March 16, 2005
WANGARI MAATHAI
Fabulously dressed Nobel Peace Prize winner 2004. Born in Kenya 1940. First woman from East or Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. As child, sent to school only after older brother pressured parents. Came to New York in 1960 & lost shoe on first escalator she ever rode on. On coming to America as a student:
"When autumn came, my first autumn, the experience of trees losing leaves was, for me, phenomenal. Trees losing their leaves! They were of course very beautiful & different colors & this doesn't happen in Kenya. So that was phenomenal. And then they all fell, every one of them.
"And the tree literally went to sleep. And then the wind. You read in novels about whispering winds. It was only in Kansas that winds ever whispered! And they blew through those trees like violins. I never heard anything like that."
Founded Green Belt Movement in Kenya in response to deforestation which wiped out 90% of Kenya's forests. Began by planting 7 trees, largely female grassroots movement has planted 30 million & provided poor women with income & education. Persecuted by Kenyan dictator Daniel Arap Moi:
"It was not the tree planting that Moi was against; he was against the educational component, the civic & environmental education, because that touched on governance, touched on democracy, respect for human rights, respect for environmental rights, protection of natural resources, equitable distribution of resources."
Successfully led protest against
Moi's plan to build luxury resort skyscraper & statue of Moi in Nairobi's Uhuru
Park (which would add 200 million to Kenya's debt). Voted into
Parliament in 2002. Has been arrested, teargassed, jailed, clubbed unconscious, threatened with death.
On fear: "People often ask me why I was not afraid. The best way I can explain it is to say that I did not project fear. If you project that you might die, that you might lose the privileges of the position you hold, that you might be fired, you begin to focus on the consequences. But if you stay focused on what you want to attain, then you actually go right in there where many people would not dare to go."
Member of Parliament said curse should be placed on her. Moi called it 'un-African & unimaginable for a woman to challenge or oppose men.' Has been dubbed 'mad woman,' 'threat to the order & security of the country,' 'an ignorant & ill-tempered puppet of foreign masters,' 'unprecedented monstrosity,' &, by ex-husband, ‘too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn & too hard to control'.
On the male ego: "I'm sick & tired of men who are so incompetent that every time they feel the heat because women are challenging them, they have to check their genitalia to reassure themselves. I'm not interested in that part of the anatomy. The issues I'm dealing with require the utilization of what's above the neck. If you don't have anything there, leave me alone."
On women: "We did not have any guns & we were not going to use force, even when they used force to try to stop us. We are the ones who can change government, we are the ones who can decide what kind of leaders to put in place. And so we got rid of our fear, we refused to be victims of government intimidation."
On respect for the
planet: "I'm a Christian
& a Catholic. If you read the book of Genesis, you will see that God created other species before he created humanity. He created humanity last. But if he had created us before, we would probably not have survived. The moral of the story is that it is the other species that were created before us, which we need to survive. Whereas they don't need us."
On jail: "It is dehumanizing. It is filthy. It is crowded. You are put in areas where people will mock you, guards & even prisoners. You are put there to humiliate you."
On the contributions of women: "Women, I think, have a capacity to care for others, to see beyond personal gain. Many women, I believe, are at their happiest & best when they are serving. I myself am at my happiest & my best when I am serving."
On corruption: "Today's African leaders are comparable to the African slave barons who facilitated the capturing & selling of millions of their fellow blacks to distant lands where they were subjugated into slavery, only today they are subdued within their own borders."
On the impact of the Nobel Prize: "The message for Africans is that the solutions to our problems lie within us. The work we have been doing with the Green Belt Movement is a local response to a local problem."
On ethnic wars: "It is the threatened elitist leaders who are using tribes to arouse ethnic nationalism to cling to power. Such leaders speak peace while they are planning civil wars. In Africa it would be impossible for any community to train militia, arm them, kill members of the targeted communities (in full view of the police force) without the personal sanctioning of the Heads of States who are also the Commanders-in-Chief."
On Third World debt:
"The people who are really being punished are the poor people who never
received that money to begin with. Those who did business with our leaders knew they were corrupt, that they were not delivering services, that the money was stolen
& stashed away. Yet when you request cancellation (of debts), people want to pretend that you got that money."
On AIDS: "I may not be able to say who developed the virus but it was meant to wipe out the Black race. I cannot prove this but everybody knows that there are biological weapons. America invaded Iraq because they believed such weapons existed. Why is the rest of the world just watching, doing nothing while Africans are being wiped out?"
(Maathai denies this statement, but told TIME magazine: "I have no idea who created AIDS & whether it is a biological agent or not. But I do know things like that don't come from the moon. I have always thought that it is important to tell people the truth, but I guess there is some truth that must not be too exposed." Official website states: "I neither say nor believe that the virus was developed by white people in order to destroy the African people. Such views are wicked & destructive.")
On people power: "We must never lose hope. When any of us feels she has an idea or an opportunity, she should go ahead & do it. I never knew when I was working in my backyard that what I was playing around with would one day become a whole movement. One person can make the difference."
NPR interview; official website; Greenbelt Movement; Fabulous African Imports
Posted by Jeff at March 16, 2005 04:01 PM
Comments
On Andrew Lloyd Webber: "Let's cut the crap. I want that man out of my life toute de suite. I do not want my life made into a musical, and I do not want that fellow Rice mucking up my words. Please, somebody stop this man. Seriously."
Posted by: Esther Wilberforce-Packard at March 16, 2005 04:20 PM
Wonderful profile Jeff. If only there was an ounce of her courage and vision in all of Africa; things might turn around. Here's to hoping...
Posted by: TF6S at March 16, 2005 04:26 PM
So if, as Genesis says, God created the first woman after the first man, does that mean that men don't need women but women can't survive without men?
Posted by: Jonathan at March 16, 2005 04:34 PM
Jeff, this was a great piece. With some slight and possibly moot reservations to her cited economic statements (“…equitable distribution of resources”), she should be an example to pull the rest of Africa out of its despair and serve as an admonishment to what I believe is still a very strong sense of racism and colonialism around the world with regard to the unique and priceless people of Africa.
Also thanks for the great imports link. There are a few really great African art shops here in my area, but I always enjoy checking new stuff out.
Posted by: Martin at Blogbat at March 16, 2005 06:54 PM
Well, I don't get any sense she's an ideologue, & she's a strong proponent of grass-roots DIY activism. "Equitable distribution" shades differently in a dictatorship like Kenya, where a thug like Moi steals the country blind.
I'm not sure what to make of her strange statements about HIV, but her approach to AIDS in Africa is very practical
Posted by: beautifulatrocities ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 16, 2005 07:45 PM
Hopefully she'll get to be Kenya's Yusckenko.
Posted by: Martin at Blogbat at March 16, 2005 08:43 PM
Wow, Jeff. Incredible reading and information here. Thanks for posting it.
Posted by: Rae at March 16, 2005 08:49 PM
Thank you for another great post.
Posted by: Susan at March 16, 2005 09:14 PM
Terrific piece, informative and inspiring (aside from those unfortunate AIDS comments). Nice to see that the Nobel Committee can actually get it right from time to time. I really wish I could believe Esther Wilberforce-Packard was quoting her accurately, but that would be just too good to be true.
Posted by: utron at March 16, 2005 09:36 PM
I saved a copy of the entirety of her comments on AIDS (before they disappeared in the memory hole). You can check them out here.
Posted by: Dave Schuler at March 17, 2005 08:02 AM
"If a doctor operating an HIV Aids infected patient puts on three pairs of gloves when operating, how is just one condom is expected to prevent the disease"
-that was an interesting statement, on the other hand, most people who are involved in intimate activity aren't working around sharp objects.
Good digging, Dave. It's interesting. I wouldn't say it's over-the-top, but there might be a lot of emotion behind it too. I'm not ready to designate her a moonbat for it just yet.
Posted by: Martin at Blogbat at March 17, 2005 08:30 AM
It's odd, but she's publicly repudiated those sentiments.
Posted by: beautifulatrocities at March 17, 2005 08:38 AM
test
Posted by: beautifulatrocities at March 17, 2005 11:25 AM
Wow, she was getting ridiculed along with the Nobel committee for the trees planting. I'm glad you clarified that. I like her.
BTW, you passed the test.
Posted by: Gordon at March 17, 2005 01:26 PM