Mphala Mogudi
Profile
Mphala Mogudi has added a new dimension to my understanding of apartheid. Her parents, based in South Africa, sent their children to school in neighbouring Swaziland (echoes perhaps, of British parents who educate their offspring in the Caribbean to escape what they view as the under-achievement of black children in UK schools?). In the mixed environment of her Anglican Missionary school, Mphala was able to develop friendships across boundaries, and so although she grew up fully aware of apartheid, she did not live under its restrictions much of the time and did not internalise them.
At home in South Africa and at school in Swaziland, Mphala was exposed to many different religions and this gave a her respect for the practices of others. Her parents tended to be conservative and they had their children baptised as Lutherans. During her marriage Mphala thought it was important to worship as a family, but whenever she was working in the UK she had an opportunity to explore, and so over the past ten years she has gradually moved away from Christianity. She had started questioning Christianity as she got older and came to the conclusion that their religion didn’t necessarily help Christians to solve the problems that non-Christians also shared. While working in Wakefield on a short-term contract, Mphala regularly passed the Unitarian church on her way to the rail station. She went in to look and there met the Lay Leader of the congregation, Melanie Prideaux. Since then she has regularly sought out the Unitarian congregation whenever and wherever she has been living in the UK.
The fact that we are all looking for the path seems to Mphala to be a given among Unitarians. She likes knowing that she can express reservations and misunderstandings and still be accepted by other Unitarians. This contrasts with some of her experiences of religious communities where you are expected to ‘toe the line’, or else you might be accused of lacking faith. After moving to Oxfordshire to take a temporary post at the Abingdon Child and Family Clinic, Mphala sought out the Oxford Unitarians and liked what she found: a lot of individuals ‘living their faith’ outside the congregation, not just to please a minister or a god. She finds our chapel a lovely building but would like to see it filled with a wider age range and more children.
Mphala’s early international education clearly gave her a taste for travel. There was an expectation in her family that the children would study and travel, although she is the only one of her siblings who still lives abroad. She originally intended to study medicine but decided to do a BSc in biology at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA first. It was during this period that she was introduced to psychology and decided to continue her studies in this area. This decision at first worried Mphala’s parents, as they didn’t know any black psychologists, but they have always supported their children’s own choices. Now her impressive CV attests to the ultimate wisdom of this choice. Mphala is registered as a Fellow in Psychiatry in South Africa, having gained further degrees in Medicine, as well as a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard University.
Mphala’s spirituality is reflected in her approach to her career. For her, work is not just a job, but an opportunity ‘to be a channel for God’s grace’, as Maud Robinson recently put it. In her daily work as a psychiatrist she tries to listen with understanding – and without judgement – in order to express God’s love through herself. Mphala feels that God gave her the gifts to do this work, and she tries to bring love, acceptance, and warmth to the job in addition to ‘textbook psychiatry’ and the stark requirements of professional medical records.
For several years locum work provided Mphala with the flexibility that suited her family arrangements. This took her to dozens of locations around the UK, but she has obtained a permanent appointment in Abingdon run by the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health Trust. Mphala will be living in Reading so that her daughter Tumi can attend Leighton Park Quaker School.
Julie Adams, April 2007