Prof. Praise Matemavi is Zimbabwe’s first female Transplant Surgeon. With an unplanned pregnancy at the age of 18 that threatened to derail her dream of one day becoming a surgeon, she never gave up.

“It was devastating, I became pregnant when I was 18 out of wedlock and ended up getting married,” said Prof Matemavi. 

“I didn’t know how I was going to ever fulfil my dream. It was sad because that was the one time I saw my dad cry. I got married because I thought that it was the best thing to do,” she added. 

Being involved in an unplanned marriage, Prof. Matemavi ended up enduring physical, mental and emotional abuse. She got divorced at the age of 23, with four-year-old and two-year-old children. 

As a single mother of two, she worked as a cardiac nurse to put herself through medical school and she was the only woman in her residency class. Prof. Matemavi fought her way to the top in a male-dominated field despite hearing discouraging comments like, “Girls don’t belong in an operating room,” from some attending physicians.

Against all odds, Prof. Praise Matemavi 
completed her multivisceral transplant surgery fellowship at University of Nebraska Medical Centre. She graduated from Michagan State College of Osteopathic Medicine and did her general surgery residency at New York Presbyterian Queens Hospital.

She is currently an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, USA and a published author of ‘Passion and Purpose: Black Female Surgeons’.

“My faith in God and my belief in myself kept me going through the difficult times. Giving up on my dream was not an option. There are times when it was hard to even get out of bed but I kept going. One foot in front of the other, one moment at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time. The storms in life do not last forever, remember that,” said Prof Matemavi.

Source: Women Power Africa