Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Gift of the Givers celebrates 25 years of giving to mankind
THE story begins 25 years ago tomorrow. A young Pietermaritzburg doctor stands before a Muslim teacher in Istanbul, Turkey. It’s 10pm on August 6, 1992. They have just finished praying.
The holy man, Mohammed Safar Effendi, speaks to the doctor in Turkish. The doctor doesn’t speak Turkish, yet he understands every word.
The instruction is simple: “My son, I’m not asking you,” says the teacher, “I’m instructing you to form an organisation that will be called the Gift of the Givers. You will help all people of all races, or all religions, of all classes, of all cultures, of any geographical location and of any political affiliation.
“You will help them unconditionally, you will not expect anything in return not even a thank you. In fact for what you’re going to be doing expect to get a kick up your back. If you don’t get a kick up your back regard this as a bonus.
“You will treat people with love, kindness, compassion and mercy… Best among people are those that benefit mankind.”
Three weeks later, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, 55, was in Bosnia. The rest is history – much of it record-breaking. Gift of the Givers has been to most of the worst disaster zones in the world in the past 25 years, distributing R2.1 billion in aid across 43 countries, notably Iran in 2003 after the earthquake, Thailand in 2005 after the tsunami, Haiti in 2010 after the killer quake, Somalia the following year with the famine, Syria since 2012, the Philippines, Nepal and Pakistan.
Those are the foreign missions – there’s also the local work, most recently in Knysna and before that Tzaneen, Barberton and Khayelitsha. That’s just this year.
But disaster relief is not the only thing Gift of the Givers does – it builds hospitals and houses, distributes aid from food to clothing and blankets and runs soup kitchens.
The sprawling township of Alex is a stone’s throw from Gift of the Giver’s main logistics centre in Bramley, Joburg. The relief workers regularly go in there and into the rural and peri-urban areas in other provinces where entire villages are in danger of starvation but the TV cameras and the reporters aren’t always there.
Today, the organisation has three major distribution cen- tres in Bramley, Durban and Cape Town. There are offices in Lilongwe, Malawi, and Harare, Zimbabwe, while the admin office remains in Pietermaritzburg, where it all began.
Sooliman and his wife Zohra and some relatives started off using his son’s room as an office, with a fax machine and phone amid the toys.
Zohra still runs Careline, the counselling division she set up after realising people affected by disaster needed emotional care, as well seeing to their physical needs.
The organisation is small for the scale of work it does, with a permanent staff of 60, casual labour for the manual work of loading and packing and scores of volunteers, medical professionals and specialists among them. They give their time and expertise for free when Sooliman calls them to ask them to take part in a missions, which can be planned and put into execution within two hours of the volunteers arriving in Cape Town, Durban or Joburg, picking up the specialist kit they need, whether for fires, earthquakes or floods, and getting on board chartered aircraft.
The equipment ranges from the emergency bag all volunteers take with them whenever they deploy further than Gauteng, to overalls, wetsuits, fire- retardant clothing, life jackets and air-portable kennels for the rescue dogs.
Over the years, the organisation has innovated and designed, from the first containerised hospital in Bosnia, to being able to operate from the runway the moment they land at their destination.
“We’re not a field hospital,” Sooliman said, “we’re a mobile, portable hospital; when we deploy, we carry everything that we need.”
He’s proud of all the missions Gift of the Givers has carried out. Some have been tougher than others, like Bosnia, which he credits for teaching him 85% of what he knows, to Syria, where the team built a hospital in a war zone and continues to service it today.
Haiti was tough logistically. It was the first mission he didn’t control on the ground but it was also the first time a South African rescue group had pulled someone alive from beneath rubble. Pakistan was another, being asked by the military not to go to the quake site but instead save a hospital that was condemned as unserviceable, within 24 hours and create a 400-bed emergency centre for victims.
He’s proud, too, that Gift of the Givers dispatches complete disaster relief teams.
“Some organisations send clothes, others food. Some send trauma specialists, others post-operative experts. Some send search-and-rescue teams, some send dog handlers with rescue dogs. Some build houses. We do everything, sometimes altogether – and we even build hospitals.”
There have been the countless times Sooliman has interceded as a hostage negotiator. South African Stephen McGowan was released by al-Qaeda on Thursday, after being held for five-and-a-half years. Sooliman had worked tirelessly behind the scenes to get him freed.
Sooliman has followed the mission of serving mankind with like-minded volunteers ever since that day in Istanbul.
“They are from all races, all regions in this country, some are very rich but then I see them working in appalling conditions without sleep and without complaint.”
Tomorrow will be a normal day for him and the Gift of the Givers. He’ll pray in gratitude, five times as his faith requires, but there will be no party.
“How do I invite everyone?” he asked. “If a man gives me a million, but has R100 million, is that better than a man who gives me R10 but only had R10 to his name? What about those who gave nothing but remembered us in their prayers?
“We won’t invite anyone because everyone has been important to us. I will remember them and give thanks for them in my prayers. The projects will continue, the missions will continue because, as the teacher said, everything is done through you, not by you.
“There’s no place for ego in what we do, we are merely instruments of the divine.”