Amid Lebanon Blackouts, Dark Comedy Offers Glimmer of Light

Buildings are seen at night during a power cut in some areas in Beirut, Lebanon July 6, 2020. Picture taken July 6, 2020. (Reuters)
Buildings are seen at night during a power cut in some areas in Beirut, Lebanon July 6, 2020. Picture taken July 6, 2020. (Reuters)
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Amid Lebanon Blackouts, Dark Comedy Offers Glimmer of Light

Buildings are seen at night during a power cut in some areas in Beirut, Lebanon July 6, 2020. Picture taken July 6, 2020. (Reuters)
Buildings are seen at night during a power cut in some areas in Beirut, Lebanon July 6, 2020. Picture taken July 6, 2020. (Reuters)

Without electricity for air conditioning or fuel to reach the beach, two comedians are keeping cool in crisis-hit Lebanon by splashing around in an inflatable pool - in their living room.

“When the generator comes on, we’ll crank up the light to get a tan,” one of the women quips, part of a new wave of Lebanese opting to laugh in the face of disaster.

As the economic downturn deepens, Lebanese are increasingly turning to caustic comedy to mine humor from the everyday chaos, be it the rampant power cuts, hours-long lines at gas stations or the 90% currency devaluation.

“We’re showing how far we’ve fallen,” said Nathalie Masri, an advertising executive who launched the “Coffee Break” page with friend and associate Nadyn Chalhoub in 2018 with the tagline “Sarcasm is our means of survival”.

Their first posts were mostly social commentary, but when Lebanon’s financial collapse began a year later, the pair turned to the widespread daily shortages that shape daily life.

“Why do you need cooking gas? Just rub two rocks together and you’ll make a fire,” said Chalhoub in a May 2020 video.

Their “Lebanese 2021 Starter Pack” came with a logbook to track planned electricity outages in rationing and a generous handful of “anti-anxiety pills from abroad” - as most Lebanese pharmacies can no longer afford to stock them.

No laughing matter
Nor are they alone in finding humor in the new reality, with Lebanese social media awash with gallows humor.

The anonymous author of @Lebaneselira - whose Twitter bio declares “I’m collapsing” - posts quips about the lira’s volatile exchange rate on the black market.

WhatsApp chats, too, are filled with sardonic asides: jokes about the new “fashion trend” for half-ironed shirts amid all the power cuts or mock pride at Lebanon achieving zero carbon emissions as empty tanks keep cars home.

In a mock tutorial on Instagram, Farid Hobeiche shows his 156,000 followers how to turn fridges into extra clothes closets since blackouts had rendered them useless for food.

“It’s not about inspiration; it’s reality,” Hobeiche told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from his hometown of Ghazir, north of Beirut.

More than a jokey escape, he said the posts offer people a collective coping mechanism in a crisis the World Bank classifies as one of the worst in 200 years.

“I’m not doing comedy to make people laugh so hard that they pass out... But to make them feel hope - when they see someone still standing, still joking,” he said.

Countless studies show how humor helps the brain cope with hardship - even for Holocaust survivors or prisoners of war.

A 2014 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that “humorous complaining” could help people by reframing dire situations in a less negative way.

“When we share the pain and the reality, we cry together, but we can also laugh together at the absurdity of it,” said Shaden Esperanza, a stand-up comedian.

She has even joked about the exorbitant cost of imported feminine hygiene products, a subject that can still be seen as taboo in Lebanon.

“Viagra is subsidized by the government, but not tampons? I’ll gush blood all over you,” Esperanza repeated to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Darker days ahead
But with Lebanon’s economy in freefall, even its most playful observers feel it resembles a race to the bottom.

“What I used to be able to make fun of two weeks ago, I can no longer laugh at today - because the crisis is getting so much worse,” said Hobeiche.

Posting online may soon not even be an option, as shortages of fuel at telecomms centers have forced Lebanon’s state internet provider to cut connectivity in swathes of the country.

“I guess I’ll have to send my CV around,” he ribbed.

The “Coffee Break” hosts spoke to the Thomson Reuters Foundation from an office with no electricity, through a cellphone with a precariously dwindling battery.

The pair said they were considering working abroad as power and internet cuts had derailed work deadlines, while other shortages had prompted health worries for their young children.

“We want to be able to write, ‘I hope this email finds you well,’” joked Chalhoub.

“And have the email actually send,” Masri filled in.



Water Crisis Batters War-Torn Sudan as Temperatures Soar

People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
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Water Crisis Batters War-Torn Sudan as Temperatures Soar

People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)

War, climate change and man-made shortages have brought Sudan -- a nation already facing a litany of horrors -- to the shores of a water crisis.

"Since the war began, two of my children have walked 14 kilometers (nine miles) every day to get water for the family," Issa, a father of seven, told AFP from North Darfur state.

In the blistering sun, as temperatures climb past 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), Issa's family -- along with 65,000 other residents of the Sortoni displacement camp -- suffer the weight of the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

When the first shots rang out more than a year ago, most foreign aid groups -- including the one operating Sortoni's local water station -- could no longer operate. Residents were left to fend for themselves.

The country at large, despite its many water sources including the mighty Nile River, is no stranger to water scarcity.

Even before the war, a quarter of the population had to walk more than 50 minutes to fetch water, according to the United Nations.

Now, from the western deserts of Darfur, through the fertile Nile Valley and all the way to the Red Sea coast, a water crisis has hit 48 million war-weary Sudanese who the US ambassador to the United Nations on Friday said are already facing "the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet."

- No fuel, no water -

Around 110 kilometers east of Sortoni, deadly clashes in North Darfur's capital of El-Fasher, besieged by RSF, threaten water access for more than 800,000 civilians.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday said fighting in El-Fasher had killed at least 226.

Just outside the city, fighting over the Golo water reservoir "risks cutting off safe and adequate water for about 270,000 people", the UN children's agency UNICEF has warned.

Access to water and other scarce resources has long been a source of conflict in Sudan.

The UN Security Council on Thursday demanded that the siege of El-Fasher end.

If it goes on, hundreds of thousands more people who rely on the area's groundwater will go without.

"The water is there, but it's more than 60 meters (66 yards) deep, deeper than a hand-pump can go," according to a European diplomat with years of experience in Sudan's water sector.

"If the RSF doesn't allow fuel to go in, the water stations will stop working," he told AFP, requesting anonymity because the diplomat was not authorized to speak to media.

"For a large part of the population, there will simply be no water."

Already in the nearby village of Shaqra, where 40,000 people have sought shelter, "people stand in lines 300 meters long to get drinking water," said Adam Rijal, spokesperson for the civilian-led General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.

In photos he sent to AFP, some women and children can be seen huddled under the shade of lonely acacia trees, while most swelter in the blazing sun, waiting their turn.

- Dirty water -

Sudan is hard-hit by climate change, and "you see it most clearly in the increase in temperature and rainfall intensity," the diplomat said.

This summer, the mercury is expected to continue rising until the rainy season hits in August, bringing with it torrential floods that kill dozens every year.

The capital Khartoum sits at the legendary meeting point of the Blue Nile and White Nile rivers -- yet its people are parched.

The Soba water station, which supplies water to much of the capital, "has been out of service since the war began," said a volunteer from the local resistance committee, one of hundreds of grassroots groups coordinating wartime aid.

People have since been buying untreated "water off of animal-drawn carts, which they can hardly afford and exposes them to diseases," he told AFP, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Entire neighborhoods of Khartoum North "have gone without drinking water for a year," another local volunteer told AFP, requesting to be identified only by his first name, Salah.

"People wanted to stay in their homes, even through the fighting, but they couldn't last without water," Salah said.

- Parched and displaced -

Hundreds of thousands have fled the fighting eastward, many to the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea -- itself facing a "huge water issue" that will only get "worse in the summer months," resident al-Sadek Hussein worries.

The city depends on only one inadequate reservoir for its water supply.

Here, too, citizens rely on horse- and donkey-drawn carts to deliver water, using "tools that need to be monitored and controlled to prevent contamination," public health expert Taha Taher told AFP.

"But with all the displacement, of course this doesn't happen," he said.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, the health ministry recorded nearly 11,000 cases of cholera -- a disease endemic to Sudan, "but not like this" when it has become "year-round," the European diplomat said.

The outbreak comes with the majority of Sudan's hospitals shut down and the United States warning on Friday that a famine of historic global proportions could unfold without urgent action.

"Health care has collapsed, people are drinking dirty water, they are hungry and will get hungrier, which will kill many, many more," the diplomat said.