Bringing aid to Sendai, firsthand account:

A Japanese friend in Berlin forwarded this email containing the account of an Egyptian in Japan. Very small world these days. (I removed the names and email addresses.)

Date: 2011/3/29
Subject: transfew a mail from Egyptian in Earthquake disaster
To: and em

Dear friends, (this mail is sent by Bcc )
This is TANAKA, How are you doing, I want you to read a mail from one
Egyptian studying Hiroshima univ.. He couldn't help going to Tohoku area
where was damaged so much by earthquake and tsunami when he knew the
disaster.
==============following is pasted his mail ==============================

In 25 early morning I get up at 5:30 am. I did my prayer then moved
to the sendai mosque. I found Pakistani people there preparing for
going to find needy shelter. The mosque provides them a guide and
provides us another guide.
It was Friday. I moved with the guide, he showed us the destruction
in the city. The high way separates sendai into two parts. It was
able to stop tsunami. The city behind the high way was safe but the
city before it was completely removed.
You can see only houses wood and damaged cars.
We went to the shelters around the city. They mainly use schools.
These shelters contain around 1000 in every shelter. The people just
sleep in open space. The manager told us that most of family here is
not complete. Some family lost the kids or the mother or the father.
He himself lost 14 people of his family relatives. The shelter in
the city have enough food and electricity. Many people bring them
food and life needs.
Our guide who lost his company told us that his brother was behide
the high way just 30 seconds driving brought him away of death area.
We have to went back to the mosque because it is Friday we have to o
our prayer.
After the prayer, the guide was unable to join us because he have to
arrange another work. He provides us a Japanese woman to guide us to
remote area near to sendai to find needy shelters.
After driving around 40 Km we saw what the eye cannot imagine.
Massive destruction. I do not know what power can make this. The
entire city has been removed. Nothing is remaining but some houses
were just behind the mountain. It was safe. In this area we find 3
shelters. Two of them was tents and the third one was a temple. You
cannot imagine how people are happy when they see you. The children,
women and men are happy to see you. But me so sad to see them. The
people dress is so rusty because they cannot wash. Childern face is
cracked because of cold. I can imagine how happy life they were just
few days ago.
I wish I could speak Japanese to tell them to believe in allah, he is
the only one who can protect them.
They told us one week ago no one come to bring them food. When I
enter the place they store the food. It was only water there. One
person can get only 1 meal per day.
The people in this area love each other so much. When we go one
shelter, they reject to take all the food. They take some and ask us
to go to the second shelter because they know that the second shelter
also has no food. This is a manner of islam. Nothing in the life
better than the people loves each other.
I wish I had enough money to bring them food everyday. I wish I could
live with them. Although the life is very poor but it is very happy
because people love each other.
If you want to go there. You can take the following things with you.
Gasoline tanks
Rice (the most important)
Nodules and ramin
Caned foods
Water
Juice
Bread
Milk
Skim milk
Children milk
Biscuits and cookies
Potatoes cheeps
Cold medicine
Painkiller
the trip using a van full of food costs from 40 to 50 man yen.

"I wish I could speak Japanese to tell them to believe in allah, he is the only one who can protect them."

Allah, God, or whatever, it makes me sick when people want to proselytize during disasters. The Japanese believe in Kami-sama, thank you very much, and don't need anybody converting them to Islam, Christianity, or anything else.

Besides, Allah didn't do a great job of protecting them from the quake, tsunami, or the crippled nuke plant, so why would he do any better now?

The caring, cooperative attitude of the Japanese people is something all these religious zealots would do well to emulate. Nobody there is trying to convince gaijin aid workers to convert to Shinto.

And that's as it should be.

On a lighter note, I think it's cute how the survivors are requesting "cheeps" to eat. Some things are universal. :)

Think what you saw there. An Egyptian student went to a Pakistani mosque in Sendai and then went with them to distribute the supplies they had gathered. Without speaking Japanese, without being able to proselytize in any way, they made their way through that horror and found the people in need.

Don't take a youthful ego's impulse to convert the world as the only thing of importance. No matter what his religion, he did good. Frankly, that's all I ask of anyone.