I worried about leaving my daughters for 7 weeks. Here's why I went ahead. - CNA

SINGAPORE: Tam Wai Jia was clearing emails one Saturday afternoon in October 2021 when a new message came in.

It was from her mentor, a professor at the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, where she worked. It was a call for humanitarian assistance for the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“Wanna go?” the professor had written.

For Tam, 35, it was an opportunity to fulfil a long-buried childhood dream. But as she stared at the email, her first response was, simply, “no”.

“This is not for me,” she remembers telling herself. “It’s for other people who are free and single and don’t have to be a mom to two young kids.”

Tam is a humanitarian doctor and speaker who has written and illustrated several children’s books. She also runs an international non-profit, Kitesong Global, which aims to inspire people to realise their dreams through tools such as storytelling and partnerships with grassroots organisations.

But the heart of her identity, she says, is that of a mother.

Tam, whose two daughters Sarah-Faith and Esther-Praise were aged four and two at the time, tucked the email aside. But for weeks, it continued to bug her.

“I think deep down inside … a part of me was disappointed because this was my dream,” she said.

Finally, she confided in her husband, Cliff, a stay-at-home dad. She was not prepared for his response. “Wai Jia, this is what you’ve been training for your entire life,” he told her.

“You just have to go.”

In the fifth episode of the podcast Imperfect by CNA Insider, Tam talks about how she grappled with guilt and realised she’d made the right decision to spend seven weeks as a risk communication and community engagement consultant in Eswatini, a land-locked kingdom that is one of the smallest countries in Africa.

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2023-06-10 22:00:00Z
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