Simon in the Middle East: Beirut

I am reluctant to write too much about what life in Beirut is like, lest I am accused of selling out or murdered by a bitter humanitarian worker who was sent on a deployment where you can't watch rock legends live in concert or drive an hour to go skiing with a sea view. Therefore I won't mention the Guns n Roses show or the quality of the snow in the mountains.

On my first weekend in Beirut a colleague invited a few of us to watch her judge a tattoo contest in a nightclub. No tattooing was conducted – instead the contestants revealed their tattoos and explained their origins in the Lebanese mixture of English, French and Arabic. The more attractive or drunk ones danced about a bit. There was a stunning likeness of Lenin on one fellow’s shoulder, rubbing cheeks with Che Guevera, and another had Lenin on his chest. I don’t know if the Beirut tattoo scene is a hotbed of communist thought; in fact the second one could also have been the Argentine footballer Juan Sebastian Veron so I won’t speculate further.

A few days ago the prime minister of Lebanon and his entire cabinet resigned, leaving the country without a government. Political turmoil is so familiar here that people barely noticed. Our security detail sent us each a text message warning us of celebratory gunfire from some factions and the other kind of gunfire from the other factions, and advising us to "avoid areas associated with political tension", so I guess we all have to leave the country.

I play football twice a week with a nice group in Burj Al Borajne, where Hezbollah hang out. Sometimes we hear deafening AK47 fire coming from behind a wall just beyond the touchline, but no one is bothered - it is just an arms dealer testing his wares.

I spent a pleasant couple of days at our office in Qubaiyat, in the hills by Lebanon’s northern border with Syria. When our field office here has visitors they are put up in the guest rooms of the Convent de la Paix, and I was disappointed not to pass gaggles of giggling trainee nuns on my way to breakfast.

Garish decor in my bedroom at the convent

We are distributing winter clothing and shelter kits to Syrians who have crossed the border in search of a land where bombs don't keep falling on their heads. Our logistics manager got sun-burnt at a winter clothes distribution recently which made us wonder whether a bikini and flip-flop distribution would be more appropriate, but it still gets cold at night in the mountains. To try and make it look like I'm actually doing useful work and not just smoking shisha and dancing on bars, here are some photos of a recent distribution in Qubaiyat.