The piece of bread that transformed two lives - an unsung Maltese hero

Small deeds can lead to big results. Victor Mizzi ran a scout group in Malta in the 1950s. He went on to run his own very successful business, but even when he was helping out with the scouts he showed signs of enterprise and determination. He once contacted Lord Mountbatten, then Admiral of the British Fleet, and arranged for a group of 300 scouts from Malta to travel to the UK by warship. No mean feat to achieve!

He went to school at Jesuit Saint Aloysius College in Birkirkara.  He later started his own charter company Belleair holidays in 1974 and was highly successful. In fact, he was so successful that he made enough money to retire before the age of 50. Something I have heard so many dream of doing but never quite manage.

When the Chernobyl disaster happened Victor became aware of the shortages of supplies afflicting hospitals and orphanages in Belarus. 70% of the radiation fallout landed in Belarus and it impacted 2.5 million people with health consequences in an area that was already very depressed economically and suffering from crippling poverty. The result of the radiation was a huge increase in thyroid cancers and many children were born with malformed limbs or even multiple congenital deformities.  It is thought that 250,000 children were exposed to varying degrees of radiation in Belarus. 

Showing his usual terrier type tenacity Victor Mizzi continued to offer medicine and supplies to as many hospitals and orphanages in Belarus as he could. It was while he was visiting one of the orphanages that an incident happened which changed the course of his life. While in the orphanage a small three-year-old boy called Igor Pavlovetts, who had been born badly deformed, toddled over and offered the Maltese businessman a piece of bread. 

It was an unexpected act of kindness that led to a transformation. Victor was so touched by the small child that he arranged for him to be flown to the UK to receive medical treatment. While Igor was in the UK, Victor arranged for him to stay in a foster home. Following extensive physiotherapy and support, Igor grew in confidence and ability. 

Mind you, some of the artificial limbs and aids used for the disabled were pretty crude in those days and nothing like the state-of-the-art technology available today.  An old film of Igor's life shows his devastation when his "new legs" turned out to be just huge black crude boots with six-inch soles on them. The small child had obviously been expecting more natural-looking and more comfortable legs. But Igor's natural optimism and resilience shine through as he smiles at everyone around him despite his disappointment. Igor went on to have an independent life in the UK and has since married and had three children of his own.

Such an injection of generosity from Victor Mizzi could have ended with this one life being transformed. However, Victor was only getting started. Realising that so many children in Belarus were suffering ill-health as a result of the radiation, he started a scheme to allow Belarus children to travel abroad for 3 to 4 weeks so that their systems could recover in healthier climes. In time he would arrange for 56,000 children to have holidays outside Belarus and their immune systems benefited enormously from these breaks.  Such were his powers of persuasion that he even convinced British Airways, Belavia and Ukraine International Airlines to give all the children involved free travel to these destinations.  The charity he started so many years ago still runs today and has touched so many young lives.

So often in life, we miss these tiny but significant acts of kindness. Surrounded by the corruption and competition we might not even see the outstretched hand of a small child offering us bread. Even if we noticed it and felt a wave of sympathy for this tiny disabled child how many of us would have just moved on.  It took just one man, Victor Mizzi to see the boy, feel compassion and then arise to act, to make all the difference. That one act triggered an avalanche of endeavours that continue to influence children’s health in Belarus to this day.

 

Victor and Igor in the early years

Victor Mizzi passed away aged 84 in the UK in March 2019 and in the week before his death was visited by a journalist who recalled Victor saying to them “Always help others, when you have a chance.”

"Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity."

Baha’u’llah

Cloistered Nuns

Went with some friends on an outing including a tour of an extensive underground shelter here in Malta.  It also included a visit to the Benedictine Sisters of Birgu at the The Monastery of St. Scholastica,  the first Holy Infirmary of the Knights in Malta.  

There was a service there and behind the altar there were two windows with gratings on them.  I realised that behind these gratings sat the cloistered nuns.  

It seemed medieval to see these women secreted away.   And indeed the monastery has been in existence for five hundred and fifty years.  In fact this was the hospital in Malta for the Knights even before Valletta was built.  A real sense of history and I was able to enter and have coffee and cake with the nuns.  Some have been there 60 years and the day begins early with 4.30 am prayers and ends equally early at 9pm.  There is a whole lot of praying in between.  There is a shortage of women entering the order, it has been twenty years since the last novice entered.  So they have recently created a website to entice new entrants.  There is a peculiar grating through which the cloistered nuns are allowed once a month to have visits from family members.  

Ancient wooden swivel windows allow things to be given in and conversations to take place.  I couldn’t find an actual ancient version like those used but here is a modern equivalent.  

A sense of history surrounds the place and a quietness.  The nuns seemed nice and kind.  So fascinating to meet people who have such a different life to the norm.  But am struck by the truth of the words.

“People must live for one another, and not live in seclusion as do the monks and nuns. People should not live solitary lives. Light is of no value in an empty room.”

           (Compilations, Baha'i Writings, p. 440)

Jimmy and Eleni

We had some wonderful friends on Rhodes, Greece.  Jimmy and Eleni were just like angels.  We met Eleni, when we went to Greek classes at a nearby centre.  My depressing attempts to learn Greek were disheartening.  Despite my best attempts to memorise words for homework, my brain was incapable of keeping this information for any degree of time.  As a result, after months of classes my Greek was worse than awful and even the newcomers from Albania or Russia were outstripping me within weeks of starting.  But the best part of that class was Eleni.  She was Greek and a lovely radiant 60 year old.  She attended the classes to help with our pronunciation and her kindness was a salve.  Gradually, we got to meet her husband Jimmy another wonderful soul.  They lived in Koskinou and had a lovely house in a huge garden of fruit trees.  Sitting having coffee in their garden with the apricots hanging over us was heavenly.  Eleni did a good turn everyday in her father’s name.  Such a sweet thing to do in memory of someone you love.  We would arrive home to our flat to find a huge bag of fresh delicious fruit hanging on our door handle.  Or the day my youngest son learnt his first Greek word (it happened to be the Greek word for watch) and she bought him a small watch to encourage him to learn more!  Jimmy and Eleni are wonderful people inside and out.  Such a privilege to know them and I hug myself in glee to know they are on Rhodes cultivating a fertile garden out back and radiating love and kindness to all they encounter.

The Lovely Mr Nikos

I remember calling at my son’s primary class in Greece and his teacher Mr Nikos seemed unusually agitated.  This was not like him at all.  He was the calmest, nicest Greek I had ever encountered.  His good humour and determined kindness had helped my volatile youngest son Daniel in his first year at Greek primary school.  Not speaking any Greek had been one disadvantage but such was Daniel’s bad temper he even made the boisterous and aggressive Greeks around him seem positively as mild as milk.  You got used to it in our household and sort of coped.  Like the time my uncle had won at monopoly and Daniel had immediately over turned the board and the table, storming out of the room.  In the awkward silence that followed my uncle in dry tones muttered, “Sure, if I knew it meant that much to him, I’d have let him win!”

Taking Daniel to learn team sports had proved equally disastrous.  When other players took the ball, pushed against him, he became righteously indignant and marched of the pitch, stiff necked in rage.  When really angry at home, he would walk onto our balcony and announce his intention to throw himself off.  His other brothers would chorus at such times, “Just do it!”

When a substitute teacher had taken over from the delightfully calm Mr Nikos there had been trouble.  A boy had got up and slapped Daniel on the back of the neck in class.  As Daniel got up to respond, the young teacher had told him to sit down.  Daniel told her what had happened but she informed him she had not seen the slap and he should sit down immediately.  Daniel responded in usual form by telling her she must be blind.  A shouting match ensued with escalating volume on both sides.  Neither would back down and finally the young teacher ran out of the class to seek help.  Daniel by now, was firmly in his, “Kill me if you like, I’m not backing down mode.”  The teacher returned out of breath with Mr Nikos in tow.  The wise Mr Nikos took Daniel outside into the corridor and closed the classroom door.  Having got an irate Daniel on his own, Mr Nikos knelt down in front of him and said in a warm and understanding tone.

“Daniel, I know you are a good boy”

This breeched Daniel’s enraged defences and he immediately burst into heartfelt sobs of apology – what a clever teacher.

So to find the calm, usually unruffled Mr Nikos enraged was a worrying development.  To add to the disquiet every single child in the room was sobbing.  Some with their heads on the table, others held shaking desks with shoulders heaving and tiny girls wailed their distress.  I walked my son home bewildered with the situation.  As we headed along the street Daniel explained that at lunch time a group of children from his class had surrounded a six year old mentally disabled Albanian child in the playground and threw stones at her and shouted abuse.  She had become distraught and Mr Nikos had heard about the event from other teachers as his class filed in for their last lesson of the day.  “What did he say?”  I asked.  Daniel said that Mr Nikos had told them a story about a tiny girl, with many problems, from a foreign country coming to a new school and feeling very alone and afraid.  Then, how she encountered a crowd of bullies who tormented her and even threw stones and abused her.  Imagine, if she was your little sister, he told them sadly and softly.  If your little sister was alone in our playground and it happened to her, how would you feel?  On and on he’d gone for the full 45 minutes until every child howled their hearts out at the injustice and unfairness of it all. – what a teacher!  He’d taught them all a valuable lesson that day.

When we were leaving Rhodes I’d wanted to thank Mr Nikos for all his kindness and wisdom.  So in my crude Greek, I told him how lovely he was, how really, really lovely.  Not knowing much Greek, I tend to re-use the same words.  Daniel squirmed in embarrassment beside me as I stressed again and again how lovely I thought Mr Nikos was.  Feeling that I had at least managed to do the right thing and conveyed my appreciation to a good teacher we headed home.  Daniel then pointed out that my Greek “lovely” actually meant “handsome” or “good looking” and I’d been wittering on about how attractive he was.  How very, very attractive, really good looking in fact.  As my cheeks glowed red in embarrassment, Mr Nikos’ surprised but usual understanding face burned in to my memory banks.