Sunday 26 / January / 2025
It is better to give than to receive. It’s a lesson that has been taught to all of us since we were children. Do good and you will be rewarded for it. Sometimes, especially in the modern world, these ideals may not seem to mean much to us. If you’re an adult, you now know that sometimes, rewards take longer to materialise. If you’re a child, know that your elders are indeed speaking the truth.
But then there are some who give selflessly, not because they want attention for themselves, but simply because it is the right thing to do. They do it because they realise that they have so much that others don’t, and don’t do it because they are seeking rewards in the form of richness and recognition, but are just doing what is honourably expected of them.
Nasr Al Jadhamy is one such man. For over 10 years now, this Omani national has been voluntarily collecting donations from kind-hearted people in the form of clothes, books, blankets, food and other basic necessities needed for people among the most underdeveloped countries to survive.
For years now, Nasr has been sending aid shipments to unfortunate people in Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia and Palestine. In 2017, he included Yemen as part of his aid network. Deeply concerned by the plight that thousands of innocents faced in Oman’s south-western neighbour, Nasr reached out to all who had supported him in the past to gather aid to Yemen.
Many did a double-take when they heard where he was heading. Yes, there may have been people who were struggling to eke out a living in Africa, where he had previously been, but they weren’t in the middle of a war zone. His wife was particularly shocked by the idea. No one, after all, would want to see a husband leave his family behind and voluntarily go into a conflict zone.
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But Nasr was undeterred. He felt the powers above would protect him, because he was doing the right thing. He embarked on his first trip at the end of 2016, and is currently preparing for his sixth expedition south.
“Honestly, I am not worried about myself when I travel to Yemen, but when I come back from Yemen,” admitted Nasr to T weekly. “I felt that things were getting better than they were, and that is why we kept doing what we do. Honestly, the first time the idea to help people came to me, it came in the form of a dream, where I dreamt I was sitting and talking to a man named Habib bin Hafiz, and he was asking me why I was not helping people in Yemen when I was doing so for people in other countries.
“I explained this dream to my wife, and she told me it was not good to follow all the dreams that you have,” he added. “People came to me and told me Yemen was really unsafe, but three days later, I had the same dream, and there was a third man in this dream, and he lived in Mawaleh in Oman. We were walking together, he held my hand, and Habib told me, ‘welcome to Yemen, Yemen is safe.’
“After almost four trips, I finally met him personally and he invited me to stay in his house. I told him about this dream and he was very happy to hear that. During my first trip to Yemen, it was too difficult. My fifth trip was supposed to be during Ramadan but it did not happen at that time because it was too unsafe then.”
Nasr’s first trip was dogged by uncertainty and danger. He’d send his lorries ahead of him, and had then flown from Muscat to Salalah in the Dhofar region before arriving at the Yemeni border. His destination was the town of Seiyoun in the Hadhramawt Governorate, but there were several obstacles he would have to cross before then.
The first was the border between Yemen and Oman. The conflict meant there was no way officials at the border could get in touch with their officers in Sana’a, which meant Nasr was stuck at the crossing point for nearly a week. Many would have given up in the face of this adversity, but Nasr saw this as a test of his faith and determination – nothing that is worth doing is after all easy.
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On the seventh day, Nasr had had enough, and told the guards that he wasn’t there to cause trouble, but to help people. If he wasn’t able to help those who needed it, he’d be happy to give his truck to someone who could. Jolted into action by his words, the border guards finally let him through, but Nasr’s journey had only just begun.
As he entered Yemen, what he witnessed shocked him. The war had left the towns and villages abandoned, while the continual mortar and artillery fire meant the roads had developed huge pockmarks, making the going for Nasr and his truck driver extremely treacherous. But these were only teething troubles he’d faced.
As night fell, Nasr saw a light blinking in the distance, signalling him, almost, and was glad that he did. Yemeni soldiers had set up the signal to ask him to stop, and were mere minutes from gunning him down ... they had thought he was a weapons smuggler, only for their commanding officer to stop them from firing before they had confirmed that he wasn’t. Each truck carried 45 tonnes of relief supplies, with more than 200 tonnes of aid and supplies to help the people in Yemen.
“We have prepared to get a lot of things,” recalled Nasr. “We have 3,500 blankets, 5,000 sweaters, one container of food items, and we are still continuing to gather clothing, because time is still there, and the big support for my sixth trip has come from the Oman Charitable Organisations. I also have people supporting me in the form of voluntary activities across Muscat, and I have to also thank my wife, because she is the biggest volunteer and she struggles more than I do.
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“The first time I went to Yemen, I remember asking God to help me get these goods to the people in Yemen, even if I wasn’t the one to give it to them. They were very shocked and excited to see me and were surprised to hear that I was alone. They wondered why I didn’t turn back after seeing the conditions on the streets. Sometimes I feel this is now a part of my life. Whenever I see someone who need aid, I always wonder how I can help them.”
Nasr’s efforts may involve the gathering of some pretty basic supplies, but he hasn’t forgotten the little ones: Indian and international schools in Oman previously organised donation drives from their students to collect aid for children in Yemen, many of whom who haven’t been able to go to school because of the war. The response was overwhelming. School sent him new school bags and pencil cases, as well as text books so that children in Yemen could continue to study.
“Sometimes, when we go to Yemen, we take many toys, because children don’t have things to play with,” added Nasr. “When people see the toy cars, they believe that these are real cars and that they can do whatever they want with them. When I sit together with my children, I tell them stories about the children in Yemen. My children are now telling their friends about the children in Yemen, and telling them that we should be thankful for what we have with us.
“We started sending one truck, and that then expanded to five, maybe six trucks,” he said. “Every time we went to Yemen, the number of trucks would coincidentally correspond to the number of trips we had taken. For the first trip, it was one truck, for the second trip, two trucks, and so on.”
Several United Nations agencies are also on the ground, working to alleviate the situation on the ground, just like brave, unselfish volunteers like Nasr. A UNICEF report shows that 66% of schools in Yemen have been damaged by the violence, 27% have closed down, and seven per cent are used to shelter families or for military purposes.
Fearing for their children’s safety, parents are keeping their children at home, but if not in school, children are also vulnerable to a host of threats. The report says that out-of-school children are at higher risk of recruitment into the fighting, early marriage and child labour. If not school, children can become illiterate and unskilled parents increase the likelihood of passing on poverty to the next generation.
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“Three years of brutal conflict in Yemen have put the education of 4.5 million children on the line due to non-payment of salaries for nearly three-quarters of public school teachers in the country,” said a UNICEF representative. “Many of the teachers have sought other work to survive or are only teaching a few hours.
“An entire generation of children now are facing a bleak future in a country where two million are already out of school as a result of years of underdevelopment, poverty and intermittent conflicts,” he added.
At the end of 2017, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there were 71.44 million persons of concern. Of these, there were 2.42 million persons of concern in Yemen. Of these, 270,919 were refugees, 9,773 were asylum-seekers and 125,036 were returnees, but the biggest chunk of them were the 2,014,062 internally displaced persons (IDPs), many of whom had been forced to abandon their ancestral homes due to the terrible conflicts.
The largest number of persons, though, is not from Syria, where 7.03 million persons of concern are present. Of these, 6.15 million are IDPs, with a further 674,364 being refugees, 160,000 are stateless, and 19,429 are refugees. Instead, they come from Colombia, where 7,677,609 people are internally displaced.
Despite his exertions in Yemen, Nasr has not forgotten about those in other countries whose needs are greater than his own. He regularly sends two to three shipping containers worth of aid to Africa every year.
“What we send them is clothes, holy books, dates, rice and other foods,” he said. “We send the containers two months before they are expected, especially before Ramadan, because it takes two months for these containers to reach them.
Having now partnered with the Oman Charitable Organisation, the Sultanate of Oman’s official charity arm, Nasr hopes this will help more people to come forward and help.
“I want to give a big thank you to all the volunteers, as well as the Indian schools and Muscat International School, because they are also donating,” he said. “When I was doing the work myself, I was taking everything, but now, because I am with the Oman Charitable Organisation, I only take that which looks good and is presentable, because I am here representing the country.
“Here in Oman, we deal with Al Haya Al Ammar Charitable Organisation, and they have a partner with whom they work in Yemen,” added Nasr. “These were the same people I was also working with. Whoever wants to contribute needs to reach out to Al Haya, and whenever I hear the success stories of those who are helping in Yemen, I feel like crying sometimes, so we will welcome all the help we can get.”
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