Africa-Press – Tanzania. A PARENT can guide his or her child to a success in academic or sports performance. Parents can therefore be our role models in our life. It can be hard for young athletes to identify and reinforce what drives them to excel, but parents can do that and motivate their children to be who they are today.
A 22-year old Ntunga Mchembe is an upcoming basketballer, who steps into his father’s shoes. He was motivated by his father to be a basketball player.
His father played basketball but not at a competitive level. As if that was not enough, he was also motivated by his father again to become a doctor, the reason why he is now also undergoing his degree at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College.
“ It all started at home after seeing my father wearing doctors’ white special dress. He always looked smart and was very passionate about his job,” I always admired to be that way,”.
“I liked seeing him attending seek people, I always liked that. “Sometimes I used to go to his different working hospitals when we just passed and say hello to him,” That was something that just fascinated me.
“Helping other people is what is like, to be a doctor has always been my dream,” he says.
For him, being a doctor does not bar him from playing a competitive basketball. In fact, his dream is to play an international level because American NBA star, Lebron James is his inspiration. Why?, Mchembe says the American does so many things to help his community, so that is what he also dreams to do when he gets success.
HOW HIS BASKETBALL CAREER STARTED
He has no long history to tell in his basketball career.
Basically, Mchembe says he played basketball at his primary school level, competing in house, inter-primary and later secondary school’s competitions.
The in-house and interschool competitions, while he was at Agha Khan Primary, Shaaban Robert (secondary) and later Feza ( A-level) helped him to cultivate more interest and the more he played the more he got experience.
He won different awards through those competitions among others, Most Valuable Player (MVP) for Moshi Region. He managed to achieve all of these and so much more because of a big support from his family and friends.
They regularly visited him while playing. He says being busy with his studies and an evening training programmes has helped to drive him away from bad behaviour and being engaged into bad groups. “And that made me to be busy, concentrating on my studies and career,” he says.
He got more interest to play basketball when he moved into college medical studies, where he played for different teams in Moshi, among others, Wakuda. They competed against other teams in the so-called community tournament held in Moshi and Arusha.
His determination and success saw him being spotted to play for the Kilimanjaro regional team in the just ended CRDB Taifa Cup Basketball tournament held in Dodoma. It was his first time in his history to play in such a big tournament. The event drew more than 900 male and female players from more than 20 regions in Mainland and Zanzibar and Mchembe was among of them.
“I see myself developing in my sports career, from school, street, college to the national level is a big success for me,” he says. Mchembe therefore, stands chances of being picked in the national team should the Tanzania Basketball Federation (TBF) technical team be impressed with his performance during the competition.
For TBF, the Dodoma event was used as a platform to select both men and women national teams ahead of various international assignments. He spearheaded for Kilimanjaro region’s triumph into group stages, though they did not progress to the top level of the competition.
“I had a good time in Dodoma, playing at a such big gathering was a great success,”
“ My family, as usual came to support me, daddy was there when we lost our opening match to Rukwa and my mother , who is Gairo’s District Commissioner, ( Siriel MChembe) was there also during the competitions because she is an ardent sports fan,” he says.
But Mchembe says that playing basketball to a successful and competitive level needs one to work hard and more determined. Making of new friends, learning new things , with a new experience and motivation was the most important for him when he made his debut appearance at CRDB Taifa Cup.
“There is a big talent out there, every one wants to achieve it,” ‘I have seen, during the CRDB Taifa Cup, many players do magical things, dunking, dribbling, passing and even scoring.” “Even those with a short height manage to do that, it is very interesting,”
“But this drives me to work even hard and appear in as many national and international games as possible,” he says.
“What I need is to manage my time and space between my studies and basketball,” “ I don’t want to lose both of them, though studies stand at first place in my life,” he says.
“I need to play, but when I get old, I will not be able to play anymore, but I will need to live,”
“ My medical professional career will probably do that favour for me,” he says.
“ We have different roots in life, but we also learn from others to cultivate interest of doing other things,” Mchembe says that it is important for the local players to consider this fact, giving their priorities to sports and any other life careers because they will not play throughout their lives to earn a living.
“They should also invest in other areas, if they manage to go to school or colleges, they should do that or do any other good stuff for their living,” he says.
“I have an inspiration to be a professional basketball player, but also I always had an interest in the medical world.”
He says he wants to balance his life between two things, playing basketball and at the same time treat people. “I attend my college studies from morning to the evening,”
“Then I refresh for a while like listening to music before going to the evening, this has been my daily schedule,” he says.
He says there is a scarcity of doctors and this is demanding because the Tanzanian community is big for the doctors not to be able to be everywhere. Doing a surgery is what he likes most, though he says sports medicine is more demanding.
“I saw this during the competitions as many players got injured to seek for an attention,” “ I also got my nose injured and several others players got injured as well,” he says.
Enock Robi, Mchembe’s team mate whose profession is a dentist says that sports and education are inevitable though others may miss the latter because of various reasons, including family background. But he says being an educated person does not mean one must come from a rich family.
He says it is a matter of determination. Robi, 29, started basketball in 2010 by playing for street teams in Mwanza and later played for Magone of Dar es Salaam in the so-popular league, RBA. He was later shifted to Kilimanjaro Region for his internship where he met and played together with Mchembe.
“He is a dedicated player with focus of progressing further in basketball like the way I do,” says Robi, who will soon start his master degree at Muhimbili College of Health, specialising on dentistry. Dennis Semiyono, who coaches Kilimanjaro says that Mchembe was helpful for his side and has been very aggressive in his defence line.
“ When we played against Tabora, he came in from a bench, pressured and made several fouls that resulted in free throws for us to win,’ says Semiyono. He says the aspect of combining sports and education is good for the modern life. “We see other players abroad, especially basketball players in America who are groomed from colleges and universities,”
“I think it is high time that our local players take that into their consideration for them to be smart in life and their field,” he says.
