3 minute read
PERSPECTIVES ON IDENTITY with Zodidi Gaseb
WITH ZODIDI GASEB
PERSPECTIVES ON IDENTITY
Zodidi Gaseb is the founder of African Naturals, a Namibian business that is built on social entrepreneurship. In celebration of TEDx’s one billion views, Zodidi’s talk, “I am not your stereotype. I am not my hair” was featured as one of fifteen “amazing talks from around the globe” (https://tedxbillion.ted. com/). She is also the founder of the Natural Hair & Beauty Expo Namibia, a speaker at the Global Media Forum and currently works in events planning and management at the Namibia Business Innovation Institute. She is a mother of two teens, an advocate for self-love and an image activist who is passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship as a tool to change conversations.
“I realised that there was a need to change something within my community and that something was hair. I started making products specific for African hair, but it expanded to conversations about people trying to change their work environment, their school environment through the topic of hair.
“It grew into an expo where we celebrate our uniqueness, but also encourage especially women entrepreneurs to start making their own products and give back to their own community and to the economy at large.
“As a child I was very confused. I went to a multicultural, multiracial school and children can be really mean sometimes and because I was different, I got picked on and bullied and as a result I started to shrink myself with it.
“I started doing things to myself that I thought would be acceptable to the rest of the group, but the strange thing is whatever I did, I was never a hundred per cent in the group. But there was always something that was different, whether it was my loving music or reading horror books. “Being a teen was the most challenging time. Until I went to university and I was like, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a lot of people like me here.’ That’s when I started to get out of this shell that I had built around myself.
“We talk about changing our world and we think it’s this massive, massive thing and we have to find cures for all diseases and so forth. We tend to forget that our world can be our community and when we focus on how people look, what they have, it takes away from the real conversations
we can have to change our communities. I mean, when you look at the issues that Namibia has, we should not be worried about how you look, what you’re wearing, what you’re driving or any of these material things. We should be solving problems and working together.
“You put so much pressure on yourself if you compare. I know
it’s challenging sometimes, but there is so much freedom in being yourself.
“Do the things that scare you. When you feel like, ‘Oh, are people going to be okay with this?’, do it anyway. People are always going to talk, whether you do it or not, so do it anyway. You don’t want to be ninety years old with boring stories. You want to live your life to the fullest, so just do it.
“It’s very challenging and I must share that I don’t always feel that way every single day. It’s a daily conversation you have with yourself. You don’t wake up every day feeling, ‘Ah, I love myself. Life is fantastic.’ You have trying times, but there are certain things that I do. Music, for me personally, is a healer. Listen to things that have a positive impact. Writing is also very good for me. Surround yourself with people who are likeminded and light-hearted.
“There is so much therapy and healing in really wonderful conversations about changing the world, and before you know it, you are over that fear that you had. For instance, bungee jumping – I never thought I would ever, ever do it in my life. I did, and I never want to do it again. They had to push me, so . . . But, you know, I did it because I was with the right people at the right time and I don’t regret one minute of it.”
