From nurse to artist, Lady Susan Wood is remembered for doing good everywhere she went. A perennial experimenter, many of her trial projects brought a new lease of life to their beneficiaries. She was awarded an MBE from the Queen of England for her service to destitute women.
Lady Susan Wood may have died over a decade ago, but her words of wisdom remain inspirational, permeating the various books she left behind. Ponder this: “Marriage is a relationship which is under great pressure and undergoes
big changes in our present age,” she writes in Reflections in a Dusty Mirror. “It is the recognition of two lives coming into one life and this requires many adjustments on both sides. A while ago I wrote a poem in which I said that the greatest gift that love can give is freedom. That is very true though perhaps freedom is the wrong word, it has too many connotations. I think what I mean is space. Today marriage is threatened by the fact of travel. Men travel to the four corners of the earth for their work, and on the other hand, women build a career, which takes them away from married life and is another form of separation. To be successful, each needs the space and opportunity to develop their individual life but at the same time making space for the other life…”
Through the testimony of her son, Hugo Wood, one gets to grasp just how deeply Lady Wood valued family. One of her biggest regrets, he says, was failing to give her parenting role enough time. “She often said that she regretted not having enough time with her children. I was shipped off to England to attend boarding school when I was 11 years old and only came back to visit once every year.”
It is a regret that permeates her writings, reflecting the eternal struggle of work-life balance that is the bane of many a career woman, a challenge that comes through her grappling with ‘wholeness’. “If I were to attempt to put my thoughts about life into a single word I would choose the word ‘wholeness’. ‘Wholeness’ is the ultimate degree of being oneself,” she says in another one of her books titled Dusty Mirror, which is strewn with WORDS of wisdom on a threatened institution.
Perhaps she was a victim of her own success, as seen in the many roles she played. Wood was a farmer, writer, politician, businesswoman, art enthusiast, philanthropist, wife and mother before she died in 2006. She wore her different hats with grace that belied her inner turmoil. Born Susan Buxton in 1918 in a mud hut on the edge of Ituri Forest in Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo) to missionary parents, she was educated in England, where she trained as a nurse and later met and married medical student Michael Wood, of the Flying Doctor fame, in 1943. The couple migrated to Kenya after World War II. “If I were to attempt to put my thoughts about life into a single word I would choose the word ‘wholeness.’”
Although her husband had been offered a job by an acquaintance of a surgeon in Kenya, Lady Wood loved to joke that they ‘fled’ to Kenya to escape the severe cold in England due to Michael’s asthmatic condition. For the young mother of two –two-year-old Mark and three-month-old Janet – Kenya provided much-needed reprieve. She wrote fondly about her children. In her book A Fly in Amber, Wood recalls a dramatic incident in their garden involving Mark. Adventurous and gullible, Mark picked a handful of red peppers and stuffed them in his mouth. He went on to rub his face after the stinging got worse. Wood and a worker rushed to the distraught boy’s aid. He never played with the ‘red devils’ again.
Her husband worked as general surgeon throughout East Africa. When he found his work greatly hampered by a lack of ready blood grouped appropriately for transfusion, it fell upon Wood and a few friends to remedy the situation. They started a blood bank, which they later bequeathed to the Government’s Medical Research Laboratory. Michael was often called upon to intervene in medical emergencies outside of Nairobi. With a passion for saving lives, he approached the Red Cross and sold the idea of setting aside some money each year to finance an air ambulance. He also persuaded an air charter company to make a plane available when necessary. Once he had fitted a stretcher into the small aircraft, he was ready to fly.
It is, perhaps, Wood’s self-sacrificing willingness to support her husband that enabled him to contribute selflessly to the world, making AMREF a global healthcare provider. “She was a big support system to my father, always going to
functions with him. She was also his advisor, since she was a pretty good judge of character,” recalls her son Hugo.
Michael became the original Flying Doctor, his efforts culminating in the famous East Africa Flying Doctor Service, later known as African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) that he served as Director-General for 29 years until his death in 1987. He was knighted by the Queen of England in 1985 in recognition of his contribution to health services in Africa; hence Susan Wood’s title. Lady Wood died exactly 19 years after her husband, on 16 May 2006. Blatant racial segregation prompted the Woods, along with a friend, David Stirling, to set up a multi-racial society in Kenya known as the Capricorn Africa Society. Capricorn paved the way for racial interaction that was previously non-existent. One of its guiding principles was that human rights were equivalent to the responsibility to ensure that all races lived up to this expectation. Members of the Society signed a ‘contract’ that bound them to this principle. It declared in part: “All men, despite their varying individual talents and differences of race and colour are born equal in dignity before God and have a common duty to Him and one another…” Capricorn’s membership included political elites like Moody Awori, one of Kenya’s first African politicians, and the future presidents of Tanzania and Uganda, Julius Nyerere and Milton Obote, respectively. Wood’s attempts to make a début into politics were, however, fruitless.
The Woods later relocated to Limuru as Nairobi became more cosmopolitan, denying them the tranquillity they cherished. Her husband would comment that they did not come all the way to Kenya to live in Woking – a bustling town in Britain. They preferred the lush rural life to the frantic Nairobi. In Limuru, Lady Wood took up farming, in spite of having no prior experience. She employed competent locals who taught her the dynamics of farming, although she never disclosed to them that she was their student. Many of her ventures were sheer experimentation, and she was later to say that most of the things she started began with the title “Things I know nothing about”.
Her mettle was to be later tried and tested when the couple decided to sell their farm in Limuru to a multiracial religious community. Other white settlers made a spirited fight to stop the community from acquiring the land, but she would not budge. She eventually sold the property to the St Julian Community. The community used the
property as a retreat centre for rest, rejuvenation and spiritual refreshment for all races caught up in the pressures, strains and stresses of overwork. Wood’s mission was to alleviate suffering, pain, poverty and various afflictions
through whatever means available to her. One cold night, in a heavy downpour, she left the warmth of her home and bed to help a local woman in labour. There in a smoke-filled mud hut, very much like the one she was born in, she offered practical support as the mother give birth to a baby girl.
Julius Were, Wood’s driver of eight years, says: “She was a great lady who was loved by people and gave to the poor. I remember her having three people on her payroll, though they did not work for her.” He shares that one was elderly and the other two were living with a disability. “She gave me 1,000 or 2,000 shillings to take to them every month.”
It is in this humanitarian spirit that she employed single mothers and widows at Kazuri Ltd, which she founded in 1975 in partnership with two other women. Wood knew very little about beads, but thought they were beautiful. She often bought them during her travels, then sold them. She combined her heart for the community and her love for beads to form Kazuri, which has made a mark in Kenya’s art industry. The company specialises in producing hand-painted ceramic beads made from clay as well as pottery. Through this initiative, Wood was able to economically
empower struggling mothers by giving them a chance to earn a fair living, a legacy that still lives on.
Kazuri, Swahili for ‘small and beautiful’, is perhaps what she is best known for. It is an innovation of her late 50s, when most would be considering retirement. This venture earned her a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) from the Queen in 1990 for her service to destitute women. She sold Kazuri to Mark and Regina Newman in 2001, as she was getting old and could no longer handle the business. The new owners opened up Kazuri to international markets and continued Wood’s legacy of employing single mothers and widows.
Lady Wood wrote several books, most of them her memoirs of Africa. Apart from A Fly in Amber and Reflections in a Dusty Mirror, her other titles include A String of Beads, As Falls the Rain, The Single Flower, Tales of Africa, No Turning Back, Tree Music, and Kenya – The Tensions of Progress. An art enthusiast, Wood’s genius proved helpful when she came up with the idea of the Kenya Festival of Africa to showcase Kenya’s multi-cultural, multi-racial artistic work in South Africa in form of a photo/film festival.
A day in the life of Lady Wood would see her at the Kazuri workshop located on her farm as early as 7am. Robin Ulyate, now her daughter Janet’s husband, organised the people in the workshop. She would then drive around the farm, checking on livestock and mending fences before having breakfast around 9am. She would be back in the office from 10am until noon then head out for errands. In the evenings, she walked her dogs, which were often Labradors. They included Tumbo, Sable, Gavana and Damien. Between six and seven in the evenings, she would sit by the fireplace reading a book or listening to her favourite classics of Schubert and Bach, sipping her much-loved whisky.
Hugo says of his mother: “She didn’t go out much; she loved being at home. She was very well read. Every morning, she read all the newspapers – that was until her eyes failed her. Maybe that is why she could hold a conversation on most topics, although her favourite subject was politics.”
Wood is described as being ‘very religious’, although she was not a churchgoer. Hugo adds, “My mum was easy, approachable and a very good listener and that’s why everybody loved her. Owing to her leadership character, family and friends often sought advice from her. She loved making everything with her hands and sold stuff at the craft market. She also had a good sense of humour.” Wood always looked at the bright side of life. Once, when her house burned down in Tanzania and she lost her treasured paintings, she declared that she was thankful for the opportunity to collect more paintings.
The art-lover also tried her hand at painting. “She enjoyed it, but certainly didn’t have enough talent to sell her paintings,” Hugo says with a chuckle. She is survived by four children: Dr Mark Wood, formerly head of PCEA Kikuyu Hospital Eye Unit, Janet, a farmer in Tanzania, Hugo who owns a farm in Narok, and Katrina who is a consultant in TV content and divides her time between Los Angeles and London. Wood can be said to have lived a full life, to have loved passionately, to have given wholly, to have inspired many and to have lived a life devoid of pretence, admitting the folly of her humanity and breaking forth towards the unknown with unshakeable courage.
WORDS OF WISDOM
“Marriage is a relationship which is under great pressure and undergoes big changes in our present age… To be successful, each needs the space and opportunity to develop their individual life but at the same time making space for the other life…” Excerpt from Reflections in a Dusty Mirror.