Act Global volunteer Nazim Tasadiq travelled to Pakistan a week after the devastating floods started where he worked with a team from Islamic Help and GlobalMedic to provide clean water to those affected.  Read his story here...

Seeing pictures on a television screen can never prepare you for the reality of the situation. Imagine your home and everything inside being destroyed as water floods your village. People are living without shelter, without food and without clean drinking water. A vile smell spreads through affected areas which you somehow know is coming from dead carcasses; they could be humans or animals. I prayed in my heart that it is the latter.

Arriving in Pakistan, I wanted to start working straight away, to not waste any time and to try and help as many people as possible. It should be simple.  You have aid, people are in need and therefore you distribute the aid. Simple math. However when you have a situation where the area affected is so huge and people are scattered, you cannot just set up anywhere. You have to find where aid is most needed and make sure that your aid is appropriate – the large water purification machine, the Nomad, we had with us was for an area with a high concentration of people. 

We found an area heavily hit by the floods in Nowshera where there were approximately 100,000 people and we were able to set up the nomad in a local mosque. Finally, we were distributing clean drinking water. The look of relief on the faces of the children and their parents was something that I will cherish in my heart forever. The clean drinking water will make sure the people do not develop diseases which can be fatal such as diarrhoea and cholera.

Over the next couple of days, we were able to set up the smaller water purification machines, the trekkers, in other affected areas.   By the time I left, everything was running well and in the next week the team would be setting up a medical camp, purifying more water and distributing food packs.  But I was left with the feeling that no matter how much aid anyone did, we were still scratching at the surface due to the magnitude of this disaster.

I have learnt a lot from this deployment - the all round aspects of disaster relief work and especially the unexpected obstacles and logistics which in hindsight have to be done in order to get the best results from your work.

I cannot imagine how it feels to lose my home and everything in it. We take so many things for granted living in England.  We don’t put any value to something like clean drinking water or food on our plates everyday or having a roof over our heads. The situation in Pakistan really gave me a sense of perspective - we have it so easy.

Through all the devastation, I want to pay tribute to the people in Pakistan who still smile and still have strong imaan (faith) in their hearts through this testing time. I will miss them all, especially the children who gave me so much inspiration to work hard and try to help improve their situation through the smiles they wore every day I worked in Pakistan.

I end this blog with a reminder that the people in Pakistan still need our help so I urge everyone to do their part, whether it is to donate or to volunteer; our Ummah is a body and we must heal the pain that has been caused by this disaster urgently. Do your bit.

Finally, I would like to thank Allah Almighty for the blessings that are bestowed upon us every day. I would also like to thank Islamic Help, the GlobalMedic team and MADE in Europe for giving me the opportunity to help the people of Pakistan.