Beirut last Monday morning was rainy and chilly as Mount Lebanon was snow-capped. Outside a hotel in the city centre which has been re-built since the civil war with much of the old French flair, a minibus waited, while the women walking past in black boots and jackets made Parisiennes seem shabby. We were waiting for security clearance to enter a different world, the Shatila refugee camp, as the second step of a most ambitious project.

Once clearance had come from the security council in Shatila - Lebanon’s police and army do not enter the camp - we drove through the drizzle along dual carriageways to the refugee camp, only three or four miles away, so not far from the middle of Beirut. The cricket world drives on the left; driving on the right was a mark of how we were going against the grain.

The moment we turned into Shatila, the Beirut of luxury clothing shops and Porsches and the new national football stadium - which echoes a majestic Roman amphitheatre - ceased. Wooden carts displaying oranges and vegetables from the Bekaa valley; males of all ages waiting, and waiting; nothing so wide as a street but crowded alleys, and relatively clean, given the taps seldom have water (and then too salty to drink). Above all, wires: walk down any alley in Shatila and at least 50 wires and electric cables hang over your head. Annually about 30 people are fatally electrocuted.