Quiet Until the Bell Rings

The bell rings and the referee raises Fakhika Shehe Haji's hand. She wins her first fight by unanimous decision. She does not remember most of those three rounds, but rather her sister Farida's voice from outside the ring, shouting in Kiswahili, unaweza, you can do it.

Outside the ring, Fakhika is a very different person. Ask her, and she'll tell you she's an introvert, quiet, and careful with her words. Five months before her first win, the 19-year-old had never thrown a punch.

Getting to Surakarta started with Farida and a scholarship called TIAS, the Indonesian AID Scholarship.

When a scholarship came up, Farida applied first. The twins had volunteered with a youth organization in Kenya that worked closely with the government; it was the organization that later recommended them for the scholarship. After rounds of selection, both were accepted to Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS). 

“I could study there, in Mombasa, and live with my aunt. Because, honestly I don’t have any ideas about living in Indonesia,” said the management student.

Fakhika has spent most of her life apart from her parents. Her mother is Kenyan, her father Tanzanian. After they married, her mother moved to Tanzania to live with him.

As Fakhika understands it, her parents believed education offered the best opportunities for their daughters and entrusted the twins to the care of Fakhika's aunt in Kenya, whom the sisters also call mom.

Fakhika does not describe the arrangement as a hardship. She has simply never known distance from her parents as something to grieve.

So unlike most international students, Fakhika did not arrive alone. She said it is a blessing to have her twin share a scholarship, a university, and a country. 

"There were three of us, me, Farida and mom (their aunt), now it's just the two of us, but I don't feel homesick at all, plus we have a lot of friends here at Pesma,” she explained.

UMS requires a year of BIPA, language study, before international students start their actual degree. For Fakhika, that meant nine months in the country with no coursework, only mornings spent in matriculation and occasional events by the UMS International Office. The rest of the day is mostly hers.

It was Fakhika's twin who first took advantage of all the time they had. Farida wanted to go to the gym to get in shape, and Fakhika was just tagging along.

Once inside, Fakhika noticed the gym also ran boxing and Muay Thai classes alongside the regular fitness schedule. It piqued her curiosity, and she paid for a single class despite the cost. 

A friend later pointed her toward a flat monthly rate instead of paying per visit. Within weeks she was training five evenings a week with the Han Academy community.

Fakhika didn't know on that first day that she'd be sharing a gym with Aziz Calim, Charles Ebu, and Faisal Giru, household names in the Indonesian martial art. She figured it out watching other people at the gym ask them for photos. Then it dawned on her that they are the real deal.

"I'm really lucky to be there because I get to watch them train," said the Kenyan international student.

Back in Mombasa, people saw her as introverted. In the gym, none of that holds. "Here, in boxing, I talk to people. We laugh together, it gives me confidence, and it makes me more open to talking to people,” said Fakhika.

Fakhika is the only international woman training in the gym, but she feels welcomed by her gym mates. 

"If they see me doing something wrong, they just say, this is how you do it," she said. "They are very sweet, even though sometimes they struggle with English, they try."

The shift caught her mother off guard. She found out Fakhika was boxing from the twin Instagram story.

My mother is fine with me boxing, but when she found out about my first fight, oh my God, I'm in trouble," Fakhika laughed. Her mother's worry was injury, not the sport itself.

She has two amateur wins to her name, one from an event called Gettsee Show, the other from The Battle of Surakarta.

Left: Fakhika Shehe Haji (left) displays the medal and certificate she received after winning the Gettsee Show exhibition bout. Right: Fakhika celebrates with her twin sister, Farida, following her victory at the Battle of Surakarta boxing event.

What Fakhika remembers most from before her first fight is the uncertainty. "I kept thinking, can I really do this? It was a mix of excitement and uncertainty," she recalled.

Her coach kept telling her to trust the training already in her body. Farida was outside the ring too, shouting and screaming to get her sister fired up.

Fakhika's goal that night was to finish all three rounds. By the final bell, she already felt she'd done what she came to do.

She believed now that her coach's push to get her into that first fight is the reason she had the confidence to enter a second.

"That first fight taught me to believe in myself, and opened the door to many more opportunities in boxing,” she added.

The rest of her time she spent exploring Surakarta, sometimes with her twin and other international students, sometimes with her coach. New as she was to the city, Fakhika said she never quite felt like a stranger in it, guided along by Alwy, a fellow Mombasan, and by a coach she described as helpful both inside and outside the ring.

Fakhika (left) poses with UMS Rector, Prof. Dr. Harun Joko Prayitno, M.Hum, after receiving the Outstanding Sport Achievement award at the International Student Award 2026.