Harald Meyer-Porzky (HMP): Dear Ruth, how important is it to you to meet the people who donate money to your work face to face? You have been to Germany, Austria and Switzerland quite often and this time you have little opportunity to meet anyone.
Ruth Pfau: It is very important to me because we are not just a company in the sense that we want to get money from the west and then use it in Pakistan to implement something. It is very important to me that we feel the flow, not only of financial but also of personal energy.
I once spoke to a woman I corresponded with by letter who had knitted a blanket for a Christmas market. She had clearly spent hours at this Christmas market hoping to find a buyer. Nobody bought the blanket. She wrote to me and I replied to her with complete conviction: “Evidently our project didn’t need 300 DM on that day – instead, it needed the six hours you spent in the cold: they were much more important. Please accept our thanks for doing so.” There was a great deal of energy transferred between the two parties.
HMP: I know that you don’t enjoy giving advice. However: what would you like to say to humanity, what is your message to humanity?
Ruth Pfau: (laughs) Never keep quiet please! Whenever you see something that is wrong, at least talk about it, even if you cannot do anything to change it. At least make it public.
HMP: And what do you notice when you are visiting Germany?
Ruth Pfau: The reason I like being in Germany is because it is a state bound by the rule of law. You can sleep at night safe in the knowledge that nobody is being tortured and that, if something does happen, everybody is equal in the eyes of the law. It makes such a difference not living in such a state – people in Germany cannot imagine. I couldn’t either although I must have known it from the Nazi era.
HMP: What is your greatest personal wish?
Ruth Pfau: My greatest personal wish is that nothing happens to our manager Mervyn Lobo in the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre (MALC) in the face of all these attacks in Karachi. He does so much for the 50,000 leprosy families, three times the amount of tuberculosis families and now for this totally new programme with disabled children and old people. The thing I fear most of all is if Lobo cannot work. I don’t think he’ll ever retire. I sometimes say to the Lord, “Send someone to look after him if you don’t have the time.”
Contact:
Ruth-Pfau Foundation
c/o DAHW, Harald Meyer-Porzky
Mariannhillstr. 1c, 97074 Würzburg
Telephone: (09 31) 79 48 - 135
Fax: (09 31) 79 48 - 160
e-mail: Ruth-Pfau-Stiftung@dahw.de
Bank details:
Commerzbank Würzburg,
Account number: 307969700
Bank sort code: 79080052
IBAN: DE98790800520307969700
