Aziz Rahemtulla

From Khoja Wiki
Aziz Rahemtulla
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Town of birth
Country of birth

Born in Tanga

Aziz in Tanga
Aziz and Gulnar’s Wedding,1981.
Aziz and Gulnar,2019:
Climbed Kilimanjaro,1974. Aziz second on the right.
At the top of the Kilimanjaro. Aziz on the right.

The quote below is taken from the book "THIS IS MY LIFE - Gujarat, East Africa, Canada - A FAMILY BIOGRAPHY ", a personal biography by Naznin Hebert which is also a lively, poignant life history of both sides of Naznin's large family.

Book Cover Naznin2.png

(The book makes great reading and is available for a modest price of $10 plus shipping from Naznin nazninh@gmail.com

Aziz was born at home in Tanga on June 3rd, 1957. He was our payo, a happy baby always laughing. He did his primary schooling in Tanga. In 1971, when he was fourteen years old, he went to a boarding school in Mombasa until 1975. At the age of 17, he successfully climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a group of students from his school. After completing high school, he went to Munich on a temporary visa for one year and worked with Feri and Fred in their produce business.

After the expiration of his temporary German visa, he came to Montreal on a student’s visa. He took computer programming at school. After graduation, he worked at a pharmaceutical company in Montreal. Although Aziz lived in Montreal, his mind was elsewhere. During his high school years in Mombasa, he had met a girl by the name of Gulnar. He had never forgotten her. He worked hard, saved his money, and went back to Mombasa where he married his high school sweetheart in 1981. He stayed true to his words.

My dadabapa had been a businessman almost all his working life. Both my mamas had done business all their lives in Congo. And so did Mummy and papa. So, when it came to Aziz, as the saying goes, “the apple did not fall far from the tree”. When the timing was right, Aziz and Gulnar bought a dental clinic where Gulnar worked as a dentist, among other associates, and Aziz as the administrator of the clinic. They ran the clinic very successfully until the summer of 2019 when they sold it. Again, the timing was perfect, just before the pandemic.

AZIZ’S Testimony

Eighteen years of paradise

Being the youngest and the only boy after three sisters was a privilege. I felt a lot of love from my family. How can I describe my childhood? Joyful, laughter, carefree and mastikhor (mischievous).

Here is one example of my “masti”. In the afternoons, I was supposed to be napping. But I never stayed in the room for it. So, one time, Mummy said she will lock the door to prevent me from getting out. But that did not stop me. Between the room I was in and the adjoining room there was an air condition installed. I climbed up on a chair and removed the air condition and crept out through the hole into the adjoining room and escaped. When Mummy came back, she found the room empty. I was outside playing with friends. After that, they gave up on me. I was a lost cause. During the monsoon rains, I would run through the puddles and be covered with mud and make boats and play with them in the muddy water. I spent a lot of time at the Club House, which was across the road from our house, playing with Go-carts that we had made. I loved climbing trees and rooftops. I often sat up on our rooftop watching the volleyball game from across the road on the grounds of the Sports Center. I loved to play in the evenings, either soccer or badminton.

Swimming was my other favorite sport. I used to walk to the Swimming Club which was about half an hour walk and spent the afternoon with my friends, swimming. My love for sweets and chocolates was irresistible. My mouth and pockets were always full of sweets every time I visited our shop. I think it was in my fate that I owned a dental clinic later in Canada and got all my dental work back in order. My fond memories were going to a movie once a month with Mummy to watch a western at the Majestic Cinema. I would come home and act out the whole movie. Felt like John Wayne!

Mummy was the one who taught me to drive at a very young age. Coming back from the shop, I used to sit beside her, and she would let me shift gears and that was the beginning of my driving lessons at an early age. East African Safari was held every year around Easter. I was a huge fan. If they passed through Tanga, I was sure to be there to watch. If not, for the whole four days I would be glued to the little transistor radio that we had and record their score and timings. I kept a scrapbook of the newspaper articles about the race. I loved my childhood. I loved my spacious home with lots of fruit trees and flowers. I loved everything about Tanga. It was my paradise for eighteen years.

I was seventeen years old when my school organized a Mount Kilimanjaro climb for my class of Grade 12, led by our teacher Mr. Fernandes. Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa. It is 5,895 meters above the sea level. Our training was very rudimentary and lasted six weeks. Every Sunday morning, we would walk twenty kilometers with a stuffed backpack in the middle of the sunny day in the tropics. We were very ill-equipped for the climb. We had bare minimum of warm clothing and had no idea how cold it would be higher up on the mountain. We had cotton socks and had rented rubber hiking shoes from the YMCA. Some of us had plastic bags to put over our socks. All I had was a cotton jacket. The big day arrived. We took the bus from Mombasa to Moshi. There were sixteen of us in the group.

It was a five-day hike, three days up and two days down. There were three stations along the way about sixteen kilometers apart. The base camps were very basic. There were wooden bunk beds with no mattresses, no running water nor any other facilities. We had porters who carried the bulk of our supplies. The first and the second leg of the climb were fine. It was a gentle slope. As we got higher up, it got colder, and the terrain got steeper and harder to climb. Some of the students in the group could not acclimatize, got tired and sick. We started the final climb to the summit at midnight when it was pitch dark. The reason being because the terrain was so steep, psychologically it was better that we did not see it. As the saying goes “You cannot fear what you do not see”. And secondly, we had to reach the summit and then climb down to the third and the second base the same day, with a short break between the two. Six out of the sixteen of us, made it to the top, five guys and one girl. Two of them were carried to the top by the porters. The way down was a walk in the park.

It was quite an accomplishment considering our lack of experience and proper equipment and adequate clothing. It was our youth and naivete that took us to the top. I am proud to have done it.