DAR ES SALAAM, Aug. 24 — “There is nothing like man-dominated occupations in my vocabulary. Car mechanics has for a long time been viewed as a man’s world,” said Jane Goodluck Isowe, a woman who runs her car repair workshop at Magomeni Mwembechai in Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania.
Isowe, 49, has been running her own car repair workshop since 1994, attracting both female and male customers who visit her place to repair their cars.
“Our communities think that there are occupations, including car mechanics, for men only. To me, that is daydreaming. Women can do any occupation thought to be male-dominated if they decide to do so,” the soft-spoken Isowe told Xinhua in a recent interview.
“My team, mostly of trainees, and I repair one to two cars a day. We fix brakes, clutches, engines, and differentials,” said the woman mechanic as she was busy repairing a car. “Most of my customers trust me and they always appreciate my work.”
Isowe said until now she has trained three women that have graduated as qualified mechanics and are now employed in different car repair workshops.
Apart from the three women, Isowe said she has also trained more than 50 young male mechanics who have secured employment in various workshops.
She said her journey to becoming an accomplished car mechanic started in 1989 when she moved from Marangu in the Kilimanjaro region to the business capital Dar es Salaam.
“But before I moved to Dar es Salaam I started cultivating an interest in cars when I was very young. I made cars out of plastics,” she said.
In Dar es Salaam, she stayed with her brother-in-law who was teaching at the Ardhi University, she said. “My brother-in-law had a car and I used to ask him the functions of different parts of his car.”
Her brother-in-law and his family later moved to Canada and Isowe decided to join a religious secretarial college until in the early 1990s when she bumped into a car repair workshop.
She asked the owner of the workshop she named Eugene Mushi whether she could join the workshop and train as a mechanic.
“The owner was surprised and asked me how come a woman like me wanted to learn mechanics,” said Isowe, proving again that mechanics was an odd career choice for women to venture into.
Isowe was determined to break such stereotypes and claim her place in the male-dominated sector of car mechanics.
“I put on a T-shirt, a pair of trousers, and training shoes and started learning how to repair an engine,” said the woman car mechanic who was clad in a blue overall. She said at first she worked with four male car mechanics who after a short time all wanted to work with her.
“After my bumpy beginning as a car mechanic, people are now happy seeing me working as a mechanic,” said Isowe, adding that she was looking forward to securing a spacious place so that she could expand her workshop.
She said she was also looking forward to securing modern tools to improve her business but they are very expensive.
Isowe mentioned a catalogue of achievements that she has acquired from her business, including building a decent house, buying a personal car, and training more than 50 mechanics.
Some of the people she had trained joined universities, the National Institute of Transport and vocational and education training centres to acquire academic credentials. (Xinhua)
Tanzania’s woman car mechanic conquers man’s world
