By Ben Mbangu in Sinazongwe
A 50-YEAR-OLD grade 8 pupil and volunteer police reservist of Sinazongwe district in Southern Province says his dream is to go to college after completing secondary education.
He warns that, “If children of nowadays don’t put school first they will face real and big challenges in their life.”
In an interview with The Mast, Given Muvombo, a husband and father of seven, last year sat for G7 examinations at Munzuma Primary School in the same class with two of his biological children and obtained get 674 marks.
He says hardships forced him to go back to school.
“Finding a job has become difficult if you don’t have a paper. I thought like maybe in future I can take care of my family well. Right now I have enrolled in grade 8 under external programme. My plan is to complete school. I wrote grade 7 from Munzuma Primary School last year in 2021 where I wrote together with my two own biological children,” he explains.
Muvombo said his plans are to go to college after completing school to study business administration.
“I can only manage to do something to do with business. If I acquire much knowledge then I can employ myself,” he says.
“I dropped out of school in grade 7 in 1986 and now again I have started in the same grade. Long ago if you failed any subject or short of three marks from cut-off point, places for one to proceed were not there hence people were opting to drop out.There was no progressing if you failed as the case today. I have seven children – five girls and two boys and married to one wife. Only one child completed grade 12 and was accepted at Mulungushi University but unfortunately due to lack of money he failed to make it.”
Asked how he managed to pass when he was not learning in formal school, Muvombo says he relied much on guidance from teachers.
“I just used to ask for past papers to study from teachers. They used to help me a lot with maths and English at no cost because I used to get along with them,” he narrates.
Muvombo says he could have done much better had it not been the 2021 general elections which took a lot of his time as a police reservist.
“I’m not happy with my results even if they are good because I never studied well due to elections. I volunteer as police reserve at Sinazeze Police Station. So last year due to lack of manpower at the station, we had a lot of work prior to elections,” he says. “I decided to volunteer as police reserve because I feel like helping the community and learning about law. The love for knowledge about law is forcing me to work as police reserve. I want to know the law.”
Asked about how people in the community reacted over his decision to start school, Muvombo says majority laughed at him due to lack of knowledge.
“They were saying that as old as I’m going to school because they don’t understand my vision,” Muvombo says.
He advises young people to focus on education and not things that can disturb them.
“Young people must know that in future there will be more problems than we are facing now us their parents. So if children of nowadays don’t put school first they will face real and big challenges in their life,” warns Muvombo.- The Mast