Bekaa Plain (Lebanon) (AFP)

In a small refugee camp nestled in the Bekaa, in eastern Lebanon, Mohamad and his three sisters fear losing another school year after almost two missed years because they cannot follow the lessons on the internet.

Like them, tens of thousands of Syrian and Lebanese children have been forced to drop out of school since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, in a Lebanon in the midst of economic collapse whose dilapidated infrastructure is not conducive to education. remotely.

"Look at my phone, how do you expect my son to study it? The screen is cracked (...) and I don't have internet", laments Abdel Nasser, Mohamad's father, sitting cross-legged in a modest "diwan" "- traditional living room with cushions on the floor - set up in his tent.

"We do not have the means to buy a telephone for everyone, we must first feed our children", adds his wife Chamaa.

At 11 years old, Mohamad does not know "even how to multiply 1 by 1", laments his father, a refugee in Terbol (east) with his family since 2012. The boy started school in 2019, seven years late, but classes were interrupted due to anti-coronavirus restrictions.

Her sisters Amal, Hind and Sarah - aged 12 to 14 years - followed for four years the afternoon classes given to young Syrians in Lebanese public schools closed since March 2020.

An abrupt stop with serious consequences.

"I was happy before," Amal blurted out, sobbing.

"I was studying Arabic, English, science, geography".

"I cry because (...) my parents cannot provide me with school fees on the internet," she adds.

- "Catastrophe" -

With a large poster featuring the Arabic alphabet, her mother is trying somehow to limit the damage.

She notably accompanies Mohamad in deciphering the 28 letters and the corresponding words.

But the family fears that schools will not reopen in the fall because several hundred people are still infected every day in Lebanon with Covid-19.

According to the NGO Save the Children, more than 1.2 million children have been out of school since the start of the pandemic.

She warned at the beginning of April against an educational "disaster".

The health crisis has worsened the situation of a country already in economic decline.

More than half of Lebanese live below the poverty line, and 90% of Syrian refugees (855,000 registered with the UN).

"Some Syrian children have had to give up their studies to work and to help their families," Lisa Abou Khaled of the UN refugee agency told AFP, citing an estimate by the Lebanese Ministry of Education that "25,000 students Syrians "left school in 2020/2021.

"We think the number is higher than that," she notes.

According to the UNHCR, more than 50% of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon no longer have access to education.

- De facto dropout -

The school career of many Lebanese is also disrupted.

Living in a cramped apartment in a dilapidated building in Bourj Hammoud, in the suburbs of Beirut, Pamela has almost lost her year, for lack of regular follow-up of courses on the internet.

"I was studying at this desk," said the 11-year-old girl, pointing to the dusty black case of a screenless computer.

It “shattered” in the explosion at the port of Beirut in August 2020, which also “blew up the family apartment”.

The gigantic explosion killed more than 200 people and devastated a third of the Lebanese capital, bringing to their knees an already badly tested population.

A new computer "costs millions" of Lebanese pounds today, deplores Pamela, alluding to runaway inflation which has exceeded 140% in 2020.

Cornered, she "started to follow the courses on a cell phone" but her sight problems, the cuts of electricity and therefore of Internet connection - "up to 18 hours a day" - only made a difference. make it worse, causing him to drop out.

“I was disgusted by teaching on the internet, I couldn't take it anymore,” she says.

Beside her, her father has only one word in his mouth: leave.

This taxi driver who has been unemployed for over a year admits to having wanted his daughter out of school at the start of the year.

"I don't give a damn about teaching any more," he grows angry.

"What we have experienced is more than enough".

But Pamela still dreams of going back to school: "I want to study so that I can get a decent job later and be able to take care of my parents."

© 2021 AFP