A New Life: Kevin Bodenham tells Sylvia Thompson how familial obligations meant he was 37 before he began his ideal job
There are many people in the world whose career choice is not, in fact, their choice but something that has been foisted on them for a variety of reasons.
Forty-four-year-old South African Kevin Bodenham had always wanted to be a hairdresser but, as the eldest of five children with a difficult home life, his career path took many twists and turns before he finally came home to himself.
Growing up "under the mountain" in Cape Town, he went to a small, private Catholic boys school which, he says, was outside the anti-Apartheid system.
"We were taught by the Salesian Brothers and wore uniforms and straw boaters," he explains.
However, when a severe car accident left his father unable to work, the family had to move from their lovely big house in Claremont to a council house.
Luckily for Kevin, his local church agreed to pay his school fees so he could finish his education at the same school.
"I don't agree with all the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but I do have a debt of gratitude to the church," he explains. "Also, I knew I was gay and it was only as I grew in my faith that I came to accept myself better as a gay person regardless of the doctrine of the church."
At 17, Bodenham got a job in the South African civil service but quickly realised he didn't belong there. "I continued to work in the civil service for four years while doing a Business Science Degree. Then I did my military service [which was compulsory in South Africa at the time] and went into private employment."
Over the next 12 years, Kevin continued to live on and off with his family - helping to financially support his younger brothers and sisters as his father slowly became an alcoholic.
"It was difficult, but my mother was an inspiration and the strength of the family. She had that typical attitude of keeping everything hunky-dory on the outside while they were falling apart on the inside. I was very annoyed with my father for years but life doesn't always go the way you want it to and you have to soldier on. I have always been a devout Catholic which has gotten me through."
Moving from import and export work at the civil service to systems management in retail and manufacturing, Bodenham says he hated every moment of the work. "Hairdressing just wasn't considered [to be] something I could do. I had to be the breadwinner, have an office job and make money. Yet, I always did my sisters' hair and I used to restyle my mother's hair when she came home from the hairdressers unhappy."
At the age of 35, Bodenham began to seek change in his life. "My mother had Alzheimer's disease, I had a bad relationship which broke up and I asked myself why I was stuck in a job I hated," he says. With his siblings grown up with jobs of their own, he began to study hairdressing. His mother died just as he completed his training.
"I was 37 by the time I was qualified and I got a job as a stylist immediately - skipping the whole junior thing of washing heads and sweeping floors. I worked for four years in hairdressing in South Africa and loved it."
Hitting his early forties, he found life became difficult again. "I realised I hadn't properly gotten over my mother's death and the break up of my relationship."
So, he took a year off to go travelling through Britain and North Africa and then stayed for three months with his great-aunt in England. "I toyed with the idea of working in London, as so many South Africans do, but a friend invited me to Dublin for the weekend. Flying in over the Irish Sea, it felt like I was coming home."
Curiously, he had just discovered from his great-aunt that his great-grandfather had come from Ireland, changing his name from O'Malley to Bodenham upon arrival in Cape Town.
And so, once back in England, he immediately began to look for a hairdressing job in Dublin. Very quickly, he secured a job with a St Stephen's Green barber, with his employer arranging his work permit. He moved within weeks to take the job and since living here, he has changed jobs a few times and now works in Whetstone, an Aveda salon, in Parliament Street.
"I adore working in the Aveda salon. We do four 10-hour days, which leaves me with three days to do the things I enjoy." Agreeing that there is a sort of counselling role attached to hairdressing, he says it's linked to the tactile nature of the job. "You are touching someone's head which invites a greater intimacy than other services."
Speaking about the personal resonance such a workplace has for him, he says "I had been keen on natural products and practises for some time and haven't used prescription drugs myself for over 12 years. To keep well, I do reiki, walk a lot, sing in a choir and go the gym."
But, does he yearn for his native country? "I've been back to South Africa every year since I moved here, but I've bought an apartment here now and I can't see myself ever leaving."