The Life and Journey of an Entrepreneur

Mulenga Maine

Description

Katongo Maine’s autobiography is the first book to be published in a new series of memoirs, entitled Remarkable Women of Zambia, that will show how women have made their mark in politics, civil society, education, business and NGOs. Women were always involved in Zambia’s Independence struggle and after it was achieved they queued alongside men to vote in the first elections. They have never given up their involvement in public life but, as elsewhere, it was men who slipped into most positions of real power and stayed there. For women throughout the world, the struggle to fulfil their potential continues and it is hoped that this series will not only claim a place for the remarkable women who figure in Zambia’s modern history but also act as an inspiration to younger women today. Katongo Maine’s story tells of a remarkable young girl from a poor family who defied her mother by refusing an arranged marriage, determined instead to become a nurse with a career and salary of her own.

Sujets

• Autobiography
• Business
• The Women
• Woman
• Zambia
• Biography
• Women

Informations

• Publié par: Gadsden Publishers
• Date de parution: 08 février 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789982241335
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

THE LIFE AND JOURNEY OF AN ENTREPRENEUR

THE LIFE AND JOURNEY OF AN ENTREPRENEUR

Katongo Mulenga Maine

Gadsden Publishers P

Gadsden Publishers P.O. Box 32581, Lusaka, Zambia

Copyright © Katongo Mulenga Maine 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievable system or transmit- ted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBN 978 9982 24 1090

INTRODUCTION

Katongo Maine’s is the irst book to be published in a new series of memoirs, entitledRemarkable Women of Zambia, that will show how women in this country have made their mark in politics, civil society, education, business and NGOs. Women were always involved in Zambia’s Independence struggle and after it was achieved they queued alongside men to vote in the irst elections. They have never given up their involvement in public life but, as elsewhere, it was men who slipped into most positions of real power and stayed there. For women throughout the world, the struggle to fulil their potential continues and it is hoped that this series will not only claim a place for the remarkable women who igure in Zambia’s modern history but also act as an inspiration to younger women today. The series is initially founded on the work of theChipembi Alumni Writers’ Groupwhich meets informally to encourage its members in the dificult task of creating both memoir and iction – there just isn’t enough literature produced in Zambia and theChipembi Alumniare determined to remedy that, but it is hoped that other new authors with different backgrounds will come forward with their own life-stories. In colonial Northern Rhodesia education was racially segregated, there were few opportunities for formal secondary education for African children – and if it was bad for boys it was even worse for girls. Established not by the Northern Rhodesian Government but by the Methodist Church,Chipembiwas the only school in the whole country to provide African girls with the full secondary education that could take them on to university and the professions. Competition for admission was ierce, soChipembi girls were acknowledged to be an intellectual elite. They were truly modern women and were pretty formiddable. It was inevitable that the school’s alumni would constitute the irst generation of prominent women in independent Zambia and that old school friendships would become the basis of a network of support for this newly emerging category. It was equally inevitable thatChipembialumni would marry some of Zambia’s most successful men.

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Katongo Maine’s story tells of a remarkable young girl from a poor family who deied her mother by refusing an arranged marriage, determined instead to become a nurse with a career and salary of her own. Against all the odds, she gained a place atChipembithrough her own hard work, but when she arrived there found that it was a real shock. She writes about the way the school taught self reliance, bringing her into contact with new ideas and, importantly, with women teachers who were self-supporting spinsters. At school her horizons widened and, whilst still a teenager, Katongo was offered a place to study nursing in East Germany, a country she knew absolutely nothing about, where she would have to learn a new language before commencing her training. Katongo recounts her experience of the strange ways of her hosts, their peculiar food, the cold and the clothes that went with it. She didn’t realise it at the time but, with Independence looming in African states, both the Communist Bloc and the West were competing to train the new professionals who would replace the colonial administrators and businessmen and Katongo was a part of this process. She left colonial Northern Rhodesia with all the social and career restrictions involved and returned as a qualiied nursing sister to independent Zambia with a new view of the world and her place in it, but if her German sponsors thought she would be an agent of African socialism they’d miscalculated. Throughout her memoir, Katongo’s determination to be successful shines through and her abiding goal was to be very wealthy in her own right. Eventually nursing was unable to satisfy her boundless ambition and we ind her retraining as a dress designer in New York when she joined her husband who was studying at the University of Columbia. To inance her own course and to supplement her husband’s tiny grant, Katongo worked at night as a nurse – attending college in the day and juggling her role as a mother, there was little time for pleasure or a social life and she is disparaging of the diplomatic wives who treated their time in New York as a free holiday. On her return to Zambia we see her designing for a new cosmopolitan market, setting up a dress factory, specialising in wedding gowns and establishing the most

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prestigious dress shop in Lusaka. Constantly expanding and investing, she moved into import/export, becoming a millionaire in her own right. She was never afraid to undertake work that others thought demeaning or daunting if that was the best way to raise essential capital; so we ind her getting up early to drive to Kafue to buy fresh ish for the Lusaka market or making the long trip up to the Northern Province alone to sourcekapentaand caterpillars. The range of her trading exploits is staggering – one of her biggest coups was to arrange to ly fresh beef from Zambia to Mozambique. But Katongo was not just a successful businesswoman. She is a daughter, sister, wife and mother and she invites her readers into the intimacies of her family life with her journalist husband and her two much-loved sons. Readers become party to decisions about the boys’ education, sending them to school abroad. She tells us about the move to a farm outside Lusaka that becomes the focus of many parties. She also reveals her own spiritual unease and her eventual conversion to Christian Science. On top of everything else, Katongo was drawn into political life. Disillusioned with the policies of the One Party State, particularly matters regarding business enterprise, she became a founder member of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy and was returned as an MP in the 1991 election. In acknowledgement of her hard-fought campaign she was appointed as a junior minister, but found relations with President Chiluba dificult (to say the least). Politics was not her natural home and things started to fall apart with political skullduggery and a series of investment setbacks. She hit her all-time low in 2002, falling into a severe depression when her husband and son died in the same year. Katongo does not hold back or gloss over her personal grief and the way her business empire fell apart. There is much to be learned from her account of this bleak time and how she came out of it. People who write their autobiographies are brave – they offer their lives up for others to scrutinise and they know that there will inevitably be criticism (sometimes vicious) and gossip. A memoirist would have to be a saint not to

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try to put herself in the best possible light and critics often accuse them of vanity, but this is unfair. From accounts like Katongo’s readers can learn about the times the writers lived through – dry history comes alive as one follows the fate of someone one comes to know and care about. Unlike academic history, memoir is unabashed about being written from a single point of view and there is no denying that Katongo’s story is that of a particularly determined and talented woman, but she is also a woman who experiences the same doubts and set-backs as the rest of us. Now in her seventies and retired from much of her business activity, Katongo looks back in this fascinating book on her full life, she tells us how she now takes pleasure in her status as a grandmother, but she is no ordinary “Granny” – she is also busily involved in reafforestation in Muchinga Province! I am proud to have been asked to edit this series and I am eagerly awaiting the next life-history of another remarkable Zambian woman.

Pamela Shurmer-Smith

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PREFACE

Child Marriage

More than anything else, I want to share my experiences with the girls out there and urge them that they should ight this scourge tooth and nail; after all it is their lives at stake. The issue of child marriage has been with us as long as we can remember, and the sad thing is, the reasons for this cruel and destructive action remain the same. Namely: poverty and ignorance. Due to poverty parents blindly consider their daughter a one-off merchandise that will solve the bad situation they ind themselves in. Unfortunately 99.9% of the time they do not realize how few and short lived the beneits are. The only thing that is 100% sure is the fact that the girl’s life is irreparably ruined. And yet if that girl had an education the parents would comfortably be taken care of for the rest of their lives, because she would turn out to be their steady passive income. Therefore, there is a glorious life for the girl child harnessed within the conines of classroom walls. In the African family set-up, educated daughters have proved to be more caring and responsible towards their parents’ welfare, as well as the family. However, the vicious circle of child-marriage will end only when the society and parents at large begin considering the girl child as the goose that lays the golden egg and not one-off merchandise. I am a living example of the goose that could have been a one-off merchandise. Had my parents succeeded in marrying me off at the age of ifteen I would never have become: a nurse, a fashion designer, a successful CEO of my own enterprises, a world-travelled person, a Member of Parliament, and a Minister in the government of my country, Zambia. I pray and trust this book will fall into the hands of the girl child before she becomes that ‘one-off merchandise’. Rick Warren said in his bookThe Purpose Driven Life:“The things you’re most embarrassed about, most ashamed of, and most reluctant to share are the tools God can use most powerfully to heal others.”

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