At first glance, you might not think a newspaper columnist and a civil engineer would  have much in common. Well then, you haven’t met Rotarians Yusuf Kodwavwala and V.J. Patel. They were born in the same state in India. Financial aid helped each through college, and that education, in turn, helped elevate them into professions beyond their humble origins. Both currently live in Africa, both are married, and each has a son and daughter.

Each is also a past district governor and regional Rotary Foundation coordinator, meaning they’re key fundraisers for The Rotary Foundation.

And both of these generous Rotarians lead by example. So it seems fitting that they and their wives were inducted on the same day this year into the Arch C. Klumph Society, which honors donors who have given at least US$250,000 to the Foundation. Kodwavwala and Patel are the first Rotarians from Africa in the society, bringing to 15 the number of RRFCs who have been so honored.

The surgeon and writer

When he’s not donning a surgical mask and gloves, Yusuf Kodwavwala is writing novels or penning a column that appears every two weeks in the Sunday Nation newspaper, which is distributed in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The proceeds from his books and columns account for part of the $250,000 that Kodwavwala and his wife have donated to the Foundation. Most of those funds will help pay the airfare for teams to and from District 9200, as part of the Group Study Exchange program that allows non-Rotarians and a Rotarian team leader to spend four to six weeks in another country to experience another culture.

“We endowed a Group Study Exchange because I thought if you want to increase world understanding, there is no better way,” says Kodwavwala, who also has his own foundation that funds charity work in India, Kenya, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Such a worldly view is far from Kodwavwala’s humble beginnings. He was born in 1928 in Bantwa, a town in the state of Gujarat, and spent his early childhood living in a one-room house with no electricity or running water. His family slept on the floor and makeshift beds, bathed from a bucket, and used another bucket outside as a latrine. Eventually his father found the resources to run a small business, but it was still rough going for the family since Kodwavwala’s mother, a full-time housewife, died in childbirth at age 35. Kodwavwala, only eight years old at the time, recalls standing by her bedside watching her grow paler. The child she had just delivered, a son, survived and also went on to become a physician. Kodwavwala’s three elder brothers would become lawyers.

His school years weren’t easy. Kodwavwala, who financed his education with a scholarship and loan, stayed behind to finish schooling when his family fled to Karachi, Pakistan, as tensions surfaced between Hindus and Muslims in his hometown. He then spent five years in England training as a surgeon and working in a hospital, where he met and married an English nurse named Marie.

In 1961, he and Marie moved to Kenya for what was to be a three-year contract as a general surgeon at a hospital. Forty-six years and two children later, the family is still in Kenya. Kodwavwala, who specializes in breast surgery, is also a senior lecturer at the College of Health Sciences at the University of Nairobi.

And in his spare time, he writes his “Surgeon’s Diary” column about his experiences as a doctor.

“His is one of the most popular columns in the Sunday Nation. There are lots of readers who buy the paper because of him,” says his editor John Agunda, who adds that readers called when the column didn’t appear on a couple of occasions. Kodwavwala is now the top-paid columnist at the paper, earning about $300 a column.

The surgeon credits Rotary with starting his career as a columnist. A local Rotarian who was slated for surgery asked the doctor to fill in for him as the speaker at his local club meeting. Kodwavwala agreed and his impromptu speech, gleaned from his professional experiences, prompted another club member, a newspaper editor, to request a copy of the speech to publish in his paper. The column was so well received it has been running since 1980.

Kodwavwala, who writes under the pseudonym Yusuf K. Dawood, has published three collections of his columns, an autobiography, and five novels, including one about a refugee family that flees Uganda and moves to England. His first novel was published in 1978. He started writing them as a way to relieve stress while working as a surgeon and running a hospital.

“It was quite a strenuous job,” he says. “To get some sort of relief, over the weekends I started writing a novel based on a hospital setting. I took it to a publisher and he said, ‘Yes, we like it.’ So that was the start of my novel writing.”

His start with Rotary, however, began years before that. He joined the Rotary Club of Nairobi in 1967 after hearing a Rotary volunteer speak about her efforts to rehabilitate young polio victims. In 1989-90, he served as governor of District 9200 (Eritrea; Ethiopia; Kenya; Tanzania; Uganda). He has also been an RI membership zone coordinator, an area coordinator in Africa for RI’s Water Resource Group, and a member of the Foundation’s African Regional PolioPlus Committee.

After 40 years of wearing the Rotary pin, Kodwavwala is naturally a strong believer in the Foundation. He likes its educational and humanitarian programs, says its finances are transparent, and approves of how it manages its money. “They do a good job,” he says.

The engineer

Even though he owns a construction company that posted revenue of $20 million, V.J. Patel has not forgotten the people in his home state of Gujarat where he grew up in a house that lacked even a bathroom.

Through an educational trust, Patel gives a total of about $50,000 annually to around 500 high school and college students there.

He and his wife, Kusum, have also donated more than $400,000 to the Foundation. Of that, $250,000 will endow Ambassadorial Scholarships, which allow recipients to study abroad at a college or university. “Education is the best thing you can donate,” he says, adding that if he hadn’t received financial aid to help him through school, he wouldn’t be where he is today.

One of five siblings, Patel was born in 1945 in the village of Bharasar. “My father was a simple laborer when he started working. He never went to school,” he says. “Later on, he became a mason and a carpenter. My mother was a housewife, but she had to work in the fields.”

When Patel was born, his father was working in East Africa where he had found better employment, but he would return to India every five years. When Patel was 10, his father took him and one of his brothers to live with him in Nairobi, Kenya, and enrolled them in school.

“Unlike other fathers, he did not pull us out of school and take us to work,” Patel says. “He made a resolution that he will educate his children so that they don’t have to do the donkey’s work that he was required to do. That changed our lives.”

The three eventually moved back to India where Patel continued his education. The government gave him a scholarship for books and incidentals, the university waived its tuition, and a church gave him a rupee a day to pay for his eight-year stay at a boarding house while he studied. In 1969, he received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering.

Patel returned to Nairobi to look for work. He found a job as a civil engineer with a construction company, which transferred him to Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar. During his 10 years with the firm, he rose to become its managing director and own 20 percent of it. But he dreamed of owning his own company, so in 1979 he quit and established Vijay Construction. Patel says his firm has about 550 full-time employees and has built a range of projects in Seychelles, including hotels, a sports stadium, roads, quays, and jetties.

In 1985, Patel joined the Rotary Club of Victoria. In 1992-93, he served as president of the club and in 2002-03 as governor of District 9220 (Comoro Islands; Djibouti; Madagascar; Mauritius; Mayotte; Reunion; Seychelles).

During his year as governor, his district donated about $213,000 to the Foundation, thanks mainly to Patel’s generosity and a fundraising incentive. He told Rotarians in his district that if they donated $500 to the Annual Programs Fund, he would contribute the remaining $500 necessary for Paul Harris Fellow Recognition. He had one condition: The donors’ clubs had to get at least five people to each donate the $500 (for clubs in lower-income areas, the minimum was three). Patel contributed about $80,000 over the course of the year.

During the past decade, Patel has also provided full funding for Paul Harris Fellow Recognition to a handful of Rotarians who performed outstanding community work.

Clearly, Patel is a natural born leader, but he credits Rotary with improving his skills. “You learn how to talk to people, how to interact with them, how to get things done,” he says.

And having used those skills to achieve so much, Patel considers himself blessed. “I couldn’t afford to eat, and now I don’t know what to do with my money,” he says. “But mind you, I don’t have any expensive addictions. It hurts me if I [waste] money on unnecessary things.”

Instead, he shares his wealth by contributing to charitable causes like The Rotary Foundation. “From the bottom of my heart,” Patel says, “I am grateful to the Foundation for giving me the opportunity to help others in need.”