Putting smiles on people’s faces
WHEN the time came for nurse Funeka Cele to retire and sip tea with other grannies in her village, the 64-year-old crisscrossed the country giving dignity back to people who have cleft lips and cleft palates.
Cele of KwaNikhwe village in Bizana, Eastern Cape, worked for 31 years as a maternity nurse at a public hospital before she retired in 2013. By that time she was already volunteering for Operation Smile SA (Ossa) where she identified and assessed people with clefts.
Clefts are openings of the lip or palate caused by a birth defect.
Cele joined Ossa in 2008 and is the organisation’s only volunteer nurse in the Eastern Cape. Her main duty is to assess people who need free surgical operations that Ossa provides to its patients yearly around the country.
The thought of staying idle at home after retirement never appealed to Cele.
“I loved my nursing job and I still miss it even today. When retirement came I didn’t see myself sitting and doing nothing at home so I Babolo opens wide as Funeka Cele takes a look at his lip repair and assesses his cleft palate. Funeka assisted in Babolo receiving a cleft lip surgery in 2014. decided to carry on doing my work for Operation Smile.
“I knew what I was getting myself into. I accepted it a long time ago that it was voluntary work and I won’t be paid for it. I don’t mind that. I’m doing this out of love and the job satisfaction I get of seeing the results of a surgical operation on people I have identified. I sleep very well at night.”
Her job entails travelling throughout the Eastern Cape identifying possible candidates for the facial operations and then to travel with them to a hospital where the procedure will be done. This year she is taking about 15 patients to Mbombela’s Rob Ferreira Hospital where all their operations will be done.
Cele has been to Rwanda, Malawi and Madagascar on international missions.
She said she did not understand why clefts were ridiculed. “Despite workshops that we do in our communities, we still get children and parents that are being made to feel ashamed. Clefts are just ordinary birth defects that we don’t really have control over,” said Cele.