Shingirai Maphosa (19), a waitress attending customers at a busy restaurant in Harare, has inspired her older workmates with her courage and strength to bulldoze through the barriers erected by Zimbabwes economic meltdown to accomplish her dreams.
Maphosa finished her ordinary school level at Glen View 1 High School in 2007 and describers her four-year experience since then as frustrating and discouraging -though she soldiered on. Getting chased out of school for failing to pay school fees was typically how the young woman started every school term in her high density suburb. She never had new school uniform, white socks or shoes, since her father passed away in 2006. She had to buy used uniforms from school leavers with the money she earned from selling home-made mauyu (an African fruit) lollipop ice-creams.
And I hardly paid any cash for the second-hand uniforms, but I was fortunate that they were patient with me and sometimes I would even manage to pay them when the uniforms were torn in the collar and armpits, she recalled. I was always left behind in the studies because I would spend the whole week at home without school fees, then I had to help my mum at her market place to raise my school fees as well as those of my young brothers. It was even difficult to concentrate in school because I always worried if we were going to be able to raise the exam fee in the end. Because of these problems, she only passed three Ordinary level subjects (English Shona, Food and Nutrition). Maphosa sat again for the Accounts, Geography and Science examinations the following year, which she eventually passed. At 21 she went on to do a 14 month-course in hotel and catering at a college in the capital.
Her current job as a waitress, where she works 72 hours a week, is nothing close to her dream of working at a five-star hotel and eventually opening her own restaurant. But she remains happy that she is two steps up the ladder. It is that kind of job where employers love taking in young girls like me whom they know wont complain much about the salary. I get US$90 per month and my other workmates get US$60. But I have learnt not to complain because I have told myself that all I need is experience, she said. Her widowed mother is a vendor in Glen View and has relied on her business to raise her four children -Shingisai, Godwill (17), Panashe (13) and Masimba (3) – since her husbands death three years ago. She wakes early every morning to source vegetables in Highfields Lusaka market to sell in her community. With a meager profit of $US15 per week, the family has managed to survive. It is not easy, but sometimes when Im about to quit I try to look at other options, but find none. The money I get each day is sometimes not enough to prepare a meal for my children and looking at them starve is heartbreaking for me as a mother, she said.
But Im happy that I have managed to get my daughter through ordinary level and she has been helping with what she gets from her job. That has been the life for us and we are at least proud that there was never one day where we stole from anyone. We have always believed in hard work and that is what I have taught my children. The Maphosa family epitomises thousands who have been hard-hit by the Mugabe regimes corrupt patronage system which has wrecked the countrys once-thriving economy. Last year, before the dollarization of the economy, almost half the population in Harare city centre scraped a living by vending. Literally every street corner was jammed with women and children selling sweets or cell phone re-charge cards as the atmosphere was filled with voices shouting R5 unodya ten masweets (R5 for ten sweets), Dollar for dollar Buddie, Txt, Partnership.
Some have raised families by cross-boarder trading, while others have been forced by circumstances to become housemaids in neighbouring countries, ignoring the ill-treatment from their paymasters for the sake of their families.
Post published in: Opinions