SHE woke up one day and could not walk. When this happened to Maria Dube, then a Form
Two pupil, she thought that it would pass. This was something that a doctor’s
prescription would fix, she naively thought.
This was, after all, an illness that had never affected her
in her young life. It would soon be over.
At that moment, she did not know that she now had a
condition that would now shape her life from that point onwards.
The little girl, who ran and played with other teenagers,
who lived life with all the exuberance of youth, was gone.
“I wasn’t born disabled. I had for many years been like any
other normal girl,” she told Sunday Life.
“I just woke up one day and I couldn’t move my legs. At the
time I don’t remember panicking. I just thought that this was something that
would go away. I thought that this was something that the doctors would fix
once I got to the hospital. At the time I didn’t think that this was destined
to be my condition forever,” she said.
The mystery illness could not have come at a worse time for
Maria. Her mother was struggling financially and as the seriousness of the
condition dawned on the family, they were ill prepared to deal with it.
“The doctors were unclear about what had happened to me. At
the time I remembered that they wanted me to do an MRI scan so as to diagnose
exactly was wrong with me. But I was unfortunate because at the time my mother
was going through tough times financially so we couldn’t do what the doctors
ordered,” she said.
Painfully, to this day Maria, who walks around with the aid
of crutches, does not know what brought on her disability.
“So even to this day I don’t know what caused my
disability. I haven’t got a full diagnosis of what really went wrong,” she
said.
For the first half of her life, the 30-year-old Maria had
been mobile and agile. Now, through a cruel twist of fate, her legs had been
ripped away from her at a stage where she had already flowered into a promising
young woman. The sudden change took a toll. Mentally she was not prepared.
“When it got obvious to me that I was going to be like this
all my life, it was tough to cope mentally. I struggled with depression and I
was just all over mentally. I also started having splitting headaches as a
result of the worrying and thinking,” she said.
From those dark days, a ray of hope was about to shine
through Maria’s life. While she was in hospital, she caught the eye of two Good
Samaritans who fell in love with her work ethic and passion at first sight. The
day the two Australian philanthropists laid eyes on her, was to be the
beginning of a new life for a girl that was drowning in sorrow. The girl who
had withdrawn into her shell would have to face the world again.
“One time I was in hospital and two white pastors from
Australia were moving around seeing sick people. Suddenly they came to me. I
don’t know for what reason but they took a liking to me.
“They asked if I wanted to go back to school and I said I
didn’t think I could manage. Because of this illness I had left school when I
was in Form Two and I had also retreated into myself. I had become withdrawn
and I didn’t think I could be among the crowds at school anymore. I was scared
I would fall or something of that nature,” she said.
After their encounter, Maria had not given much thought to
it. Surprisingly, when the couple was back in Australia, they thought of that
vivacious girl they had left in that hospital bed in Bulawayo.
“They took my number. When I gave it, I didn’t put much
thought into it. I didn’t think they would call me. To my surprise, however,
they did and when they called, they told me they love my fighting spirit and
they wanted me to learn how to be a fish farmer. I had no clue what it entailed
but I agreed to it. They connected me to someone who was going to train me, a
specialist in that field,” she said.
While fish farming might seem like a stroll in the park for
the casual observer, that was not the only thing required of her. She had to
learn how to train crocodiles, preparing them for a future where they would not
be aggressive towards human beings.
For this she needed the courage that has seen her rise
through a disability that threatened to derail her life. Should things not go
according to plan, she could find her limbs in one of the water predators’
fearsome jaws.
“I started my training around July 2014 and by the end of
December that year my training was finished. On my first day I was very scared.
I didn’t think I could touch let alone train a crocodile. I had to conquer my
fears and I did that after a few days,” she said.
Over the last few years Maria has been establishing fish
farms around the country, becoming an industry standard bearer while seemingly
unhampered by her disability. However, she has also learnt that despite her own
courage, many are still afraid to learn a skill she seems to have mastered in a
relatively short space of time.
“Crocodiles are easy to train but people are afraid. They
are trained from a young age where they can be taught not to fear or attack
human beings. You hold and cuddle them when they are young and gradually as
they grow older, they become more pliant to human beings. They are not like
untrained crocodiles in the wild.
“Despite that many people or most people, I come across are
still afraid of crocodiles. So, at the moment most of my focus is on the fish
farming aspect of my project. It’s easier to train people how to be fish
farmers rather than crocodile trainers. I think people should conquer their
fear just like I did. All I ask of them is to try only. You can never know
whether you can do something or not until you try it,” she said.
Last Friday Maria launched Tsalach Foundation, an
organisation through which she now seeks to pass on her skills and knowledge to
disabled and less fortunate people. With support, she is now hopeful she can
turn around many lives and also transform the face of fish farming in the city
and country. As she spreads her wings and soars further, the sky is her only
limit.
“We’re currently looking for land to start a full-scale
project. The Bulawayo City Council promised to help us in that regard. For now,
we have 12 people working on the project but our ambition is to have 2 000
people working for the foundation,” she said. Sunday News
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