SATURDAY FOCUS: REMARKABLE WOMEN(7) Pamela Ateka Muthiora

Sing Africa SingSelected poems
by Pamela Ateka Published 2004 by Community Focus Group,Nairobi, Kenya

In 2005 I coordinated an International Storytelling Festival in Perth Western Australia: Storytelling on the Edge. Before I knew it the programme had taken on a life of its own. Storytellers from all states/territories of Australia, as well as from Canada, England, Ireland, Israel, Kenya, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the United States of America, made contact, wanting to be part of this event. So many people from so many backgrounds — and that’s how I met twenty-eight year old, Pamela Ateka from Nairobi!
...As I read Pamela Ateka’s letter and proposal, something inside me sang. Here was a performance that promised to be as unique to Australian storytelling as it was ‘on the edge’ All at once I knew we had our Keynote Speaker/Performer.

Dressed in traditional costume, Pamela captivated all with her humour, her dance, her drumming and her ability of involve her audience as she recounted ‘The Parable of Writing’: a story she had developed to teach the principles of HIV/AIDS prevention. It told of a young man who, like the prodigal son, left his village home for the city lights. Here, he contracted HIV/AIDS and returned home, sick and dying, to experience the acceptance of a caring community.

... In the words of one of the participants: At the Perth Storytelling Festival in 2005, many of us were lucky enough to meet and hear Pamela Ateka from Kenya tell her amazingly vibrant and inspiring stories. We became aware of the great work she is involved with in Nairobi caring for AIDS orphans and using story as an educational tool in schools to inform students about the threat of AIDS and the ways in which the transmission of the disease can be avoided
... It was only in the breaks at meal times and between events that I began to appreciate the passion and dedication with which this young artist and peer educationalist committed her life.

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‘Pamela,’ I asked, ‘where did the idea of this work come from?’
She looked at me and smiled a gentle smile. ‘My sister,’ she whispered, ‘my sister died from AIDS in 2000. I couldn’t understand. She left a small son and I took him to my heart and my home.’
How hard was that?
It just seemed right … I was suddenly aware of the growing number of orphans and I knew I had to do something about it.
But you did have other personal and family commitments?
Yes, apart from my nephew, I had a young daughter of my own, Joy Pendo … but I couldn't stop thinking how I’ve always loved poetry and acting, and I should use these skills to good purpose. So I talked with my friends and came up with a plan to use poetry and storytelling to raise money for the care of children orphaned by AIDS, and to create awareness in society at large.
Your poetry and acting took on a particular flavour - focus. Tell me about that.
I developed what I call ‘edutainment’. I wanted to increase HIV/AIDS awareness through theatre and poetry, and using story, as an educational tool in schools to inform students about the threat of AIDS and the ways in which the transmission of the disease can be avoided.
But why performance?
Performance is the language that everyone understands. Families won't come to a lecture; but they will come to see me perform. And off of that experience, they find it easier to talk about sex and AIDS with their children.
Apart from your artistic skills, did you need other training?
I’ve always been a bit of a social activist – concerned about injustice and human rights – especially for women and children in my country. I had a wonderful opportunity to join a community-based training programme for community groups and their organizers run by the East Side Institute (http://www.eastsideinstitute.org/) — part of a growing international movement of healthcare professionals, scholars, youth educators, and artists seeking to use performance to reinitiate and advance human development.
So your work didn’t stop with writing and performance to highlight community needs?
Oh no! Just looking around Nairobi and seeing hungry and orphaned children on the streets, pushed me into taking more hands on action. With the help of friends and volunteers, I founded a Community Focus Group. We set up a feeding programme. Initially, the feeding centre catered for 26 children orphaned by AIDS, who came daily at lunch times and received a meal and moral support from the helpers. Over time the children were found host families who were, in turn, assisted with food packages, and money for school fees and uniforms.Today the centre provides for almost one hundred orphans.
Who funded this programme? Government? Corporate sponsors?
Oh no! I was very inexperienced about fund raising. The Government wasn’t interested and corporate sponsors were wary of an unknown group with no track record.
So what did you do?
I turned to my local community for support -- organizing fundraising events, where I would perform my poetry and tell stories. The costs of the feeding centre were met by fees for performances and by the income-generating activities such as jewellry and craft making of volunteers, most of whom were young, unemployed college-leavers living in the slum area. Then there were the royalties from my book of poetry and from poems published in various newspapers. Many local businesses also offered support. I was able to organise clothing drives and find partners willing to offer the older children job training.
Where are you at now with all this?
The programme currently has three staff and three volunteers who help young people, ages 7-14. Another 200 children are on the waiting list. Most of them, like my nephew, are orphans and living with relatives.
And your performances?
That’s expanded enormously. Coming to your Festival in Perth was a wonderful experience. I made many new contacts. Some of the storytellers there helped me market jewellery; and, one man from the group set up a donation scheme from which I receive regular contributions.
But Perth wasn’t your only international venture, was it? You have taken your performance to quite a number of countries outside Kenya.
Yes, I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to present and perform in many countries, including South Africa, Egypt, UK, Spain, Mexico, Ethiopia and Uganda
I understand that you returned to Nairobi from the festival in Australia and were on a plane to America before you hard scarcely time to catch your breath. I hope your performances there went as well as the ones you did here.
I had a wonderful time there too. But I was very tired
Not much wonder. In the midst of all this were planning your wedding and preparing for the birth of a new baby.
...Pamela, it has been refreshing to talk with you again and recall our first meeting. Your Perth festival performance of the "Parable of Writing" will long be remembered across Australia (and to other parts of the world where festival folk carried it). And here in Perth, the folk at the Aids Support Centre were greatly uplifted by your visit. I've also had good feedback from the Church groups you visited as well.
I want to thank you and the Storytelling Guilds around Australia so much for your continuing support. Poetry and storytelling are part of the program’s staples, helping to “soothe the children’s souls.”


Postscript:
On 25 Match, 2006 Pamela married Charles Muthiora. They have a baby daughter Shantel Neema Kagwiria (meaning ‘song of Grace’ in Swahili).
...On a sadder note, Pamela’s mother died in a supermarket fire earlier in 2010.
Yet Pamela continues her work.


To support Pamela’s work go to: http://www.creativexchange.org/hivaids/CFG


A copy of Sing Africa Sing may be purchased from
Community Focus Group
PO Box 447-00518
Nairobi
Kenya

SATURDAY FOCUS: REMARKABLE WOMEN(6) Joice NanKivell Loch

Operation Pied Piper

The story of the rescue of 2,000 civilian refugees from Poland and 50 orphaned Jewish children

Joice Loch’s account of events of her incredible rescue of Polish refugees and orphaned Jewish children in A Fringe of Blue are greatly understated. In fact, she makes no specific mention of Operation Pied Piper at all. I am left to wonder whether she didn’t recognise the enormity of the task she’d undertaken, or personal humility on her part or a restriction imposed under some wartime ‘secrets act’. Perhaps all three played a part. Susanna de Vries (in the 2007 edition of her biography about Joice Loch, Blue Ribbons Bitter Bread, p.331) offers another possibility. In her seventies and during the writing of her autobiography, Joice had a serious accident that badly affected her powers of concentration and memory.

Joice’s story:
Background
At the commencement of WWII Poland, at the request of Britain and France, had resisted mobilizing its armed forces to defend itself for fear that Germany would perceive such a move as a threat and respond aggressively. Now Poland found itself attacked on two sides – Russia from the east and Germany from the west. Escape was now their only option. Trainloads of refugees — Polish families, wives and widows of regular soldiers, and reserve officers fled to Greece and Jugoslavia, many via Rumania, to ships they hoped would take them to France. Those in Rumania found themselves confined in internment camps under orders of King Carol who wished to avoid being drawn into war with Hitler. Their only means of escape was to obtain exit visas - many able to be purchased only through the ‘black market’.

The Mission Begins

Joice Loch in Quaker uniform

Joice and Sydney Loch were sent by their Quaker organization to work with the Poles now stranded in Rumania. The ‘Green Frontier’ provided an escape route for Poles who fled on skis, stealing through the forests, mountains and snow like the wolves and deer, to an underground in Hungary.

...Meanwhile, Russia and Germany were squeezing their ways through to the rich oilfields of Ploesti, Rumania.

...Joice flew to Budapest to close the Quaker mission there and, against a background of false propaganda that Britain had been defeated, oversaw the care of and made payment for river craft to take the escaping Poles to Bulgaria and Constantinople and on to the port of Mersin on the SE coast of a neutral Turkey. An empty hotel was found by the British Consulate for the evacuees to wait for a ship. Among her charges was a large group of Jewish orphans whose parents had been killed escaping Poland.
...At last the aging war horse Warszawa stolen from a break-up yard in Danzig and crewed by volunteers arrived. Under cover of darkness, the Poles were smuggled on board and the ship set sail for Cypress. Among those on board was a complement of 500 Polish soldiers en route to Palestine.
...The war situation was changing fast. With the fall of Greece and the invasion of Crete, Cypress was no longer a safe haven. The British Government sent another ship to carry 2000 Polish refugees (including some rescued from Siberia when Russia joined the Allies) and 50 Jewish orphans to Haifa.
...To enter British controlled Palestine and be eligible for food rations all the refugees had to be registered as soldiers. Hence, the first Polish soldier to land on Palestinian soil was a four year old girl!


Operation Pied Piper
(various sources):
Summer 1940 marked the beginning of Operation Pied Piper. Susanna de Vries (2000) explains how Joice Loch borrowed the title from Robert Browning’s poem ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ in which a piper with a magic flute spirited the town’s children away. Interestingly, Rumanian legend records its own sequel, as it tells how about one hundred and fifty years after the event described by Browning, some merchants returning from the East told how, as they had journeyed across Hungary, they had come to the mountainous village of Sebenburgen (= seven hills). Here, they found that all the inhabitants of the village spoke only German. The people insisted they had come from Germany but did not know how or when they chanced to be in this strange country. “Could these people,” enquired the merchants, “ be descendants of the lost children of Hamelin?”
...Be that as it may, in early September, Joice, accompanied by a twenty-two year old assistant, Lushya, and Father Ambrosius, a Polish orthodox priest, took 450 Polsh women and children and fifty Jewish children from Bucharest by train to the Black Sea resort of Constantza, where she was to pick up another 400 women and children who had been harboured by wealthy Rumanians. Earlier, Joice and Lushya had trudged around the city to addresses where the women were housed to warn them of their danger and the plans for escape.
...As if this wasn’t enough to deal with, money Joice had requested from the Quakers War Relief Fund had not arrived. Although she had money enough for tickets, there was nothing left for food, medicines or any emergency. At the last minute, an urgent request for assistance from a Rumanian Banker and his wife, solved two problems. They asked Joice if their two nieces, recently orphaned in a war atrocity, together with their only daughter could be included in the escape plan and delivered to family in Haifa. In exchange for this consideration, the couple handed Joice an envelope containing ten thousand lei — more than enough to meet the needs of the journey to come.


from de Vries, 2007, p.274

 ...It was school holidays and the train from Bucharest was crowded with holidaymakers on their way to the beaches of the Black Sea resorts. The children, dressed in sundresses and shorts, and the women clutching beachbags, mingled with the general crowd and boarded the train in family groups, laughing and chattering. They arrived safely in Constantza in time to catch the afternoon ferry to Istanbul. Joice played the role of English governess to her three newest charges as they filed through customs. Every thing had gone well!
...Then came an announcement over loud speakers in Rumanian and German that brought a chill to the adults in the party. The ferry must return to Constantza immediately! What now? Had they been betrayed?  Would they now be herded on to cattle trucks and despatched to labour camps in Germany — or worse?
...A detachment of Iron Guards was waiting at the wharf. The soldiers clambered aboard amid the surrounding deathly silence and gathered around eight huge wooden shipping crates labelled sturgeon and tinned caviar. Guns were drawn. Then, after some confrontation between the Captain of the ferry and the guards, a crane boom swung over the crates to load them into nets and landed on the dockside.
...Joice was puzzled. All this fuss over tinned caviar! But Lushya, watching the pantomime playing out on the dock as the Iron Guards prised open the crates with crowbars to reveal the glint of gold bars, began to laugh. The crates contained the bullion King Carol was shipping out of the country to finance his exile.
...The ship’s engines were restarted and the ferry pulled away from the dock for a second time. Another crisis averted!
...On arrival at Istanbul, the party was met by a committee of Poles who escorted them through the streets to several large pensions where the group had been booked for the night. The next evening they boarded an overnight ferry to Mersin. From here they were to await a ship to take them to Cyprus.
...After a week, Joice was feeling desperate; money was running out, the Harbour Master was anxious she accept his recommendation of a suitable vessel. But heeding her husband Sydney’s warnings about finding a trustworthy captain and the dangers of dysentery, Joice knew she must find a ship with a safe water supply and proper sanitary arrangements.
...In desperation, she contacted the British Embassy in Constantinople. After an initial rebuff there was good news. The British Naval Command had found her a ship. The Warszawa would arrive in Mersin within the next twenty-four hours. It had been commissioned to embark Polish soldiers on their way to join British forces in Palestine. But since the ship was already bound for Cyprus en route, the cost to Joice and Operation Pied Piper was nominal. There was one proviso: they must buy their own provisions and cook their own meals. It was settled. The Polish women embraced the task. They rolled up their sleeves, scrubbed the decks, toilets and cabins, and cooked meals for themselves and the children.
...Under cover of darkness, the Polish soldiers bound for Palestine were smuggled aboard singly and in pairs; and the Warszawa slipped out of Mersin harbour so quietly during the night that not even the Harbour Master noticed her departure.
...The sea was calm and they managed to avoid German mines. After an anxious night, Joice was relieved to see the island of Cyprus. With the support of the British Government, the Polish refugees and the Jewish orphans were settled into comfortable accommodation; and for a time, Joice and Sydney now reunited, were able to relax.
...By the spring of 1941, while Joice was negotiating places for the Jewish orphans on a troop ship to Haifa where there was a large Rumanian-Jewish community who would take care of them, Germany invaded Greece and Crete. Cyprus would be next! This meant, not only the Jewishe orphans but also now, the entire contingent needed to escape.
...In June 1941, the British Government sent a naval cruiser, and Australian troops who had arrived in Cyprus after the battle of Crete helped load all 2,500 refugees aboard. Under a scorching sun, the British cruiser made slow progress, twisting and turning to avoid floating mines. The journey was perilous in many ways; there were not enough life jackets for all the passengers and few of the children could swim. One night the drone of engines was heard overhead. Bombs aimed at the ship created a maelstrom as they hit the water on either side. At dawn the German planes flew away.
...On their approach to Haifa, the Captain received a radio message to advise the area surrounding the harbour had been mined to destroy their ship. What now? Joice felt overwhelmed with concern, when, suddenly, out of nowhere, steamed their old friend, the Warszawa with hundreds of soldiers in Polish uniform waving and cheering.
... Shortly after, a British mine-sweeper arrived to remove the mines - and the refugee ship was allowed to dock. Despite stories of Palestine refusing entry to any further Jewish refugees, when port officials came on board there were no difficulties. All the women and children were ushered through customs and a special train was sent to the port to deliver the refugees to two camps outside Haifa.
...The orphaned Jewish children were found foster homes or relatives among Haifa’s large Rumanian Jewish community
...Thus, after more than eighteen harrowing months ‘Operation Pied Piper’ was finally complete. Joice Nankivell Loch had pulled off yet another remarkable feat.


References
de Vries, Susanna (2000), Blue Ribbons Bitter Bread, Hale & Iremonger. First edition
de Vries, Susanna (2007), Blue Ribbons Bitter Bread, Pirgos Press, Brisbane. Updated edition
Loch, Joice Nankivell (1968), A Fringe of Blue, John Murray, London
Various references, articles, interviews and reviews found online