International Women’s Day celebrates women who’ve made huge contributions in their fields of work, but it also highlights the work of women who haven’t been given a voice – such as stay-at-home moms, teachers and nursing staff.
Popular culture has taught the younger generation to look to celebs such as Beyoncé and Lady Gaga as role models.
That’s all good and well, but young people need female role models they can relate to, those whose stories resonate with them on a deeper and personal level.
South Africa has given birth to strong, independent women like Caster Semenya, Minnie Dlamini and the late Miriam Makeba, just to name a few.
In praise of the female fighting spirit, we profile four boss ladies with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Southern Africa who’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty.
ON THE MOVE: Hailing from Kenya, Monica Genya travelled the world with her diplomat parents.
Monica Genya
Monica joined MSF by chance in June 1994. “I had not heard of them and was called in for an interview at their Nairobi offices. I’ve never left,” she jokes.
Hailing from Kenya, she travelled the world with her diplomatic parents, but nothing prepared her for the hardship she’d encounter while working as logistician and field management trainer on various missions.
“In 2014 I got sent to Sierra Leone, which has a long history of civil war,” she says, before adding that during this time there was a severe outbreak of Ebola in Freetown and the outlying areas.
“When you see someone suffering, your first instinct is to go and help. There were too few of us to help the whole country and it was hard for us as there’s always the possibility of contracting Ebola.”
Luckily, Monica completed her mission Ebola-free but two of her colleagues contracted the virus, with one succumbing to the disease.
She has also worked with MSF in Jordan, China, Cambodia and South Sudan.
Through her work, Monica has encountered armed conflict and describes an incident where she had to hide under a bunker.
The danger associated with being a field worker hasn’t deterred her one bit as she proudly explains how, as a member of MSF, you get to see the kind of work they do.
“We have a saying here: ‘Well, if it’s not us, then who?’”
And it’s this kind of attitude that keeps her going. “There’s a compulsion when you hear that something is happening – you run towards it. It’s a need to do something. It’s an exciting life!”
SURVIVOR: Jonine Lotter survived a bombing at Kunduz Trauma Centre in Afghanistan during her first assignment with Doctors Without Borders.
Jonine Lotter
Jonine believes “we only succeed in life when we push ourselves beyond our boundaries”.
An operating theatre nurse from Stellenbosch, she survived a bombing at Kunduz Trauma Centre (KTC) in Afghanistan during her first assignment with Doctors Without Borders.
The 2015 incident was more than she could have anticipated when the hospital she worked in was destroyed during the October 3, 2015 attack by a US military warplane.
Jonine and others made it out alive but 42 people, including 14 MSF colleagues, were killed.
Less than a year later she was back in the field - this time working as an OT nurse supervisor in Bor, South Sudan, where conflict and lack of access to infrastructure and services has left the local population with very little – including medical care.
SUPPORTIVE: An advocacy manager at MSF, Fezile Kanju’s work focuses on improving maternal and child health care.
Fezile Kanju
Fezile stresses that “policymakers need to acknowledge major crises such as ongoing wars and inhuman living conditions that push people to flee to South Africa and other countries.”
Fezile’s work as an advocacy manager focuses on improving maternal and child health care and access to treatment for hepatitis C in two different provinces in Pakistan.
Currently on a 9-month long assignment at MSF-run Peshawar Women’s Hospital, she has been developing an advocacy strategy to improve women’s access to safe, quality maternal and child health care.
She joined MSF in 2011 and worked with various universities on numerous humanitarian issues, including access to medical care within migration contexts.
Dr Vanessa Naidoo
Vanessa’s passion for people and medicine has led to her“leaving the comforts of home to provide much-needed medical care for vulnerable people in some of the world’s most dangerous places”.
Soon after hearing about MSF through the setting up of the Khayelitsha ARV programme, she decided to fill out an online application. Since then she has travelled to war zones in Afghanistan, South Sudan and Syria. She has thus far completed five assignments with Doctors Without Borders.
Vanessa is studying emergency medicine at the University of Cape Town and is scheduled for her next assignment with MSF in May 2017.