The following story tells of the rewards ofsteadfastness and obedience.
It was written by Dr.Farhan Yazdani, a Baha'i pioneer in Tahiti.
He hasgiven permission to share it freely.....
"My parents arrived in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika, in1952 for the 10-Year-Crusade and, in 1954, mygrandmother, Mrs. Zarrintaj Afroukhteh arrived as a pioneer but died shortly later. She had requested a Baha'i cemetery and the NSA made an application thatwas accepted, and a lot was allocated to the Baha'i community within the European Cemetery where she was laid to rest. Some time later, one of our earliest African Baha'is,Mr. Leslie Matola, who had translated "Baha'u'llah andthe New Era" into Kiswahili died. The community prepared for his burial in the Baha'i Cemetery, butthis project met with a strong opposition from the British authorities, as it was illegal under British apartheid to bury a black person in a white cemetery.The NSA stood firmly for Baha'i principles and the authorities yielded and, soon, to the astonishment ofall, a multicolored community found its way into the European Cemetery, taking Leslie Matola to his last resting place. Time went by and Tanganyik! a became anindependent state in 1962. The indigenous population took on the government, apartheid was abolished and the country merged with Zanzibar to be calledTanzania. In 1970s, after some 19 years, one of the goals of the9-Year-Plan was the election of an LSA in Pemba, a small Muslim-populated island off the East African Coast where the Baha'is needed help for organising the election. My mother, Mrs. Farzaneh Afroukhteh-Yazdani,was sent as an NSA member to meet the Baha'is and toprepare for the election. Arriving on the island, she found that there were no taxis and that the believers,who had no phones, were dispersed in areas where she could not hope to reach on foot and where only 4-wheel-drive vehicles could access.Seeking information at the police station, she met the Chief Constable who asked why she wanted to visit these people. She replied that they were local Baha'isthat she wanted to meet. On hearing this, the Chief Constable called in his officers and asked on! e of them to show my mother around the island with the PoliceLand Rove r. Her mission was a success and she met all the believers around the island and the LSA waselected. When she returned to the Police Station she thanked the Chief Constable, who replied that it was an honour for him to help the Baha'is as Baha'is were people who kept their promises. When she asked why, he replied that he was Leslie Matola's grandson and had attended the funeral and noticed the firmness of Baha'is inupholding their principle of racial unity."
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