David Njobvu
July 8, 2024
In 2018, we encountered a young man named David Njobvu while staying at a hotel in Lusaka, Zambia. He was working in the restaurant and though he waited on our table, our interaction was brief. It wasn't until a year later, when we returned to the same restaurant, that we saw David again. This time, after we had finished our meal, he approached us with a request. David asked if we could assist him in obtaining a scholarship to pursue his dream of becoming a nurse.
We gave it some thought. From what he told us about himself—that he really had no other help, his parents weren't able, and there were no relatives to support him—it was mostly just him and his siblings. So, our hearts went out to him and we decided to help him with a scholarship.
Then came the COVID pandemic. After leaving him with a computer, a computer bag, and a cell phone, he wasn't able to go to school the following year. However, we stayed in touch with him, even helping him with a small street vending business because, during the COVID years, work was very hard to come by. With our help, we provided him with food and housing.
When COVID was finally ending, almost two years later, he began his schooling at the University in Zambia in the school of nursing. LifeNets has supported him for four-plus years, and he is now about to graduate. He has been so thankful and grateful for our help.
We wanted to share this story with you because we felt like we lifted him out of the poverty he would have faced for the rest of his life. Now, without a father or mother, he and his siblings will hopefully be supported by the earnings he will begin to make after graduation this fall.
We are thankful we were able to help him. It's been almost five or six years, but now he's about to finish. He called me literally in tears, expressing his thankfulness because we supported him the entire way with the costs he needed for his scholarship, livelihood, and housing. He couldn't have done it without our help, and while we can't help everyone in this way, we chose to help him as a one-off.
We will watch him graduate and hopefully get work as a nurse, enabling him to help others. That's our goal within LifeNets: to help those who cannot help themselves so they can begin to help not only themselves but others as well.
We can’t help but think of the story of two people walking along the ocean’s shore and seeing many thousands of starfish out of the water, unable to get back into the ocean. One of the men commented how they really couldn’t make a difference because there were so many starfish. The other person picked up one of the starfish, flung it out into the water, and said: “Well, we made a difference for that one!"
We feel that our Zambia story fits this parable. We can’t save all the people of Zambia and give them an education, but we could for David.
-- Beverly Kubik
David N is in the front row third from the right
David is far left
David is at the far right.
