Changelog

The mains water network is broken, so water arrives by truck at whatever the driver asks. Fuel, gas and cement have to be brought to a border village. Nobody publishes any of those prices, and what people know, they know from each other. There is now a board for writing it down. Six things a household is buying right now — trucked water by the cubic metre, a jerrycan of diesel, a gas cylinder, a bag of cement, a block, a bundle of bread. Sign in and put in what you actually paid. Anyone can read it without an account, including family abroad who are sending money and have no way of knowing whether a figure they were quoted is normal. It shows the middle of the last six weeks of reports, and only once three people have reported an item, because one or two numbers are not a price. These are neighbours, not an authority, and nothing here is a judgement about whether a price is fair.

Electricity from the generator in Khiam costs around half a US dollar for every unit, at the ceiling the Ministry of Energy and Water set for May. That is roughly five times what households pay in most countries, and it is the reason rooftop solar spread across Lebanon after 2020. The new page does that arithmetic in the open. Put in what you pay the generator each month and it works out the rough size of system that would cover it, what it would cost to install, what it would save in a year, and how long before it has paid for itself. At Khiam's prices, panels with a battery come out at roughly two to three years. It also reads the European Commission's solar model for Khiam's own coordinates and shows what a panel makes here in each month of the year. That matters more than the yearly figure: January produces about 86 units for every kilowatt of panels and July about 159, so January makes a little over half of what July makes. A system sized on summer numbers leaves you back on the generator through the shortest days. None of it is a quote, and nobody calls you. And if your roof is being rebuilt, the cheapest moment to run the cabling and set the mounting is while the work is happening.

The reference hospital line shown in Who to Call and in the Returning & Rebuilding guide was fixed to Marjeyoun Governmental Hospital's verified number, 07 831 033, matching the Ministry of Public Health listing.

The Shia religious year — Ashura, Arba'een, Ramadan and the two Eids — alongside Lebanon's national feasts, each with its next date worked out for you and updated on its own.

When the olives flower, are picked and pressed, and when the tobacco is sown, cured and sold to the Régie — with the one rule that comes first: keep off any land until a clearance team has released it.

Khiam's town page now opens with a sketch of the stone-walled olive terraces stepping down the hillside above the Marjeyoun plain — the town's oldest livelihood.

A short, clear page for anyone returning to Khiam: the one rule — do not enter a home, field or road until it has been checked, because a cleared road is not a cleared house — what to do if you find something, the numbers to call to report it (and for an injury), who clears the land and certifies it safe, and the order a safe return usually happens. It carries no live status and no crowd-reported locations; it is the verified safety facts in one place.

Today's five prayer times — Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha — worked out from the sun over Khiam by the Ja'fari method, with Imsak and the direction of the Qibla. It follows the sun day by day; the start of each Islamic month is still set by moon sighting and announced by a religious authority.

Khiam, the border town in Marjeyoun, is now on the platform with four tools for a town living through a hard, conditional return. A new Aid & Recovery Navigator lets you tap your situation — home damaged or destroyed, renting and displaced, abroad, or unsafe land — and get a plain step-by-step plan with the papers to gather and exactly who to contact. Alongside it: a guide to how war-damage help works and how to stay safe coming back, the emergency, hospital and unexploded-ordnance numbers a household needs, and a generator-bill checker against this month's official tariff.