The survival story of Zimbabwe's proud women

BY GRACE CHIRUMANZU

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 between her poor background and her dreams, erected by Zimbabwe’s difficult economic situation over the years.

Maphosa finished her ordinary school level, at Glen View 1 High School, in 2007 and she has since described her four-year experience as “frustrating and discouraging” though she soldiered on.

Getting chased out from school having not paid school fees was typically how the young woman started every school term, in her high density suburb. She hardly wore any new pair of school uniform, white socks or shoes, since her father passed away in 2006. She had to buy cheap used uniform from school leavers with the money she earned from selling home-made lollipop ice-creams from mauyu –an African fruit.

“And I hardly paid any cash for the cheap 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 are as old as getting torn in the collar and armpits,” she recalled.

“I was always left behind in the studies because I will 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 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 the hic-ups, 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. The 21-year-old went on to study a 14 months-course in hotel and catering, at a college in the capital.

Her current straining job as a restaurant waitress, where she works 72 hours a week is nothing close to her dream of working at a five star hotel, in the country and eventually opening her own restaurant. But she remains happy 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 they won’t complain much on the salary. I get US$90 per month and my other workmates get US$60 and I have learnt not to complain because I have told myself that all I need is experience and it will not be the same with staying at home,” she said.

The young waitress’ widowed mother, is a vendor in Glen View, and she has relied on her business to raise her four children -Shingisai, Godwill (17), Panashe (13) and Masimba (3)- since his husband’s death three years ago.

She has always waked up early in the morning for her hoarding of vegetables in Highfield’s Lusaka market to sell in her community. With a meager profit of $US15 per week, the family has always adjusted to live under the circumstances by reducing their meals of the day.

“It is not easy, but sometimes when I’m about to quit I try to look at other options and find none and the next day I will still be stuck with it. It is not the best rewarding job to do when you are trying to raise a family, the money I get from each day is sometimes not enough to prepare a meal for my children and looking at them starve is so heartbreaking for me as a mother,” she said.

“But I’m 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 we survived the day with anything stolen from anyone, we have always believed in hard work and that is what I have taught my children.”

The Maphosa family, is an epitome of several families in a Zimbabwe that has been hard-hit by a tough economic situation, in recent years. Women have survived through by empowering themselves with one of the society’s uninspiring business of vending.

Selling “Dollar for two” packets biscuits at several bus stations in the country, less profit making R2 each lollipop sweets and cellular phone juice cards has been most women’s source of income.

Last year, before the dollarization of the economy by the government, almost half the population in Harare city centre resorted to vending. Literally every corner of the street was jammed with women and children selling sweets as the atmosphere was filled with voices shouting “R5 unodya ten masweets” (R5 for ten sweets), “Dollar for dollar Buddie, Txt, Partnership” and that will be mobile phone airtime.

They have switched from one self job to another with different levels of the economical hardships. Some have raised families by cross boarder trading, as others have been pushed by circumstances to voluntarily stoop low and become house maids in neighboring countries, ignoring the ill-treatment from their paymasters for the sack of their families.

That has been the survival story of the proud and hard-working Zimbabweans; in an African country the economy has left the world wondered how a human being can pull through a day.