US-based Zim Academic, Tererai Trent 'Shocked' By New York Statue

A Zimbabwean-born academic based in the United States of America, Tererai Trent, said that she was shocked to learn that a life-size statue of her would be unveiled in the US.

Trent, who earned her PhD in the US, where she is now a teaching professor in health at Drexel University, told BBC that she taught herself to read and write while growing up as a girl in the then Southern Rhodesia. She said:

I’m just so humbled – it is unbelievable. Can you believe I am standing so tall in New York City?

We know that 3% of the statues in the city are female. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother – ha! – they would never have dreamt of something like this.

There were so many things that shaped the denial of education for young women like me – poverty being one of them, and the colonial system that never valued education.

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Growing up as a girl in Rhodesia meant that her educational opportunities were extremely limited when compared to boys. He said:

There were so many things that shaped the denial of education for young women like me – poverty being one of them, and the colonial system that never valued education.

In the whole village, only men could read and count, and the majority of women could not. And yet some of these were brilliant women.

I always say that if she had had an education maybe she would have become one of the best gynaecologists in my community, if not the whole world.

She used to go after her brothers’ books and went on to teach herself the alphabet. She added:

I was fired up. I really wanted to be able to read, seeing these pictures and these words.

We never had books based on Rhodesian or Zimbabwean experiences – they were all from Britain or elsewhere. And I wanted to go to those places! But, I went there through the books I was reading.

Trent has formed Tererai Trent International – a foundation which seeks to provide quality education in rural communities in Zimbabwe.

More: BBC News