Text for Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees

Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees by Franck Prevot

2015, Charlesbridge

     It’s almost as if Wangari Maathai is still alive, since the trees she planted still grow.  Those who care about the earth as Wangari did can almost hear her speaking the four languages she knew – Kikuyu, Swahili, English, and German – while she carried out her important work with important people.

     Wangari encouraged many village women.  She dug holes with them in the red soil - holes in which to plant hope for today and forests for tomorrow.

     When Wangari planted a large-leafed ebony tree or an African tulip tree, she was reminded of her own roots.  She was born in 1940 in the little village of Ihithe, across from the majestic volcano Mount Kenya, which her people consider holy.  This is her story.

The immense forest around Wangari’s childhood home is populated by bongo antelopes, monkeys, and butterflies.  The leopard, called the ngari by Wangari’s people, lives here, too.  It may be because wa-ngari means “she who belongs to the leopard” that Wangari feels as though she is part of the entire forest.

     Wangari fetches water every day at the foot of the big mugumo, the generous fig tree.  As the eldest sister of five siblings, she is the second lady of the house.  She helps her mother with countless tasks: gathering wood for the fire, cooking, looking after the little children, and doing farm chores.

     Wangari’s mother gives her a little garden.  Wangari learns to dig and plant.  In the shade of the big mugumo, her mother teacher her that a tree is worth more than its wood, and expression that Wangari never forgets. 

     Wangari’s father works for Sir Neylan, one of the ruling British colonists.  The British claim the best land for themselves and insist that Kenyans take Christian names.  As a result, Wangari is called Miriam during her childhood.  The British grow richer by cutting trees to plant more tea.

     Wangari remembers the first tree she saw fall.

     She doesn’t yet know that she can change things with her voice and her hands.

     One evening in their little house made of mud walls and dried dung, Wangari’s big brother Nderitu asks their mother a questions:  “Why doesn’t Wangari go to school?”

     Wangari knows the answer.  Daughters must help their mothers before getting married and having children of their own.

     But without even realizing it, Nderitu changes things by asking his questions.

     A few days later Wangari is running joyfully to school with her brothers and cousins!  She is thankful to Nderitu for daring to ask the right question, and to her mother for making the decision that will change Wangari’s life.

     Wangari wants to know and understand everything, and going to school helps her succeed.  She receives her high-school diploma at a time when very few African women even learn to read.

     Senator John F. Kennedy, the future US president, invites six hundred young Kenyans to come to the United States to pursue their studies.  Wangari is one of the students.

     For the next five years, Wangari discovers snow, forests of skyscrapers, and people who look nothing like her.  Even cornfields in America are different from those at home.

     Wangari also discovers that even in a great, free, independent country, some places are forbidden to black people.  Just like at home, some schools are for white people only.  During the 1960s angry African Americans demand the same rights as white people.

     At the same time, in faraway Kenya, another anger turns into triumph.  For more than ten years, black people have been demanding the right to cultivate their land and govern their own country.  Now they achieve independence from Britain at last. 

     When Wangari returns home, the British colonists are no longer the masters of Kenya.  The country is free, but the trees are not – they still cannot grow in peace.  Kenyans are cutting down trees and selling them as the colonists did.  By using the land where the trees used to grow to cultivate the tea, coffee, and tobacco sought by rich countries, they can make more money.

     Wangari travels through the country to study wildlife and is shocked.  Wild animals are rare now – they fled the chain saws.  Women can no longer feed their children, since plantations for rich people have replaced food-growing farms.  Rivers are muddy – the soil has been washed away by rain because there are no tree roots to hold it back.

       Now Wangari knows how she will make use of her studies and the people she has met.  She will explain to the world’s great leaders and to Kenya’s farmers that a forest is one of the most precious treasures of humanity.  She’ll tell them that planting thousands of trees will help change the lives of men and women – black and white, rich and poor.  In Kenya and elsewhere.

     Wangari knows that a tree is worth much more than its wood, as her mother taught her.  A tree is a treasure that provides shade, fruit, pure air, and nesting places for birds, and that pulses with the vitality of life.  Trees are hideouts for insects and provide inspiration for poets.  A tree is a little bit of the future.

     /Wangari wants to shout to the world, but change happens slowly.  She doesn’t want to wait.  So in 1977 she creates the Green Belt Movement in order to start planting trees immediately.

     Traveling from village to village, she speaks on behalf of trees, animals, and children.  She asks that people think about the future even if the present is harsh and difficult.  She encourages villagers to discuss their problems in their own words – in the language of their tribe.

     Her words travel to villages, into newspapers, and through letters to the Kenyan government and international organizations.  She needs to raise money because replacing hundreds of thousands of missing trees is expensive.

     Wangari creates tree nurseries across Kenya which she entrusts to village women.  She provides the women with a financial bonus for each tree that grows.

     The government officials who built their fortunes by razing forests try to stop Wangari.  Who is this woman who confronts them with a confident voice in a country where women are supposed to listen and lower their eyes in men’s presence?

     Wangari believes confident women have in important role to play in their families.  In their villages, and on the entire African continent.  She can’t be quiet.  With countless sisters to help, “she who belongs to the lepard” doesn’t get discouraged.  She keeps planting forests.

     Wangari is determined not to let one more single tree be curt down.  She doesn’t lover her eyes, even when she faces President Daniel arap Moi, who will rule Kenya for twenty-four years.

     He wants to build a sixty-story building and a statue of himself in the heart of Uhuru Park in Nairobe.  Wangari rallies her friends to fight the bulldozers, and the project is abandoned.

     Moi then plans to launch a huge real-estate project in Karura’s forest, which would threaten endangered species such as the blue monkey and thie river hog.  Wangari stands tall.  She calls the world to the rescue, replants trees, and forces the president to back off.

          After her victories a Kenyan man tells her:  “You are the only man left standing.”

     But standing up against the authoritarian power of Daniel arap Moi is dangerous.  Wangari is now a threat.  She knows that the president will stop at nothing to silence her – he is a powerful man who orders police to shoot at crowds of demonstrators.

     She is humiliated, hit, hurt, and imprisoned several times, but she doesn’t give up.  Each time she is released, she fights to liberate political prisoners and speaks out against torture.  Wangari receives death threats and often must hide outside of Kenya.  But she perseveres. 

    Wangari wants to make democracy grow – like trees.  She knows that if her people work together to decide the laws of her country, it will become stronger.

     She dreams that Kenya’s children will be able to play with tadpoles in clear water under fig trees at the edge of great forests.  She wants them to be able to eat when they are hungry.

     Wangari quickly realizes how many more battles she must fight in order to save the trees.  She runs several times for elected office, creates an environmental party, and rallies the opposition to try to bring down Daniel arap Moi.

     Facing rising protest, President Moi tries to divide the people in order to rule.  He knows that when tribes fight one another, the president can quietly govern the way he wants.

     Wangari and the Green Belt=Movement help foil Moi’s trap.  She suggests ooffering young plants from tree nurseries to neighboring tribes in symbolic gestures of peace.

     Little by little, those peace trees bear their fruits.  Wangari even succeeds in convincing soldiers to help her cultivate friendships among tribes.

  President Daniel arap Moi finally falls in 200d.  The country has a new constitution, which requires him to retire, and his party loses the election.  Wangari is elected to Parliament.  The new president appoints her assistant minister of the environment, natural resources, and wildlife.

     For Wangari, now affectionately called Mama Miti, or “the mother of trees,” a new part of her story begins.  She now holds the power to make decisions.  She can finally work to make Kenya a fair nation – for women, men . . . and trees!

     Today there are more trees in Kenya than there were when Wangari began her work, and democracy has been established.  The Grteen Belt Movement =still protects trees, such as those in the Congo Basin, the second-largest tropical forest in the world.

     Wangari Maathai and her supporters planted more than thirty million trees.  And every day, even now, new ones are planted in Kenya.

     Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8, 2004, for the countless seeds of hope she planted and grew over the years.  She was the first African woman to received the prize.  To celebrate, she planted a Nandi flame tree at her home in Nyeri,k at the bas of Mount Kenya.

     The mountain and the inhabitants of the forests around it – lepoards, bongo antelopes, other wild animals, and humans – must have been proud that day.