[Yeukai Mellary Chimpelo]

#88534

Hi everyone
my name is Yeukai Mellary Chimpelo, most would follow that introduction with ‘which name do you prefer’. To which I simply reply: both. I’m a first generation immigrant who was brought to South Africa in 1995.

To anyone else maybe this means welcome to democracy but what it meant to my parents was raising daughters who would be easily accepted by a society that may hold a little more esteem to a Christian name and good English – with as little as my mother land accent as possible. My family (parents and sisters) have always called me Yeu (which when said by those who I adore is quiet endearing, it’s also the name we coined our home names) and Mellary was I how introduced myself to anyone outside of my home (school, church, varsity).

As I grew older it did cause an internal conflict – who am I? Am I South African or am I Zimbabwean…where do I belong, where are my roots? And the birth of that conflict stemmed from when I started varsity and started introducing myself independently, when I was a stranger to everyone around me.

Needless to say I graduated and started my career and smack boom: identity crisis. What is my name and who am I? My first HOD asked me my name and I answered as above, she lifted a brow and asked which do I prefer and back then I didn’t know so she decided for me…so for the first time in my life I was introduced by my home name…my mother tongue name Yeukai(which means remember). And I liked it…loved it…just as much as I loved hearing my best friends and partner call me Mellary.

It’s been in these few years that I’ve learned to love both my names and choose to introduce myself as Yeukai Mellary because, as we all well know, our names form part of our identities and my names have been an incredible part of how I identify myself.

So, hello all. My name is Yeukai Mellary Chimpelo. I am passionate about medicine and wholistic management. And I’m incredibly excited to and learn and hopefully by doing so become better at identify the signs and symptoms taught outside of a textbook or lecture room.

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