Enock Naphazi - a journalism student’s life story
June 24, 2009 is a date 21 year old Enock Naphazi will never forget. It was then he learned that his dream of continuing his education at college level had miraculously been fulfilled.
“To this day, June 24 is my own private holiday, each year I will pause to thank God for providing me with one of the greatest father by the name of FOCHTA in my life”, said Enock.
It all started in 2005 when he was selected to Thunga Secondary School. A school which is almost 25 km from his home Mankhamba village, Traditional Authority Thomas, in Thyolo district. While in most cases it is a joyous and happy time when one is selected to secondary school, this was not the case for Enock who had an uphill battle to fight. He lost his father in 2003, and because of this there was no one immediately available to pay his school fees. “My mother could not manage. The money she earnt from her business selling clay pots was not enough to feed four of us and pay school fees”, he disclosed. “I tried with some relatives and organisations to help me, but unfortunately there was none”, he added. But Enock had an ambition, and for this ambition to be fulfilled he had to go to school. Forced by his ambition, he had no choice but to think of a way by which he could find the money himself.
He decided to find a job so that he could earn k1,200 for school fees per term. But he had to find a job early in the morning or in the late evening because he had to be at school the rest of the day.
He got a job helping a dairy farmer deliver the milk to a selling point. He had to get up at four o’clock so that he could meet the dairy farmer at five o’clock. He had to finish his work before half-past seven so that he could get to school in time. Unfortunately he was forced to give up school in his second term of form one because the milkman wanted him to work fulltime a thing which was very difficult to him.
It was on 13th September, 2005 in his third term in form one, that FOCHTA started to help him with school fees together with other eleven students from the same school, who were also facing similar challenges. This is how Enock became one of the beneficiaries of FOCHTA.
“Apart from supporting us with school fees, we were also enjoying delicious food at every lunch break and during the growing season we were given two 50kg bags of fertilizer”, he said. According to Enock this fertilizer were helping them a lot as this enabled them to harvest bumper yields and they were food secure throughout the
year. This helped him improve his class performance so that when he sat for the MSCE examination in 2008, he was second highest out of 30 students who passed at his school.
But this was not the end of the journey; Enock had a vision that one day should be a journalist. Because of this, he was forced to go further with his education, then he had to find an institution that provide journalism course. He applied to Malawi Institute of Journalism (MIJ). Luckily he was called for an entrance examination and
later he was awarded a place.
Enock has now finished a one year Certificate in Journalism Program at MIJ, after FOCHTA paid k170 000 that was required.
In early August 2010 Enoch will start an 18-month Diploma Course on Journalism at the Malawi Institute of Journalism which will be sponsored by The Australia Africa Business Council (NSW) Inc.
Posted on: Sunday, 25 July 2010 at: 5:14 am
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