Imtiaz Sooliman – TEDxUKZN
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Thank
you very much. I'm sure this is very different from what you guys
have been listening for the whole day today, and he was asked to
speak about service and the kind of work that I do, gift of the
givers. Foundation was established on the sixth of August 1992
I met a spiritual teacher in Istanbul as a night player, night
program. And I met him the year before in 1991
when I met him in 91 and again in 92 he said, My son, I can see in
your soul that you somebody who likes to help people. Then he
said, I'm instructing you. I'm not asking you, I'm instructing you to
form an organization, and the name in Arabic will be walkful Walk a
film, translated into English, means gift of the givers. He said,
You will go back to South Africa, and you will serve all people
unconditionally. Your motto
not working,
okay, there was your motto in Arabic, will be hero NAS May and
for on us translated into English, it means best among people are
those who benefit mankind. And he said, Remember, the emphasis is on
the word mankind, not a particular group, not a particular color, not
a particular race. Doesn't matter which country they come from, what
politics they belong to. You will serve all people unconditionally.
He said, You will serve them with love, compassion, kindness and
mercy, and especially those who are downtrodden, who are in
difficulty, you will make sure you preserve their dignity. You will
not do anything second hand or second or secondary standards. Now
this can be a very long program. I've got 30,000 slides of all the
works that we've done, and you don't have that amount of time.
And since you've got only 15 or 20 minutes, 15 or 20 minutes, I just
want to illustrate a few lessons from some of my projects.
But just to go back one before this,
in 2002 we were credited by proudly South African as a first
proudly South African international organization.
International organization, as I was mentioned in one or in my
doctoral talk, to be recognized by other parts of the world means
nothing not recognized by your own country. To be recognized by other
institutions is not the same than to be recognized by your own
institution and to get accreditation from other countries
is not the same as getting accreditation from your own
country. That's why, to me, when he said, serve people with dignity
and be the best at what you are, made us make sure that we the best
at what we do. The first project, which I haven't put here is going
to take too long to speak about, is the world's largest
containerized mobile hospital, the first one of its world, the first
one of its kind in the world was designed by us. Up till today, no
agency, no government, has done anything similar to this hospital.
But there's not enough time to go into details. Are too much. I just
want to show you some of the work that we do.
We're involved in human suffering. We're involved in the saving of
life. We're involved in healing and bringing relief to people in
great difficulty.
This thing doesn't seem to be
okay. I'm in the wrong way. Okay. This is not a desert. It's a river
that's drought in West Africa. In Nigeria, crop stretches about
coming up. Drought came and destroyed the corpse, whatever was
left. The Locust came and finished it off.
That's the animals,
and that's the children.
This is what we face almost every day in our work. You have to have
strong minds dedicated people to go across. When we went across
here,
the people were in great difficulty. One of the things that
really affected me in this area was not so much the condition of
the people, but I see this every day. What affected me was the
political decision that was taken when I asked them in the main
hospital of the area, why are there so few patients in the
hospital and not full but pure kid with suit famine,
they said. And they gave me the answer that shocked me. They said,
a few months ago, there was a meeting in West Africa, the
meeting of ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States,
and they were told by the World Bank and the IMF that they should
charge all patients in West African countries. If they don't
pay, they cannot get medical services. And these kids with that
result, hungry, malnourished, kwashioco
maras and M.
Type of disease affected by malnutrition, and they were dying,
and they could not come to the hospital. When we got there, they
told us that we going to charge medical services to these people.
And I said, I came with donor money, donor medicines and doctors
from South Africa. No way in the world am I going to charge for
something that's supposed to be a free service. To cut the long
story short, I went to the President. I went to the governor
of the of the country, and in three minutes, virtually three
minutes, we changed the law, and we made sure that this took
service to the people. 15,000 patients turned up in three days,
and thereafter we provided food for another several 1000 people.
This was the crisis in Nigeria. We've been involved in 27
countries, but the culmination of all the experience in of 27
countries and 18 years of work is this one year the earthquake in
Haiti.
It's probably one of the greatest natural disasters of all time. And
I said that. Why they say this is a top in the top four in terms of
disasters? To me, it's number one. And why do I say that? It's a very
small country. It only has 9 million people. The earthquake
struck 15 kilometers below the surface. If it strikes 35
kilometers or 50 kilometers below the surface, there's a better
chance of survival. If it's sized, strikes very far away from the
epicenter of the city, it's the great chance of survival. Yet the
epicenter was very close to the city. Secondly, 50 kilometers
below the ground. Thirdly, the construction was not of good
quality because of the engineering and the way cement was used in his
buildings. Ordinary mixing was done, no proper strong cement
structures. And fourthly, the buildings are virtually on top of
each other when they were built. So if you go to border Prince, you
don't see separate buildings. It's like one long building, because
everything is on top of each other. So if one building goes
it's a pack of cards. Everything goes with it. The loss of life was
more than 300,000
in a short space of time,
only seven on his vector scale. Many countries would survive that,
but because of the nature of the country and the factors I
explained, it destroyed everything. It was very, very
heartbreaking.
When my teams went across, this is what they saw.
Not 1000s like this. The
the grief, the hardship, the difficulty. I want to say
something again that I mentioned at the doctor of speech.
A few years ago, I met a Malawi in diplomat in glentayo, and he said,
a few years ago, I was at a meeting in Europe, and in that
conference, for three days, they spoke about various things. And
they said, Do you know that in three years, the word Africa? I
mean the three days, the word Africa was not mentioned once in
the whole conference. And they said he was about surprise. They
mentioned Australia, New Zealand, Europe, countries, America, Middle
East, Asia. But the word Africa was not used once. So the end of
the program, after three days at the dinner, he asked the convener.
He said, You know what, I feel a bit shy, but why did you not
mention the word Africa, and why did nobody here mention the word
Africa? So he said, Do you know what answer he gave me? He said he
told he told me that Africa is not relevant,
but we are partly to blame for that, because we are always going
with a begging bowl. We don't have faith in ourselves. We
underestimate our own value,
and that's why, when I see conferences like this, technology
conferences, conferences on health, conferences on
engineering, it makes me proud to be feel South African, because we
represent Africa. We represent the African continent, and we can do
wonders. When I went to the Pakistan earthquake in 2005 there
were teams from Europe, and the first question they asked me, What
are you doing here? Have you come to fetch something? I said, What
do you mean? I came to fetch something? He said, You guys in
Africa are always asking for something.
When this happened, 2005 and after the Malawi diploma told me, I said
to myself, we will make sure that Africa stands out. We will make
sure that we will be counted. We will make sure that people will
hold their heads high for South Africa in 2003 the Iran
earthquake, we were the first in the world to respond. We were
there in less than 24 hours. A year later, the tsunami in Sri
Lanka and in Somalia. There were 13 countries involved. Most people
responded to Thailand and to Indonesia. I said, No, Sri Lanka
does not have much assistance. They don't know what to do. The
President of Sri Lanka came on TV saying, we don't have a disaster
management plan. We don't know what to do. We don't know how to
respond. In 24 hours, my teams were already in Sri Lanka.
That was on the 27th of December. On the 28th of December, the
president of the country met our teams. Within the first five days,
we sent in a million dollars of.
Eight I flew in tents from Dubai into Sri Lanka, from India into
Sri Lanka, and in Sri Lanka itself, I hired a cargo plane that
would take the goods across the broken bridges, the broken areas
where the roads were not possible anymore. And we saved lots of
lives. And we were the first agency in the world to be given
land by the Sri Lankan President to set up housing if Sri Lanka,
which we did, coming back to this earthquake, I said it's one of
the, not the one of the worst one in the world. People say, Yes,
loss of life is 300,000 and the loss of life in Indonesia may have
been 400,000 in the tsunami, but Indonesia is a country of 220
million people. Pakistan, the whole North West province was
gone. An earthquake strikes a city. In Pakistan, it struck the
entire region. 400 villages were knocked out. More than 400,000
people died. But in Pakistan, you could bring somebody from Karachi,
you could bring somebody from Lahore, you could bring somebody
from nawalpindi. There were other areas for which you could bring
people. In Indonesia, there's many islands from which you could bring
people. But in Port au Prince, when 300,000 people died, the
country was gone. Because Port au Prince was the country. There was
nothing much around there. So it means that all the guys who
trained in technology, all the guys who trained in medicine and
in engineering, if they were in that city. It means 35 years of
skills are wiped out, because they will start grade one all over
again, get to matric, go to varsity, get in the job market, go
to America, get experience and come back. Besides the 200 years
of difficulty they've had, besides what the earthquake has done to
them, they are now 35 years behind, even before they start.
That's the crisis of Haiti,
as I said, we wanted to make the world know we are there 10 past
six on the morning of Wednesday, 13, January, I got a call from 702
I just got back from Egypt, and he said, Did you hear about the
earthquake? I said, No. He said, put the TV on. I put the TV on. It
doesn't take me long to figure out how big a disaster is. I mean,
this business for 20 years, virtually, and at half past six, I
made the announcement that we responding. This is not about me.
This is about South Africa. At half past seven, South Africans
were ready, the search and rescue team and the search and rescue
equipment were ready to leave for the airport. One hour later, an
hour later than that, 53 medical personnel, the top class
specialist in the country, were prepared to leave Garden City,
brenthis, Mediclinic, Saint Augustine's etequini, Anthony from
all those kind of centers. They were ready to leave in an hour,
but they heard there's looting and there's shooting and it's
aftershocks and after events, After Effects. But he was still
prepared to go. When we went into Lebanon, 100 South Africans were
prepared to fly into a war zone to provide medical services. Who
says, We cannot do it. We have the heart, and we had the skill. And
we went in. Within seven days, the South African search and rescue
team together, what the Mexican team pulled out this lady, 64 year
old, en Azizi, a Christian, Catholic lady from there. The more
she got up, she told Ahmed bam, she's from the northwest. The
premier released them to come with us. And she told Ahmed bam, in
French, he doesn't understand French, but any case, told him in
French, I love you. And she said, I love God. Says, For seven days I
sat here thinking of God Almighty, when you can go from so many 1000
kilometers away, and it's three instill hope in people in another
country. You know, you've done something great, but I have to
qualify something. My spiritual teacher gave me the most important
message from everything that he told me, the most important
message he gave me, said, My son, remember, and remember this well,
that whenever you do something, it is not done by you, it is done
through you. The day you forget that the gift is gone. There
should be no inflation of ego, no thinking. I did it, believe me, I
have done a * of a lot of things that even I can understand.
I got done. It's not possible the kind of stuff that you've done,
you can get into a country for the President of the middle of the
night, and it responds to you cross borders where nobody in the
world can cross, and you go across. I'll give you one example
before I finish off here. When I built the hospital for Bosnia in
1993
it was self contained for theaters, X rays, ICUs Belgium,
the 28 containers of the state of the art technology which nobody in
the world had seen even so much so that when CNN went into Moscow on
the second of February 1994 they filmed the hospital and showed it
to the world and said this South African containerized mobile
hospital is comparable to any of the best hospitals in Europe. And
he was not talking talking about contained hospitals in Europe,
because he is no contain hospitals in Europe. He was talking about
normal, fixed structures. And then this was what we had achieved in
and this is one of achievements. And when we build this hospital
one Tuesday afternoon, I realized, you know what? I.
Have done all this, but there's no theater equipment. Never assume,
never assume they're going to find equipment in another area,
everything is bombed. So I said, let's find equipment.
I picked up a few cup medical surgical companies. I call them.
They gave me a cost of what I wanted. Orthopedic said, trauma,
said, guyness said, General said, all the kind of sets. They said,
60,000 in 1993 was a lot of money after you spent 80 after you spent
8 million Rand. And I said to myself, this very expensive. The
money on the other side, in case we get stuck, something gets
broken down, transport cost, accommodation, bombing areas. We
need money for that. We need spare money. I did my afternoon prayer.
I went to my post boss box. I was still a GP, six and a half years
practicing. I went to the post box. All the mail came. There were
whole lot of medical journals, medical company papers. I picked
up one paper, exactly the surgical instruments that I required was in
this brochure. So I phoned the company and I said, I want all
these things. They said, 30,000 then. So I shouted them. I said,
are you giving me plastic? They said, What do you mean? I said,
the company quoted me before you over 60,000 Rand. What can you
give me for 30,000 Rand? So they said, Give me the name of the
company. So I told him who the company was, and they said, we
supply to that company.
Do you know what's a strange thing? Six and a half years I
received brochures from all companies. I never received a
brochure from the 60 surgical company in six and a half years,
six and a half years. The day I was a surgical equipment, it was
in the post box. Let me tell you something else from that day after
today, I've never received a brochure from the company and
everybody else, the brochures have still been coming. It's done
through you, not by you, when we pull the survivor out. CNN was
there, live, Sky News, BBC, Mexican TV and all kinds of TV
were there. South Africa and Africa got recognition. Believe in
ourselves a daily after the search and rescue teams. Three days
later, the medical teams went in, and when they went in, they met
teams from America, Europe, France. Everybody was there.
France is part of Europe, but the French and Americans were there at
the 70 Adventist Hospital, when they came there and said, it's not
possible to function here. No X ray machine, no equipment. How are
we going to survive? So the certificate said, this is nothing
for us. We can manage. So they proved to the rest of the rest of
the world that they went to work 20 hours a day.
To the credit of the Americans and the French, they told everybody in
Haiti, if you want service, then go to the Dream Team. South Africa
is the dream team. What the malabin diplomat told me, We
corrected many years later, in 2010
that we have the skills, we have the capability. I'm sure this
conference it stands out internationally. We need to
believe in ourselves. If you go to Europe and America, some of the
best intellectuals are from Africa. They've taken them from
our continent. We refuse to believe in our own capability and
our expertise. I need you to get this message across. Believe in
yourselves. Miracles can be done. Thank you very much. Applause.