My toughest time was when I became a widow. It was 1998 and I was eighteen. My husband left me with a two-week-old baby. My husband was in the military.

He was taken to the military hospital. They released him the very same day and he came back home alone. The following day he passed away. The military provided me with transport to bring his body to our home area of Murewa.

To lose the one you love most is not easy. I used to cry. People looked down on me – I was now just a single parent. My mother was not working. My father was not working. (more…)

In 1993, when my father lost his job at the mine where he worked, that was when the lot fell heavily on my family. It was then that my family had to move to the rural areas. I was in Form One and my father insisted that he had no money to pay for those of us who were in secondary to continue in school. My sister and I decided we needed to get employment to help the family but with only my primary school completion, I had no choice of a job. So I was employed as a maid. (more…)

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. (more…)