Refugee, guard ... and now a doctor

When third-year medical student William Shabani fled for his life from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he took just three changes of clothing, his academic records and his dream of becoming a doctor.

Fellow travellers advised him to get to South Africa and he eventually ended up as a car guard at Parklands Hospital in Overport in KwaZulu-Natal.

Then one day he casually offered a patient - who happened to be the husband of a staff member - medical advice.

"I was talking to him and he said: 'You are telling me exactly what the doctor told me,' and I told him I was a medical student."

The patient told then-hospital manager Philip O Healy that he had a doctor in training wasting his talents in the car park.

The hospital's Physicians Advisory Board chairman, Dr Archie Rajput, said a plan to assist Shabani through medical school had then been proposed.

Parklands Hospital, doctors and Durban Rotary clubbed together to help, and Shabani graduated at the University of KwaZulu-Natal earlier this year after five years of studying.

He starts a two-year internship at Northdale, Edendale and Grey's hospitals in Pietermaritzburg next month.

Rajput said: "It shows that perseverance pays off. In a foreign country and in a different language, he still did it."

• This article was originally published on page 6 of The Cape Argus on December 23, 2009