By Olivia Day For Daily Mail Australia
22:57 14 May 2023, updated 23:00 14 May 2023
- Peri Ndakize, 20, worked two jobs
- He saved $50,000 in just 18 months
- His family moved from Congo in 2016
A hardworking young Aussie has surprised his single mother with a house for Mother’s Day after arriving in Australia as refugees just seven years ago.
After he left high school, Peri Ndakize, 20, promised his mother that he would save enough money to buy her a house of her own.
He started working two jobs, sometimes up to 13 hours a day, so he could repay her for making the ultimate sacrifice for her family.
In 2016, Esperance Ndakize left Congo, in central Africa, with Peri and his brothers searching for a better life in Australia.
The family spent time in Townsville in North Queensland before settling in Wodonga, a town on the NSW-Victorian border, where they have been renting for seven years.
Mr Ndakize said starting a new life in Australia had been difficult for his mother and that he had always dreamed of buying her a home.
‘Raising three boys on her own would have been pretty challenging so I wanted to step up and be the man of the house,’ he told The Project.
‘When I finished school, I said I was going to make it a goal to buy her a house before I start chasing my own goals.’
He said working a full-time job from 8am to 3pm and then completing removalist jobs on the side had been extremely tiring at times.
‘I just kept remembering why I started,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to make her happy.’
Mr Ndakize was able to save $50,000 in just 18 months. He revealed the one-storey brick home to his mother on Mother’s Day.
Ms Ndakize said her hardworking son had made her ‘so proud and happy’.