Off Duty, Technically

On Monday morning, I was outside my compound when I got a notification on my Instagram from a friend. I opened it to check it, responded, and then clicked back to my feed. That was how I found news on Instablog. Reading the caption, it was about a 25 years old NYSC doctor serving in a state that was not disclosed who died just a couple of days after he requested a sick leave, and it was either delayed or not granted. Sad! This young man only asked for something simple, not even big at all.

He was probably posted to a hospital or a clinic where he attended to sick people, and he also got sick, made it known to the right authorities and this exact system of ours that was supposed to keep him safe treated his exhaustion as something that could be delayed. I feel by the time his leave was approved, it had become too late for his matter. Collateral damage.

Something struck me hard after that. I took a moment to process everything. Not because I personally knew this guy, but because I have seen something similar in action about two years ago.

During my service too, I got to realize that leave was a word people had been using loosely. I could remember two weekdays that I was off. I was not meant to attend to any activities and yet, my phone still rang. At first, they needed me to report to work. I respectfully declined. The second day, someone needed to know where a particular document was on the system. Then another person needed me to help her work on a work that I can simply do the following week. I had no choice but to answer those calls right from my room, because saying I am on leave again out loud might felt like it needed a stronger excuse than exhaustion, the same way that the 25-year-old doctor's sickness apparently needed more proof before the right authorities considered it.

Upon reading that dreadful news, what I was forced to think about was not even mental health days as a new idea. But about something on how loosely we already treat leave categories we claim to respect. This sick leave we are talking about only exists on paper. Yet a young man trying to struggle to make it in life died because he was waiting for his to get approved.

Looking at the situation of things and how long a lot of people's leaves have been delayed unnecessarily even while they are sick, like that doctor, they are delayed until it becomes fatal, in my humble opinion, I just don't know what convinces anyone that a mental health day, something with no scan or fever to prove it would be treated any differently, especially in a country like mine.

Most people's concern and what I have read is that people will find a way to abuse days meant for their minds. A lot of people seem half as concerned about what we already do to the days that are meant for our bodies.

I only went through some of the comments under that doctor's post because I just had to ignore some comments and went back inside quietly because of how I felt that day, I have been like that in a while.

Thank you for reading.

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