Power Through Story, with Getrude Matshe
Introducing Getrude
Getrude’s book club recommendation: What Happened To You? by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry
Getrude Matshe is the Global Curator & Founder - HerStory Circle. She is a fashion Designer, Celebrated Author and Philanthropy Consultant, Rooney International Scholar, TED Speaker, New Zealand Rotary Member. Getrude is an African textile artist, fashion designer and an inspirational storyteller who has been described as a vibrant bundle of African energy whose zest and passion for life inspires everyone she meets. She is passionate about helping people achieve their full potential and find their individual life purpose, making her an energetic, inspirational and enlightening speaker. Getrude has written several books, ghostwrites and is now a book writing coach.
How did you find your passion for advocacy through storytelling?
My passion to empower other women began in Zimbabwe, when I was just 17 years old. While visiting my grandmother, a World Health helicopter appeared in our village to drop flyers and condoms down to people as part of their AIDS awareness campaign. This was in the 80s, when you could see the face of AIDS in our communities: the skin lesions, the thinning hair, the weight loss. We called it the Slow Puncture, as people literally withered away and died.
The flyers landed on the ground and in people’s hands, but no one could read. Adults were using it to light their fires. Children were collecting the condoms and blowing them up as balloons. World Health held workshops about how to prevent the spread of AIDS, using a broomstick to demonstrate how to put on a condom. But because people were illiterate and many didn’t speak English, every single hut in our village ended up with a condom on a broomstick behind the door - because that's how you prevent AIDS.
I wanted to help my people understand this important health information using the way we’ve always shared lessons in Africa: through story. I wrote to World Health and let them know that their campaign had been totally ineffective, and asked if they’d sponsor me to write a play with an AIDS theme. I wanted it to be entertaining, and followed with workshops in vernacular languages so that people could understand. I've never been afraid to do things like that, and sometimes, you're rewarded for your courage.
At that time, I was a part of an organisation of political advocates, called the Zimbabwe Association of Community Theatres. Our work was inspired by Kenyan playwright, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who toppled a Kenyan dictatorship by writing political plays that connected large groups of people. It made sense for our group to use similar methods to bring about change in Zimbabwe, to educate and inspire our people.
I had also founded an all-women's theatre group, called Just For Women Theatre, which surrounded me with other activists.
World Health said, “yes.” This sparked the beginning of my advocacy work, and was when I realised that education should be a basic human right.
Does storytelling run in your family?
My grandmother was the storyteller in our family. She could hold you in the palm of her hand with her stories. I was three years old when my parents took a scholarship to study in London, and left us with our grandmother in Africa. After coming in from her fields at the end of each day, we’d sit under a mango tree, watching the sun go down, and she’d captivate us with her stories until we went to bed.
What was your mother like?
My mother had immense ingenuity.. She had a tenacity and will that made her unstoppable. Being raised by such a dynamic, vibrant woman shaped who I am today.
On my mother’s days off from nursing, she would take me with her to sell things from her basket. In Rhodesia, we lived with racial segregation. Blacks and whites didn't mix. So if you wanted to make real money from selling, you had to cross the racial line and go into the white neighborhoods. We would travel for miles on her bike in the heat, going from house to house.
I remember one particular day, when I was around six years old. We hadn't sold anything. I was hungry, thirsty and wanted to go home. My mother said, “Getrude, when you go selling, people have two choices. They can say, ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If they say, ‘no’, it has nothing to do with you and you have to knock on the next door because that's where your sale is.”
The next house she knocked on was answered by the lady of the house, which was unusual because most people had African servants for this. The woman must’ve seen my sorry little face, because she did another unusual thing by inviting us into the house. I'd never been in a white person's house before. She sat me on a chair and gave me a slice of cake and some orange juice, then asked my mother why she was selling. My mum explained it was to pay for her girls to go to the private convent school, where my sister and I were the only two black kids. She was very surprised, and said, “Why? Why don't you send them to the African schools like the other children?” My mum said, “Because my girls need a good education. If they're educated, they will get out of poverty.”
This woman bought everything in our basket that day. On our way home, my mother said to me, “Getrude, there are good people in this world. They come in all shapes, they come in all colours. Never judge people by how they look.” She told me that was a good woman. She didn't need to buy everything in the basket, but when she heard about me and my sister, she bought enough to cover our school fees for two years.
Now, that's the lens through which I view the world. That's how I connect with people. I never make assumptions. I never judge. I let people show up for who they are.
What is one moment that changed your life?
There was a Norwegian woman who’d come to Zimbabwe with her church group. She saw me acting in a play, and afterwards, she told me I have a gift and offered to sponsor me to become an actress. I was the sole breadwinner for my family at the time, so I couldn’t accept. Before she left, she gave me her business card and told me if I ever changed my mind or found myself in Europe, she was only a phone call away.
Two years later, without a scholarship and without any money, I went to London to try for my first degree. A few months in, my boyfriend came to visit and I fell pregnant. He didn’t want the baby, and I made the difficult decision to have my son on my own. I lost my job and soon ran out of food. As I was rummaging through my purse looking for coins to buy a loaf of bread, I found the business card of this Norwegian woman. Just underneath the card was my last coin, 50 pence. I had to decide whether to buy a loaf of bread or call a random stranger in Norway; I couldn’t do both.
I trusted my instinct and went to the nearest phone booth. She didn’t pick up, and I only had enough time to leave her a message that I needed help before the phone disconnected. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I sat there crying, as it started to snow, wishing I’d bought the bread instead. Ten minutes later, the phone rang; it was her. She said I’d been on her mind just the day before as her brother, a theatre company director in Norway, was on his way to Africa to recruit actors for a musical production about Nelson Mandela. She bought me a ticket to Norway and I toured the whole of Europe in this musical, while my belly grew bigger and bigger.
Not only did this woman, a virtual stranger, help me when I had no one else, she also showed me that I had the strength to keep my baby and do it on my own. She’s truly like a mother to me, then and still now.
Her passion is for education. She was a teacher at the time, and ended up being a Vice Chancellor for a university. While I was living in a small town in Norway, full of white people who would stop me in the street wanting to touch my hair and skin to see if the colour would come off, she told me that people act like this out of ignorance. She encouraged me to teach, and I started giving presentations about Zimbabwe each week. Before I knew it, people were paying money to hear me speak and, eventually, teach them traditional African dance.
My Norwegian mother was reflecting me back to myself. Now, that’s what I try to do with HerStory. A lot of people think that a story is just a story, but I believe our stories are our intellectual ideas. If you have a story, you can write a book, and that book can be repurposed in so many ways - webinars, courses, plays, movies, or even board games.
A story is not just a story. Our life experiences as women, especially the hardships and the successes, turn us into teachers. Our stories become a doors into other worlds, shortcuts for other women to find their paths forward.
Tell us how HerStory Circle began
HerStory Circle began with a trip to intensive care in Indonesia, and came to life a year later while in another recovery period, this time from my home in New Zealand. But really, the seed was planted more than 20 years ago, when I became a professional speaker.
Over the years, I’ve travelled to countless places across over 56 countries, sponsoring children in orphanages and setting up coops across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa to help women get out of poverty. Around five years ago, my journey took me from my home in New Zealand to the United States for a job lecturing in film at the University of New Mexico. While I was there, I decided I wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for my 50th birthday.
I started hiking in the desert every day to prepare. I developed a dry cough and headaches that would keep me awake at night, and lingered on for months. The emergency centre would send me home with cough and headache medicine, never suspecting that my heart was packing up. It was only when I returned back home to New Zealand to renew my work visa, that I saw my own doctor, who diagnosed me with high blood pressure.
My children were concerned, because I’d never had any heart problems before. My daughter, desperate for me to slow down, surprised me with a 10-day spa vacation to Bali. It was a wonderful trip, but on the ninth day, I collapsed in a rice field with congestive heart failure. Five days later, I woke up in intensive care to learn that I’d almost died. As I was lying in intensive care, I thought about all the people I was letting down. I realised that the coops I’d created were unsustainable, and I’d have to find another way to do this work.
To help my recovery from heart failure, I started riding an electric bike. One day in early 2017, when I was returning home from the city, I was knocked off my bike by another rider, and fell onto the motorway in rush hour traffic. I can still feel the wind brushing my cheek from a truck that just barely missed my head - only centimeters away. It’s unbelievable that I walked away with only scratches and bruises. I asked myself, “why am I still here?”
For four weeks, I couldn't move. I was in so much pain. I would sit on my couch and wonder, “what’s next?” When it came, it was like dreaming with my eyes open. I saw an image of ten women sitting in a circle, each connected another ten women, and another ten women. This was the future HerStory Circle.
I used Facebook to look for the first 100 women. 48 hours later, 2,400 women from 30 different countries had responded. My health wasn’t in a good place, and I didn’t have the money to start a new business, but I felt excited to get such an overwhelmingly positive response. It gave me a familiar feeling of energy to know that I was on the right track and something big was happening. So I trusted that feeling, and haven't looked back since.
How does HerStory Circle work?
Since we were born in July 2019, we’ve curated over a thousand stories on our YouTube channel, and shared through our magazine and Facebook group as well. Our platform grows by each woman who joins bringing another ten women with her. We were able to quickly scale from 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 in this way.
We’ve also started selling the HerStory license, so women can run HerStory events on our behalf, from their own home. Our license holders pay $10,000 a year for our full support and to recruit speakers who take part in their events. In return, they get 25% of whatever profit is made. Our event fees start at $97, so if we have an event with 100 women, it brings in around $10,000 and $2,500 of that sum goes to the licence holder. License holders can run as many events as they want; whether it’s one a year or a hundred, it’s entirely up to them. COVID has been a blessing in this way, because with so much isolation, people are seeking connections now more than ever.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to become a better storyteller?
The first thing I suggest is to just be yourself. Don't try to be anyone else. There's only one you, and you can only tell a story in your way. People too often try to be what they're not by putting on masks. Being yourself is the best way to be a storyteller.
I tell people to drop out of their heads and into their hearts. A lot of the time, people recite stories, because they have a specific way they want to say it, but I've never told a story the same way twice. When you don’t work to a script, the right words and the right stories show up when they need to.
I've spoken at events where I know the theme, but have no idea which part of my life will fit into it. The first thing I wonder when on stage is, “how can my story be of service to the people who’ve come to listen to me?” Something magical takes over, and the right stories come out, unplanned. It's almost as if a spirit is working through me to deliver the right message that people need to hear.
Once, I was speaking at a conference in Mexico City to around 3000 people. I had prepared a presentation, but the projector wouldn't connect with my laptop and I couldn’t share it. Everything that could go wrong with technology, went wrong. So I stopped and listened to my inner guide. Something took over my body and voice, and I ended up delivering one of the best speeches of my career. I channeled that presentation. It was the most magical experience, and ever since then, that's what I trust.
What might HerStory Circle look like in 5-10 years’ time?
Ultimately, my goal is to have HerStory in every country in the world. I want to see HerStory ten million-strong. I want to hear stories from those women whose voices have never been heard.
There are women in my birth country who live and die without anyone ever knowing who they were. I see my platform turning into a bridge between women in Western countries and women in developing countries, so we can help to pull our sisters out.
Many different aid organisations have come to Africa, but so much of that money ends up in administration and advertising. I want to cut out the middleman and connect person-to-person, so that if you donate $20, then the beneficiary (the person) receives $20. I want to disrupt the aid narrative, because I think the world's problems are not as big as we make them out to be.
What inspires you?
Leaving a legacy inspires me. While I was writing my first book 21 years ago, I dreamt of my own funeral. Someone was reading my eulogy about what I’d achieved in life. I wrote everything from the dream to be the last chapter of my book. It was that I would create a foundation reaching millions of children across Africa, that I would write a book to sponsor that foundation, and that I would be the first African woman to write, direct, and produce an Oscar-winning screenplay. Almost everything in that dream has come true, or is in the making. I truly believe these visions don't come to us by mistake.
Find HerStory Circle
Website: herstorycircle.com
YouTube: youtube.com/c/herstorycircletv
Facebook: facebook.com/HerStoryCircle