First Lady, Esther Nyawa Lungu in New York for UN meeting
ZAMBIA’S First Lady Esther Nyawa Lungu is one of the many African dignitaries that will attend the United Nations (UN) General Conference in New York, United States of America scheduled for next week. She will be travelling alongside her husband President Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
She was born on 2nd June 1957 and has been married to President Lungu for 30 years, they have six children and ten grandchildren. She wants them to get better.
She first expressed interest in training as a nurse and save lives because she hates to see people in pain from any ailment.
But part of her interviews to train as a nurse was to come into contact with ill people, injured people and all sorts of patients. And this is where she could not proceed with her ambitions.
She veered away from nurse because she could not manage to see ill people without breaking down and instead trained as a Secretary.
Her first job as a secretary was under the leadership of veteran folk singer and administrator Dr Lazarus Tembo, the only visually impaired man to become a deputy minister in the post independent administration of Dr Kenneth Kaunda.
Being a secretary or training as a Secretary helped with the organisational skills she has since shown in running the Esther Lungu Foundation, an out-reach programme that has seen her work in eight out of 10 provinces so far.
She wants to help improve the lives of young women and other vulnerable elderly women including the girl child.
She resents early marriages and has spent her first year in State House fighting against the vice through her tenacious outreach work that sees her move out of State House more often. This is according to an excerpt in the first ever President Edgar Lungu profile book under construction by veteran journalist and senior Diplomat Anthony Mukwita scheduled to be released by December 2016.
Mrs Lungu is a devout Christian who believes her husband was helped to assume the highest office in the land, only because he believes in God and his son Jesus Christ.