POLOKWANE – Susan Monyepao never let anything stand in her way and used to ask questions about things she did not understand when she was a little girl.
“I wanted to know what made planes fly and it was around Gr 4 when I told my mother that I wanted to become a pilot,” Susan says. Her dreams of becoming one was halted by financial constraints but that could not hold her back. She started her avionics studies at the Paramount Aviation Academy in 2018. Her job entails looking for faults and servicing electrical equipment in an aircraft.
The most challenging part of her job is when there is a fault but she does not have any clue where to start looking for it. “It often means that you could be busy for almost two weeks in search of one problem. You need to go through every component inside the plane to search for the problem,” she says.
She adds that the best thing about her work is that she was the first women from the company to take on the challenge to do what is usually known as a male-dominated job. She urges people who would like to go into the same area of work, to make sure that they obtain good marks in maths and science. Susan is a person who grew up in a rural area, went to rural schools but did not let that stand in her way of fulfilling her dreams.
Her dream for the future is to pass her final exams and obtain a bursary to become a pilot.
“To young girls who find themselves in rural areas without the belief that they can fulfil their dreams, I would like to say that you can do everything as long as you stay positive. We might lack the equipment and technology other people have but as long as you work hard and believe in yourself, you can do anything. Do not let coming from a rural area stop you from being the person you were meant to be,” she says.
