Imtiaz Sooliman – TEDxUKZN . Imtiaaz Sooliman The GIft of the Givers Foundation

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, it 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 were your motto in Arabic will be hero NAS, meron

NAS, 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 of 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 we've got only 15 or 20 minutes, 15 or 20 minutes, I just

want to illustrate a few lessons from some of my projects.

Just

to go back one before this,

in 2002 we were credited by proudly South African as the first

proudly South African international organization.

International organization, as I was mentioned in one or 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 to today, no

agency, no government, has done anything similar to this hospital.

But there's not enough time to go. The details are too much. I just

want to show you some of the work that we do.

We involved in human suffering. We 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 doing the wrong way. Okay. This is not a desert. It's a

river that's drought in West Africa, in Nigeria, crop stresses

about coming up. Drought came and destroyed the corpse, whatever was

left. The locusts 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 everyday. 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 this 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,

Erasmus and every.

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 a 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 Niger. 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 a 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 its size 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, it is only 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 wrong

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 what 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.

They the grief, the hardship, the difficulty. I want to say

something again that I mentioned at the doctorate speech.

A few years ago, I met a Malawi diplomat in Blantyre, 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 surprised. 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'm feeling about, 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 diplomat 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, and

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 A.

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 and broken areas

where the roads were not possible anymore. And we saved lots of

lives. And we were the first agents 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, 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, and 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 counter 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 they 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.

Brent has medical clinic, Saint Augustine's etequini, anti Beni,

from all those kind of centers, they were ready to leave in an

hour, but they heard there's looting and the shooting and as

aftershocks and after events, After Effects, but they were 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, he's from the north west. The

premier released them to come with us. And he told Ahmad bam, in

French, he doesn't understand French. But any case, he 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 re in 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, he 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 a lot of things that even

I can't understand. I've got done. It's not possible the kind of

stuff that we've done can get into a country phone the president of

the middle of the night, and he 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 burns, in

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 there 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 it's not 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 medical, surgical companies. I call them. They gave

me a cost of what I wanted. Orthopedic said, trauma said, gyne

said, General said, all kind of sets. They said, 60,090 93 was a

lot of money after you spent 18. After you spent 8 million Rand.

And I said to myself, this very expensive. Need money on the other

side, in case you get stuck. Something gets broken down,

transport costs, accommodation, bombing areas. We need money for

that. We need spare money. I did my afternoon prayer. I went to my

post box, 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 Rand. 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 have a 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

16th surgical company in six and a half years, six and a half years.

The day I wanted surgical equipment, it was in the post box.

Let me tell you something else. From that day, up till today, I've

never received a brochure from the company, and everybody else's

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, they said, it's not possible to function here. No

X ray machine, no equipment. How are we going to survive? So the

South African 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 Malawi 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. Medicals can be done. Thank you very much. Applause.