From a very young age, I was interested in people’s stories and I loved helping others. I would always be the first one to volunteer whenever there was a task to be done in class or at home. When one of my friends did not have lunch, I would hand over my lunch box without any hesitation at all. Whenever I saw an injustice, it made me cringe with pain as if it was directed at me. I remember when I was in Secondary School, one of my friends had albinism and her parents and siblings used to discriminate against her to the extent that she would not be given any lunch for school whilst her three step siblings had lunch boxes. I then took it upon myself to bring an extra lunch box to school for the full two years that we were in the same school. I never judged her step siblings or her mother because whenever I opened my mouth to judge, my mother would remind me not to pass judgement since I did not know their story. Little did I know that she was preparing me for my career path.
I completed my Grade 10 when I was 16 years old. The following year I then decided to take a gap year instead of continuing with my education. That is how I found myself volunteering at a Mission Hospital. I was the youngest volunteer and as such found myself running errands for almost all of the senior staff members and I had to do all the other duties that no one wanted to tackle. However, I loved helping patients and got very emotional when they had to be discharged or when one of them passed away. I was at a point in my life where I decided that I wanted to be a Nurse. However, one day, an incident happened that changed my career path forever. A male patient was admitted with severe burns that had been caused by boiling water. His wife threw boiling water over him when he was sleeping after he had beat her up with an axe handle. It was reported that he regularly abused his wife when drunk and she had tried to open criminal cases against him, more than five times but each time she opened a case, she would withdraw that case the following day stating that he was her husband and the breadwinner so getting him arrested would mean that she and her children would starve. The day after this patient was admitted, his burns’ story had circulated around the whole hospital and many people, especially the males, were infuriated. To make matters worse, his wife was with him in hospital taking care of him while people were pointing fingers at her, whenever she was not looking.
On the second day of this patient’s admission, I came back from lunch to a noisy male ward; voices were raised and people were shouting. Some were pointing at the poor woman, who had crouched in a corner in fear, shouting that she deserved to be burnt with water also; others were calling her a witch and said she needed to be chased away from the hospital. The man’s relatives were also telling him that he must just divorce his wife otherwise, they would not be held responsible for what they were going to do to her in retaliation. At that point, I forgot my age and my position. Something in me woke up, I just felt this urge to speak out, and speak out I did until everyone in the ward kept quiet and looked at me as if they were seeing me for the first time. I outlined this woman’s story, the abuse she had suffered on a daily basis at the hands of her abuser, all the injuries she had endured (which her husband’s relatives were aware of ) now because she had reached breaking point, who were they to judge? Yes, what she had done to her husband was wrong, but did she deserve to be judged this harshly given the abuse she had been facing for such a long time? When everyone had quietened down, I called her aside to check if she was okay and that is when she said to me, “I am so confused, what must I do now?” and I said to her, “Take your children and go back to your parents, before you either kill your husband, or he kills you. You saw what happened today”. I do not know what became of that woman or her husband because I never saw her again. Years later when I was studying for my Social Work degree, I realised that this incident had destined me as a Social Worker.
As a Social Worker, I seek to understand all my clients and to accept them without judging them. I believe that everyone can change and that everyone has an answer to his or her problems, however sometimes life’s problems paralyse us to the extent that we need someone (a Social Worker) to assist us to manoeuvre our way out of those problems. Sometimes the weak and vulnerable members of our society (for instance children, women, the poor, the elderly, the sick etc.) need someone to speak on their behalf and ensure that their rights are protected, and that is where social workers come in. Social Workers strive to make this world a better place where everyone has the opportunity to live a satisfactory life, where everyone has equal access to resources, where everyone can live freely without being abused, disadvantaged or discriminated against.
Social Work is a Calling, a Passion. Monetary gain does not have a place in Social Work, but only the Passion to:
· Improve people’s lives
· Equip people with skills to make the most of their lives
· See children enjoying their lives without fearing abuse, abandonment or neglect.
A passion to see a better nation, a nation where the most vulnerable people, for example women and children can walk on our streets during the day or at night, without any fear of violence. Until that happens, I REMAIN YOUR SOCIAL WORKER.