It was June 19th, 1988, Father’s Day back in the states, and I was a young aid/relief worker for a Catholic- based relief organization serving in various areas throughout Africa, most of it dealing with the droughts and famines in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Sudan, but at that moment in time, we found ourselves stationed in South Africa.
Though trained as a paramedic, what I really brought to the table was to help get supplies and services to towns and villages that were in some way stricken, and that were in locales that were controlled by either warlords, militias, thugs or often abusive government security forces.
I had a way of talking our way into these volatile areas to those who desperately needed aid.
We had to bribe our way into many, depleting what supplies were needed, but we did what we could.
A few times I was beaten senseless, receiving concussions and losing a few replaceable teeth, but none of us were ever killed or raped so I guess there’s that.
Though by this time, typhoid had virtually been eradicated in South Africa, we got reports from trusted sources that at least two villages just outside our current area of operation was hit bad with the disease, and that people were dying and suffering and that they were being left to pretty much fend for themselves.
As well, parasitic and infectious diseases, attributed due to the lack of clean water and sewage disposal systems, had further compounded these poor people’s misery.
We were supervised in that area by someone who had no business in a humanitarian setting, and that can only be described to you as Frank Burns of MASH infamy, without the medical expertise.
We were expressly forbidden by him to render aid to these stricken areas, because they were outside our area and that they were being controlled by militias that were in turn being paid by government security forces, for what purpose was unimportant then and now and beyond my pay grade or interest.
Long story short, with six others…. one fearless and tireless young doctor, three nurses, two medics including myself and a very sweet and equally fearless chaplain…. we commandeered three trucks loaded with supplies; medicine, food, water, electrolytes…. and a half a case of blow bubbles.
Children everywhere throughout the globe take great delight in blowing bubbles.
Most have never seen a blowing bubble before, and it takes an edge off of their misery, and brings rare smiles and laughter to their faces.
I learned that from Wavy Gravy and Dr. Larry Brilliant.
And made sure I carried blowing bubbles everywhere, all the time, wherever I went, for decades.
We took extra supplies because of the probable bribes.
We talked our way through, though we had to spend a pensive hour in a hut with violent men with loaded carbines, and we were indeed hit with depleting bribes.
We treated 411 people all told.
There was a lot of death and sickness, mostly the very young and the very old, and their was such such sadness and grief…. and I will spare you the details.
When we got back, I was told that I was being sent back to the States by ‘Frank’, and he referenced the belligerence of my people ( I’m Jewish ).
My girlfriend and confidante, Mariam, was a committed Malian nurse who I wanted badly to return with me, and she said she would….. only after she spent more time in the field.
The next day, most of us were all eating in a canteen that we shared with two other larger relief agencies….
….when walking through the door was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, his wife Nomalizo Leah Tutu and his executive officer at the time, Njongonkulu Ndungane.
The room stood up in disbelief.
He wanted to meet those and thank those that had served these villages.
He didn’t know that we did it without permission, and we didn’t tell him.
Desmond, Leah and Njongonkulu walked to the two tables we were eating.
I was holding clenched hands with Mariam when they did so.
I don’t know how in the world he did, but he already knew our names.
They shook our hands and thanked us, and all three spent time with each of us, individually.
Desmond asked Mariam the name of her hometown in Mali, and was familiar with it.
He spoke both Tswana and Xhosa to others in the room.
He walked up to me and shook my hand and he thanked me.
He knew about, asked about, and took delight in my bubbles.
I told him about our great, living American saint, Wavy.
He had a twinkle in his eyes. A twinkle that I have never seen so pronounced, before or since in anyone.
He then stared for a moment at my yarmulke.
”A practicing Jewish man serving with a Catholic agency? It’s our tradition, isn’t it Tevye?”
And then he said, quietly, “Tevye…… Tradition.”
And then, Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the Archbishop of Cape Town and winner of the Nobel Prize just four years previous, sang in the way of Topol playing Reb Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof…
”How do we keep our balance? Traditiooooooon tradition…..tradition! Traditioooooon tradition….tradition!” And then he mixed it up with another song in Fiddler, “Dadadadadadadadadadadadadadada.”
There was laughter and everyone had the widest smiles and the widest eyes that you can imagine on our faces.
Mariam also had tears in her eyes.
He then told us quietly that he would do everything he could to further aid to these people.
The three went over to the other tables and spoke to every single person in the room, from all three agencies, including the cooks and staff in the kitchen.
He shook hands with ‘Frank’, the man who would send me home.
And then in about an hour, they said their collective goodbyes and we all as one said goodbye as they left.
For that entire time, Mariam and I rarely stopped holding each others hand.
“What just happened?”
It was a moment that no one there will ever forget.
And did I ever have a story to tell my father when I called him later that day.
The head of the agency in Africa came the next day to talk with us seven.
Afterwards, Frank was relieved of his position and sent back stateside within the week. He continued with the agency for another month before he moved on.
I was elevated into a position allowing more logistical decisions and eventually took Frank’s position, and Mariam and I served together, with plans to be married, throughout Africa for over two years before she/we discovered, fought and succumbed to cancer.
She died surrounded by family in Mali.
Until her death in 2007, her mother still called me ‘son’.
On the morning I woke up to found out this man died, I cried and I laughed.
In his last years, after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama, he championed and launched an international campaign for LGBTQ rights in Cape Town.
"I would not worship a God who is homophobic."
And urged the British parliament to allow assisted dying and the right to die on one’s own terms, Death with Dignity, saying, "The manner of Nelson Mandela's prolonged death was an affront."
And always made sure that his own lawn was in order, as he did when he published the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report, putting most of the blame for abuses on the forces of apartheid, but also finding the African National Congress, his own, guilty of human rights violations.
The ANC sued to block the document's release, earning a rebuke from both Desmond and from President Mandela.
And on and on and on.
And on my mothers refrigerator is a polaroid picture taken by another in that canteen that day.
It shows me, without a wrinkle on my face and with impossibly white teeth, holding hands with my love, surrounded by nurses with wide smiles and wider eyes, and Desmond, in mid ‘traditioooooon’, with a twinkle in his eyes.
And that polaroid shows me at the singularly happiest moment of my life.
On this anniversary of that day, I light a candle and remember, deeply remember.
Thank you for allowing me share this special moment with the best humanity has to offer.
He was the best there was.
The truest champion of the worlds downtrodden.
Always speaking truth as he saw it and always always always seeking reconciliation and peace.
With the worst of us.
Dedicated to and for the well being of others.
With joy.
Blessed be the Peacemakers.
Blessed be Desmond Tutu.
Two very very good friends.
Delightful, and I urge you to watch it through.
I carry your spirit.
I believe, in this time and place and space, it’s pertinent to mention that in my years with this agency, I never…. not once…. witnessed a single instance of proselytizing, including and especially from the chaplains.
I ask that those who live with righteous anger and vengeance in their hearts to consider remembering the examples of Desmond and of Nelson ‘Madiba’ Mandela.
We can and will prevail in our struggle.
Without resorting to turning into ‘them’, and becoming our own worst nightmare.
We have something much more potent to offer.