Consequences of living a fake life
Poverty is everyone’s devil; no one wants it. However, most people end up finding many ways to run out of it. It is said many poor people remain poor or even poorer as they try to hide their poverty, pretending to be rich.
By Praise Muzulu (Peer Educator Nyanyadzi Youth Centre)
Mamvura family (not real name) learned the hard way of the consequences of living a fake life. They learned their lesson after losing one of their child. Amanda Mamvura (not real name) was the first born in a family of four. She was so beautiful, intelligent and always dreaming to be a medical doctor one day. However, Amanda’s dreams became a nightmare because of her parent’s pride. Her parents always told her to hide their true status, no one outside was suppose to know that they were actually poor and struggling a lot. However, Amanda was against her parents pride or concept of life. She could not understand why her parents wanted a fake life to an extent of refusing any help from anyone as they said they were not beggars.
Amanda tried to talk to her parents to swallow their pride and accept help from others but all the advice fell on deaf ears. Her parents always said they were capable of taking care of their children and refused to admit that although they were managing to pay school fees, sometimes they were turned away from school due to late payment. However, the worse happened when Amanda was form four when her parents failed to raise her exam fees and also refused help from Amanda’s uncle who was willing to help. Her parents said they were capable of raising her exam fees before the due date and after all they did not want their uncle to boast that he was richer than them.
However Amanda’s parents failed to raise the money for exam fees and as a result they told Amanda to wait until next year. They said they would never accept any help from anyone like beggars. This did not go well with Amanda who saw her dream shattered just because of her parent’s pride. Unfortunately Amanda decided to take a deadly decision as she promised her parents that since they were not ready to swallow their pride, they should get ready to swallow reality and pain of losing a child. Amanda’s parents thought that it was just a mere threat but finally Amanda committed suicide.