Sister Carmelita Kok
Abrick thrown at her window at Fish Hoek Clinic is a memory Sister Carmelita Kok won’t soon forget. On the day, the small building had been teeming with patients queuing for TB and Aids medication, and mothers and children were waiting for primary healthcare. They were physically distanced, as it was during the hard lockdown last year.
Fortunately, the glass did not shatter, and nobody got hurt.
Kok recalls how a disgruntled patient threw the brick. He has since apologised, and she has forgiven him. Today he is one of her “favourites” – such is her empathy and compassion.
“I’ve got this one client,” she says. “We are not allowed to mention names. When Covid started last year, he was at Strandfontein. The City of Cape Town erected these tents for displaced people, you know. And some of them didn’t want to live there and moved out. So this one client came to me all the way from Strandfontein.
“And I remember, I was working that day, and he was just very deurmekaar (confused). He was out of order; he was demanding to be seen right away. I was one of few staff at the clinic, and there were a lot of clients. And I told him: ‘You can see that we are busy. Please, can I give you an appointment? Or just hang on until I see you later.’ But he demanded that I see him immediately. Then he actually threw a brick through my window,” she says.
Kok is speaking to from her home in Da Gama
Park, in the south of Cape
Town, which she shares with her husband, daughter, son and two stepsons. She had tested positive for Covid-19 five days