Meeting Youth Challenges Head on...Accessing Education.

Clive Siachiyako (from Times of Zambia)

ENTERING the gates of the University of Zambia (Unza) Great East Road campus this coming Sunday, together with many other first-year entrants, will be a 30-year-old Chililabombwe mother of two whose story is as inspiring as it is touching. Her story is one of those that bring alive legendary United States boxer Muhammad Ali’s words which imply that great feats are never thrust upon anyone but built from one’s inner drive to succeed.“Champions aren’t made in gyms, Ali begins. “Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: A desire, a dream, vision.

They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster; they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.”With skill, Gertrude Funga serves her customers at Chililabombwe Senior Police Club where she works as a barmaid.But, as Ali contends, it is the willpower in Funga’s life that has been overly amazing. Being barmaid is just one of the many menial jobs that Funga has known over the last nine years, including being a house servant for a white man in Ndola and a cook in Chililabombwe.

It has been a meandering road for Funga who is going to study for a bachelor’s degree in education with a bias in biology at Unza.At the age of 14 in 1993, Funga dropped out of school in grade nine at Fatima Girls Secondary School in Ndola not so a result of failure to qualify to grade 10 as lack of sponsorship.Thus marked the beginning of a journey down the avenue of tribulation which could have broken the aspirations and blurred the vision of any young woman in her predicament at that time.

There being no money to enable young Gertrude continue her education, the easier way for the girl’s mother was to send her into marriage at that still-fledgling age.Hopelessly, Funga became a wife at Dola Hill in Ndola’s Zaffico compound and, before long, was in a motherly way, leading to her first child, Justin, who is now in Grade 10.A girl, Lisa, now 10, followed three years later.After six years in marriage, the man’s job had been done; Funga’s husband had had enough and it was time to leave his wife and the two children.

So in 1999, Funga was left with no husband to support her and the two children, and the situation became grim as she could not manage to make ends meet to sustain the lives of her offspring.Listening to the lyrics in the late South African reggae artiste Lucky Dube’s track God Bless the Women, it makes one feel the singer had Funga’s circumstances in mind.In the middle of the night, I heard her pray so bitterly . . . She prayed for her children.

She prayed for their education. Then she prayed for the man who left her with her children.We praise heroes everyday. But there are those we forget to praise; the women of this world. They don’t run from anything. They stand and fight for what’s right.God bless the women. Even when times are so hard, they are so cool, calm and collected. They don’t run from anything, they stand and fight for what is right. They do not run from responsibilitiesFunga recollects the dark years of her life: “I had stopped school in grade nine in at Fatima Girls Secondary School due to lack of sponsorship and then I was forced into marriage which resulted in me having the two children I now have.“The man who gave me those kids later divorced me, and to support my children, I was forced, in 2000, to start working as a house servant for a certain white man (Dr Andrea de Angeles) at Villa Farm in Ndola.”

It was evident that Funga’s husband had not planned for the two children, and that was lesson number one, which inspired her to beginning doing some voluntary community work whenever she found time away from work as a house servant.“During my free time, I could do voluntary work of distributing condoms and sensitising people on the importance of family planning,” she says who was staying in Commando Site and Service in Ndola.At the back of Funga’s mind was the desire to continue with her education at some point. If she could make time for community work, it could surely be possible to continue with her education.

But as Funga was figuring out how she could do this using her meagre resources, the man she was working for was deported, rendering her jobless and without any income to support the two children.“This forced me to relocate to Chililabombwe where I started working as a cook at an orphanage called the One Way Mission,” she explains.She remained determined not to become a victim of psychological and emotional stress, and denial of personal development as a result of early marriage.Realising the direct link between education and income, and education and opportunity, she was resolute to go back to school.

She says: “Personal success is a dream of every individual but success is almost bleak without good educational qualifications. I realised that education is a catalyst of every person’s development. So, I strove towards my dream and in 2004, I started going to school at Muleya Secondary in grade nine.”Her determination paid off and she qualified to grade 10 but, a year later, lost her job again.“This time, I had no option but to relocate to a farm in Kasumbalesa where I began to work on the land,” she says.With every passing day, Funga increasingly realised the direct link between education and income, and education and opportunity.From the farm to Muleya Secondary School, the distance was 15 kilometres but, driven by determination, self-belief, hope and conviction, Funga did not forget her dream of completing her education.She would not let go this opportunity and soon got hold of a bicycle which she could ride every day for 45 minutes to get to school and cycle back after classes.

This she did until the last secondary school grade and sat for examinations. The results of those examinations have now sent Funga to university to pursue a degree programmeWhat determination!After school, Funga still needed to support her children, which was why she looked for a job as a barmaid at Chililabombwe Senior Police club.Despite overcoming her numerous hurdles, Funga now has the latest challenge of financing her education.Funga’s job as a barmaid has helped sustain her and the two children but will certainly not be sufficient to finance her university education.While she appreciates the 75 per cent Government bursary, Funga says it would still not be enough to meet her accommodation costs.She has so far been to the department of social welfare but nothing tangible has come forth.

While at university, Funga is going to leave her two children with her mother at Kavu Settlement in Ndola rural.Even as she ponders over how she is going to look for the money, Funga is able to look back with pride, saying all that she has gone through has not weighed her down as she has always been determined to chart her own course.She encourages women in a similar situation to be objective resilient, and never to forgo their dreams.

“Life and people can be cruel at times but it is important not to be cruel to yourself by living a careless life that leaves your future on the verge of collapse,” says Funga who stays with a well-wisher, Febby Kabwe, herself a widow, in Lubengele Township.Funga says eradicating one’s poverty demands formidable ammunition, most formidable of which is education.Education, she says, has the ability to propel one’s war against poverty with surety of victory.

Again, the inspirational Ali says wars of nations are fought to change maps while wars of poverty are fought to map change.Change in Funga’s life has been mapped by her determination to make a difference and become an inspiration to other women in a seemingly inextricable condition.(Funga can be contacted through the Times Features Desk on 02-12-617096/02-12-620063).