THERE IS A WILL, AND SO, THERE IS A WAY: Chifuniro's story

I remember vividly the first time I saw my mother; it is because she was in a coffin. I was 13 then and at a boarding school. My father came to my school and told me we were going to visit people at my home village. It was my first time to go to the place my father came from. As we drew closer, I saw a crowd of people surrounding the houses. I was greeted by leaves along the road which in my culture announces a funeral. Older women came to welcome us, they took me in a house and told me I was here for my mother’s funeral.

I was confused because the year before we had laid to rest my mother, so, “who was this lady?”

I was told then, the lady I knew as my mother, my whole life,  was my step mother but this one was my biological mother.

I had so many questions but everyone was silent, they silenced me too. After the funeral I went back to school, and upon completion of my second term that school year, I went home to an empty house. I asked our neighbors where my father and siblings had gone and I was told they had moved to Zimbabwe. I couldn’t understand why they decided to leave without me and I had no way to get to them.

This was the beginning of the next phase of my miserable life. A friend of my dad’s contacted him and my father said, life was too expensive there; he couldn’t afford to have me there. I lived at the mercy of people who invited me into their homes and chased me out at their will. Differences in religion, preferences, needs, appearances would have me chased out of homes. Several times I have dropped out of school but graciously I completed my high school. My father died in diaspora. I have been helped to succeed to college, but school fees is now my problem. I am looking for donations, Jobs, scholarships, anything that could help pay for my college fees.

For more information, enquiries or to support the works of Voices Awake, email Vanessa Mwangala at mwangalav@gmail.com, call or whatsapp on +265888191832 or follow on
https://web.facebook.com/VoicesAwakegirlsEquippedForChange/