MINA, 21 December 2007 — They are driven by an indefatigable passion to help the guests of God. All of them are Jeddah-based Indian expatriates. They arrived in the tent city on Wednesday in large numbers, wearing their trademark orange jackets. They brought in 30 wheelchairs and positioned themselves in key areas helping pilgrims of all nationalities whichever way they can.
“Our only objective is to earn the reward from God. We want to help the pilgrims. We consider ourselves lucky to have been working in Jeddah. Being so close to the holy sites entails a certain degree of responsibility on us and we want to carry out that duty,” said the group’s Haj services coordinator Ahmed Kutty. He said they were doing it under a different name in previous years. “We have been doing this service under the name of Muslim Ekta Samiti earlier but now we are doing it under Jeddah India Fraternity Forum.”
The forum brings together Indians from nearly 10 states and has been successful in garnering support for their Haj support mission from the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and the Indian Consulate. “In Mina, we have not confined ourselves to Indian pilgrims. We help everybody. But our main focus has been on Indian pilgrims. For the sake of better coordination we have divided work by forming tent service teams and field service teams,” said Noushad Punnakal, the group president.
Jeddah India Fraternity Forum has deployed nearly 600 volunteers in Mina. They moved into Mina on Wednesday just when pilgrims were returning to Mina from Muzdalifah to carry out the most difficult rituals of Haj. “Going by our experience we realized this is the day when pilgrims need the most help. They are tired after having spent the day in Arafat and the night under open skies in Muzdalifah and then they return to Mina to perform the stoning-the-devil ritual. This saps their energies. And they need constant help.
Twenty teams of 25 volunteers each are deputed to guide the pilgrims to their locations in Mina and support them to perform the rituals; another 12 teams of 10 volunteers each are assigned to support the pilgrims in their tents. Their service enables the weak and sick pilgrims to receive adequate medical assistance and necessary care from the clinics and hospitals in Mina.
Both Noushad and Kutty felt pilgrims from South Asia have a huge problem in communicating their difficulties. “They look for somebody who can speak their language. Sometimes they are just next to their camp but because of the white landscape everything looks similar to them and then they run in circles. When we drop them at their places, they become very emotional and they shower their blessings on us. This is what our volunteers look for.”
Noushad said they were greatly helped by WAMY leaders. “They helped us by providing a number of jackets and wheelchairs. They also provided us with entry passes. These are important because we cannot enter the holy sites just like that. We need proper permission from proper authorities.”
The Indian Consulate provided them with a large number of jackets.
The two JIFF representatives said “some nice” gentlemen at the South Asian Establishment for Pilgrims helped them attend various seminars and training sessions. “We complement their work. They appreciated our efforts. They involved us in their activities. And this was very encouraging and a tremendous morale booster for us.”
JIFF volunteers are not the only ones in Mina. There have been people of other nationalities as well trying to help pilgrims here. An Egyptian expatriate working in Jeddah was in Mina along with a number of friends helping Egyptian pilgrims locate their tents. “As a Jeddah resident I must be grateful that God is taking my help in this way. It is a blessing to be earning your livelihood in Jeddah so close to Makkah. If I can bring any feeling of relief to all the people waiting at home for news of these pilgrims, then I will have completed my mission.”
source: arab news
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