
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 7, 1994                   TAG: 9407070216
SECTION: NEIGHBORS                    PAGE: S-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ZIMBABWE MAN FULFILLS HIS GOAL TO HELP HOMELAND

Johnson Masuka was born in a rural village, the eldest of 17 children. Because his parents cannot read or write, he is not sure how old he is; his father said he was born in the year the locusts came, perhaps around 1940.

Zimbabwe is a landlocked nation in southern Africa, and the terrain varies from mountainous regions similar to the Roanoke Valley, to semiarid areas, such as in Arizona, said Roger Matthews, executive director of Goodwill Industries Tinker Mountain Inc., who has visited the country several times.

Because Zimbabwe was the former British colony of Rhodesia, English is the predominant language, and Masuka's speech is sprinkled with phrases such as "jolly good."

Unlike many of his countrymen, who receive little education, Masuka was able to attend a mission school near his village. He then went on to the Dadaya teacher's college in Zimbabwe. After graduating, he met Jairos Jiri.

Jiri was a peasant farmer who moved to the city of Bulawayo and was disturbed by the number of beggars, many of them handicapped. He began taking them in and feeding them, and soon had so many guests that his wife started to complain, said Masuka.

So he began to set up institutions for people of all ages, and established vocational schools for those who could work. He included handicapped people in the training programs.

Jiri persuaded Masuka's parents to allow him to join his organization and continue his education. A group known as the Friends of the Jairos Jiri Association paid the cost of his schooling.

Masuka went on to take training as a teacher of the deaf at Montford College in neighboring Malawi before leaving to study in Denmark and England.

Unlike many people who leave their native country to study overseas, Masuka never considered not going back.

"I felt there was a need to assist the people because the plight was great. I feel I was part and parcel of them. I [left] with the intention of assisting them."

Masuka has been with the organization since 1964, and is being groomed to take over the organization in the future.

Although he now lives in Bulawayo, a city of nearly 1 million people, and has 10 children of his own, Masuka still returns to the village of his birth when he can and works in the fields alongside his family. They are self-sufficient, providing their own vegetables and meat from their fields and their herds of goats and cattle.

Part of Masuka's job is to locate people in rural areas in need of his organization's services. Traditionally, he said, handicapped people were killed at birth. But with colonization by the Europeans in the 19th century, the population adopted the Western custom of locking disabled people away.

Although Zimbabwe has been an independent nation since 1980, this practice still is followed in the rural villages.

"The biggest problem at the moment is the attitude of the public," Masuka said.

by CNB