All the students studying here in Cuba from more than 120 countries worldwide receive money from their governments except us, why us? Students from other African countries are paid on time, even those from the smallest, poorest countries. Why does the Zimbabwean government fail to pay us our stipends? , it is now a year living here without money, we don’t even have clothes, shoes, nothing. Who on this earth can send a student to a foreign country promising to support that child and on the way you ignore like that, we have been abandoned for a long period of time and we hope the new minister would take into consideration our problems, we are very disappointed here!
We are the poorest and the most ignored students in the world universities. The only option left for us is to participate in illegal business. How else can we afford our living expenses? Some are forced to borrow from other students. What sort of image are we putting across of our home country? I think these scholarships of studying abroad are only for the kids of ministers and rich people , us poor people a scholarship like this is only a baptism of fire, we are very angry!
Here in Cuba we are less than 25 in total, a small group. The whole of SADC has students here and each country has more than 400 students. South Africa and Angola have more than 3,000 students and what surprises me is that all these countries pay their students on time except us – and their stipends is even twice more than that of ours.
With the little that we thought we were supposed to be getting each year nothing is coming, students here are like street kids, no one seems to be worried about this situation. Why are you stressing us like this? Why do you like demoralizing your own students who are the owners of our beloved Zimbabwe? Why can’t you just pay stipends on time to your own students like any other country? We are just dumped here! I would like to inform the new minister Doctor Olivia Muchena to take this situation seriously and at least give us an immediate solution to this problem; we have been frustrated for a long time. – Chema Wanzwikwa, by email
Post published in: Letters to the Editor