I really like Geography Now! The YouTube channel has almost 880K subscribers, and their mission is pretty straightforward. They do an overview about each country of the world, and have been doing that alphabetically. At the end of February, came Lebanon’s turn!

Here’s the video, and below I’ve put some comments on it.

For starters, Barby didn’t use the usual orientalist tone in talking about Lebanon, but actually tried to cover a lot of the complicated things about the country, but in a simple enough way so people who probably can’t even find us on a map will still kinda get it.

They did a good job of showcasing the geography and positive stuff, like loads of history and culture, our food (hummus was suspiciously missing), skiing and swimming on the same day and of course our clubbing.

They also did a good job highlighting some of the negatives, and I felt they were a bit too kind on us when it came to the electricity outages and the unbelievably expensive price of electronics.

What was interesting is how many people self-identified as “Phoenician” vs “Arabs”, signifying the division that still bisects big chunks of our society: those wanting to relate to other Arabs, and those that want to distance themselves from them (Muslim for the former, Christians for the latter).

That, plus the fact the Lebanese diaspora is more than twice as large as the actual population in Lebanon, the refugee crises Lebanon has dealt with and other pertaining issues were also briefly explained.

A cute thing was in the “Friends” segment, where Barby highlighted how different sects consider different countries as their “BFFs” (Iran/Syria or Shia, Saudi for Sunnis and France/US for Christians). What was cool though, was the description of the special relationship between Lebanon and Egypt, the two countries that churn out the most content when it comes to Arab pop culture (movies, music, series, shows, etc.) That was an insightful commentary that isn’t always obvious at face-value, so kudos to that Barbz!

Anyway, what did you think of the video? I liked it honestly, it’s always good to see what foreigners think about Lebanon when they do enough research. You can see the differences between different Lebanese communities, and I liked how Geography Now! were well aware of that, and tried to show each side’s and the rationale behind each of those beliefs and opinions.