ON FRIENDSHIP

 Friendship is a beautiful and important aspect of life! It is a relationship built on mutual trust, respect, and support. Good friends are there for each other through thick and thin, offering a listening ear, a comforting word, and a helping hand. Friends share laughter, adventures, and memories, and help shape each other’s lives in meaningful ways. One of the most important characteristics of a friend to me is loyalty and reliability. I often tend to share a lot of personal aspects of my life and I expect honesty and open communication. Friendships can take many forms, from close and intimate to casual and social.

I was not a very social child in pre-school and did not make any friends. During grade one I was constantly crying and experienced separation anxiety, I wonder how I actually learned to read, write, and count. By grade three I made two very good friends. I still keep in touch with one of them through Instagram. By grade 6 I met a lovely girl, and our friendship continued up to high school, and medical school, even today we speak almost every day. She is a gynaecologist back home. We have a group chat on WhatsApp with two other friends, one is a family medicine doctor in Canada and the other one is a Pathologist in Iran. Medicine and motherhood are the most common topics we talk about.

Our best friends are usually the ones we meet in school and college. It is quite challenging to find new friends in adulthood. Everyone is busy with their partners, kids, and family and find it difficult to invest in new friendships. I faced a big challenge when I first moved to South Africa to connect and make friends, however, I met a lovely girl from Cuba during my SA registration exams, and we exchanged numbers and kept in touch. We didn’t make it through the oral exams, but we helped each other, tried again, and subsequently passed. She was a very passionate person and helped me accept and style my curly hair. She stays in Pretoria, but we are very close almost a decade later. 

 I tried attending some of the events organized on the online Meetup platform. I met some amazing women one of them is a lovely Indian lady who is a widow and we still hang out. One of the gentlemen who used to organize a Sunday Walk Meet-Up introduced me to a Lebanese lady. He suspected that we were going to have a lot of chemistry together, and he was right! We both had Middle Eastern roots and were immigrants in South Africa. She was a child psychologist and we had a great time together. We would meet regularly for coffee, brunch, or weekend walks. she was an amazing cook. we always enjoyed the great food she cooked. 

At one of the gatherings at my Lebanese friend’s house, I met her school’s secretary originally from Serbia. We started chatting and connected instantly. We stayed only two kilometers away from each other and met once or twice a month. The Lebanese friend currently immigrated to Italy but we still stay in touch. I haven’t been able to have such close friendships with my colleagues during the four-year training as an OBGYN, or the others I met from my home country.

Friendships are very valuable. There is no marriage contract or family relationship to keep us together. We choose to be together because we simply enjoy each other’s company, we have fun together and we hold each other’s hands when we are in need. What I love about my friends is that I can share thoughts and problems that I am not able to discuss with my spouse or first-degree family.