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Flora Fadzai Sibanda, Chronicle Reporter
FOR a majority of people, the country’s first Covid 19 lockdown in March 2020 brought their world to a standstill, causing a lot of stress and hopelessness.
However, for Ms Shylette Ngwenya (23) of Binga District in Matabeleland North, the script read differently. For her, the lockdown created an opportunity for her to get involved in charity work with targeted focus on vulnerable groups in rural areas, which ultimately triggered her passion to study medicine.
Ms Ngwenya, a third-year medical student at the University of Zimbabwe, started as a volunteer during Covid-19 pandemic.
When the Government relaxed the lockdown regulations, she decided to study medicine, a missing puzzle in her life that she had been looking for.
She said the experience of helping people during her voluntary work especially during Covid 19 made her realise helping vulnerable communities during health crisis is what she really wanted.
Born in Donga Village in Binga, Ms Ngwenya grew up without anything, but enough to take her through the day, which made her dream of a bigger picture of life.
The crisis and the failures she experienced at a young age taught her to stay focused on the path of building a life she wanted to live.
At the age of five, Ms Ngwenya experienced an unbearable scene when she witnessed her father take his last breath in their homestead in Binga, and had to be fended for by her siblings.
During the lockdown, Ms Ngwenya enrolled into different online self-growth programmes and read a lot of inspirational novels.
“It made me realise that l was not doing so much yet l had a lot of potential. During that time l decided that l would work hard and make myself proud. That is when l decided to start volunteering helping different people,” she said.
The young medical student said she has always loved helping her community so volunteering was easy for her.
She started to volunteer with GirlUp Zimbabwe, Doctors and Nurses on a Mission (Bulawayo) where she was helping patients and educating people on Covid-19 without being paid.
“That is when the thought of being a doctor started coming to me. I knew l wanted to help people and my father’s death also triggered it as he died at our home while l was watching so maybe had l been a doctor then l would have saved him,” said Miss Ngwenya.
“My father got sick when l was five years old. When l was left with my father alone at home, he told me to get water and when l left his room to get the water my grandmother approached us. l suddenly realised that my father was gone. That whole experience gave me nightmares and stuck with me for some time as l would recall all the events. I knew l did not want my family members and other community members to go through that same experience where a loved one is bed ridden and has no one to help them,” she added.
The young woman is currently running an organisation that is involved in charity work, spreading the word of God and paying school fees for vulnerable Donga primary school children.
“At the moment we have managed to pay for 43 students at the school. We also donate warm clothes every first week of May in Bulawayo to vulnerable people of Bulawayo who live on the streets and we usually collaborate with other organisations on this one,” said Miss Ngwenya.
She said she recently got introduced to the real life of a hospital and she said so far it’s been very fulfilling and pulling her into achieving her dream of being a qualified medical practitioner. — @flora_sibanda
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