Living rough in Lebanon without medicine, electricity or fuel

Ahmad, his wife and four young children wake up day after day at dawn, when the humid heat of late July floods their small flat on the outskirts of Beirut as soon as the fan blades stop with the four- to five-hour blackout that recurs every morning.

For weeks now, government electricity has been reaching Lebanese homes for only one or two hours a day, while the companies that operate the private electricity generators ration supplies because of a shortage of fuel to run them.

"Government electricity doesn't even reach one hour a day, the rest is all from the generator and the generator is cut from 6am to 10am or 11am. All of us, including the children, get up at 6 a.m. because of the heat," Ahmad told Efe, sitting in the semi-darkness of his home in the Shatila refugee camp, a large Palestinian-populated neighbourhood.

The economic crisis unleashed at the end of 2019 in Lebanon, one of the worst worldwide in the past century and a half, has plunged more than half the population into poverty and the recent deterioration of the situation makes it almost impossible for this Palestinian family, whose only livelihood is Ahmad's carpenter's salary, to make ends meet.

"There are many things we can no longer buy, including chicken and (red) meat. A lot of things," he repeats.

His salary is about 2.4 million pounds a month, when a family of five needs at least 3.5 million pounds for food alone, or about five times the Lebanese minimum wage, according to estimates by the American University of Beirut (AUB) Crisis Observatory.

In a report published this week, the centre warned that the prices of basic foodstuffs have risen by more than 50 % in just one month, while a list of ten staple foodstuffs such as vegetables, dairy products and oil has increased by 700 % since mid-2019.

The AUB Observatory attributes food inflation to the loss of value of the local currency against the dollar, which has depreciated by more than 90 % in just two years.

Many pharmacies in Beirut remain closed due to growing shortages of medicines. "Why would they open? What are they going to sell? There are no medicines," laments a pharmacist in one of the few pharmacies open in the east of the capital.

The woman, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, says with visible frustration that only parapharmacy products are sold, which barely covers the shop's operating costs.

She explains that the shop has "nothing" to offer its chronically ill customers, as it only receives "one or at most two packets" of the medicines they would need, and not on a regular basis.

Pharmaceutical distributors have been accused of stockpiling their stocks to sell them at much higher prices when the government lifts subsidies on medicines and other commodities due to lack of funds.

For their part, the authorities have been blamed for defaulting on millions in subsidy payments to suppliers.

"If it wasn't for the fact that he knows that many families live off this pharmacy, the owner would have closed it down a long time ago," says the shop assistant.

Not far away, in the Mar Mikhael district, young Rudolf Saad tries to run the family grocery store as best he can.

He doesn't pay much attention to most products and concentrates on selling cigarettes and alcoholic beverages, which are the most profitable in this nightlife area.

"The price changes every day, I buy alcohol and tobacco every day so I know what price to put on them", he explains to Efe in view of the instability of the exchange rate on the black market, which dictates the cost of practically everything in the Mediterranean country, with a highly dollarised economy.

Most shops in the capital have stopped putting prices on products and are also coping with the disastrous consequences of power cuts: Saad has had to reduce his selection of dairy products to "a tiny amount" to prevent them from spoiling.

Taxi drivers, meanwhile, can only work on days when they can get fuel, the shortage of which causes kilometres-long queues at petrol stations, many of which close at midday after running out.

One taxi driver tells Efe that the last time he filled up he was only given 12 litres after waiting three hours. He laments that he usually loses half of his working day to get petrol, but he knows that the survival of his four children depends on the little he earns from driving.