Against All Odds: The Fatuma Zarika Story- Part 7
6th September 2018
WBC champion reveals the biggest source of her inspiration and it is not money, fame or belts
- Zarika’s children are her biggest source of inspiration and have always been throughout her career
- She has amazing levels of dedication, doing any work that she could find before boxing just to put food on the table at the end of the day
- The urge to give her kids a better life than she had or had ever imagined has been the constant source of inspiration in her life
- Many would have chosen to throw in the towel but that was the last thing on Zarika’s mind. She had to keep going.
NAIROBI, Kenya- The moving Fatuma ‘Iron Fist’ Zarika story can keep you glued for seven days of the week.
The embodiment of one of the most moving rags to riches stories not only in sport but in every other sphere of life, SportPesa News has already brought you six parts of her series and this is the seventh.
Here, Zarika outlines the inspiration that propelled her to scale the heights of boxing from a single room unpainted hall in Mathare North to the superstardom she enjoys today.
You can catch up with the opening six parts
of the riveting tale here,
here,
here,
here,
here
and here.
This is a story that you definitely cannot get tired of.
THE INSPIRATION
Zarika’s children are her biggest source of inspiration and have always been throughout her career.
Despite the countless times that she has been disheartened enough to call it quits, the thought of why she is doing all this, which is her kids – has seen her always pick herself up to soldier.
She has amazing levels of dedication, doing any work that she could find before boxing just to put food on the table at the end of the day.
"I was really desperate for change in my life and it took all of me not to give up because I had people counting on me.
"Seeing as I had no education and no steady source of income, I deliberated getting married and with that I left home without saying a word to my mother,” Zarika explained.
The hustle of not being able to look for work because of having nobody to look after Sophia continued to be a problem weighing on Zarika’s shoulders as she constantly had to turn to her mother to look after her.
The urge to give her kids a better life than she had or had ever imagined has been the constant source of inspiration in her life.
Many would have chosen to throw in the towel but that was the last thing on Zarika’s mind. She had to keep going.
"My motivation was my kids. I knew that I had to provide food and a roof over their heads, so I couldn’t give up,” she asserted.