A Day in the Life of Farhiya, a Clinic Officer, a Peer Educator and a Consultant

For the past four years, Farhiya has been working at Y-PEER Puntland as a clinic officer, a peer educator, an SRHR advocator, and a consultant to gender-based violence victims.

"I’ve been working here since 2018,” said Farhiya, “when you count the years, it seems too long, but when you see the impact you had on your community for that time, four years doesn’t sound that long.”

Farhiya, a fresh graduate from East Africa University joined the Y-PEER Puntland team with the vision of using her knowledge for the development of her community.

“I was always interested in giving back to my community, I had and still have a passion for helping others, having a positive impact and going above and beyond in providing the necessary education regarding their rights and responsibility.”

Beside being passionate about her task, Farhiya had the knowledge and skills needed to perform her responsibility the best way possible.

“As a clinic officer, we had a training programme similar to medical doctors, to carry out many tasks that are usually be done by doctors including many medical and surgical, such as anesthesia, diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions, and prescribing.”

When asked about the most rewarding part of her job, Farhiya replied, 

“helping people that are in dire need of help, people that don’t get their basic rights as a human, and are not aware of it is probably one of the best parts of the job.”

And when it comes to the most difficult part of the job, she continued,

“as a Somali community, we are very conservative people, talking about certain topics are very taboo as much as its dangerous, sometimes talking about normal health related isuues such as reproductive health and rights or certain harmful practices (FGM) could get you in an altercation with the targeted community.”

Having a positive impact on someone’s life has been the main priority of Farhiya for her time at Y-PEER Puntland, the amount of people she helped, educated and consulted were one too many.

“I remember in 2020, after the first wave of Covid19 where a woman, a victim of domestic abuse came to Tilmaame iHub, a bit reluctant to ask for consultant but she did ask and I provided her with the psychosocial support she needed, connected her to the right places and thankfully, now she’s living a better life.”

Farhiya described her typical work day as a pattern but also atypical where certain days people that you meet are somewhat similar but there’s always that bit of out of ordinary cases, small differences that motivates you for the next day and who you could help.

“Usually, I come to the center at 08:00 AM, where there is a youth clinic that provides basic health services and consultant. Our main visitors are young people mainly girls coming for sanitary kits, for diagnosis, for consultant or for SHRH education. On certain days, we conduct an in/outreach awareness sessions, on harmful practices, GBV, HIV, menstrual hygiene and SRHR.”

When asked about how she impacted the community, Farhiya stated, “I would like to think I did a great job in having a positive influence on my community, I have had helped people learn and understand their rights regarding SRH, I have consulted and offered the aid and services needed to GBV victims, and I have great teammates who we share the common goal of having positive impact on our community.”

Just like any other humanitarian worker, Farhiya faced many challenges during her four years in the job, and since Covid19 there has been unprecedented challenges.

“Honestly, we face too many challenges every day, some are more difficult than others and as a human being, we are programmed to usually run from challenges, to avoid them at any cost, but I personally believe that they are huge motivation to do better, you need to work hard to overcome those challenges, to deal with them and control them.”