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Some of the 56 children who were part of the 350 Doma people brought to Harare for the first time by the Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries

Roselyne Sachiti Features Editor
Motion Metera is a 15-year-old boy. He has stayed in the Doma area, Mbire District, in the country’s Mashonaland Central Province, all his life. Metera has never been to school and seeing other children from nearby areas go to school when he is at Kanyemba Growth Point pricks his heart, really bad.

Where he comes from, life is hard for everyone. It is hard to get food, clothes and education is just one of the things that do not top the priorities of any household. To help provide food for the family, young boys like him are taught how to hunt and farm by their fathers, the only education he knows.

He cannot spell his name, neither can he write it. He literary cannot read, yet the teenager yearns to learn all this. It worries him and he sometimes has sleepless nights thinking of what his future will be like.

Despite not getting an opportunity to go to school for formal education, Metera has a dream. He wants to get formal education and wear a school uniform like other boys his age he has seen. One day, he watched policeman in their grey shirts and navy blue trousers arrest men in his village for poaching wild animals.

From that day, he’s had a great love for the police uniform and if he gets the chance to go to school, he wants to wear it too and even become an officer in charge at a police station.

“I have never been to school since I was born. All the other children in my family have also never been in school. It deeply worries me. Now that I am in Harare, I hope my dream will come true,” he said last week.

He is one of 56 children who were part of the 350 Doma people brought to Harare for the first time by Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries’ (PHD) Prophet Walter Magaya and his wife Prophetess Tendai Magaya as a way to motivate them to see the other side of life.

His visit to Harare has made his passion towards attaining an education stronger. His lack of education has also proved that in the Doma community, there are no gender disparities when it comes to education. No sex is superior when it comes to formal education. Both girls and boys do not go to school.

He does not care to enrol for Grade 1 at 15 years. All he wants is an education. Like Metera, 14-year-old Chengetai Chinobuwa has never been enrolled for school. Being the first born child in a family of six children, she has watched her siblings also miss out on the opportunity to go to school.

Yet talking to her, an intelligent girl hidden somewhere is unleashed, and knows what she wants to achieve in her life and also how to help the Doma people better their lives.

“I would like to go to school. I want to become a nurse. I see many Doma women give birth at home. I have heard that some babies die soon after being born. This worries me as other women from surrounding areas go to the clinic,” said Chinobuwa. Because of this, Chinobuwa seems to know how she, being an insider in the Doma community, can help change this.

“I want to become a nurse and help the Doma people. We cannot afford to pay for some things required at the clinic. I also want to wear the white uniform worn by nurses I have seen at Kanyemba. The white uniforms are beautiful and I picture myself in them,” she added.

Chinobuwa is well aware that to achieve all this, she has to get a formal education first, yet poverty has been the stumbling block for her and her siblings.

At least there is hope in their family. Her five-year-old brother Arnold was this year enrolled in Grade Zero, at Chapoto Primary, becoming the first in the history of their family to attend a formal school.

She hopes that he will not drop out of school because of the long walking distance to the school.

Chinobuwa also does not mind joining her five-year-old brother in the Grade Zero class. All she wants is an education. Nakisai Chinobaya (13), also from the Doma area, wants to become a driver but to reach this goal, she knows too well that she first has to learn to read and write.

At 13, she has never been in a formal school, has never heard her father talking about sending her to school. This worries her as she is getting older and might be up for marriage soon. She has watched many girls in their area, because of poverty, marry at 14 just to put less pressure of providing food on their families.

Her fears are justified as she comes from Mashonaland Central Province which, at 10,1 percent, has the highest proportion of women who first married or entered into a marital union before their 15th birthday, according to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2014.

Nationally, the proportion of women who marry before 15 years has declined over time to 7 percent within the 40 to 44 age category against the 2,9 percent between the 15 to 19 age group. After coming to Harare on her maiden trip, Chinobaya has made up her mind.

Like many other children at the PHD Hotel, she is shy and only speaks when spoken to. During the interview, she takes moments of silence, like she is in a world of her own. But when she suddenly opens her mouth, her responses show what she has been “plotting” in her head during the moment of silence.

“I will not get married at 14. I want to go to school, be able to read and get a driver’s licence. Some people from a non-governmental organisation who came to our area said I should first learn how to read so I can interpret road rules and also get a driver’s licence. How will I get it if I marry at 14? My husband will naturally expect me to start bearing children for him and I will lose this opportunity,” she revealed.

She is determined to drive a car, any car, so that if she sees another Doma person, she can give them a lift for free.

“If I drive, I will be able to take pregnant women to the clinic using my car. They will not give birth at home if I can help them,” she added. At 14, she is convinced that if she drives, some of the problems in the area will disappear.

Attaining a formal education has never been a priority for the Doma people as their unique way of living has in the past shut out all forms of civilisation. Even the older Doma people, some as old as 70, in the group that spent a week at PHD Hotel and those that remained in their village, have never been in school their entire lives.

Not attaining formal education has passed from generation to generation and become a norm. But now they have hope. Prophet Magaya, through his philanthropy work, promised to build them a school, whose construction has started and once completed, they will attend for free. Doma people coordinator Mr Bindura Kachasu said they were happy with the construction of the school as it will bring education to their doorstep.

“The construction of the school excites us. With education, we can finally be like everyone and we thank Prophet Magaya and his followers for giving us this opportunity,” he said.

He said about 600 children in the Doma community do not go to school.
“The schools are far. The nearest school is Chapoto Primary which is about 8km from our homes. The challenge is there are plenty of wild animals here and parents fear their children will be attacked as they walk to and from school. The children also do not have clothes to wear, let alone uniforms. So going to school has never been a priority. Poverty levels are extremely high within our community,” he added.

The MICS 2014 indicates that in Zimbabwe about 7 percent of primary school age children were out of school, including children who were not attending any type of school and those who were attending pre school.

Children like Metera, Chinobuwa and Chinobaya fall in the demographic of only 3 percent of primary age children who were out of school (not attending any type of school), according to MICS 2014.

In Zimbabwe, Government acknowledges that education is a basic human right, which plays a pivotal role in combating ignorance, disease, and poverty and that education is the key to socio-economic and political transformation.

As such, policies and strategies that ensured that all Zimbabweans, young and old, have access to education since independence in 1980 have been crafted to cushion everyone.

The Education Act (chapter 25:04) explicitly states that all children have the right to education yet even with Government social protection programmes like the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) meant to pay school fees for poor children, the Doma have never taken it up because of the closed society they live in and other factors like fear of being attacked by wild animals en-route to school.

With the new school being built on their doorstep by PHD Ministries and the enthusiasm to get a formal education shown by Metera, Chinobuwa and Chinobaya, life will certainly change for the better for future Doma generations.

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