Suad Ayyesh
Former UNRWA Staff Nurse, Gaza

"I wanted to become a nurse because at that time there were many, many casualities in the hospitals and nobody to help, just a few nurses from Lebanon. People started to ask: 'Why don't you choose this job, it is your country, it is your people'. We were given information about nursing in the schools. So 10 of us, all refugees, went to the hospital and we became the first Moslem staff nurses. We had taken the first step forward at that time.

It was difficult to get permission at first from my father. I went on an English course and I did not tell him in the beginning about the nursing course. But then he said: 'What school is this that goes on from morning to evening?' So I had to explain that I was on a nursing course as well. 'What nursing course? You must not leave this room', and he prevented me from going out for many days. I was crying, I was young. His friends came to speak to him, and the sisters from the hospital told him that I was the first in my class, and how much they needed me. And I asked my eldest brother to speak to him. So after a month my father agreed to let me go, but said: You must not deal with men at all!" At the hospital they accepted that, so I did not nurse men in the first five years.

In the beginning we could feel that people did not respect women nurses. You knew by their eye language, body language, the way they looked, you could feel it. But nowadays they accept us. We introduce ourselves and explain why we do this and that, and those who do not accept us can call for a male nurse."

Excerpts from an interview by Else Lidegaard (Danish Refugee Council technical expert)