Faith Muzengi

I know from personal experience that parents really love to have their daughters in school and would do everything they could to ensure they remain there and succeed, but lack of funds thwarts their effort – education has become so expensive and beyond their pockets. But faced with a situation where they have to choose between sending a daughter to school or starving the whole family, they just do not have any way out of such a cruel decision.

My own mother made a lot of sacrifices just to make sure I stayed in school.

One time my mother had to give me her only petticoat to wear under my beige uniform at secondary school. She gave it to me leaving herself with none. She said this as she handed it to me, ‘Faith, my daughter, you are the one who is going to school and you deserve the best this house can offer you. You do the best and I know when you finish school and get employed you will always be able to buy me more petticoats.’

Another time she had to sell a bucket of maize at a third of the normal price and carry it on her head to the person who had bought it five kilometres away, just to have some money for me.

I know that poor parents might be poor when it comes to material things, but they have such a rich passion for education.

Faith Muzengi, pictured above with her mother, now trains young women across Zimbabwe in community health.