Help Medo and his Family Rebuild their Life.

Hello there, My name is Mohammad, I go by Medo and

I am 19 years old. I live in Gaza City where I also grew up and spent my whole life.

I lived a year of my life in Texas, United States where I lived with amazing American host families, and went to a great American high school as a senior (Harker Heights High School) which was the best academic experience of my life. I was planning on going back to the USA for college and I wanted to major in psychology and then after that continue my studies and become a psychiatrist to help as many people as I can. Today I am writing this while in a tent, in Rafah, right next to the Egyptian border trying to raise money to help me and my family evacuate and leave the Gaza Strip, have a life, and continue on with my dreams and my family’s dreams.

The picture above shows what my block looks like now after it was brutally bombed by the Israeli forces, and the other pictures show me and my family members.

Here is a quick summary of what’s been happening for the past 130 days and what is still happening.

Well, on the first night as we were trying to sleep normally—I had a feeling something bad was gonna happen to us, the Israelis threw many nearby missiles that were very scary and awoke me and my family then they threw another 3, but this time they were so close to our house—10 ft away or so, they destroyed our house on top of our heads, we literally had to move bricks and stuff from on top of our heads and then went running in the street trying to go somewhere safer. I can’t even describe how awful the scene was. I am literally crying right now as I am writing this and remembering how horrible it was. To describe it quickly it looked like Call of Duty, it looked like a video game. All I could see was smoke from the bombing. What I heard was really sad and scary in a way, all I could hear was kids crying, moms screaming, and a siren sound going off. There was no oxygen to breath, it was all smoke and some bad smells.

Luckily we made it past that night all alive with only some light injuries. We then stayed at an UNRWA school (supposedly a safe shelter, yet in that same night they had bombed an UNRWA school) for the next week, life was really hard! Harder than you can imagine! 51 people in one room! Imagine!! If you look at us while asleep we would look like canned sardines. They had cut all supplies (water, food, electricity, internet, etc) but we had some electricity because it was generated by solar panels, anyways, a week later they threw papers from the sky saying that we have to evacuate to the southern parts of Gaza Strip because they are going to be “safe”. It was so hard finding a car to take us to the south and we needed more than 5 cars. Lucky thank god we found cars at the end and we headed to the south.

The trip to the south was the scariest trip of my life. It literally crashed me internally. They said it would be safe to go to the south but literally bombed and killed more than 150 people on their way to the south. We made it safely to the south after all and some strangers offered us an apartment they have to stay in.

For the first 75 days in the south we had struggled with food and water, eating only one meal a day, and when I say we eat I am not talking about filling ourselves up and getting full, I am talking about eating very little portions only to stay alive and because you know we are a family of 8 and there is not much food, and even the bread we eat, we had to wait for 7-10 hrs in line to get some. We had to walk about 1.5 miles carrying buckets of water to get clean drinking water, bathrooms! We haven’t used them…well in the past 120 days! I literally have to walk around a mile to go to a bathroom with water that I can use to wash. Showers? I have only had about 7 showers since the whole war began. Things were really hard and we were really struggling.

Then comes the next about 50 days in Rafah. In brief I can say: the worst days of my life.

December 26th, at 6:00am, we packed all our stuff and got ready to move from Khan Younos to Rafah; the situation was getting very bad in Khan Younos and we had to leave. We got here by noon and started working on the tent and we unloaded our stuff from the vehicle and started our journey with a whole new life—the life of struggles, a different level of struggles. Since then we’ve been eating what I call “fake food.” Just canned food, canned salami, canned beef, canned tuna and so on. And we’ve been eating this kind of food for a couple of reasons, first it is the only food we can find, and second it is the only food we can afford; everything is super expensive, so yeah we haven’t had any milk, eggs, chicken, cheese or any real food for a while.

And that is just a small part of our struggle, the whole living in a tent thing is very hard on its own..so cold at night, so wet when it rains and so hot when the sun is up, but I think rainy nights are the worst! I can’t describe how terrible it is sleeping under the rain and getting all our blankets and mattresses wet.

Now for the financial situation I don’t know where to start, my dad worked for a private company, which means he hasn’t gotten any salaries since the war started, we have been living off of some money we had saved and after it was gone we have been living off of some helps from other relatives and friends.

Update day 253

I have been living in a tent for almost 6 months now, and if there is one thing I can tell you it is that living in a tent like this is like camping in a desert but for a little too long. Living off of less than the minimum requirements for life, and what makes it worse is having to deal with all the emotional stress that comes with being scared for your life all of the time and knowing that you can’t do nothing about it because you are helpless, so you are just waiting for your turn and trying to life the last day for you every day.

I moved from Rafah 3 days before the invasion and we were lucky enough not to pay all the money we had left on us just on transportation, we still had to pay a lot on some life necessities because we were starting from the beginning again.

Then I started filming my life and posting on social media to show people what life here is actually like and how I really spend my day, but I don’t show the struggles and hardships, I only show the part of my life where I try to live and have some fun.

The money I am raising will be used for all the expenses to get out of Gaza and rebuild our lives again, that includes college and school fees because we won’t have money to pay for them but we need to go and continue our life. Let me explain why it is expensive.

In order to leave Gaza Strip in normal days is really hard, leaving during the war is a little bit more possible than impossible, you need to have a foreign citizenship or pay some money to have your name on the list of travelers through Rafah land port, and since we don’t have foreign passports we will need to pay money to go through Rafah land port which we don’t have.

It costs around $5000-$10,000 per person to have their name on the list, I have 7 family members other than myself that I need to have our names on the list. We are trying to raise the money that will help us cover the whole cost of the trip and pay for the continuing of our life and get us out of this war zone asap.

The people I am trying to get out of here are:

My dad

My mom

Myself

My sister Rahaf

My brother Zaid, we call him Zaiood

My brother Abdelrahman, we call him Abood

My brother Ahmad

My brother Zain

If you have any questions for me, you can contact me through my social media platform, I will list them below.

Instagram: @medo_halimy

Snapchat: @medohalimy2021

Phone: +972567097997

WhatsApp: +972567097997

Email: [email redacted]

Email: [email redacted]

Fundraiser Organizer: Xavier Vergin