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From Our Own Correspondent: Rebuilding Beirut one year after the blast: Renovation or more destruction?

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Rebuilding Beirut one year after the blast: Renovation or more destruction?

31/07/2021 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Rebuilding Beirut one year after the blast: Renovation or more destruction?

The Beirut neighbourhood trying to retain its history as the city tries to rebuild

Beirut is still struggling to rebuild, one year after a chemical blast destroyed much of the city. There are proposals for a new harbour, but locals fear it threatens their homes.

Stories from Lebanon, Mexico, Barbados and from the Olympics in Tokyo

How to rebuild? How to pay for it? A year after a chemical dump blew up in Beirut’s harbour, the Lebanese capital has barely begun the task of recovery. Lebanon’s economy was already on its knees, but the explosion, along with political instability and Covid have caused a financial meltdown. Even if money can be found to pay for rebuilding, it is an open question how to spend it. Tim Whewell found locals nervously wondering whether their way of life might be swept away by a bout of new construction.

Drugs like cocaine may be illegal in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, but they are also a mainstay of the economy. Nobody knows that more than cosmetic surgeon - gangsters, they say, like their wives and girlfriends to be nipped, tucked and if necessary stuffed with silicone, all to give them the “perfect body.” Linda Pressly visited the office of one local doctor, a man so devoted to his work, he performed cosmetic surgery on his own mother.

Later this year Barbados will become a republic and Queen Elizabeth II will no longer be head of state on the island, which was once part of the British Empire. This is part of an on-going effort to come to terms with the history of Barbados, and its slavery which lies at the heart of it. Barbados was the first British territory to be run on slavery, and for a time, the most profitable. Zeinab Badawi visited a former slave-owner’s mansion, there, to hear about slavery’s legacy, and attempts by campaigners to claim compensation for it. 

There is no bar to hang out in at the end of the night, no chance to party with celebrity athletes, and if you’re unlucky, you could end up locked down in your hotel room for two weeks. That is the life of a sports correspondent, covering this year’s Olympics in Tokyo. It is a far cry from the many other international sporting events which the BBC’s Alex Capstick has covered, and he tells us precisely why.

(Image: A soldier stands on rubble at the site of the Beirut explosion. Credit: EPA/Thibault Camus)

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