He recalled how he had to balance between household chores and schooling at one of the country’s ill-equipped rural schools and being rejected by a number of Advanced Level schools after he scraped through his Ordinary Levels at Mhalalume Secondary in Plumtree, Matabeleland.
“We had to walk about 5km to school and back every day. When we got home in the evening, exhausted, we would have to do household chores like watering the garden before going to sleep. At around midnight, I would wake up and study until I started preparing to go to school at around 5am. That is how I basically went through my secondary level, and even though I did well, I could have done better if the environment had been more conducive,” Nkobi told The Zimbabwean in an interview.
After passing his O levels, albeit with ‘a string of C’s’, Nkobi nearly saw his dream of continuing his education go up in flames, as a number of schools in the region turned him down.
“I was only accepted by one in Gweru that had just introduced A’ Level. So, I was one of the pioneers at Mkoba 1 High School, studying history, divinity and Ndebele. My success confirms that rural students get poor marks not because they are slow learners but because of the harsh environment they have to endure in order to get an education,” said Nkobi.
Enrolling at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa in 2008 proved a turning point for Nkobi, but it was not smooth sailing as he enrolled in courses he had no passion for. He was accepted for Bachelor of Arts because he had applied very late. The agreement was that he would do BA for one year and then go on to study Law. But as he studied a basic course in Archaeology as part of the BA he became fascinated with the subject.
Today he is one of only a few blacks to have graduated in that field.
During his undergraduate year, he managed to collect six certificates, topping his class twice in Media Studies and once in Anthropology with distinctions. He was also invited to join the Golden Key Honour for being in the top 15 in his studies for three consecutive years. In his third year, instead of doing two majors, he decided to do three majors, earning a Merit Award for his BSc Honours in Archaeology in 2011.
Nkobi is determined to ensure youngsters back in his rural home do not experience similar hardships. He is the chairman of the recently-formed Mala-Nswazi Youth Development Organisation, which aims to empower youngsters in remote areas by assisting in the challenges they face – such as HIV\AIDS, teenage pregnancy, alcohol abuse and underperforming schools.
“The Organisation is based on the framework that if you uplift the youth, basically you have uplifted the whole community. We want to do away with the spirit of individualism and bring back the spirit that, ‘it takes the whole village to raise a child’. By doing so, if one child is doing well at school but does not have the resources to go further, we want to see the whole village standing up and doing something about it,” he said.
Post published in: News