It costs Venita Njovu $1.60 a month to send her children to school. Pocket change for most of us, but worth about two days of food for her four children.
It’s a tough balancing act for a 41-year-old widowed mother…to decide between feeding her children and sending them to school. But Venita says the hunger they endure is a small price to pay for the long-term possibility education provides for her four children, ranging in age from 11 to 14. It is, she says, the only way her children will ever rise above the disaster that awaits nearly every child growing up in this part of Zambia.
“I want my children to be educated,” she says, “because education means a job, and jobs mean a better life.”
She made this commitment after the loss of her husband a little more than a year ago – that regardless of what happened, her children would stay in school. So she rents a part of their property as trash storage to a couple of home-based businesses and sells vegetables on the street to supplement her income. The money she earns keeps the children in school and pays for a few scraps of food, but little else.
“I thank the sponsor”
Despite her razor-thin existence, Venita is confident she has the fortitude to keep her head above water, especially now that her 11-year-old son, Stanley, is sponsored. The educational and medical assistance will reduce her expenses, she says, making it easier to survive each month.
One day, she muses, there might even be money to fix her tiny, crumbling brick box of a home. There is nothing to speak of in the dwelling, just a few blankets the family sleeps on, a couple of dented pans and a clothesline strung from one wall to the next. The walls are listing badly and the corrugated tin roof rattles with the slightest of winds.
Venita concedes that her situation is more severe than she likes to admit. But as she stirs some nshima – a local dish made of corn, oil and water – outside her tiny home and stands up in the searing midday sun, a gentle smile brightens her face. “I thank the sponsor for [helping] my children stay in school and do well.”
It’s a tough balancing act for a 41-year-old widowed mother…to decide between feeding her children and sending them to school. But Venita says the hunger they endure is a small price to pay for the long-term possibility education provides for her four children, ranging in age from 11 to 14. It is, she says, the only way her children will ever rise above the disaster that awaits nearly every child growing up in this part of Zambia.
“I want my children to be educated,” she says, “because education means a job, and jobs mean a better life.”
She made this commitment after the loss of her husband a little more than a year ago – that regardless of what happened, her children would stay in school. So she rents a part of their property as trash storage to a couple of home-based businesses and sells vegetables on the street to supplement her income. The money she earns keeps the children in school and pays for a few scraps of food, but little else.
“I thank the sponsor”
Despite her razor-thin existence, Venita is confident she has the fortitude to keep her head above water, especially now that her 11-year-old son, Stanley, is sponsored. The educational and medical assistance will reduce her expenses, she says, making it easier to survive each month.
One day, she muses, there might even be money to fix her tiny, crumbling brick box of a home. There is nothing to speak of in the dwelling, just a few blankets the family sleeps on, a couple of dented pans and a clothesline strung from one wall to the next. The walls are listing badly and the corrugated tin roof rattles with the slightest of winds.
Venita concedes that her situation is more severe than she likes to admit. But as she stirs some nshima – a local dish made of corn, oil and water – outside her tiny home and stands up in the searing midday sun, a gentle smile brightens her face. “I thank the sponsor for [helping] my children stay in school and do well.”
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