The journey of my life
I am Teklesenbet Menghistu Haile born in 1978 in a small village called Great Ketin Laelai in Zone Anseba sub-zone Adi Tekelezan which is 40 kilometers from our capital city Asmara, Eritrea.
I started schooling very late at eleven years old. It was due to the distance between where I was born and where the school was located. I could not manage to walk on foot every day to go to school at the age of four or five. As a result, I Iost some years.
Another reason for my late entry into education was that my parents were farmers and they did not understand the importance of education. I am not blaming them because it was not their fault. Around the time I was supposed to be in school, I couldn’t be. I had to help my father in farming and the relevance of education was absent in the society I was born in. It is only lately that they started to comprehend the significance of education and started sending children to school.
The third reason was we were under Ethiopian colonization at that time. I was just a child and commuting alone all that distance from home to school and from school to home was very scary. There was a huge risk that you might be robbed or sold to someone for money and turned into a slave (or serve, work with them for free). Parents were afraid to send their children to school but later on, the government allowed everybody to go to school. The government guaranteed security for children who live very far from school.
Life continued like this and after a 30 year battle against Ethiopian colonization, we got our independence in 1991. Immediately, our government took over the country called Eritrea. People started moving there and set up habitation and there were schools, hospitals, electricity, transport and other infrastructural facilities.
The government of Eritrea started encouraging people to go to school free of charge. There were also free health services. The government of Eritrea made the situation very normal. That is when people started living their life and came to know what the world looked like. They also started realizing the value of education.
In 1989, I started my journey towards schooling. The first year of elementary school was a challenge for me because there was an age difference between my classmates and myself and I came from a rural area far from the city. I studied the behaviour, attitude and mind development technologies, information, and so on. However, the second year became very normal. I adapted to the environment and the behaviour of my classmates and even had some friends to chat and play with. Life was going well and so were my studies. From 1989 to 1994, I completed my elementary school studies and progressed to junior school from 1994 to 1997.
I completed my national exams to get promoted to high school. From 1997 to 2000, I was at high school. I completed my matriculation which is a National exam to go to the university. I studied to be a teacher from 2002 to 2008. From 2008 to 2013, I was in South Sudan working in a hotel as a storeman manager and then as General Cashier in the purchase section. I got promoted to Manager of a bakery called Met Bakery owned by Melake Tesfazghi and Sweet Bakery owned by Rustom Gebremichael.
Presently, I am working in Angola as Sales and Delivery Coordinator with a sister Company of Anseba Lda called Eriango Comercio Geral.