Close Transcript

The woman who planted 50m trees (with a little help...)

Wanjira Mathai, daughter of Wangari Maathai: My mother was often asked, “Were you afraid? You were fearless. How can you do all these things?” She said “No, I was afraid. But what needed to be done was so compelling that I had to do it.” She grew up surrounded by nature, surrounded by the beauty of nature. I also remember her describing her mother being a farmer, her mother grew all the food they ate. And then she goes away to school, to university out in the United States, and she comes back and joins the university as a very young member of the academic staff. She was struck by the issues that were being presented by women who were very much like her mother. They were talking about lack of fuel, lack of water, and lack of nutritious food. And everything they described she felt was connected with degradation of the landscape, “So why don’t you plant trees?” she asked them. Wangari Maathai speaking in 1984: The women here till the land, so it is important for them that they know how to conserve this soil. Wanjira Mathai: She founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to help women plant trees and at the same time begin to understand how to heal the land themselves. It’s 50 million trees now and counting. Very quickly the Green Belt Movement became more than just about planting trees, because we had an extremely dictatorial government and we had a one-party system. Public land was being parcelled out to the friends of the administration of the day, and so protecting these spaces necessarily becomes political. Karura Forest was by far one of the scariest battles. Wangari Maathai speaking in 1998: “People are showing a lot of anger because nobody knew the extent to which the Forest is actually destroyed.” Wanjira Mathai: It was vicious. she got very physically hurt, she was in hospital, but she survived. And so whenever she survived she knew it was time to go back and finish the work of saving the park. We are here in Karura Forest, one of the most beautiful urban forests in the world, and it is thanks to the Green Belt Movement and the efforts of my mother at the time that saved it. But she also was a human rights activist, a women’s rights activist. Wangari Maathai speaking in 2001: I have no idea where these policemen are taking me now. I have done nothing. To challenge the President and the party of the day, that was gutsy. Newsreader: “An ecologist from Kenya has become the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Wangari Maathai…” Wanjira Mathai: She just didn’t believe that it was her. For a while there she probably thought, maybe it’s a mistake, I don’t know. But it was one of the most amazing moments to see her enjoy the spotlight and the platform in a way she’d never had before. I think the whole day she sort of spent saying, “I didn’t know anyone was listening.” My mother died on September 25th 2011. She’s left quite a legacy I think, certainly for us as Kenyans, as women, as Africans, to believe in the power of one. I think the fact that one woman from Nyeri, in the highlands of Kenya, could be such a potent force for change, remains one of the most inspiring things for me.