Wangari Maathai’s unbowed is a story of a brave woman who
confronted the state of decay of environment .
It has thirteen chapters . The first
four deal with her childhood,
schooling and realization of her
American dream. Chapters five to seven
refer to Kenyan independence and its aftermath. Chapters 7 and eight are
related to seeds of change whereas chapters nine to thirteen refer to struggle
for freedom and sustain the movement of sustainable development. The epilogue
shows the “Canopy of Hope.”
She founded and spread the Green Belt
Movement which led to the planting of more than forty million trees since
1977.She became a member of parliament in 2003 and an assistant minister for
environment in 2003 and the first African woman to have won the Nobel peace Prize in 2004.
While Mandela wrote , “ hope the world will
support her vision of hope’’, the famous novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o says, ‘’it
is also the story of Kenya, Africa, and the world . Her life is a triumph of
good over evil.”
Wangari was the third child to her parents and the
first daughter who was born on April 1, 1940 in Ihithe, a small village in the
central Highlands known then as The
British Kenya. She was born in Kikuyu community in the family of peasants who
relied on farming and rearing of cattle, goats and sheep for their
livelihood. She was the daughter of the soil and says, “Even
before my breast milk, I would have swallowed the juice of green bananas,
blue-purple sugarcane, sweet potatoes, and a fattened lamb, all fruits of the
local land.”(4) At the customs was that
the women of the village used to gather the local fruits and the expectant
mother would fatten the lamb inside the house .
Her clan Anjiru~, descendants of one of
the ten daughters of the mythological couple GIkuyu and Mumbi and is associated with leadership . Though the
clans were originally matrilineal , slowly the patriarchy replaced it.
Kikuyus who used to worship Mount Kenya as
God were slowly converted to Christianity by the missionaries and the administrators and traders who
followed the missionaries introduced logging, clear cutting forests, plantation of imported trees , and
agriculture and began exploiting local natural
resources . Wangari mentions how this destroyed their traditions. She writes , “Hallowed landscapes lost their
sacredness and were exploited as the local people became insensitive to the
destruction , accepting it as a sign of progress.” (6)
She mentions an interesting story about the naming of her country and renaming of places and things
by the colonialists. The name Kenya was coined when German explorers Johan
Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann heard the world kii-nyaa( intended to refer
to gourd carried by guide belonging to
the Kamba community) She also mentions how Nyandarua( drying hide) was
called by the British in 1884 as Aberdare
after Lord Aberdare, then the head of the Royal Geographical society. European powers arbitrarily, artificially
and formally divided Africa among
themselves at the Berlin conference in 1885. Consequently Africa suffered the division of its clans
referred to as ‘micronations’ by Wangari in the most arbitrary manner haunting into the
present.
The missionaries converted the locals by
attending to their health needs and teaching them the art of reading and
writing replacing traditional method of oral communication among the Kikuyus
through the use of the drums, horns , shouting or courier and gichandi ,
the musical means of transmission made from a gourd became a museum piece in
Turin, Italy.
Wangari thus describes how
colonial enterprise slowly and steadily entered Kenya and European settlers
came to the highlands fertile and free from malaria and with moderate
temperature and relocated the locals to
the Rift Valley or transported to other places. By the 1930’s the natives were confined to the
reserve areas and by the 1950’s thousands
of White settlers who were war veterans came to the highlands.
Referring to her parents, she tells how the
blood of Maasai and kikuyu were mixed in her. While she praises her father’s
hard work and legendary strength, her deep attachment to her mother comes out in
glowing terms. Her mother was sturdy in her physique and in character, hardworking, gentle
and kind. She remained an illiterate and
a ruralite but cultivated crops till into her eighties and always kept
provisions ready for her family whether she was well or ill. Here was a
special bond between the mother and the eldest daughter Wangari who shared
responsibility and communication. “She was
my anchor in life” (13)
The British introduced cash as currency in
the place of goats and men were forced to migrate and work on the farms for
earning cash to pay taxes which necessitated leaving their families behind in
villages. This phenomenon led to mixed results such as the large number of
woman-headed households, prostitution, absent fathers , and sexually transmitted
infections which persisted unto the present , that is the time of writing of
Unbowed(2007) .
Wangari moved to the Rift Valley along with
her mother and two brothers to join their father working on the farm of one
Neylan. She mentions absence of schools , forced labour of the family and meagre compensations
paid to his father by the settler Nyelan. She also refers to her pleasant
outing to take cattle for grazing and
eating berries grown amid the managu
plants. She regrets the disappearances of these plants in the course of time due to “overcultivation
and the use of agrochemicals.” (16)Her attachment to the soil shows how she had
come to look at nature as something inseparable from her.
Wangari Maathai shows how polygamy was
usual and her mother was the second wife of his father. But her father took
care of all the children born to him from his four wives and all of them lived in the same compound. They used to call
their mother as maitu and the younger mother as maitu munyinyi and
elder mother as maitu mukuru. Children were always taken care of by one
or other adult , visited each other’s house frequently and felt amity with one
another. There were occasions of conflicts when father used to beat his
wives but Wangari came to know of it only when as an adult when she listened to
their complaints. Children were also guarded from information
and phenomenon of death of any relative to save the young
minds. The parents taught her courage ,
leadership but her father remained strong and imposing but distant figure. On the contrary, her
relationship with her mother was intimate l throughout their lives. She
recollects how she could realise the value of health when she saw the emaciated figure of her father suffering
from cancer of esophagus.
Wangari relates an incident which
tells about her mother’s contentment and
composure. When she began singing some devotional songs from Pentecostal
denomination , her mother swept the place around her without asking her to move
aside. He mother’s trait of keeping her
disappointments to herself influenced her to develop the same trait in her
personality.
On Mr. Neylan’s farm At Nakuru , Kikuyus
worked in fields, Luos as domestic workers and Kipsigis as tenders of livestock
and milking . But these communities lived separately and the ethnic biases
persisted affecting national unity even after independence. Wangari observes that the relationship
between the master and the servant was unequal but father had more regard for
the master and presented a he-goat as a sign of great respect and friendship.
At the time of independence, the master gave twenty five acres to father and
the cooperative purchased rest of the
land from Neylan.
Wangari write how utopian’s , Indians and
Africans lived separately on the slope of the ridge at Nakuru in houses of
different styles. But after independence, the separation in living quarters
ended when money began to speak. She also refers to a Young man Thumbi , a son
of her grand father and one of the one
hundred thousand Kikuyus who were
forcibly drafted to fight on
behalf of the British to fight against
Germans and Italians in East Africa in
the First world war and die there anonymously. This remains an open wound in the hearts of Kenyans who
became cannon fodder to satisfy the imperialist
ambition of the British did the same thing to many Indians and Asians
wherever they ruled.
In the chapter on Cultivation, we come to
know how Wangari reached Nyeri to her uncle’s house to study in school along
with her two brothers who are already
studying there. She along with her mother and the youngest sister Wachatha travelled there. Neylan’s
worry was who would pick his pyrethrum. She also writes that due to the
conflict between the British colonial government and Mau Mau resistance
movement and the state of emergency, none of other siblings could not follow
them later to attend school. Referring
to the administration Nyeri, she says that the British initially recruited
locals which included even criminals, tricksters, parvenus without proper
qualifications. Despite the better candidates joining in the administration at
later stage, the legacy of corruption, lack of accountability , patronage and
incompetence persisted. Wangari’s love
for nature comes out vividly in the following passage.
The packed bus
rattled along past the waterfall and, , as it did, I glimpsed the fast-flowing
waters that disappeared into the steep
fall and heard them rolling down the cliff. We were soon travelling across he
open grasslands and interminable scrub on the eastern edge of the rift Valley.
Looking out through the bus’s open window and enjoying the cool breeze on my
face , I watched the great herds of cattle grazing on ranchland owned by the
white settlers. Zebras, giraffes, antelopes, and the occasional buffalo were
dotted throughout the plain. Together our little family and our fellow
travellers -farmers, businessmen, and visitors returning home -jostled and
bumped and hoped that our luggage would not fall off the roof and be lost in
the huge cloud of dust that spread out in
a plume behind us. (31)
She also refers to the replacement of colourful
baskets by plastic bags for transporting goods and described ecological damage.
“These plastics litter the parks and
streets blow into the streets and
bushes, kill domestic animals when they swallow them inadvertently), and
provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes. They leave the town so dirty it is
almost impossible to find a place to sit and rest away from their plastic
bags.” (35)
Her love for soil is great. While referring
to cultivation which was hard but rewarding , she mentions “Because of the frequent rainfall , the soil
of the central highlands was often wet enough that you could make a ball with
it , but still porous and smelling fresh. When you rubbed it between your
fingers you could almost feel the life
it held.” (37)
In
the second chapter ‘Cultivation’ we come to know how Wangari leans the
cultivation of soil, imagination, hard work and love for nature . She tells how her mother discouraged her from
pulling out seeds from the ground to see how they were growing. She also refer
to the deep change by the colonial government which began importing exotic
species of plants such as Pines, eucalyptus, black wattle and encouraged by the building and timber
industry , the farmers switched over to commercial plants at the cost of local
plants and animals ‘ destroying the
natural ecosystem that helped gather and retain rainwater.” (39)She was
mesmerised by the magic of writing shown
by her cousin, the growing of warmth of the central highlands due to climate
change, the chirping of birds, the stray elephants disturbed by the people to
run amuck . reverence towards the fig
tree, mother’s words that her name Wa-ngari~ and the name of leopard in Kikuyu
language ngari~ are the same and hence
no threat from it ,Arrowroots trees, disappointments at the breaking of
the frogs’ eggs when lifted and the
“cultural and spiritual practices contributed to the conservation of
biodiversity.” (46) Her experience of falling on the ground along with donkey
after getting exhausted after collecting
heavy sacks of beans, the immorality
felt by people by naming children after the departed ancestors, the riveting and repeated story telling by her aunt ‘’Konyeki and His
father.” Wangari thinks “ how you
translate the life you see, feel, smell and touch as you grow up-the water you
drink , the air you breathe, and the food you eat -are what you become.”(52)
She was able to enjoy the world without books but stories to tell and where one
“cultivated the soil and the imagination inequal measure.” (52) Her intense
lyricism comes out in describing her return from cultivating the land. She
writes,
The freshness of the evening air lived the
burden of labour off my shoulders. Strips of moonlight threw shadows into the
trees’ canopies and down the ravines. Deep in the valleys were many streams
that I had to cross as I wound my way home. It was so dark that I had to listen carefully
to the water flowing down the hillsides and through the gullies bordered by
arrowroots and dense vegetation so I could work out where I was and where I was
going. The streams would hiss and whoosh as they joined the Gura River, which swept
along the valley floor until it slid
over a waterfall and crashed onto the rocks below. (47)
She Joined St. Cecilia’s despite their family’s
initial fears of the possibility of her
conversion to Catholicism. Her affection for her brother comes out when she
mentions how he shared part of his cloth to make dress for her and how
Nderitu visited the school to enquire of
her. She also recollects once incident when one of the girls’ mentioned in her letter
to her family the phrase “we are eating fire” which means
having a good time in Kikuyu, Sister Cecilia
had arranged charcoal on her plate for telling lies. This caused much laughter among the rest of
the girls. She also mentions how children were discouraged from using mother
tongue with fines and forced to speak English. Though this improved their
fluency in English language. “Now, as then , this contributed to the
trivialization of anything African and lays the foundation for a deeper sense
of self-doubt and an inferiority complex.”(60) But she herself kept her ability to speak in Kikuyu
which helped retention of closer bond between her parents and herself. She also cultivated the quality of service by
working in hospital, gardening, ironing the church linen helping other with homework. When she changed
to Catholicism and took new name Mary
Josephine and her friends called her Mary jo through out high school and college.
While relating the freedom struggle of
Kenya she writes of the violation of the oral agreement Between A British
captain and Waiyaki ,the leader of the natives , the burying alive of
Waiyaki, the killing and silencing of
the natives after the first World War and the awareness of native returnees form The second World War
who fought for the British in Somalia,
Ceylon and Burma. The Mau Mau movement
based on members of Kikuyu, Meru, and Embu communities began in 1950’s whose main demands were land,
freedom and self-governance. She traces
the origin of the word to “Ma~undu~
ni mau” (in Kikuyu h means “The main issues are…”) . The children were
brainwashed to think of freedom fighter as terrorists, home guards were turned
into collaborators and colonial violence grew drawing out violence from freedom
fighters. People were forced to choose sides and the young were forced o join
home guards causing rift in the families and many deaths and widows in the
community.
She left for New York in 1960 as part of ‘Lift’ programme at
the initiative taken by Kennedy and got amazed by blacks which she and her
class mate in high school and college. She gets awareness of racial
discrimination when they were denied the
room to drink coca cola with in the
small open café. She says that
colonial education has hidden this from her so far. She writes,
An African has to go America to understand
slavery and its impact on Black people-not only in Africa but also in the
diaspora. It is in America that words such as “black,” “white,” “Negro,”
“mulatto,” “skin colour,” “segregation,” “discrimination,” and “the ghetto” take
on lives of their own.(79)
She offers a lyrical descriptions of seasons during her stay
in Kansas.
In her American Sojourn, she herself has not faced incidents of
discrimination as she confined to her
campus but came to know some such
incidents from others. Her sojourn at mount
nurtured in her “a willingness to
listen and learn, to think critically and analytically, and to ask
questions.” (92). Later she honed her
research skills at the university of Pittsburgh but didn’t understand much
about Vietnam War and could not decide on taking any side. America nurtured the spirit of freedom and utilising
every opportunity which persisted with her when she returned home.
Back home she experiences hypocrisy of head of the department of Zoology
who first offered and the retracted from giving her job due to tribalism and
sexism. But she got an opportunity to join the department of Veterinary Anatomy
at the University College of Nairobi.
She went to Germany to work on her Phd and travelled frequently between university of Giessen and the
University of Munich. She also expresses her surprise at cu;tural conflict
between African cultural values and Christianity while Europeans
experienced no such thing between their
culture and Christianity.
She also questions the role of women who
are expected to be as carriers of
culture unlike men . she had to balance the roles of academician, housewife,
host and a public speaker on behalf of her husband contesting to be become a member of parliament. She fought
supported by her woman colleague
Mwangi for gender equality when she was denied housing
allowance and insurance coverage in university. But other women did not join her being
discouraged by their husbands, remained less ambitious and failed to realised
importance of economic independence when they no longer had the support of men
.
Sometimes you have to hold on what you believe
in because not everybody wishes you well or will give you what you deserve -not
even your fellow women. Indeed, I found myself wanting to be more than the
equal of some of the men I knew. I had higher
aspirations and did not want to be compared with men of lesser ability
and capacity. I wanted to be me.(117)
She
joined the local board of the Environment Liaison Centre. While doing her
postdoctoral research she observed emaciated cows, undernourished people. Soil
erosion due to cash crops and felling of the fig trees . The participants and
representatives of NCWK in the First
Women’s Conference prioritised the problems of rural women and their poverty
and environmental degradation. Pragmatism or solution-oriented thinking took
her to planting of trees which provide firewood, fodder for cattle, food,
protection of water, bring back birds and small animals and
regeneration of the vitality of the earth.
She has begun the Green Belt Movement and her initials efforts through
Environcare have not beam much successful due to lack of sufficient awareness
among people. Her participation in the forest UN Conference known as Habitat I reenergised
her and led to her entering the Executive committee of the NCKW .
Her proposal for plantation received response . The plantation
programmes at Kamukunji Park on the outskirts of Nairobi, on a farm northwest of Nairobi
in Naivasha, Nyana near Lake Victoria, Ukambani in Machakos and Kitui
and Kajiado to the South of Nairobi did
not last long and she realised the need to mobilize locals to take initiative
and responsibility to sustain for the
success. By encouraging women to use
womansense and not bothering much about technical knowledge, she created
“foresters without diplomas.” They advocated planting trees of native variety,
sustenance of seedlings and containers to retain the soil around the seedlings
as they grew and when they were
transplanted. He believed and practised that education soul dot alienate people
from the land because they understand what is being lost. She writes that “The
future of the planet concerns all of us
, and all of us should do what we can to protect it. “ (138) Naomi Klein writes, if there is a reason for
social movements to exist, it is not to
accept dominant values as fixed and unchangeable but to offer other ways to
live-to wage and win, a battle of cultural worldviews.”( This changes
Everything 61)
When her husband left her
suddenly, Wangari decided to sweep the past away and start afresh. She was used
to independent life of decision making. She endured the pain of divorce trial
caused by publicity and verdict which
went against her. She understood that society,
press and lawyers wanted to
project her as spoilt and irresponsible
modern woman . Her questioning back
her husband’s lawyer, “why did you ask me such question?” in the Court hall was shown as evidence of her stubbornness and
unyielding nature causing hell to her husband. Hen her husband refused to allow
her to use his surname , she changed her name into Wangari Muta Mathaai” by adding an extra syllable to the
last word in her name.
When she commented negatively about the
judgement in an interview , she was
again tried for contempt of court and given a sentence for six months. In jail
her co-prisoners were initially surprised to know the cause of her
imprisonment, treated her kindly and prayed together for the judges to be able
to judge fairly and justly. She was released from jail after three days after
giving a statement. She understood the jealousy and sadistic pleasure of some
people and remained firm in her resolve.
When she took up a six-month
assignment with the Economic
commission for Africa for the UNDP,
she left her children with their father . Later she helped them to study in
America to rescue them from knowing about her struggles personal as well as
political. She contested twice for chairmanship of the NCWK but politics were played by the people in the
government to project her negatively. Some constituent associations were
pressured to withdraw and attempts to make the main organisation bankrupt
financially were made. Wangari has understood that the opposition to her
candidacy was “due in part to my ethnicity, in part to my education, and was
again partly due to my marital status.”(157) She was elected in her second
attempt contrary to the wishes of the government which encouraged another
organisation in competition with the
NCWK. She stood firm despite pleasing by some of her supporters who
pressurise them no to support Wangari. When she wanted to contest for becoming a
member of parliament , she was not allowed on the ground that she hadn’t
registers as a voter in the previous
election . As she had to resign her job
before contesting she had done so and her place was given to another within a
day. As she had resigned on her own, she was also denied the normal benefits
such as pension and healthcare. She
understood the role politics played. She
didn’t visit the department to collect her belongings which remained in storage
till her autobiography was published in2007. The same university of which she
was alumnus and which ignored her achievements all along gave her doctorate and
accolades. In the chapter “Difficult
years” she writes, “I was forty-one years old and for the first time in decades
I had nothing to do. I was down to Zero.” (163)
She believed that ‘We do the right thing
not to please people but because it’s the only logically reasonable thing to do
, as long as we are being honest with ourselves.” (165) he lost hopes of getting back into
University of Nairobi and the private
institutions gave polite refusals . She
realised
It dawned on me that no one would employ me
because they saw me as an enemy of the political system. I had been
in a direct confrontation with the government.” (166)
The Norwegian Forestry Society and
later the UN Voluntary fund for women
came to her rescue and provided seed money and small emolument for her and it
helped the expansion of the Green Belt Movement. She initially employed women
to plant seedlings first at far later near their homes and enlist the support
of the males of their family members. In the process she also realised the
dishonesty of some young men who behaved dishonestly which made her reflect on
corruption at higher levels.
She trained volunteers, established many
groups , encouraged people to speak in their own language rather than Kiswahili
or English , conducted “civic and
environmental education” seminars and the seminars examined the recent history
of Kenya, and also issues of democracy,
human rights, gender, and power. She mentions how colonialism encouraged
commercial crops at the cost of sustainable economy by distorting African
culture.
Before the
Europeans arrived , the peoples of Kenya did not look at trees and see timber,
or at elephants and see commercial ivory stock , or at cheetahs and see
beautiful skins for sale” (175).The Movement spread widely and by the early twenty-first century “they have planted
more than thirty million trees I Kenya alone. (175)
One finds a close connection
between the expansion of the movement through the help from the UNEP and laurels and awards which Wangari received
for her work. It also changed the perception of Africa in the eyes of all,
reduced criticism of her and eventually the separation between the NCWK and the GBM took place in the interest
of more freedom from governmental interference in the latter’s work.
In her autobiography Wangari also relates
how corruption and centralisation of power grew in Kenya, suppression of
dissent, killing of dissentient political and student leaders
and curtailing of independence of judiciary and of democracy. In 1988, The Green belt Movement
also joined pro-democracy activities such as registering voters, pressing for
constitutional reforms and freedom of expression. Thus the movement was “not
only an environmental , women’s , and human rights movement , but also part of
the broader movement for democracy.”(182) The monopolisation of political space
by the ruling party KANU continued and a standoff took place between the Green Movement
and the govt. over the protection of Uhuru Park.
Her struggle against the building of a complex in Uhuru Park as prestigious The Times peoject got support from the common people
despite ignoring the plea and vilification of Wangari by the members of
the parliament. The issue of protection of the park mingled with the issue
of democracy. She writes how Kenya in post-independence became
one party state depriving voice to the people, evicting from jobs, Violating
people’s rights. Her legal challenge was thrown aside A lot of criticism from the president , fellow
women organisations such as Maendeleo Ya Wanawake and MPs of KANU followed by
strangulating financial sources to the green Movement and eviction from the
government building from which they have been operating for a long time and the
her own residence became head quarters of the movement. She also relates how aa
young dissident who took refuge in her
house became negative had instigated the employees to ask for pay raise and strike necessitating police intervention.
Later a new home was provided by
CARE-Austria to get a house as headquarters in Lang’ata. At last Uhuru park was saved due
to support form the press which exposed the mismanagement of resources by the
government , withdrawal of support by the donor agencies and foreign diplomats. The success of the
movement and lack of harm to her energised people to speak out and challenge
the one party rule in Kenya.
In chapter ten titled “Freedom Turns A corner” she describes how trees
in Uhuru park survived despite vandalism by the supporters of the regime.
Earlier in 1990, the people’s pro-democracy rally was attacked by the security
forces leading to the death of dozens of demonstrators. She writes, ‘These
tress, like Saba Saba (7/7 in Kiswahili , to mark the date of the rally) ,
inspired me. They showed me that , no matter how much you try to destroy it,
you can’t stop the truth and justice from sprouting.”(207)
She was arrested for the first time when she along with members of the Forum for the Restoration of
Democracy(FORD) issued a statement urging the President no tot handover
government to the Armybut call aa general election. She was charged with “
spreading malicious rumours , sedition , treason , the last of which carried
the death penalty.”(213) She received support from Mothers in Action , friends
and her son Muta and organisations such as
UNIFEM, GROOTS, WEDO Called on
members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee . As a result of intervention by senator Kennedy , Al Gore and
the late Paul Wellstone, the case against her and others was withdrawn by the
government . She also describes her constant and valiant fight to get political
prisoners released through a sit-in by Mothers of political prisoners. Despite
the persecution by the government , they
continued fight from the All Saints’
Cathedral. The tenacity of their fight and support from religious authorities
helped them in achieving their goal of getting the release of political
prisoners. In the chapter ‘Freedom Turns
A Corner’, she relates this historic struggle.
She also won the Goldman Environmental Prize, Hunger project’s Africa prize for leadership
in the year 1991. She attended the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where she had to face the negative
campaigning by the official delegation of Kenya. She also encouraged the green
movement in Haiti.
She
also relates how she became chairman of Middle ground group after the split of
the opposition and organised teach-ins to educate people about democracy. She
relates she used tact to send back
police who tried to stop meeting at her
home since more than nine were not allowed to gather as per the colonial law
which comtinued even acer independence. She told the police that the visitors were friends, introduced
them to the police and asked the police to introduce themselves and sit there
to take minutes of the meeting .
Before 1992 elections Middle
Ground Group tried its best to unite the opposition but individual differences
among leaders failed their unity.The old president Moi got re-elected. Wangari
also observed how the ruling party government created schisms and exploited
inter-ethnic differences leading to clashes, During the is time she tried for
inter-ethic amity in the Rift Valley but her attempts drew the ire of the
government. On seeing arbitrary arrests,
kidnaps and killings of the rival politicians, she had to go underground .
Owing to intervention by Gorbachev she could come out to attend the meeting
on Environment in Tokyo. She also
received The Edinburgh Medal from the
Edinburgh district Council in Scotland and The Jane Addams International
Women’s Leadership Award in Chicago and UN’S World Conference on Human Rights. She
also refers to the stealing of the photos and reports from the exhibition booth
by members of the Kenyan delegation and Internally Displaced Refugees due to ethnic conflicts who were neglected by
the government and even the UN commission on Refugees and could not be rehabilitated
even in the early 1990s. She
refers to various ethnic groups as micronations . We have our own languages,
traditions, foods, and dances ,and our own cultural and historical baggage”
(249) brought together by colonialism to be called
as a nation . She speaks of future and
notes, “This concept of nationhood became a component of The Green
Belt seminars after the tribal clashes.’’ (250)She also participated in the fourth global conference on women in
Beijing where she spoke of African barriers for development such as corruption,
poverty, debt, destruction of environment and “the respect for basic human
rights, justice, equality, and equity,
nonviolence, caring, and integrity.” (253)
.
She contested for the position of ember of
Parliament and presidency but lost due to ethnicity, personality cult and
rumour mongering prevalent in the society . She later founded Mazingira Green
Party and in Kiswahili the word Mazingira means
‘environment ‘ . Her efforts to save Karura Forest In Nairobi brought her in direct confrontation with the government. She
also opposed lang grabbing and allotment of the public property to the private
people. She foregrounds solution-centric thinking in her activity. She writes :
What people see as fearlessness is really
persistence. Because I am focused on the solution, I don’t see danger. Because
I don’t see danger , I don’t allow my mind to imagine what might happen to me,
which is my definition of fear. If you don’t foresee the danger and see only
the solution , then you can defy anyone and appear strong and fearless. (272)
The agitators could ward off the
persecution by the police through dancing and singing and planting trees . From
2000 onwards, the green movement worked in partnership wit department of
forests of Kenya to restore five water ‘’towers’’ in Kenya-Mount Kenya, the Aberdares, the Mau complex, the
Cherangani hills, and Mount Elgon-that control the country’s water systems. This includes the flow of rivers, rainfall
patterns, and groundwater , all of which are necessary for agricultural,
industrial and tourist development. The movement has also increased awareness
to protect the Congo Basin Forest which is along with Amazon forest ecosystem
are considered “two of the most
important “lungs” of planet earth.” (274)
Writing of her mother’s death ,
Wangari observes and regrets the
degradation of environment and vanishing of rivers .
My mother is gone, as are many of those
rivers, and with them the trout and a way of life that knew and honoured the
abundance of the natural world. Now, because of the devastation of the
hillsides, instead of the rivers there are only little streams and the Gura
River no longer roars.”(276)
The news of winning the Nobel
prize filled her eyes with tears of joy.
While in a hotel after planting a Nandi
flame tree seedling and facing mount Kenya, she syas , “As I gazed at
her, I felt that the mountain too was probably weeping with joy, and hiding her
tears behind a veil of white clouds. At that moment I felt I stood on sacred
ground.” (293) In her view the Norwegian
committee recognised the link between environment, sustainable management and
good governance and awarded her Prize for her work stretching for three
decades.
She writes that trees symbolise hope and
peace and spread their roots in soi and yet reach to the sky . They teach
us the value of remembering keeping in touch with the soil despite winning
many laurels and invisible people who help us.
In drawing an analogy of three-legged stool
she sees democracy, sustainable management and peace among cultures and society
as the basin or seat. These are of a specific concern to Africa .in the last
chapter fittingly titled, ‘Epilogue:
Canopy of Hope’ she says that those who know the degraded state of environment
cannot be complacent. “ We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and
future generations of al species to rise up and walk!”(295) what is needed by
the progressives is, “showing that the real solutions to climate crisis are
also our best hope of building a much more stable and equitable economic system
, one that strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful,
dignified work, and radically reins in corporate greed.” ( Klein 125)
Amitav Ghosh points out that the climate is also a crisis of culture,
and thus of imagination”(12) In case of Wangari , her autobiography unbowed meets this challenge
successfully by unfolding the growth of an individual and aa movement that have
grown in stature and strength by maintain deep passion for earth, plants and
opposition to the private greed supported by the governments of recently
independent countries such as Kenya. He , writing of engagement of literature
with fiction says the following: ‘ the great, irreplaceable potentiality of
fiction is that it makes possible the imagining of possibilities.”(172) Now, a
reading of Wangari’ s Unbowed inspires one to reimagine a different
world free from environmental degradation through conscious action.
Wangari Maathai’s humble background, determination to plant trees, fighting spirit, and eventual
recognition fired the imagination of the youth. She specifically refers to her
speech to the young in international school of Brunei who attended a
conference on the “Heart of Borneo”, one of the few large pristine forests left in the world. The students who attended
the conference from Various countries such as Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia
pledged to plant one million trees in favour of environmental protection.
She also mentions mottoinai
campaign in Japan which encourages all its members to reduce, reuse, and
recycle (the three Rs) and interaction with it which led to the use of locally
made baskets in stead of Plastic bags in Kenya. The Nobel Peace prize created a
chance for “a huge constituency of environmental, peace democracy, human
rights ad women’s rights activists to
come together.”(300)
She also interacted with the significant people such as Gordon Brown ,
other women Nobel laureates such as Jody
Williams, the anti-landmine campaigner , the Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin
Ibadi and the indigenous rights advocate
Rigoberto Menchú to form the Nobel women’s Initiative
and also tried to interact with the common people.
She has committed herself to the creation
of stronger civil society in Africa, ensuring human rights and governance and
avoiding the conflicts which deviate people from development agenda. As apart
of the Billion Tree Campaign in Oxford University. She reiterates that the
greatest happiness lies in service and retaining optimism about future. At the
end, she refers to the story of a
humming bird that wanted to put out conflagration by depositing a drop of water on it and when questioned by others replied, “ I’m
doing the best I can!” Wangari Maathai’s
message is also the same. “ And this is what we are called to do, no matter who
or where we are , or what our capabilities. We are called to do the best we can !”(307)
Primary Source :
Maathai, Wangari. Unbowed: A Memoir.
New York: Anchor Books, 2007
Secondary Sources
Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement
: Climate Change And The Unthinkable. India: Penguin Random House, 2017.
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything.UK:
Penguin Books, 2015.
