The young men converted a simple hall into the vaccination center by 2 a.m.
On Saturday morning, other members of the Muslim Ahmadiyya community stand ready to greet guests with yellow safety vests.
Monika Ganster
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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A week earlier, the community had already opened the large building clad with exposed aggregate concrete on Genfer Strasse in Nieder-Eschbach for a vaccination marathon.
4,600 syringes were placed there, the queue wound around the corner of the house.
This weekend, too, the men of the Ahmadiyya youth organization are ready to guide, explain and calm down - or to clean the toilets.
The voluntary work, like here for the mass vaccination project, for the New Year cleaning in the neighborhood or blood donation campaigns, is part of the Ahmadiyya self-image.
By organizing events like this, he learned project management, says vaccination doctor and community member Saqib Cheema, who and his team help in many areas via impfpraxis-frankfurt.de and are convincing with their efficiency.
"Vaccinating can even be fun"
The women of the community, who have their own organization, are not involved in the construction and care work on weekends. However, Cheema's team is mixed: “In the medical field we don't make any differences.” Vaccinations were also carried out in other Ahmadiyya communities this weekend: in Hanau, Friedberg and Dietzenbach. The religious leader of the community, Caliph Mirza Masroor Ahmad, has called his community to vaccinate and now to boost it, says Cheema. The Ahmadiyya describe themselves as a reform community within Islam. They attach great importance to a good education, emphasize the peaceful side of Islam, but they are also considered to be value conservative.
Samee Ullah, who works on the board of the youth organization, estimates that around 15,000 Ahmadiyya live in the Rhine-Main area. Many of them have family roots in Pakistan. For Ullah, the vaccination campaign is almost an open day, otherwise almost only community members come to the corner of the industrial park, where the Ahmadiyya headquarters are in Germany. A workplace for more than 300 people. Most of the guests who come this weekend want a booster vaccination. Only about five to ten percent of the syringes used are first vaccinations, reports Cheema. Demand has declined a bit in the past week, and whether it is already full or whether people are now thinking of preparing for Christmas will only become apparent after the holidays, says Cheema.
On the way to the exit, visitors meet believers who gather for prayer in the adjacent mosque. When leaving the building, an elderly lady flinches when a young man in front of the door unexpectedly shouts a happy, loud "Hello". Since the morning he has been there with other volunteers and offers tea and wafer slices to all vaccinated people who come from the parish hall, the refreshment is free of charge. Most of them decline with thanks, but some sit outside under a garden pavilion with their steaming mug and start a conversation. The best moments for Ullah are when strangers are interested in the community. Even if the older lady initially thinks he is a refugee. “But I'm used to that,” says the 34-year-old from Frankfurt.Other visitors write a few lines in the guest book: “Great organization. Such nice people. Vaccinating can even be fun! "