It was my lifetime dream to visit my beloved homeland, which finally came true in November 2005. I had just finished my specialisation exams in Implant Dentistry at London’s Eastman Hospital, and decided to take three months off before starting a job.

My journey started when I crossed the bridge from Jordan into occupied Palestine. I will never forget that day. For the first time in 30 years I no longer felt a foreigner, and found a place I could truly call home.

Everyone I met was so friendly and hospitable, it was overwhelming. I would often have to eat lunch and dinner twice so as not to turn down invites and upset the locals, something which I paid a price for by gaining five kilos!

The main purpose of my trip was to do charity work as a dental surgeon, but also to travel as much as possible and see my country. I was involved with an amazing charity called the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (www.pcrf.net, which brings to Palestine foreign healthcare professionals to treat Palestinians in remote parts of the country, where no medical facilities exist.

They organised for me to work for a week in the small villages around Tulkarem and Nablus, which was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. To see how happy the locals were, that I came from London to treat them for free, was an emotional high I have never experienced before. It also made me realise just how lucky we are living in Britain.

I also spent two weeks lecturing undergraduate dental students at the Arab American University in Jenin and Al Quds University in Jerusalem. The two institutions could not have been more different. The AAUJ was very new, spacious and modern but totally understaffed, with the average age of each head of department being 26!

Al Quds University was very old with crumbling walls, but it had very highly qualified and internationally respected members of staff. One of my best days there was being invited to play in the annual student-versus-staff football match. The main attraction was the university football pitch, cut in half by the illegal Wall. If you kicked the ball too high it would go over the Wall into Israel, so the game would stop until we got another ball from the storeroom! The staff won – yes!

My fourth and last week was spent travelling, including my hometown Jaffa (which brought tears to my eyes), Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv.

As the old saying goes, “a picture tells a thousand words.” One such picture I took was inside the Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine. As its imam was giving me a tour, he showed me a large glass cabinet full of used ammunition that Palestinians had collected from the Israeli army over the years, including rubber bullets, tear gas and hand grenades.

These had been used against crowds of praying Muslims to disperse them from the mosque grounds, and on the infamous day that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the compound and started the current intifada [uprising].

One thing that really impacted me was how positive people were generally, despite having everything going against them. Everyone woke up early and went to work, even if it meant three hours commuting each way through various checkpoints (this made me feel that time had no value in Palestine). It was as if the harder the Israelis made life for the Palestinians, the more determined the latter became to try and live.

Another memory which brings a smile to my face was how all the undergraduate dental students were so keen to do their postgraduate training in the UK or US, then return to help their people and country. The ambition and aspiration of these young people really blew me away.

The day of my departure was very sad. All I could do was pray to God that I get another chance to go back to my beautiful country and make a change!