Helping the poor is natural for Eunice
Since 15 she has been working with communities to feed the hungry
EUNICE John is the driving force behind the annual Children’s Festival, where deprived children from Bottlebrush are treated like royalty for a day. She works with suppressed women in India, has helped those driven from their homes during the xenophobic uprisings in Durban, rushed to the aid of those in Indonesia affected by the 2004 tsunami, and has made a difference in the daily lives of those living in informal settlements.
She has been illegally imprisoned in the US, but rose above this indignity to make a difference to refugee women in similar circumstances.
To learn what motivates her, turn back the hands of the clock to when she was a 10-yearold living in Clairwood. “I was amazed at the poverty around us,” Eunice said. “If I asked for a chocolate, or a bag of chips, my dad never refused, but I soon realised that my friends living in shacks could not do the same.”
So she shared her meals with them.
At 15, she wanted to give poor children an opportunity “to eat until their stomachs were sore at the end of the day”.
The result was 91 kids taken by bus to a spot on Durban bay where they were fed sweets, chips, hot dogs and breyani, and given a Lucky Dip packet to take home.
“The skies that day were so beautiful. I felt God was smiling down on us,” said Eunice.
With time she drew inspiration from her older brother, Eden Joshua, who worked with drug addicts and among the gangs of Wentworth and Chatsworth. She joined him in a truck, stopping on different corners singing duets.
A star in javelin, discus, shotput and other sports, Eunice used another skill – drama. “We put on To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a set-work for matric students, so our school travelled to different schools to stage it.”
She was heavily involved in her church’s outreach, and many people thought she would make a perfect pastor’s wife. “I felt differently,” she said. “From what I had seen of pastors’ wives, I was not interested. I did not want my wings clipped.”
Into this scenario came interim pastor Dennis John. Her pastor asked her to drive him around and introduce him.
While fraternising with his parishioners was a strict no-no for Dennis, love knows no boundaries. On January 16, 1988,