OVERCOMING POVERTY- YOU NEED PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN YOU

https://youtu.be/w1AfxNwjz-o

Towards the end of 1996, when I was doing temporary teaching in Mudzi, I would listen to this song Nzombe Huru by Leonard Zhakata many times. It was as if this song was sung specifically for me. From the first time I got my first salary no one had to tell me that I had to help my mother raise my 4 younger siblings and my nephew. I just knew that it was my responsibility.

Our life of poverty has become worse after the death of my father in 1990. My father had left a small Insurance policy naming me and my mother as the two co-beneficiaries. My portion of the insurance payout as a minor then was being administered by the Master of High Court in Harare. At the beginning of each year my mother and I would visit Harare with school fee invoices and quotations of school uniforms. My mother would get quotations of many pairs of uniforms for me. When she got the cheque I would get one or two pairs and rest of the money would she would also get uniforms for my sisters and brother.

The funds from the insurance policy ran out in 1994 when I was doing form 5. 1995 was particularly tough for us as my youngest sister also started high school. Three of us were in high school and my mother couldn’t cope, she went to the department of social welfare. The welfare official told her she was lucky because 1995 was an election year so the Zimbabwean government would be funding the department of social welfare. My school fees and my A’Level Cambridge examination fees as well as my sister’s school fees and her O’Level examination fees were also paid by the government🙏🏿

The distance from our home in Yellow City to my school at Marondera High School was almost 6.5kms . My sister Phillipa was starting form 1 at Catholic run Nagle House next to my school. My eldest sister was in form 4 at Nyameni Secondary School were I had also gone for my O’Level. My mum could only afford bus fare for Phillipa. I would eat in the morning walk almost 6.5kms to school spend the day not eat anything and walk back home and only eat in the evening and go to Dombotombo Library.

Some days I didn’t think I would escape poverty. My mother never got tired of telling me that I would become someone. High School was also tough because of the judgement from my classmates. One day one of the girls a boarder confronted me in the Biology Laboratory and told me how disappointed she was of me as she felt I was not taking school work seriously. I could have told her if I was fortunate like her to walk only 200metres to the dormitory and eat at least four meals a day maybe my grades would match hers.

Another boy in the physics class whom I met in the Chemistry and Mathematics classes told me to my face that I was a loser and I would never amount to anything in life. During mid year exams in 1995 I didn’t pass any subject. I told my mum I was going to our village in Murewa nearer Jekwa School. My cousin was building a store at Janhi in Mutoko about 10kms from our village. I had done building studies at O’Level. I worked for exactly one week and I demanded my money about $50. My cousin begged me to stay on and I said no.

I went to the shops in Jekwa and bought paraffin for the lamp, pens, exercise books, toiletries such as Aim tooth paste etc. My parents came from neighboring villages. My maternal grandfather Mr Tapson Kagoro was now staying alone, there was a hut that my cousin had built. I stayed with my grandfather and I would walk about 2kms to my paternal grandmother to eat whatever she was eating that day. Most of the time we ate vegetables without cooking oil. My favorite dish was Mabumbe. You roast pumpkin seeds and then grind them in a dura and you build them into meat balls and they will taste like mince meat/meat balls.

I studied day and night, one day I walked in the hut and I saw a snake, I killed it and I continued staying in that hut. When I left school we had not finished the syllabus especially the options and I studied those options on my own and taught myself. They say any experience in life is important, years later when I joined the insurance industry and started studying towards the Associateship and Fellowship qualifications I did not struggle at all and the same when I studied for my accounting degree and also embarked on my LLB and MBA studies, I did not struggle.

I left the village and went back to Marondera in time for the Chemistry and Biology practical examinations. I managed to pass all my 3 subjects. I didn’t get into University so I started looking for a job for 8 months. I tried applying to banks etc. Beginning of September 1996, I visited Ministry of Education Kotwa District offices about 20kms from Nyamapanda Border Post, the district education officers wanted a person who had passed A’Level Mathematics and O’Level Building Studies to be a relief teacher at Chimukoko Secondary School. Of all the people who were queuing for teaching jobs, I was the only person with those Moses qualifications. My time had come.

I went back home and showed my mother my appointment letter, she told me that was her dream and she always wanted me to be a teacher. I told her my dream was to join the private sector and drive a nice car. I had seen a salesman at Mascho when I went to buy chicken feed, the guy was driving a brand new Nissan Sunny box shapped car. Ever since I saw that guy that was my dream. My teachers were not driving nice cars and I did not want to be like them. My mother went to a supermarket in Cherima were she had an account and got me groceries. My mother was a miracle worker somehow she could solve any problem in front of me.

I got my first salary payment in October 1996 for two months it was $4 000, I had never seen so much money in my life. I bought groceries for the family at TM Marondera without worrying how much was the cost and it felt good. I went to Harare bought a double cassette player and a 14”black and white TV the first TV we ever had in my mother’s house. I also bought a few cassettes, I remember Celine Dion’s Falling Into You, 1996 Grammy Nominees, Best of Bob Marley. My mum was surprised that as a young woman, she had enjoyed Bob Marley and here I was almost 20 years later enjoying the same music. I also applied for a landline telephone and it was installed at our home.

In December 1996 I got paid $4 800 including my bonus for 4 months. I went to Harare and bought everyone clothing for Christmas something that we last had in 1989. I bought groceries for Christmas. In 1997 my dream came true and I joined the private sector. In 1998 I went to Meikles Store and bought a 14” WRS colour TV on hire Purchase and took it home to my mother.

In 1999 I got a job at Diamond Insurance Company, the job paid about 4 times what I earned as a teacher. There was a huge 29” WRS TV that was on auction at work, I placed my bid and I won the bid. My boss Pepelapi Gumbo (Pepe would become my boss again 5 years later at Zimnat Lion) gave me her company car a charcoal grey Mazda 626. My friend Godfrey Matambo drove me to Marondera and we struggled to get the huge TV in and out of the car. I then took the 14” to my home in Avondale where I was renting a 2 roomed cottage. I was now staying with my sister Rosemary and she was doing her A’Levels at University of Zimbabwe night school which was a walking distance from home.

Beginning of 2000, I got a better paying job at AIG Zimbabwe, my salary would be 10 times what I earned as a teacher. I could now qualify to open a current account with Standard Chartered Bank. That year, my employer gave me a loan and I bought a brand new big deep freezer. I hired a colleague Mr Muzembe and he carried the freezer with his Mazda B1600 on a Friday evening from Harare to Marondera. When we got home my mother was not there. When my mother came back, I had never seen her that proud ever since she held me grade 7 results and O’Level results.
All her life my mother had relied on her neighbors for a fridge.

Poverty is dehumanizing and the worst thing is that it is very difficult to escape poverty. You need people around you who believes in your potential and even your worth. Due to the encouraging words I heard constantly from my mother, I knew that even though we were poor, I would go places🙏🏿 In 2003, a year after my mother died, all my siblings wanted to come and stay with me in Harare. MaNyoni and I moved from Avondale and started renting a 3 bedroom house in Unit H Chitungwiza as the Avondale place was too small for 8 of us. Unit H was not a pleasant place to be, it was crowded, there was water shortages, burst sewerage everywhere and we suffered a burglary whilst we were sleeping. Transport to and from Harare
was now a challenge, thankfully I was now a manager and I had been allocated a company car end of 2002. I had a fight with my youngest sister and she told me that I had done nothing for her in her life. something died inside me that day😢 It took me years to heal from those words.