{"id":2572,"date":"2019-12-04T15:01:47","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T13:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2019-12-04T15:01:47","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T13:01:47","slug":"warrior-women-with-dr-eseza-nambassi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/warrior-women-with-dr-eseza-nambassi\/","title":{"rendered":"Warrior Women with Dr Eseza Nambassi"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re honoured to bring you another interview in Matoyana Media\u2019s Warrior Women series and to introduce you to Dr Eseza Nambassi who is a Medical Doctor and General Health Practitioner.\u00a0 Dr Nambassi reminds us of a quote by Mahatma Gandhi who told us. “In a gentle way, each of us have the capacity to shake the world.” We hope you enjoy the interview as much as we did.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hello Dr Nambassi, tell us a bit about yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a world which no longer has no borders, so I like to consider myself a global citizen who is very adaptable – because I\u2019ve had to adapt. \u00a0I\u2019m a mother and a wife and I graduated as a medical doctor about 34 years ago, that was in the mid 80\u2019s.<\/p>\n

I think I was destined to go on the journey through medical school to learn something.\u00a0 What I learned has given me my passion for advocating for health and wellness. \u00a0I think life throws things at us. Looking back, I thought it was a major mistake going to medical school, I kicked and screamed. But now I understand that I\u2019m in a much stronger place having done that. I didn\u2019t want to do it but it prepared me to deal with the disease crisis and the health crises we have today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tell us about your biggest battle?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest battle has been to come to terms with my purpose and to come to understand that ingrained in my purpose was my career through medical school. You know a lot of people think medical school is glamorous but speak to any doctor and they will tell you that it\u2019s not fun. You think you are going to come out at the other end and have it made. No, it\u2019s not like that. So my biggest battle was to tease out my purpose \u2013 and my purpose is to be truthful, to actually be honest with everyone I deal with.<\/p>\n

So the battle has been to unlearn everything I was taught at medical school and come back and ask \u2018But what are the basics? What did my Creator say? Did my creator say that when I have pain, that I have a deficiency of some drug?\u2019 No, that\u2019s not what He said. So that has been a big battle. But it\u2019s also been a natural battle for me because that is how I was wired, if I may put it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which women warriors do you look up to?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWow, there are so many and actually I\u2019m loath to pick even one because there are so many women out there doing so many good things. But a warrior for me is one who has chosen a path she knows is for the greater good, a path which she knows will leave a lasting legacy.<\/p>\n

One picture which comes to mind is my biological mother and my mother in law. Because they grounded us, they set the stage for us and they sometimes denied themselves in order to put me in a better place. My mother passed away last year but my mother-in-law is still here on earth with us, she is in Uganda, and through thick and thin, she had decided to be a disciplined woman of integrity \u2013 literally her word was her bond. \u00a0It\u2019s so easy to be fickle, but a warrior woman should actually have their word as their bond.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do you think it takes to be a warrior woman?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing is to identify your purpose, and that\u2019s a journey all on its own. Some identify it quickly, others have to be guided, but there is a lot of guidance around. After that, be committed, be disciplined, have respect for yourself and you\u2019ll be able to respect others.<\/p>\n

Respect is so closely linked with love, because if you can love yourself, you\u2019ll respect yourself and you will actually choose what you do to yourself, what you feed your body and how you exercise it. I have an exercise routine that helps me stay flexible, because I\u2019ve realized that if I don\u2019t set time aside \u2013 I\u2019ll be 60 in a few months time – I\u2019ll be running into problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a difficult time for women – there\u2019s too much peer pressure, so it depends on which peer group you choose to belong to. Unfortunately it is so easy to fall into the peer group of the victim and then you can never be a warrior. Find a group where you will be encouraged by your peers. I really believe in community. You cannot do life alone, and so one thing that characterizes a warrior in our time, is to recognize community and the importance and value thereof.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes you a warrior woman?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat qualifies me as a warrior woman is that after what I\u2019ve seen in my medical career, I think I can actually get up and say, \u2018Wait a minute, can\u2019t we go back to the basics now?\u2019 In my medical practice I chose to focus on HIV because I lost a lot of relatives from HIV \u2013 my eldest brother passed away the year ARV\u2019s came on the market, so he just missed it.<\/p>\n

This has grounded me in that groove to talk about HIV. But I\u2019ve always been talking to people about the value of nutrition and I\u2019ve seen it countless times whereby just nourishing one, the symptoms are dealt with and the person can then handle ARV\u2019s better than if they were mal-nourished or immune-compromised.<\/p>\n

So, I have a purpose as a warrior for people living with HIV. I like to give them hope, I like to encourage them. I remember telling a patient to change what he was eating because we\u2019d just changed his medication. Now unfortunately because of our history, he quickly adopted the victim mentality, \u2018I cannot afford that\u2019. But I reminded him it wasn\u2019t anything exotic and not to eat junk food. One can go to the supermarket or the farmers market where you can get fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and eat those.<\/p>\n

I tell my patients to eat healthily and then come back in a month and we\u2019ll have a look at the difference \u2013 I\u2019ve done that many times and I\u2019ve seen a difference \u2013 it enhances how the medication is working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thank you for your powerful words Dr Nambassi.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re honoured to bring you another interview in Matoyana Media\u2019s Warrior Women series and to introduce you to Dr Eseza Nambassi who is a Medical Doctor and General Health Practitioner.\u00a0 Dr Nambassi reminds us of a quote by Mahatma Gandhi who told us. “In a gentle way, each of us have the capacity to shake…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[302,349,354,351,119,208,114],"class_list":["post-2572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-african-entrepreneur","tag-african-warrior-women","tag-african-women-leaders","tag-african-women-rise","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-inspirational-women","tag-south-african-women-entrepreneurs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2573,"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions\/2573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocketpad.co.za\/matoyana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}