St Hildas Help Bring Bushra Home
St Hilda’s Anglican Church in Island Bay has been instrumental in helping Bushra Alkafaji, an Iranian New Zealander, and her daughter return home from Iran.
Bushra, a former refugee, cleans St Hilda’s for two hours a week. In February, she and her daughter Nada went to visit a family member in Iran who was going blind. While there, the coronavirus crisis escalated. Iran—which has now had 90,000 coronavirus cases—went into lockdown while Bushra and Nada were visiting the city of Isafan, where they had friends but nowhere to stay, and very little money.
When TVNZ aired an item about Bushra and Nada’s plight, Jonathan Cutts of St Hilda's church recognised her. Jonathan felt called to help Bushra, and through a series of providential connections —Hamed, an Iranian man; Zaheda, a travel agent; and Sahra, Bushra’s elder daughter—he created a Givealittle page for her.
However, Givealittle takes a month to pay out crowdfunders, and Bushra's need was much more immediate than that. Jonathan approached the leadership of St Hilda's, asking them to underwrite the page, so that the travellers could come home as soon as possible. Through the church's Barnabas Fund, for people who need emergency relief, the church was able to help. The Givealittle page was created on Monday April 13. “By about 1am that night—I was staying up late looking at it—people had given a thousand dollars,” Jonathan says.
Jonathan used social media connections to help promote the Givealittle page. “I have six or seven hundred friends on Facebook,” he said, “and I messaged all of them.” He also joined community and neighbourhood Facebook groups, and posted links to the Givealittle page there. Hamed and Zaheda were also able to post the link in Muslim-specific community Facebook pages.
WhatsApp was also a vital means of communication. “Sahra was talking to her Mum on the phone; Hamed was phoning and WhatsApping friends in Iran; I created a Whatsapp group for Sahra, Hamed, and I—even though we still haven’t met each other.”
Donation amounts varied, from several anonymous donations of $500 to people giving $5—whatever they had. Three days after the Givealittle page was started, Bushra and Nada left Tehran on Qatar Airways, the only carrier still operating out of the country. After a layover in Qatar, they arrived in Auckland, where they are quarantining in a hotel until May 2.
“Thank you for all your kind words and keeping us in your prayers,” said Sahra in an update on the Givealittle page. “Humanity does not vary from nation to nation,” said Hamed, who organised friends in Iran to get Bushra and Nada to the Tehran airport, a 4 hour drive from where they were staying. “I'm very honoured to be a small ring in this love chain we made above the oceans to get Bushra and Nada back home.”
Reflecting on the generosity of strangers which made Bushra and Nada’s safe return possible, Jonathan says, “It was an outpouring of love for someone. I had this amazing sense that God was so concerned about this woman, that he loves her so much he would use anybody to help her.”
By Shanti Mathias
