Four Pakistani students studying at China University of Geosciences, Wuhan put themselves in danger for sake of other students and volunteered during the fight against novel coronavirus outbreak.
These Pakistani students along with other international students from different countries, including Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Tanzania, Madagascar, Benin, Equatorial Guinea, Tajikistan, Jordan and Yemen carried out food delivery works for the international students staying in Wuhan, according to a report published by China Economic Net.
Besides taking orders, placing orders, receiving goods and delivering goods, sometimes volunteers have to sort and sub-package vegetables and even weight wheat flour.
The `Iron Men’ volunteer team was divided into several groups to offer better services for students, like food ordering group, daily necessaries purchasing group, supplies distributing group and girls’ group.
There are two students of the food ordering group in charge of ordering Non-Muslim food and Muslim food from CUG(Wuhan)’s canteens. “I am responsible for ordering Muslim food,” said Ismail Shah, a Pakistani volunteer.
To facilitate food ordering, Shah created a group on WeChat, China’s most popular social media platform. Every night, students put their food orders for the next day in that group. They pay for their orders by WeChat Pay or Alipay, China’s top two digital payments.
After that, Shah has to make a list of all the orders and send it to his teacher Luo Jingang. Mr Luo takes the charge of forward the list to the logistics department of CUG (Wuhan). The department takes the order to canteens.
The ordered food would be brought to the gate of students’ dormitory at 11:30am, the next day. Then, it is time for the supplies distributing group to take over the delivering work.
Shah told CEN, “We are working in a proper way. Everyone has its own responsibility”.
He added, “besides routine responsibility, we also have unscheduled works, just like distributing wheat flour, rice, vegetables, cooking oil, eggs, fruits, etc”.
For example, CUG (Wuhan) got an exclusive donation consisting of 53.6 tonnes of fresh vegetables on the evening of February 23, 2020. Some of the vegetables were taken to the first floor of the international students’ dormitory. Volunteers assembled there at 9:50 on the following day.
They must divide every kind of the donated vegetables into 283 pieces and then put every pieces of different vegetables to one package, so that each student can get all kinds of vegetables. They start to work at 10:15 am, and finish the 283 packages at 12:30pm.
After having lunch and a short break, the volunteers start distributing vegetables to students at 14:00. It takes them three hours to finish the distribution of all vegetable packages.
However, volunteers could not call it a day yet. A Pakistani volunteer Habib Ur Rehman, has to make a report `Iron Man Volunteering Dairy’ and send it to the working group before 21:00. Rehman, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa said, “I feel tired physically, but I get inner satisfaction from helping others as a volunteer”.
If someone wants to work as a volunteer, which means that he or she wants to help the humanity, he said. “I can’t express the work of CUG (Wuhan) volunteers in words because they put themselves in danger for the sake of other students”, he said.
Another Pakistani volunteer Muhammad Akhtar Alam wrote on his social media account said “it is time to cook dinner for myself after serving students all the day, without getting any rest… I salute all the volunteers and teachers who serve students, while put their own lives in danger, listen to students’ complaints and tolerate students’ misbehavior every day without any complaints. I salute and respect all of you. God bless us all and God bless Wuhan.”
When asked the reason to join in the volunteer team, Shah said, “It’s my prime responsibility to help my good neighbour, friends and iron brothers. I want to contribute to the battle during the lockdown. It’s my belief that volunteerism is the best way for contribution.”
He wants to tell Chinese brothers and sisters, “we all are with you. We will fight together. We will defeat the COVID-19. It’s just like a night, and after few hours, the Sun will shine again. And ‘Indeed! Ease with difficulty’ (Al-Quran).”
Maqsood Ur Rahman, a volunteer from Pakistan, said, “It is my duty to make contributions to CUG (Wuhan) during the outbreak of coronavirus. Teachers, friends and Wuhan need us. For me, China is not a foreign country and it is just like my home. I can’t leave China now. I will fight to the end.”
Ms Zhao a Chinese said, “These Pakistani students actively volunteer to serve other internationals students during the outbreak of COVID-19. I think that they are just like the Chinese young people and neither of them forget the friendship of our elder generations.
We are still practicing the `Long Live China-Pakistan Friendship’ with actions. We will tell the iron brothers’ stories to our next generations in the future.
