Meet a well-travelled volunteer

For 25 years Sybil Nijhawan has been volunteering as a nurse. Now working at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, she explains what she has learnt in her journey around the world.

Registered nurse Sybil Nijhawan has spent most of her life volunteering in hospitals around the world. She recently moved to Abu Dhabi and is now volunteering at SKMC. Mona Al-Marzooqi / The National

ABU DHABI // Her quarter of a century of volunteering as a nurse has led Sybil Nijhawan on a journey around the world, where she has picked up new languages, experienced diverse cultures and, perhaps most importantly, learnt about selflessness.

A trained nurse from the UK, Ms Nijhawan started volunteering in the 1980s while she was working at the East Jefferson Hospital in New Orleans.

“That’s where I found out I didn’t need to go to work and earn money if I was comfortable,” she said.

“The end result was that my mental state and well-being was just uplifted so much because I felt I was doing something, not for myself, but for others. That can make a difference.

“You learn to value others and yourself. I worked for 20 years as a nurse, I thought I knew everything, but working there was a wealth of knowledge for the self.”

A year later, Ms Nijhawan moved to Aberdeen, Scotland where she was an occupational health nurse at Robert Gordon University.

Her job involved screening people who had come from all over the world to work in the city’s oil and gas industry.

“There I learnt about their different cultures, behaviours, attitudes and lifestyles,” she said.

“It was a great example for me to realise that we all are human beings, we all have the same needs,” she said,

After Aberdeen, she worked across the Caribbean where she offered her help in various community projects.

“I did a lot of health promotions, going out to small communities and educating people about how to manage their diabetes and chronic diseases,” she said.

“I learnt that volunteering doesn’t mean you can only do one thing, you can do anything you want, it is all available out there.”

She said there are needy people all over the world who could benefit from people’s help.

“Whether you work in hospitals, the community or schools, wherever you go, there are always people who will welcome you,” she said.

Such deeds make people feel valued, Ms Nijhawan said.

“We all need each other in this world. I learnt ... to treat others like I would like to be treated. Treat them with love and respect and don’t try to change people’s culture and values, but do your best to accept them.”

Ms Nijhawan’s toughest assignments were in poverty-stricken Angola, where she again worked as a nurse.

A lack of medical supplies was the biggest challenge because all she had to treat the patients with was “what was available locally in the kitchen”.

“It was a rude awakening for me, as the days went by I thought ‘why did I come here? I don’t know what I can do’,” she recalled.

“I said ‘God, why did you send me here? There must be a purpose’. Everything in life has a purpose.”

Treating cuts and bruises, she saw the squalid environment in which people lived.

“When I got to the hospital I was swamped with mosquitoes, there were no beds – people were lying on the ground. I thought ‘oh my God, this is hard’. I felt like crying because you come from a system where everything is there for you and you take it for granted.”

When she got back to the UK, she was 63, and thought about retiring.

But a week later after she offered to volunteer at a nursing home in London.

This year, she began volunteering in Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, where she still brings energy and enthusiasm to her work.

“I look forward to going there every day. Wherever there is a need and I have the potential to do it, I will,” she said.

“I think volunteering should be encouraged and I’m sure we will have a better world in the end.

“All it requires is commitment. Every culture you go to, there is something you can learn and share as you go along that journey.

“You learn, you accept, you grow and develop constantly. Volunteering has many benefits.”