Skip to main content

A hero's welcome

Perdana Global Peace Organisation (PGPO) members Juana Jaafar and Ram Karthigasu were given a hero's welcome on their return home.

They landed at Kuala Lumpur International Ariport slightly after 2pm today looking tired but happy to be home.

The pair were given an enthusiastic welcome as they walked out of baggage clearance towards the waiting area at the airport.



For the parents of Juana and Ram the wait is over: their children are safe and that is all that matters.

Relief is written all over Azizah Dahlan's face -- Juana's mum.

Vanaja Ramachandran says the family can rest easy: Ram is home.


 

Juana, 28, and Ram, 29, were part of the International Humanitarian Aid convoy under Viva Palestina, a British-registered charity, to Gaza.

The convoy departed London December 6, 2009 and arrived in Gaza January 6, 2010.

What an accomplishment for these young Malaysian heroes!

There will be stories to tell and books to write.

All that can wait.

They can relax safe in the knowledge that they are at home with their loving families.

Congratulations Ram and Juana!

We are very proud of you!


Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…
Oh, so nice! Thanks for this, Kak F.
11 January 2010 at 13:23
Unknown said…
Thanks for the opportunity!
11 January 2010 at 13:58
Juana Jaafar said…
dear Kak Faezah,

sorry i missed this post. baru tengok hari ni.

thank you so much for writing this! we were proud to carry the Malaysian flag with us on our journey, but heroes we are not! eeek! we're just regular Malaysians doing our small bit for Palestine.

thank you to you, your team and NST for giving us space. Viva!
25 February 2010 at 02:57
Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Why Shamsul Amri dislikes Facebook

Professor Shamsul Amri Baharuddin People who do not use Facebook fall into three broad categories. The first group is completely indifferent to it, the second finds it mildly irritating and the third dislikes it intensely. Malaysia's prominent sociologist Professor Shamsul Amri Baharuddin is of the last type. I made the mistake of asking Shamsul, who is director of the Institute of Ethnic Studies at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, if he was on Facebook, the social network which was hatched up in the dormitories of Harvard six years ago. "I have a face and I keep thousands of books. Why do I need Facebook?" How do you react to that reply? I didn't. I meekly invited him to elaborate on his reasons. "Facebook will take away my soul and I won't allow that to happen because I am a believer," says Shamsul fiercely, who launched into a tirade of accusations against Facebook. Ninety per cent of the things you read on Facebook are either p...
7 comments
Read more

When a card came out of the blue ...

This post is prompted by a remark made by my good friend Wei Lin. She saw me reading a card I had received from a friend recently and said: "Traditional cards are so old-fashioned." I wondered if that was true and decided to probe into the issue. A Google search revealed numerous articles on the debate between traditional paper-based cards and e-cards. Tracey Grady's examination of the pros and cons of each type is informative. In my opinion, e-cards are not substitutes for the real (traditional) ones and they shouldn't be. I treat e-card e-mails with suspicion because spammers could be using them to download viruses and software onto my computer. I have never sent anyone an e-card and I don't plan to; I dislike the cold impersonality of conveying greetings electronically. I have always liked sending and receiving cards the traditional way. The ritual of going to a bookshop, browsing at the card section, picking a suitable one for the recipient and then walking to...
7 comments
Read more

In the waiting room

People are always waiting for something. They could be waiting for the train, an opportunity, promises to be fulfilled or the return of a loved one. But "what does waiting mean in our lives and what is life without waiting?" That question was posed by Danny Castillones Sillada in his article "What is Life without Waiting?" (The Metaphysics of Waiting). The passing of the old year demands another round of gloomy introspection and Sillada's article came at the right time, given the value of waiting in our lives. "Waiting," he explains, is "an emotional and mental state, which is preconditioned to anticipate someone or something to arrive at a particular time and place". Sillada tells us that there are two types of waiting: empirical and metaphysical. The empirical form of waiting is "where the certainty of the waited and the occurrence of event are tangibly expected to happen within a particular time and place of the waite...
5 comments
Read more