Friday, 22 July 2011

Taking nursing to heart

For two years running, Juanita Simonis is Unizulu’s top science student

Juanita Simonis believes it is never too late to begin a new career. That is why at age 47, you will find her with a red second-year dot on her overall in a group of University of Zululand undergraduate nursing science students at Ngwelezana Hospital, hanging onto the doctor’s every word. ‘It is fabulous to discover that my old brain cells still function pretty well,’ she says. Juanita is approaching the training for her second career with passion, partly because she feels it is a calling and because that is how she does things - flat out. Her strong work ethic, possibly nurtured during her stint as the Acting Principal at Mtunzini Primary, has earned her a Faculty of Science and Agriculture Senate award for best performing student for two years running What really drives her is the belief that this new profession is her calling. ‘I want to be of more use to God,’ she says simply. ‘This course is the door to my next life.’ Juanita’s husband, Jean, a hydrologist at Unizulu like her father and ‘expedition fanatic’ as she puts it, is the cause of all the upheaval in her life. It was he who originally persuaded her years back to sell up everything, buy an Isuzu double cab and head off to Kenya with their two young children to work in mission stations miles from anywhere.
Juanita’s mother was a nurse, but growing up she had no interest in the profession. But she says she fell in love with health while working in Africa
‘I wanted to teach the women how to look after their babies, real hands-on stuff,’ she says. ‘But to do that you have to be qualified.’ And as soon as she is - at the end of next year if all goes well - she intends to head off into disaster areas and work alongside her husband. And what about the language barriers in all these far off places? Juanita says she will use interpreters, but people know in their hearts when you are trying to help them - and that, she says, needs no language.