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#UFSWomen: Dilahlwane Mohono: From cleaner to recipient of two honours degrees

17 August 2021 | Story Nonsindiso Qwabe | Photo Supplied

Dilahlwane copy — A story of hope, courage, resilience, and working your way to the top. Dilahlwane Mohono started working as a cleaner at the UFS in 1992. Today, she is a Senior Faculty Officer in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences and holds two honours degrees.

Fuelled by her deep pain due to falling pregnant during her matric year, as well as the desire to one day hold a qualification, Dilahlwane Mohono – Senior Faculty Officer in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences – says her story is her favourite, as it is a story of hope, courage, resilience, and working your way to the top.

Because of her pregnancy, Mohono did not complete Grade 12 in 1990. She got married immediately thereafter. In 1992, she began working as a cleaner for a company that was insourced to provide meals on the University of the Free State Qwaqwa Campus. She says this experience often left her with mixed feelings, as it hurt to see her peers studying further, but this is also what ultimately motivated her to complete her matric. “Graduation ceremonies were the most painful events for me. This eventually pushed me to turn to ABET to complete my matric in 1994. From there, I was determined to start my academic journey, so I registered with Stanford Business College for a Secretariat and Computer Skills Diploma. It was a six-month course, but I graduated in the end. That graduation inspired me. It motivated me to study further. Juggling work and studying became challenging, because I was a young mother and wife, but I had to attend classes after work.”

The joy of education

In 2000, she registered for a Higher Diploma with Unisa, and at the same time took up a new position in the library on campus. At the time, it was still called the University of the North Qwaqwa Campus. She recalls this as the beginning of her upward trajectory in life. “The joy of education and seeing how far I have come made me realise how much potential I have, so in 2003 I registered for a BA Sociology and English degree at the UFS, and thereafter went on to do my BA Honours in Sociology.”

She took up a new position as Assistant Officer in the Faculty of Education. Wishing to be relevant to her new faculty, Mohono completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), and thereafter a second honours degree in Curriculum Studies. “I felt like I was flowing. My colleagues helped me out and I wanted to ensure that I was the best in everything, because I did not want to disappoint them. What always encouraged me, were my children. I separated from my husband in 2003, so I found myself raising my kids single-handedly, and I needed to show them that we could all make it, and life would still go on.”

In 2018, the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences advertised a senior position. Mohono says she took a chance and applied because she wanted more growth. “I am now a Senior Faculty Officer. I was privileged to be afforded an opportunity to work for the university, so I always thought – how can I work in an academic higher learning environment and not use the opportunity to study and pursue an education.”

Is there a woman who inspires you and who you would like to celebrate this Women’s Month, and why?

It has to be my late mother. She was a very hardworking woman, but she passed on very early, in her early 40s. She worked in the same dining hall I started in, and a lot of the women I worked with then worked with her too. They took me under their wings and motivated me to continue chasing my dreams. Some were not even educated themselves, but they motivated me. I drew a lot of inspiration from them.

What advice would you give to the 15-year-old you?

She must take pride in being a woman, know who she is, and know that she must be brave and confident, and run with education as the key to her success. If it wasn’t for education, I shudder to think where I could’ve been. When I look back and see what I have achieved, being able to rise from all that while single-handedly raising my children, it makes me feel very strongly about myself. I am a very powerful woman.

News Archive

UFS cardiologists and surgeons give children a beating heart

2015-04-23

Photo: René-Jean van der Berg

A team from the University of the Free State School for Medicine work daily unremittingly to save the lives of young children who have been born with heart defects by carrying out highly specialised interventions and operations on them. These operations, which are nowadays performed more and more frequently by cardiologists from the UFS School of Medicine, place the UFS on a similar footing to world-class cardiology and cardio-thoracic units.

One of the children is seven-month-old Montsheng Ketso who recently underwent a major heart operation to keep the left ventricle of her heart going artificially.

Montsheng was born with a rare, serious defect of the coronary artery, preventing the left ventricle from receiving enough blood to pump to the rest of the body.

This means that the heart muscle can suffer damage because these children essentially experience a heart attack at a very young age.

In a healthy heart, the left ventricle receives oxygenated blood from the left atrium. Then the left ventricle pumps this oxygen-rich blood to the aorta whence it flows to the rest of the body. The heart muscle normally receives blood supply from the oxygenated aorta blood, which in this case cannot happen.

Photo: René-Jean van der Berg

“She was very ill. I thought my baby was going to die,” says Mrs Bonizele Ketso, Montsheng’s mother.

She says that Montsheng became sick early in February, and she thought initially it was a tight chest or a cold. After a doctor examined and treated her baby, Montsheng still remained constantly ill, so the doctor referred her to Prof Stephen Brown, paediatric cardiologist at the UFS and attached to Universitas Hospital.

Here, Prof Brown immediately got his skilled team together as quickly as possible to diagnose the condition in order to operate on Montsheng.

During the operation, the blood flow was restored, but since Montsheng’s heart muscle was seriously damaged, the heart was unable to contract at the end of the operation. Then she was coupled to a heart-lung machine to allow the heart to rest and give the heart muscle chance to recover. The entire team of technologists and the dedicated anaesthetist, Dr Edwin Turton, kept a vigil day and night for several days.

Prof Francis Smit, chief specialist at the UFS Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, explains that without this operation Montsheng would not have been able to celebrate her first birthday.

“After the surgery, these children can reach adulthood without further operations. Within two to three months after the operation, she will have a normal active life, although for about six months she will still use medication. Thereafter, she will be tiptop and shortly learn to crawl and walk.”

Mrs Ketso is looking forward enormously to seeing her daughter stand up and take her first steps. A dream which she thought would never come true.

“Write there that I really love these doctors.”

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