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- Meet the housemaid who has the world on her biceps
Regina Jonga’s day begins at 4am but she only comes alive over 12 hours later. Before she comes alive, Jonga earns her keep as a maid in Tshwane, South Africa.
It’s a job she would rather not do but she has little option. Life has not been kind to Zimbabwe’s leading female bodybuilder.
Love, too, has been a jerk.
Jonga made the trip across the Limpopo after a nasty divorce left her scarred; scars one can hear when she opens up on her life.
However, all the pain, the sadness and the hurt is forgotten -albeit momentarily – when Jonga comes alive as she hits the gym to work on a body that one legend described as an “unexplored gold mine” during the Arnold Classic back in May.
That ugly pink uniform, together with its headgear, is dumped as tights and trainers combine to bring out the woman that the maid’s buries.
As the daily transformation occurs, dishes make way for dumbbells, plates stay on – but the dinner ones are replaced with weight plates – and laundry makes way for lunges.
One would expect the 38-year-old reigning Ms Zimbabwe and an athlete who placed sixth at Arnolds to be a veteran of the sport.
Nay.
Jonga is a novice who took to the Arnold Classics stage without having done leg extensions or curls in her life.
One of the greatest mysteries in Sandton, when Arnold Schwarzenegger brought his show to Africa for the first time, was how the Zimbabwean bodybuilder had built so such muscle with so little. No proper equipment, no supplements, nothing!
For Jonga bodybuilding is more than a sport, it’s life. It can be argued that her spirit has brought her body thus far.
“When I get into the gym I feel alive, I feel confident and competing with others is just one of the many joys that come my way all because of bodybuilding,” she says.
Her Arnold Classic performance has opened doors and her hitherto story of pain and perseverance seems to be taking a turn towards paradise.
Bodybuilding South Africa president Wayne Price and his team were the first to come knocking on Jonga’s door, offering one-year membership at the Viva Gym in Mamelodi.
That move, which one can equate to being offered a chance to drive a Jaguar when the best you have ever had is a bicycle ride, has brought Jonga face-to-face with the best equipment in the bodybuilding and fitness world.
“On my first day in that awesome gym I just couldn’t stop pumping, I wanted to go on forever,” gushes the reigning Ms Zimbabwe, who broke down when the sponsorship package was unveiled live on Jacaranda FM.
Jonga is now also getting a constant supply of supplements from BSSA Supplements while, International Federation of Body Building top pro-athlete in Women’s Physique Marlene Koekemoer has offered to train her.
The results have been explosive, her body and the accolades are confirmation.
A few weeks after the Arnolds, the unassuming Jonga won the Winter Bodies competition and followed that up with winning the H&H classic a fortnight ago.
The great physique and good form have also had a massive impact on her confidence. She sounds like a whole new woman.
Interviewing her is a joy. She is full of life and eager to take on the world.
“It’s true that I am more confident now,” Jonga concedes. “Before the coming in of sponsors I had so much to worry about, including what I would eat after the show, but that is all in the past now.
“I would want to thank my personal trainer Marlene, my sponsor Mr Wayne Price, and Mr Erich from BSSA Supplements and the Jacaranda (radio) station. It’s because of these guys that I am the woman I am today.
I am forever grateful and pray that God blesses them, they mean a lot to me.”
If life begins at 40, then Regina Jonga has a had a two-year head- start!
Online Reporter