The following are some first-hand accounts from MECA’s Project Assistant in Gaza, Safaa El-Derawi, of her visits to schools where MECA installed water purification and desalination units through our Maia Project.
The following are some first-hand accounts from MECA’s Project Assistant in Gaza, Safaa El-Derawi, of her visits to schools where MECA installed water purification and desalination units through our Maia Project.
One school was very badly damaged during the massacre in Shejayia neighborhood and the water network in the area was also destroyed. MECA will repair the Maia unit once the water network is repaired.
Jabalia Elementary A&B Girls School (Abu Hussein School):
I traveled north from my home in Nuseirat Refugee Camp to check on the MECA water purification and desalination unit at Jabalia Girls Elementary School. I expected to find the unit destroyed since I knew the school was bombed during the aggression on Gaza. But I was surprised to find that the unit was still intact.
Mr. Abu Yousef, who works as a services employee at the school, told me “Thousands of families sought safety at the school in the early days of the attack and the MECA unit was providing them with part of their need for clean drinking water. After the power station was bombed there were power outages all over the Gaza Strip and the water unit stopped working. We stayed without water for two days and then we had to separate the storage tanks from the purification unit to be filled with water provided by the UN.”
Though the school year started weeks ago in Gaza, this school is still serving as a shelter for displaced families. I met a young girl named Islam who is nine years old and lives with her family at the school. She described what happened with her family during the attacks:
“We lived in the eastern part of Jabalia village and we were asleep when the Israeli shells fell on our house. I was very scared and cried a lot. My father carried me and my little sister and outside. All the neighbors were screaming and fleeing from the shells. My mother and neighbors raised white flags in order to stop the bombing, but it didn’t stop. I saw the children and adults on the ground lying in blood. We came to this school for shelter, but then it was also bombed and we fled to the street.
After the ceasefire, we went back to our house and we did not find it. We did not find anything, not even my clothes and my toys. I wish to return to our house and go to school and play with the kids like I used to. “
Shejayia Elem. A&B Co-ed School
I went to Shejayia neighborhood during one of the humanitarian ceasefires this summer and was shocked by the large destruction and the smell of death everywhere. The destruction was so massive that I could not reach the school where MECA installed a water purification unit because of the rubble in the roads.
I returned after the end of the aggression. Everything about my visit there made me sad. In the past, the overcrowding in the neighborhood used to make it difficult for me to access the school. But this time the empty streets troubled me. No noise. No congestion. No life. Only destruction and rubble.
I arrived to school and found it had been largely destroyed due to indiscriminate shelling during the Shejayia massacre. Mr. Abu Raed Amasi works at the school and told me that they collected all the broken pieces of the water purification unit. He hopes that we can repair the unit to be used after the restoration of the school and I promised we would.
Beit Hanoun Prep A&C Boys
I visited Beit Hanoun after the end of the Israeli attacks and met Zainab, mother of two, who was taking shelter at the school. Zainab explained what happened to her family. She said: “We escaped from the Israeli bombing which destroyed our house and our land and we came to the school. At first we slept on the ground and there was no water, no food. Now they give us food and water to drink and we have blankets. But every day I need to treat my children. Diseases have spread here and we cannot do anything. We do not know what our future is!!”
