Gaza on The Ground: Nirmeen

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Gaza on The Ground is a series of accounts of the people currently affected by the war in Gaza, whose stories have been brought to us by the Humanity First teams volunteering in the affected areas. This account is about Nirmeen Hassona, a 29-year-old lady. She invited the Humanity First Team to visit her shelter, a small tent beside a large tree.

Despite airstrikes destroying her home, Nirmeen has refused to turn to bitterness. Smiling outside her shelter – a small tent adjacent to a larger tree – she says:

‘I am very lucky’.

In the face of such adversity, this resilience is something to marvel at. The reason given for why she feels so fortunate? Simply being able to escape the burn of direct sunlight on her skin. Peering inside her tent, we were stunned by the sight before us. More than a home for one small family, it was a residential area where 3 separate families crowded together for safety.

However, others within that tent can’t help but express their worries. One lady says:

Our tents are ovens. Literally ovens that constantly burn us. Imagine that even my phone couldn’t bear the temperature which exceed 40s Celsius in the day. It was down due to the extreme heat!

For those of us outside such an environment, perhaps finding out that the extreme heat causes even mobile phones to stop working would put the severity of these people’s plight into context.
Yet even this isn’t the whole picture.

Disease runs rampant throughout the tent, with various unidentifiable infections wreaking havoc across all, from toddlers to the oldest inhabitants.
The patient Nirmeen’s son too has such an affliction. Rashes and blisters smother his body, and the incredibly limited medical advice available has told them that the sole cause of this is a lack of hygiene supplies, exacerbated by a severe scarcity of drinking water.

Nirmeen best sums up her son’s condition through this statement:

We simply have no medicines, no antibiotics, and not even the most basic form of pain relief.

Worms and insects crawling through the sand further add to the pain and risk of infection, but whilst so many remain in makeshift tents, there is hardly any possibility for improvement. Although Nirmeen’s story is similar to a multitude around Gaza, all hope is still not lost.

Humanity First has live teams on the ground in Gaza, attempting to supply clean water daily to those in need and offering psychological and any medical support possible to small kids like Nirmeen’s. However, their effectiveness relies on the generosity of those willing to financially support their projects.

Donating to Humanity First UK will further advance this effort, and you can be certain that every penny you donate will be used to help those in need, just like Nirmeen.