The success tale of a Form 2 secondary school drop out.

THE TALE OF JENGA SUPPORT CENTER AT BOLERO, RUMPHI

If what you do helps someone else achieve something, then you really have accomplished much. And that not money is the real reward of success. Our wise ancestors coined the edge.

Another saying of wisdom by our wise intimates; the heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the right.

After all, you must also cultivate enthusiasm and zeal in your task; otherwise you will sink into mediocrity. And where zeal and skill meet a miracle usually follows.

This came to light three months I arrived at Jenga Support Center at Bolero in Rumphi district in the Northern Region of Malawi.

Situated about 40 kilometers outside Rumphi Trading Center going to the west while braving the dusty and rough road despite being the one that takes multitudes of tourists to Nyika National Park, the strings of villages mainly of mud bricks houses with iron sheets roofs attracts attention of hundreds on lookers who passes by at the end of the day.

While appreciating stunning maize and tobacco gardens dotted all over, is a two roomed wholly roofed with corrugated iron sheets of high quality. The plastered whole building is in white paint and the words; Jenga Support Center at the top written in blue.

If you are one of those who judge people by their appearance, not success of their brains and hands you could be mislead seeing soft spoken Godfery Jenga Gondwe cladding his shoes, trousers both in black color with a crime long sleeves shirt with a necktie that he is man behind the mentioned center.

“I started Jenga Support Center with only one sewing machine way back 1999 after running a small hardware shop for two years right here at Bolero trading center,” explains Gondwe.

Gondwe a very enterprising person he is a man who dreams in colour. This is the man who is the source of economic brainwave to the rural areas of Bolero and across entire Northern region.

Making a kick-start with a single sewing machine in the past recent years he is now a proud owner of a tailoring shop satiated with twenty-eight sewing machines, carpentry and joinery workshops and wedding and fabrication.

“It was my desire late in 90s to help Malawi government in developing the country by opening a vocational trainings skills to help the needy young people and vulnerable groups at the end providing self employments especially in this era where there is a loud cry of unemployment. But at that time I had no resources and no ideas of which buttons to press for assistance,” he says.

That is why the 36 years old father of three children had every reason to call for support from non-governmental organizations and indeed TEVETA itself.

He explained, that so far eighteen youths in Tailoring, and six in Carpentry and Joinery fields had graduated since the inception of the Center and were on scholarship programme offered by Gondwe himself while the rest who had just joined the Center by January 2007 were sponsored by World Vision, (a non-governmental organization).

“Godfrey Jenga Gondwe is the beneficiary of Skills Development Initiative (SDI) programme initiated by TEVETA in 2001, under this programme TEVETA provides training outreach programmes to the youths in order to promote the provision of trainings through enhanced traditional apprenticeship schemes.

The SDI programme which was piloted in Rumphi, Salima, and Mwanza districts from 2001 to 2002 under the Informational Sector Training Programme, youths were trained in different occupation such as Brick Lying, Carpentry And Joinery and Tailoring.

But that was not the formula for solving problems facing the younger generation, unless offering some training within their locality exactly as what TEVETA did to Gondwe who mastered the skills so well as he was the recognized by TEVETA as one of those who could train his fellow locals within the community.

And since 2001 he Center has trained about 372 youths mostly girls from all over the districts in the Northern region.

“I am one amongst the first group of the youths who had benefited from vocational training skills offered at Jenga Support Center and now I have opened a Tailoring Shop at Rumphi Trading Center where am eking money to make my ends meet,” says James Gondwe, who has no relation with Jenga.

However Gondwe laments, lack of materials to give to those who graduates from the Center for a start, Houses to accommodate trainees from far districts and meeting Transportation costs to various places to see how those who have received vocational skills are doing are the major challenges the Center faces.

Visiting the Jenga Support Center one would discover to his amusement that deep in the rural areas there are some Malawians who dream in color. And if people of Gondwe caliber are to be many, fairly recognized and supported the Warm Heart of Africa would completely develop within short years.

It is the wonders of success that could make any person to trek down from where ever he or she is to Bolero to see testimonies of Gondwe.

Jenga Support Center is never short of visitors, at the dawn of the day and as the sun descends down to have itself immersed deep into the far western horizon, parting the land it had shone upon a dozen hours ago into the inevitable darkness, many have different tales to tell about the Center which are true reflections that the success story of a Form 2 secondary school drop out has been herd all over the hills and mountains.

As success can be defined in a variety of ways but all boils down achieving something one set to do or becoming what you want to be. Then it is a fact who can dispute that Gondwe has successed.