Tererai Trent – The Girl who buried her Dreams in a Can      

By Tapfuma Machakaire

Tererai Trent is one rural girl who recognised the importance of having an education, even though she could not read or write as she was denied the opportunity to go to school at an early age.

She grew up in a society that looked down on the girl child in the rural areas of Zimbabwe. She did the unthinkable by scribbling her dream on a scrap paper, placed it in a disused tin and buried it somewhere in her village.

Her dream was to study her way towards a PhD degree in the United States of America. Trent has excelled beyond her dream. She has risen to be a renowned development practitioner addressing the plight of the girl child in Zimbabwe.

Her story captured the attention of internationally acclaimed television presenter Oprah Winfrey, who could not resist running an episode on her popular programme, The Oprah Winfrey Show focusing on the book Half the Sky. The book published in 2009 by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn featured the life story of Trent. Oprah deployed a crew to Zimbabwe on a mission to unearth the tin containing the paper with Trent’s dream. The mission was successful, the rusty small tin containing the scrap paper with scribbling of the girl’s dream was found.

Born in 1965 in Zvipani village in Karoi District, Mashonaland West Province, Tererai was not given the opportunity to go to school, with her parents preferring to send her brother Tinashe to the local Matau primary school.

Thirsty for knowledge, the young girl taught herself to read and write using her brother’s books. Before long, she started assisting the boy with homework. Noticing that the work was becoming increasingly good for a boy of unremarkable aptitude, an inquisitive teacher discovered that it was the sister who was behind the great marks. The teacher approached Tererai’s parents and pleaded with them to place her in school.  Tererai was enrolled for school, but only for a short time.

Her father married her off at the age of 11. When she turned 18, she already had three children. She says her husband would beat her up each time she mentioned her interest in education.

In 1991, Jo Luck from Heifer International visited Zvipani village and asked women about their aspirations in life. Trent said she wanted to go to America and get a bachelor’s degree, a master’s, and eventually a PhD. She wrote down these dream, put the paper in a tin, and buried it in the village.

“If you believe in your dreams, they are achievable.” Luck told the young Tererai.

In 1998, Tererai’s husband eventually agreed to the plan of going to the US on condition that he would also go. Heifer International provided the plane tickets.
Tererai’s mother sold a cow, while some neighbours supported by selling their goats to help with additional income. A total of
$4 000 in cash was raised enabling the family to leave for Oklahoma. Tererai enrolled at Oklahoma University.

At one point the university tried to expel Tererai for falling behind on
tuition payments. A university official, Ron Beer, intervened on her behalf
and rallied the faculty and community behind her with donations. “I saw that she had enormous talent,” said Dr. Beer.

In year 2000 Tererai graduated with a bachelor of Agriculture degree from Oklahoma University. In 2003 she completed her master’s degree.

In December 2009, she earned a doctorate from Western Michigan University. Her thesis looked at HIV/AIDS prevention programs for women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa. She secured a two-year contract with Heifer International before she founded the Tinogona Foundation, later renamed Tererai Trent International.

Her husband was deported for abuse. She then got married to Mark Trent, a plant pathologist whom she met at Oklahoma State University.

In May 2011, Oprah Winfrey stated that Trent was her all-time favourite guest and she donated USD1.5 million towards the construction of a school in Trent’s village in Zimbabwe. The school was completed in 2014.

Tinogona Foundation has since built eleven schools in Zimbabwe and has helped more than 5,000 children attend school.

In 2015, Trent published a children’s book about her own life called The Girl who buried her Dreams in a Can. Her 2017 self-help book, The Awakened Woman: Remembering & Igniting Our Sacred Dreams, with a foreword by Oprah Winfrey, was named the Outstanding Literary Work.Trent has been an adjunct professor in Monitoring & Evaluation in Global Health at Drexel University since 2013.

In May 2020 she was honoured with a life size statue in New York alongside those of other greats such as Oprah Winfrey.

“I’m just so humbled, it is unbelievable,” Can you believe I am standing so tall in New York City?” Trent told BBC Focus on Africa.

Trent is now a senior consultant with more than 18 years of international experience in program and policy evaluation, and has worked on five continents for major humanitarian organizations.

Using her prominent global platform, Trent regularly speaks on behalf of children who are denied access to education. On top of sharing her remarkable story, she has always appealed to the international business community to invest in equal access to education.

Trent was awarded several Honorary Degrees that include an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Massachusetts, an Honorary Doctorate in Women & Gender Development from the Women’s University of Zimbabwe in 2013, an Honorary Doctorate of Human Letters from Oklahoma State University and an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Loyola University Chicago in 2014.