❊Those Foreign Ladies Just Love to Share The Minutiae Of Lebanese Life

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a wave a foreign women in Beirut who just love to blog about the intimate details of Lebanese life

(Photo source)

Back in the old days, French explorer Alexis de Tocqueville traveled for years in the United states to write his famous book “Democracy in America” in which explained the USA in all its fine details to the French and to the rest of the world. More recently, in the world’s longest running radio show (60 years!), BBC reporter Alistair Cooke broadcasted a weekly “letter from America” in which he explained in fine prose life in America to the British.

Thankfully, in the age of blogs, you don’t need to be a supper power to have Alexis de Tocquevilles and Alistair Cookes scrutinizing your country. Tiny Lebanon has a fair amount of foreign residents who just can’t get enough of telling people back home about the very little things that make life in Lebanon so unique. The fact that most of them are of the fair sex is probably just a coincidence (or is it?)

Take American blogger Danielle, author of the blog This is Beirut. She recently wrote a post entitled: 40 things I learned in Lebanon, in which she explained how she learned the difference between gunshots and fireworks, that Lebanese men wear engagement rings and that Lebanese women wear stiletto heals to work among many other things (37 to be precise)

In a similar post, an anonymous Cuban lady blogger explained how you learn you’re “becoming a Beiruti” , by giving examples like:

When you no longer blink an eye at Philipino women dressed up as girls in frilly maids’ outfits as they walk their mistress’ poodle

and when

you spend at least eight minutes at the start of every conversation, even with a perfect stranger, asking after the health of every single family member.

And who doesn’t remember the Mexican lady who learned the difference between good phone numbers and bad ones in Lebanon? Or the South African girl who writes in exquisite details about life the capital and in the villages?

But they’re all newbies compared to Sietske, a Dutch woman who has been blogging about life in Lebanon for years. She recently wrote:

when [the Lebanese] think you’re from abroad and an ignorant tourist, you get to hear all kinds of ‘interesting’ things about society that they would not dare say to each other, or at least not that I can imagine

You can fool newbies, but you can’t fool Sietske.

One audience the ladies probably didn’t have in mind is the Lebanese themselves. We really can learn a lot about the world and ourselves when we read the accounts of those strangers who have made Lebanon their homes. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

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Note: Posts with titles starting with an ❊ (asterisk) are articles. I used this system to separate long posts from quick links and comments.