Meet Lerato – story of a local from South Africa

You can only get to know a country by meeting its locals. May I introduce you to Lerato, a local from South Africa.

picture by: Lerato Maleswena; follow her on Instagram: @larryxtatum and on Facebook: @larryxtatum

I have a dream

Is it worth it to keep on working on your dreams to achieve them? Yes it it! Lerato, a 24-year-old lady, is the best example that hard work will pay off. Born and raised in Pretoria she moved to Johannesburg at the age of 23 where she started working in public relations in a global communication agency. Lerato told me that Johannesburg is a fast city, it is all about business. Especially in her field people work crazy hours. She was living a good life there. She had a great salary, the company paid for her insurance and her health care. However, what she realized is that it was incredibly difficult to find a balance between life and work. She barely had time to spend with family and friends.
She didn’t have time for the things she likes either. Lerato loves dancing and enjoys reading books, especially poetry books from Langleav and Michael Faudet, a couple that does poetry.

Her greatest passion is photography though. She explained that she was always interested in photography. It all started with taking pictures with her phone. At the age of 21 she bought herself her first camera. Having never taken any classes she was ambitious in teaching herself how to take stunning pictures. She started shooting events, baby showers and she had the honour of photographing one of the finalists for Miss South Africa. Her strong wish in becoming a professional photographer grew.
She was invited to Cape Town when H & M was launched there. It was her first time ever in the city. Lerato told me when she went to the beach in Camps Bay and that is where it hit her. That’s when she decided she wants to live in Cape Town and wants to start something with photography, which has always been her dream.
Back in Johannesburg, she started searching for a job in Cape Town. She found a company that was looking for potential photographers. When she applied, there were many applicants. She passed the first test  and was one out of 100 that got selected for following tests for the recruitment process. Every time she got one step closer to reaching her goal. Eventually she was one out of 14 that got accepted.

Lerato has been in Cape Town for a year now. Since then, she has learned a lot about photography and even started her own photography on the side. What she has also learned is that instead of making the big money it is important to be happy and to have a good balance in life.
It is true that she has other greater dreams. Lerato see´s her self  having a photography studio one day, preferably she would love to shoot for a food magazine as she loves food a lot. Also, she would love to see herself being a writer- writing about woman and life issues in her own blog. She told me, the only reason why she hasn´t started working on all of that yet is because she is waiting for her new laptop to arrive. As soon as her laptop arrives, she is going to start preparing everything.
When it comes to family she hopes to find someone whose personality matches hers. She can imagine having one or even two kids which she would love to teach good life lessons. One life lesson I have learned already is that it is really important to have dreams. I got to know Lerato as a strong, enthusiastic, ambitious woman who is always positive and knows exactly what she wants in life. For me she is the best example that if you have dreams and you work hard on them they will pay off. I am pretty sure she will succeed.

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Follow Lerato on Instagram: @larryxtatum

and on Facebook: @larryxtatum