I love tending vehicles as mothers tend babies – Female mechanic

To 24-year-old Salome Ifeoluwa Odusoro, only few things can be more fulfilling than working on a faulty automobile. As Odusoro said, she developed an unquenchable interest in the auto industry from childhood and has been pursuing a career in that direction.

Odusoro has also always cherished education as she wanted to be an automobile mechanic. To eat her cake and have it, the young lady wouldn’t just start as an uneducated apprentice in a local automobile mechanic workshop, as many would want to do. Instead, she headed to the University of Lagos, where is now a 500-level Mechanical Engineering student.

Currently, she is doing her industrial training with Metropolitan Motors Ltd, Akilo Road, off Oba Akran Road, Lagos. Metropolitan Motors specializes mainly on Toyota and Kia cars, on which Odusoro has been honing her skills to be a repair and maintenance expert. She, however, noted that she also does Honda, Hyundai, Mitsubishi and even Ford cars.

Odusoro told EKO TRUST that she regards herself as a doctor attending to cars the way a medical doctor works to save human lives and mothers tenderly attend to babies. She said she always finds it great fun when she is on a car working to put it in a healthy condition.

She disclosed that well before she chose Mechanical Engineering as her course of study in the university, she had, because of her natural interest in vehicles, been reading literatures in that area.

“So because I’d always known what I wanted to become, I was ready to face whatever risks would be involved in it. During my secondary school days, when almost everyone was running away from Further Mathematics, I knew I just had to do it because of my passionate desire to become an engineer,” she said.

When asked how she has been coping in school as a female Mechanical Engineering student, she responded, “It hasn’t been rosy. There are the assignments, group projects, preparing for exams and lots more. But because of the keen interest I have in the course, classes have been mostly exciting.”

Unlike many young girls who consider such a career as automobile repairs difficult and odd for a female, Odusoro expressed pride at what she is doing. “I love what I am doing. At the company where I am working we don’t usually lie under vehicles; we lift a vehicle high to work under it. Lying under vehicles to effect repairs only becomes necessary when we do jobs outside our workshop, away from the company.

“But it’s actually fun working under vehicles. In fact, these days, I have started seeing vehicles technically as patients while I’m the doctor. When a vehicle is faulty, we listen to the noise it makes and which part of the vehicle it’s coming from and I actually love that,” she said.

Odusoro is not without her challenges, though, as she forges ahead in her cherished career.

“The major challenge is the issue of strength. There are some things that require strength that I can’t really do, such as having to loosen big tyres. There are some I feel can do, but sometimes when I want to do something that requires a lot of strength, my bosses ask me not to do them because I am a woman,” she said.

The female mechanic appreciates the admiration and encouragement she has been getting from some people. “Some men even asked me to come and work on their expensive cars, an offer I gracefully declined because I am still learning,” she said.

For now, she can, without supervision, diagnose a car, change brake pads, change spark plugs and service injector nozzle, as well as work with her bosses on extensive engine jobs like correcting the steering knuckle, changing of steering rack, removing the entire engine, changing shock absorbers and loosening the engine seat.

Odusoro is looking beyond merely repairing vehicles. “My dream is beyond working as a mechanic. My dream extends to producing car parts. I prefer to be on the manufacturing side of automobile. I want to produce car parts myself,” she said.

The engineering intern didn’t see why anybody should appear dirty because he or she is an automobile mechanic. She advised all mechanics to endeavour to maintain some level of cleanliness, especially when they are moving out of their workshops.

She also advised Nigerian youths not to allow the obstacles of life overwhelm them.

Particularly, she urged girls to engage in productive activities that would give them some level of financial independence

“No one likes a parasitic relationship and a liability. For me, no work is meant for a particular gender. As long as you love it and passionate about it, go for it,” she advised.