My connection with Africa started with President APJ Abdul Kalam’s visit to Tanzania in September 2004. I did not go with him on this trip. Still, I got involved after he was told about the plight of Tanzanian children suffering from congenital (by birth) defects in the heart, where there is a hole in the wall that separates, the wall between the right and left ventricles (lower heart chambers), leading to the mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood returns from the body. This mixing reduces the amount of oxygen-rich blood pumped to the body, leading to lower blood oxygen levels and the bluish skin discolouration.

I was tasked to find a solution, leading me to Madam Eva Lilian Nzaro, the Tanzanian High Commissioner to India. One might easily confuse her for a lovely, cuddly grandmother as she has two grandkids living with her.  But with almost 30 years in diplomacy to draw on for experience, being an envoy, she was perhaps the best diplomat around. She came to India after serving as the Tanzanian Ambassador to the Russian Federation (Moscow) from 1998 to 2002.

Madam Eva Lilian Nzaro organised the selection of 24 children needing surgery. Air India lifted them with their mothers and a team of doctors and nurses and brought them to Hyderabad. They were all operated on at Care Hospital by Dr M Gopi Chand and his team and returned cured. When I met her in Dar Es Salaam, she ensured that one child, who had been operated on and is now a hefty, well-built man, also met me. She also gave me a bag of cashews, the best in the world. Madam Zaro passed away on February 14th, 2021. If there is one Angel I met in my life, it was her.