I thought it was pretty chill, compared to the military training during our conscript service (Finland practises peacetime conscription a bit akin to Israel, that young men are conscripted for military training, and after it is over, the units are transferred to reserve, but conscripts are never deployed and reserve is called up just for refreshers; deployments to foreign soil are always from contract reservists), as our main tasks were patrols and guard duty. I personally preferred the patrols by far, as they were the actually interesting part, where you'd get to see the area and interact with the locals (at the camp we didn't get to do that much, more on that later). It was mostly vehicle patrols, sometimes foot patrols (the foot patrols were my favourite) and sometimes we just went into some observation points, always with LAF though at least in some part. The guard duty was the tedious part, as we (Finns) were stationed at a French-run camp, and the force protection scheme was their generic scheme, which was pretty exaggerated to the situation in Lebanon, and meant that we'd get poor sleep during the periods of guard duty. When there weren't an active guard duty or patrol, we generally were free to go to the gym or just chill in our freetime facilities, which had a kitchen/dining room with Finnish foodstuffs and a movie/gaming room and such.

Of the camp life, we were pretty much confined to the camp, because the French didn't like their grunts interacting with the locals (yeah, probably because military camps cause all kinds of side effects like prostitution, of which UN forces have been accused of in some peacekeeping areas). To get out of the camp, there had to be a valid reason for it, and it wasn't just to go to shopping or restaurant, but an actual military reason to get outside (patrol or equipment maintenance or such). The French also had their typical way of having an annoyingly tight set of rules, and then the generally accepted way of doing things, which actually was against the rules, but no-one cared unless something happened. But being typical Finns, we were instructed to do things actually in accordance to the rules, which, eh, was impractical and annoying.

On the patrols we got to interact with the locals, as you mentioned. However, of the basic setting, one has to understand that UNIFIL is, even though UN-mandated and all that, foreign soldiers deployed there. From a local point of view it is pretty understandable that not everyone likes foreign soldiers on their own soil, even if it meant protection from continued hostilities and support of the fragile peace. Generally, we were well received in the area, to my experience better than the French (after all, the French were the old colonisers in Lebanon), but not everywhere. In some villages we would be waved at and greeted in short Finnish greetings and even invited to eat or drink coffee with the locals, in others the locals would just politely answer to our greetings, and in some we would get the finger and other hostile gestures thrown at us. Generally we were best received in Christian villages and towns, especially in areas where Finns had had longer presence at, also Sunni villages were always at least politely friendly. Shia villages varied greatly from similar friendliness to straight out hostility. This difference is based on the political history of Lebanon and the setting that currently the Shia are the largest group and pretty much govern the country together with some Christians, but in the past the Shia were opposed to the Christians and Sunni, which then again were at least to some extent allied, and the post-armistice conditions forced the Christian and Sunni militias to give up their arms, while Hezbollah got to keep theirs. The UN presence in the area is pretty much meant to limit Hezbollah from exercising full control of the area, and to support the LAF/Lebanese government control, so the UNIFIL is considered helpful by the Christian and Sunni minorities so that the status quo is preserved. There are clear tensions as some of the UNIFIL AO was home to the pro-Israel/Israeli proxy SLA, due to the pro-Israel Christian population in towns like Marjayoun, and on the other side of the very valley there's a Shia Hezbollah-supporting El Khiam, which was pretty much levelled by Israel in the 2006 war, so they have more than just some opinion differences...

During my stay there we witnessed a popularity drop amongst the Hezbollah, as there were the Amal-Hezbollah skirmishes going on elsewhere in Lebanon at the time. Just a week and most of the Hezbollah flags were gone, some just removed and some replaced with Amal flags (Amal is the Shia conservative party and Hezbollah the radical, originally hardliner splitters from Amal). The locals have a habit of setting up flags of their supported parties, something that happens in many areas with adversarial settings (like Northern Ireland also, where you'd see Union Jack or the NI flag on British/Ulster Scots districts and Irish flags on Irish districts). This was especially prevalent in Hezbollah supporting areas, but also Amal and the Christian parties did that.

Of the people and the general appearance, in Christian villages it was like in any European Mediterranean country, they had very similar general appearance, and people also dressed in completely Western way, the villages were also very clean of trash and houses well maintained. In Sunni villages, the same was true of the houses and cleanliness, but people dressed in much more Arab way (Christians Lebanese don't generally consider themselves Arabs, while the Sunni often do, despite both speaking Levantine Arabic), women in hijabs almost without exception, no niqabs or anything like that though. In the Shia villages there were varying levels of cleanliness; the inhabited houses were clean, but the streets often were not. However, they'd dress in much more western way, and hijabs were either a formality with a loose scarf just holding up the hairs to the back, or not at all.

Then there were the Palestinian refugees and the Syrians. Generally, all Lebanese groups seemed to hate them about as much as the Israeli. We didn't get to interact with the Palestinians, as they were confined in walled/barbed wire fenced settlements which had LAF checkpoints at entry points; Lebanon couldn't apply their jurisdiction there, as the last time they tried street battles broke out with the Palestinians, so they just confined them inside the fences, naturally also UNIFIL couldn't enter to prevent any skirmishes. And from the Lebanese' negative experience with the Palestinians, the laws had been tightened up so much that the Syrians couldn't have similar permanent houses as the Palestinians to live in, their slum-like villages consisted of some shacks with loose planks, plastic sheets and car tyres. It was pretty absurd to see satellite antennas atop such "buildings", as well as shops with cooling equipment built from such materials. The local Lebanese were very hostile towards the Syrians, calling them terrorists and such, and especially the Syrians who wore niqabs caused strong opposing reactions in the Lebanese, even more so than in Europe.

We couldn't independently, during our patrols that is, help the locals much, and were forbidden to give water to the refugees, to prevent any expectations from forming that UNIFIL patrols would do that every time they pass by. Some of my subordinates (I was a squad leader) were annoyed by that, as they had hoped that they would be able to do something to help the poorest locals (I wasn't as idealist, my main reason to be there was pragmatic patriotism, as the UNIFIL participation serves our national interest in gaining international goodwill and also maintenance of global peace is our national interest). Sometimes we would break the rule and give some of our patrol food to some well-behaving/friendly kids, but it wasn't a norm. We saw other nations doing it a lot more, so I'm not sure if it was a functioning rule at all, though. UNIFIL also distributes coordinated aid (food etc.) to locals, which is meant to be the form of aid that is allowed, but since our unit didn't do that, we weren't technically allowed to.

In the past when Finland had its own battalion and area of responsibility (1982-2001 and 2012-2016 together with the Irish), our peacekeepers used to offer medical services and other kinds of support to the locals (construction/infrastructure aid and such), and that had also lead to some locals in that area learning Finnish phrases and understanding some conversational Finnish, which was strange to us, who are used to being able to use such registry without loanwords to make our speech completely unintelligible for foreigners, but it didn't work there. As I mentioned, those areas however were the most friendly to us.

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