YOU TOO CAN MAKE IT!

Type :Personal Essay

Countries :Zambia

YOU TOO CAN MAKE IT! Many are stories of rags to riches, glass to grace but when you are in the trench of life these stories are all but farfetched if not unbelievable and frustrating. I was born at home before due time so goes the story as told by my mother, as such this led to long term illness when I was young. They had to move me from one hospital to another and so detrimental was the situation that they felt I wouldn’t make it past infancy. My uncles suggested I be named Mabvuto (meaning sorrow) but at my mother’s objection I was named Paul. I fully recovered around six years and by that time I had already missed nursery school phase hence I was put through directly to first grade of primary school. As though it were not enough to have gone through a lot of illnesses, school life was to be another hard challenge and a source of nightmare both to me and my parents. Throughout my primary schooling I was among the least performing pupils and by fifth grade I never knew how to read and write. My life was in total chaos as I felt unwanted, unliked and with no future ahead. No amount of parental guidance and other leaders’ talk and motivation made sense or brought hope of a better life and by then I had joined the bad boys of my community stealing from our guardians and been unruly at school. One eventful night would come by in late 2007, we had gathered as a family for devotion though I didn’t understand what was going on in that moment I felt empty inside with nothing to look forward to as a person. I looked behind my life and a series of questions run to my head, why me? Why am I the least behaved and literate person in my family? What do I want to do with my life? And in that moment of self-reflection and agony I deeply felt a powerful conviction that ME TOO CAN MAKE IT! I realized there was more to life than what I was living, that instead of causing pain around me, I would be the game changer around me and bring happiness to those around me. Instead of been that person that they would refer to or cite in a bad example to young people I would rather be one who young ones would look up to. I decided I would be a change maker. I ended that night by saying to myself in self-belief that I would from that following year be a change maker and turn my life around that would constitute one of the powerful tools that I later discovered to be the power of the tongue and self-belief. I had failed consistently all my first six years of school and I was determined to be excellent in the rest of my school life. The following year my parents moved me to another school I learnt how to read and write that year and I was the top performing pupil in state examinations at that school. I went on to junior secondary school and throughout I was in the top five in my class and was among the top five pupils in the state examinations and among the best in the province. I was accepted to study at the prestigious David Kaunda Technical High School in Zambia. At the end of high school in 2013 I was among the top performing pupils in the country and was awarded a scholarship to study Electrical Engineering in Russia where I graduated with an Honors Degree. The hardest thing to happen to me was to believe that I would change and become an outstanding and a person of influence in my community, that me the one who was born before time and suffered so much would go on and be a change maker in the country. In late 2019 I decide to use my story to make a difference to those in poor communities, to those who have their hopes shuttered and don’t have a clear picture of who they are going to be in the future and to those that lack that determination and self-belief that regardless of their situation they can make a difference and turn their lives around to live at their own terms, I joined Youth Lead Activity Zambia under USAID and implemented by FHI360 as a platform to reach out and tell young ones that they too can make it. Thus, I have developed the conviction that a job can earn one a living but sharing one’s story can make a living. To never live a life to one self but for others to contribute and spread hope with a strong belief that though life my seem hard they too can make it! PAUL NKHOMA