Our reporter Sympathy Sibanda(SS)  caught up with recently published author, Patience  Madondo(PM) to share more about her art and upcoming projects.

SS: Hallo Patience and welcome to My Afrika magazine. Our readers have  a lot of questions and I will just take a sneak peak on a few of them. So ,what’s your story, why do you write?

Thank you Sympathy. Its a wonderful opportunity to be featured among the great stories published here. I discovered my passion for writing in recent years. I love  inspiring others by sharing my experience and knowledge through writing. Sharing my thoughts and creativity is very powerful to me and  I remember writing my first book “Dealing with Emotions” for myself  then decided to publish it to help someone going through the same situation ,to give them hope. 

SS: That’s phenomenal. Now, you have written the book Moulding a great generation. Why a kids book?

Growing up I loved and adored children story books and some of the books that I read in my childhood shaped me into who I am today.  I took an opportunity to write this  book for children by creating my own stories. My hope  is that this book can offer awareness towards the many situations children find themselves in . 

SS: Interesting, What motivated you and where did you get the idea to write this book ?

 Writing is just a passion of mine so I get self-motivated. The idea of writing my latest book for children “Moulding a Great Generation” came during lockdown when I was idle and thought I was stuck in a place I wasn’t supposed to be at that time. Initially the idea came when I was asked to do a children’s story for the next church service so through searching for a story on the internet, a surge of an idea came and I said to myself “why can’t I create my own story.”  After having realised that my story was actually interesting and the kids loved it, I then decided to write more stories and make it a book for children.

SS: Do you have any people that you look up to?

I look up to anyone that can inspire me to become a better version of myself. I admire people that are intelligent, hardworking, and successful and share most of the same values and interest that I do but above all, I look up to Jesus who is the author and finisher of my life, who knows it all  even better than what I know about my life. 

SS: What’s your vision, and what more can we expect from you?

Being a civil engineer and working in a construction takes most of my time so I can’t promise when I will have a chance to write another book.  I’m toying with the idea of writing a book for youth on what influencing them as young people but that will depend whether I will find the time to focus properly on it.

SS:I understand you are a civil engineer. Do you get some inspiration from your job to write?

Well, civil engineering is my career while writing is my passion. I always try to find time for both and both ventures fire up my inspiration. While civil engineering takes most of my time, I try to sneak in some writing whenever I can. Without both, I would lose my own motivation.

SS: Thank you so much for this interview Patience, any last words for our readers? 

Its an honour Sympathy. We should always give our children a legacy of faith and character rather money and material things. Most of our characters are shaped during the childhood life so every kid deserves to have a strong foundation that will help them in the future.  The kids are learning to rely on their parents and their elders and so it very imperative to have the right materials to give our children at a tender age. This particular book with all the stories, puzzles and colouring activities goes a long way to achieve this.