For 48 years, Esther Phiri has lived a mostly difficult life. However with the help and support of African Enterprise (AE), Esther now has the chance to turn her life in a different direction.
Born in 1975 in the eastern province of Zambia, Esther was unable to attend school due to her family’s poverty. This left her with no education or chance to gain a skill set to generate income. She was only 16 years old when her family decided to marry her to a man named Rodgers.
After almost 12 years of marriage, Rodgers left Esther for another woman in a different town. At the time Esther was seven months pregnant with their third child, so she was left to care and provide for the older two children and manage her pregnancy as a single parent.
She shares that life as a single parent was not easy, but she tried to make the best of the situation.
“In 2010, I decided to enrol in a tailoring course in Petauke in the hope of gaining a skill that would help me generate more income. However, I dropped out because I couldn’t manage to pay for myself to complete the course,” Esther said.
In 2012, Esther’s grandmother became unwell and her family asked her to move to Lusaka to care for her. Once she passed away, Esther thought it best to stay in Lusaka and started work as a maid to pay for her rent and buy food to feed her family. For a while things were beginning to look up for Esther.
“My boss, Mr Chiti was so happy with the way the garden boy and I were working, so he decided to take us for some skills training. I chose to do tailoring while the garden boy decided to do driving. My dream to do tailoring was being revived! However, my dream was short lived because Mr Chiti remarried and his new wife influenced him negatively and so he stopped sponsoring us to do our skills training,” Esther remembers.
Once again, Esther’s desire to be trained in tailoring was unfulfilled. But despite these setbacks, Esthers feels that through it all God had been faithful to her. Esther became a committed Christian in 2020 and in 2021 she joined the True Worshippers ministry. As she began to serve among the other women, the Bishop told her about African Enterprise and their intention to start Community Transformation Groups (CTG) in her area.
“I joined the CTG as soon as it was formed! Before long, African Enterprise announced that they were going to start a Women Empowerment Project training women in tailoring. My CTG leadership selected me as one of the five women from the Bauleni CTG to benefit from this training,” Esther says.
“I am so happy, my dream of becoming a tailor is finally coming true. Thank you African Enterprise for helping me live my dream at my age!” Esther exclaimed.
Praise God for his faithfulness and love for Esther and her family. Pray for her as she works to complete her tailoring course, along with the support from African Enterprise.