Poverty shoots up as Lebanese economy fails

Residents of Lebanon's poorest city, Tripoli, are in despair as the country faces a terrifying confluence of events.

An unprecedented economic crisis, nationwide protests and coronavirus restrictions are posing the biggest threat to stability since the end of the civil war in 1990.

Nowhere is the pain felt more than in Tripoli, hometown of Faiqqa Homsi, a mother of five who feels her family is being pushed closer to the edge.

Homsi was already struggling, relying on donations to care for a baby daughter with cancer.

Her husband lost his meagre income driving a school bus after the pandemic outbreak.

She hoped to earn some change selling carrot juice after a charity gave her a juicer. But as Lebanon's currency collapsed, carrots became too expensive.

When anti-government protests first broke out in October, Tripoli was labelled the "bride" of the uprising.

Daily rallies in the city center ran late into the night offering protesters elsewhere inspiration and motivation.

Protests have now quietened.

But Linda Borghol, an activist who started a soup kitchen during the protests, negotiated to keep the kitchen going after troops broke up the protest camp when coronavirus restrictions began.

She now distributes 600 meals a day to the poor and plans to continue her work.

Bab al-Tebanneh, one of Tripoli's poorest neighbourhoods, has always been a destination for Lebanese to fix a broken car or wooden door at low cost.

For Mohammad Al-Rawi, a blacksmith and carpenter, the pandemic meant that his shop was closed for almost two months.

"Some people have sold their wives' gold to (be able to buy food and) eat, is this a life?" he said.

In the same area, Abdulhakim Al-Ayash, a furniture factory owner, said he had to lay off all of his workers.

Even before the crisis, most of Tripoli's workforce depended on day-to-day income, and more than half of them made less than $1 a day, below the national average of $5.

In the current climate, things look set to get even worse before they get better.