Lessons in care from the lady with the lamp
In the early 1950s, after she had finished high school and trained as a midwifery nurse, my mother, Elizabeth Nchadi Ranoto, was assigned to the Helene Franz Hospital in the far northeast corner of South Africa. In that same decade, she married Ngwako Solomon Moloto, and they welcomed their first child in 1958. That was me, Phuti Gladys Thamaris Moloto.
My mother and I stayed in the nurses’ cottage homes, while my father was a laborer at one of the nearby German shops. Germans had colonized the area where we lived, and many of the places had Germanic names.
Some of those names have changed over the years, including the name of the town where we lived, Bochum, which today is known as Senwabarwana. There’s a town in Germany named Bochum, though some say the name of our town was a corruption of Bochim, a place in the Bible. Either way, the settlement was, in the early 1900s, the site of a hospital founded by the German missionaries Robert and Helene Franz. Robert may have been the missionary — the preacher — but it was Helene who ran the hospital.
Image credit: Daniel Barreto
The hospital, according to one history, had been established “to address the prevalence of endemic diseases among the Black population in the Northern Transvaal region.” Among other things, it ministered intermittently to people suffering from leprosy, and the Bochum Leper Institution was established in 1914, with Robert as the superintendent — though the institution might never have existed had it not been for Helene.
As their grandson R.C. Franz told the story, the couple’s original hospital lacked the room and the resources to properly treat the leprosy patients. It was only after Helene insisted that she and her husband travel to Pretoria, the country’s administrative capital, where she waited stubbornly until the appropriate government official agreed to see her, that the couple got what they needed to establish the dedicated leprosy hospital.
Helene devoted 40 years of her life to providing medical care in South Africa. In 1935, the year she died — and three years after my mother was born — Helene received the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal for her work among the Indigenous people of the northern Transvaal. Following her death, the Bochum hospital was renamed the Helene Franz Hospital.
What the people of the northern Transvaal needed now was someone to succeed Helene Franz, the woman known as the Angel of the North. I truly believe that successor was my mother, Elizabeth, the lady with the lamp.
A mother’s care
As I said, my mother was a midwifery nurse. She was loved by her patients because she had a big heart and a down-to-earth way with people. She was a soft-spoken, God-fearing woman, filled with love and a great capacity for caring for others. Prayer was her tool to propel her forward regardless of the challenges, both at work and at home. Because of her lenient and empathetic heart, expectant mothers always requested my mother when they came to the hospital to deliver their babies. Hence, many of those newborn babies were named after my mother.
Like Helene Franz, my mother also ministered to the people with leprosy. The buildings where they stayed were about a third of a mile from the main hospital. There were many trees around the hospital and, as I remember, there were many snakes about during the night. When my mother made her rounds at night and headed off to visit her leprosy patients, she always carried a lantern to light the way. The sight of my mother heading off with her lamp was an inspiring sight, not just for me, her daughter, but for her colleagues and the patients who depended on her.
As Mother cared for and interacted with the people with leprosy, she never covered her mouth or face or wore gloves as protection against the disease. She would just stroll with them, chatting and laughing. It was her way of giving them hope and a sense of belonging, of making them feel like they were one of us. Despite her lack of precautions, my mother was never afflicted by the disease.
I was 4 years old by then, and I was very afraid of the people with leprosy. I was frightened not so much by the disease itself but by the way the patients appeared. They were all very pale and had scalelike skin. Some had lost hands or noses or ears, and some had lost both their upper and lower lips, which left their teeth bared. But what surprised me was that they could still pick themselves up and make their way to lunch or dinner, though admittedly some of them did need an assist from my mother.
When this photo was taken, in 1958, I was 2 months old, and my mother, Elizabeth, was a nurse at a hospital in South Africa.
For me, going to church with my mother on Sundays was a nightmare. She would bathe and dress me, and I would then accompany her to gather the leprosy patients who needed assistance to get to the church hall. I never saw other children at church, but their parents — the other nurses and their spouses — attended, and everyone covered their mouths, noses, and hands. Everyone, that is, except me and my mother.
I also remember that, during the day, as my mother headed toward the remote buildings to give the people with leprosy their medications, I would run right behind her, staying beneath her opened umbrella. But as we approached the buildings, my natural shyness emerged, and as we drew even closer and I saw the patients staying there, my traumatic terrors kicked in. But Mother would always encourage me to see her patients as people like me, irrespective of their appearance. Even in church, she urged me to forget about their appearance and sit among them as fellow church members.
To my surprise, Mother’s methods worked. As time went on, I came to realize that the leprosy patients were people just like us. They loved me so much, as I was the only child in that hall, and they would extend their deformed hands toward me, smiling and saying hello. As time passed, I ended up embracing their love and smiles. And just like my mother, I was never afflicted with leprosy. God is good.
Following her example
Eventually my paternal grandfather, who was an induna — a Zulu word for a headman or councilor — bought a farm for my father in Bochum. My father built a house there, where I lived with my parents and siblings. Other people bought farms and built houses, and one day my father became an induna too.
At home in that new community, my mother continued to serve and share what she had with other people. Commonly known as Nurse Moloto, she would give people whatever they requested, even when that left us with little to eat. “We must learn to share with the needy where possible,” Mother told me and my siblings, and that seed, once planted, grew in all of us.
At first I had wanted to be a nurse like my mother, but ultimately, realizing the importance and power of education, I became a teacher and, later, a school principal. During my 34-year career, I encountered many needy people and children, and through the mercy of God I was able to change many learners’ and communities’ lives through education.
Even after I retired, I continued to reach out and help members of my community. I turned my home into a hub of education, where local children could access books, a laptop, and free Wi-Fi, and find a place to study, do homework, and work on school projects. I also started a backyard vegetable garden where people could help themselves to whatever they were willing to harvest. I encouraged them to replicate what I’d done in their own backyards so that they could enjoy fresh vegetables planted and nurtured by their own hands. In all this I was following the example given me by Mother with her lamp.
My emulation of my mother has reached far beyond my own neighborhood. In 2017 I had the privilege of volunteering at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya, which is home to thousands of war orphans and displaced children. Today I continue to volunteer there virtually, bringing hope and education to children through online teaching and learning initiatives at the school launched there by the global educator Koen Timmers and the United Nations refugee agency.
Here I am with both of my parents. I was 5, about the age when I began to learn some important lessons by watching and listening to my mother.
Making an impact through Rotary
I joined Rotary in 2016. For me, given all that Rotary represents and has accomplished, it was a natural fit. Today I am a charter member of the Rotary E-Club of Baobab, and I served as its 2023-24 president. We accomplished much during my year as president, including establishing a new Rotary Community Corps in South Africa’s Limpopo province and furthering the development of another. The benefits are huge in that the RCCs are best able to determine their community’s needs and, with the guidance of our Rotary club, find workable solutions.
The club’s other impactful projects have included collecting and distributing blankets and books, eyeglasses and solar panels. As a teacher, my favorite project is the Mandela Day coding competition that club members initiated at local schools. By incorporating coding into the academic curriculum, we fostered an environment where students can collaborate creatively, explore modern technology, and learn to understand complex concepts. The coding competition has become an annual project sponsored by our club, and we are making strides toward introducing it to our region’s rural schools.
I like to think all this would please my mother, as it would, I hope, please Helene Franz. There’s a third woman I admire whom I might add, Mother Teresa. She wrote: “The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.”
That’s the same lesson my mother taught me, and it was the greatest gift she could have given her daughter.
We buried my mother on the tenth day of July in 1999. Her colleagues gathered at the burial site, and at the conclusion of the ceremony, they recited a farewell elegy as tribute. And through it all, they held aloft a lamp.
Rest in peace, Mom.
Phuti Gladys Thamaris Ragophala is a charter member and past president of the Rotary E-Club of Baobab and lives in Seshego, South Africa.
This story originally appeared in the June 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.