Community oven serves up meals and dignity in blast-hit Beirut
AMMAN: When a huge blast tore through Beirut on Aug. 4, Rawda Mazloum decided to move the giant oven she was using to cook for refugees in the Bekaa Valley to assist residents of the devastated capital. Today, the stove that has helped feed thousands of refugees and rehabilitate former fighters as part of a community cooking project, sits in a relief centre in Beirut and provides hot meals to people left homeless and destitute by the explosion.
“When the blast happened, I decided to prepare quick meals and pastries. We took boxes of water and masks and went to the site of the blast,” said Mazloum, a refugee from Syria who has been in Lebanon since 2014. “Beirut has given me so much, I feel it’s personal to me. It felt good to be able to offer them something,” she said. Mazloum, 43, had been leading the preparation of meals for about 50 refugee and host community families through the Great Oven project, which encourages marginalised communities to cook together.
The elaborately painted two-tonne oven - which requires a crane to be transported - ended up under Mazloum’s stewardship in the eastern Bekaa Valley in March, when the coronavirus dealt another blow to Lebanon’s battered economy. Launched by Spanish-Irish chef James Gomez Thompson and Lebanese news producer Nour Matraji almost two years ago, the Great Oven initiative set out to help reintegrate former fighters and young militants in the northern city of Tripoli.
Sectarian violence still flares up in and around the city 30 years after the end of Lebanon’s civil war, but the project has brought together old rivals, including former prisoners, to learn new skills and foster community ties. “We were trying to think of anything creative that they can also develop as a skill,” Matraji said. “They need to self-sustain... so we came with the oven, we train, we teach. We also link them up with the food donors so we make sure they’re getting a steady flow of free ingredients,” she added.
The blast in Beirut port, which killed about 200 people and left 300,000 people homeless, exacerbated Lebanon’s difficulties amid a financial crisis that has sharply devalued its currency and pushed half the population into poverty. Dozens of other grassroots initiatives have sprung up to help those affected by the explosion, offering aid to rebuild ruined homes and provide emergency shelter and food. As donor fatigue sets in globally during the COVID-19 pandemic, Thompson said the oven project embraced a more sustainable way of helping people in need.