From early morning the cars hooting their horns. The cocks crowing. The generators going in the yard below? Generators? Why generators? Because, this morning there was a power cut for a couple of hours and the shops below where we live would lose the contents of their fridges.

And then, from time to time another sound. The Call to Prayers. But a beautiful sound.

At Samidoun we meet Ola, Hebba, Hanane, Maryam, Rami, Zahra (who cycles into the room on her bike), and others too many to remember. After an hour's meeting - a meeting of initial misunderstandings - we go to Dahieh, via the entrance to the Bourj el Barajneh Palestinian Refugee camp. And just as in London, just as in Hackney, poverty and wealth are only yards apart.

B el B is only minutes from a new motorway bridge they're constructing through town but at the side is what looks like the spoil heap of a quarry into which has been stirred bits of rubbish, old cars and metal, some of it going back what would appear years. But on top of this are new pictures, of Arafat, Sheikh Hassan and Rantissi from Hamas. As well as older more faded ones I don't recognise. Samar tells us that they never take any of these down, rather letting the weather have its effect.

Then a few yards further on, a right turn and we're going down a bit of road construction and below us on the sides of ten story blocks of flats huge banners of laminated plastic, celebrating Hezbollah's victory against the Israelis and beyond that another with an ironic message 'Made in USA' and a photo below of this area we're now approaching: Dahieh. The southern suburb. The Hezbollah stronghold.

Also, and I couldn't get any photos of this but I will, on the way in from the airport were similar images, this time on huge backlit advertising hoardings showing these and other images, including the one from Cana of the father holding up his dead child. Hezbollah have obviously got the money - and the necessary in with the people who rent out the bill-boards to take up all the prime locations that would, on the road out of Heathrow, say, be taken up by Coca Cola, Siemens, Sony and Panasonic. Influence!

Then, once we've passed beneath the posters and hung a couple of lefts and rights, we pull up in a little scruffy square with a battered astroturf football pitch. This is where we are to be located for the next four or five days.



We stay for an hour or more. The kids are as high as kites. English people. On their territory. And later Andrea tells me that at one point the guy who turns up on the scooter to sit and watch our baptism elicits cries from some of the kids: Hezbollah, Hezbollah! But he soon quietens them. Stays a little longer. And then goes off.

We go for a look round the wider area. Go into the lower part of B el B - a warren of alleys with children everywhere smiling at us, the younger ones peeking round the braver.

Later still we drive to the Corniche. To a bar by the sea. The sun is going down now, just metres above the irridescent horizon and here we have a meeting with the Samidoun volunteers to here more about the workshop I will be starting tomorrow night. It goes well. They seem keen, if a little nervous. They all want to know what they will be doing but I only give them the barest of details. I don't want to tell them the story before they come to the performance...

Penultimately, we go to a posh restaurant in the Christian quarter. Called Shtroumphf something. Something to do with the world of the Smurfs. But it's a 'green' restaurant.

I have a burger...

Then, finally, off to the internet cafe. But the connection speeds are snail-like and we manage to download and upload none of the photo. That has had to wait until this morning. And here we are. In Hamra. This place is high-speed. But 3000 lire per hour.

In an hour or so we go back to the football field. Jed and Andrea are to give their first workshops. I'll let you know how it goes.