Refugee dentist Sona Hassoun (25) was eager to get to work. She hated Niksen in the asylum seeker center in Dongen. A call to help her went viral and resulted in double success. She works in Tilburg and Boxtel, but still as an assistant. “I wanted to hug the boss, I was so happy,” Sona beams.
“It’s really perfect!”, Sona beams. She is working in Tilburg on Thursday afternoon with a smile of pride. “I feel like myself again! I really love my colleagues! They are so kind to me.”
Hundreds of comments
Sona was born in Syria, but she is Palestinian roots. She fled from Syria to the Netherlands at the beginning of last year and still lives in the asylum center in Dongen.
Photographer Mona van den Berg met Sona while making a report in Dongen. She posted a call on social media two months ago. It generated many hundreds of responses.
“I wanted to help her! That was just a feeling,” says practice owner Michael Joosen of Mondzorg Tilburg West. “I saw a lot of reactions under the call, but who really does what they say?”, he wondered. “Let that be me,” he concluded. She now works in Tilburg on Thursdays. On three other days she works at another practice in Boxtel.
‘Terrible’
Yet she is not allowed to be a dentist in the Netherlands. She did that for 1.5 years in Syria and also obtained her diploma there. It has everything to do with paperwork and rules. “She has to arrange a BIG registration and pass her Dutch tests,” Michael gives as an example. “That will take a while, but I wanted to get her out of that center where she was wasting her time.” Sona: “Doing nothing was really terrible.”
The practice is now training her to become a dental assistant, which is not easy to do in these times of staff shortages. And sometimes that is just as difficult as an accomplished dentist. “Sometimes I have to restrain myself from doing everything myself. No, I tell myself,” Sona laughs.
Can she stay?
“She’s doing very well. She really goes for it,” says Michael. “I really hope she can stay in the Netherlands.” Sonia is currently stateless. She doesn’t have any passport. She should hear before August whether she can stay in the Netherlands. “Very exciting, I really hope so,” she beams. “I don’t want to think about what I have to do if I’m not allowed to.”
Does she already speak Dutch well? “Just a little bit! Brabant!”, she shouts. And she already knows the most important ‘dentist phrase’: “Are you okay?” she laughs.