Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)

by Maathai, Wangari

  But I have never been interested in what is not possible. “I'm going to plan,” I said to myself. “I'm going to make sure these people have jobs, or they will never vote for us again, because we've broken our promise.” When Mwangi won the election, I was proud of his achievement. I was in the speaker's gallery when he took his oath of office and was genuinely happy for him. I knew that he was happy, too; he was now an honorable member of Parliament. After he had taken his oath of office, I raised the issue of his promises. “What are you going to do with all the people you promised the jobs to?” I asked. “That was the campaign,” he replied. “Now we are in Parliament.”

  “But they might not vote for us the next time,” I urged him to remember.

  “Don't worry, they won't remember.”

  I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “Excuse me?” I cried. “Of course, they'll remember! How can we face these people in another campaign? How can we walk around asking for their votes? Don't you think they'll ask, ‘Where are those jobs you promised?’ ” Mwangi told me not to worry. But I did. I refused to accept that we should break our promises so easily. Soon after, I launched a business that I hoped could provide many jobs and would incorporate the planting of trees. I called it Envirocare Ltd.

  Now, Lang'ata constituency contained many of the richest as well as some of the poorest parts of the city, including a section of the expansive Kibera slum. The wealthy areas consisted of huge estates with many large and luxuriant gardens. To me these gardens never looked well maintained, even though the owners of the estates employed servants to look after them throughout the year. I thought that I could change that. My idea was simple: Why not bring a whole army of men and women into these gardens and let them do everything that needed to be done, in one day? The owner of the house would come home to find his garden looking perfect and he would need only to call us again when his hedges needed trimming or his flowerbeds required tending or new trees needed to be planted. Furthermore, the owner could enjoy his garden by himself, without having servants wandering around it each day.

  Envirocare would employ people from the poor part of Mwangi's constituency, who needed jobs, to keep happy the richer members of the constituency, who could afford to employ them. They would also plant seedlings in parts of the city that were bare of trees. In the process we would create a beautiful Nairobi! It seemed to me a perfect solution, and I thought the wealthy people would support it. Envirocare would be located in our house, and my idea was that, in addition to providing employment, it would become a forum through which Mwangi and I could listen and respond to the concerns of his constituents.

  During the campaign, a family friend who had campaigned for Mwangi with me introduced me to Kimathi wa Murage, a forester in charge of Karura Forest to the north of Nairobi—the site twenty-five years later of a standoff between myself and government forces. The friend explained to Mr. Murage that I wanted to establish a tree nursery so that the people in Lang'ata who needed jobs could plant seedlings. Mr. Murage told me I could start a tree nursery right next to his government nursery. So I hired a young man, Charles Githogori, to look after it and this became my first tree nursery. It gave me the confidence that I might be able to fulfill the promises made to the Lang'ata constituents.

  Unfortunately, Envirocare met with numerous problems. The rich residents of Lang'ata didn't seem to want lots of poor people wandering around their gardens, if only for a day or so. They seemed to enjoy their gardeners being around. In addition, when Envirocare was hired, the homeowners would not pay me in advance. This posed a problem since the people I was employing were so poor they needed me to pay them at least half of the fee Envirocare charged the homeowner and couldn't afford to wait to get their money at the end of the month.

  Whenever they were employed, I also had to cover the costs of transporting the workers to and from Kibera, where they lived. All of this meant I had to pay out of my own pocket, and I was not a wealthy woman. My husband thought my idea wasn't very bright and saw no reason to help me with the expenses. So I wasn't getting support either from the people I was trying to help or from the man whose promises I was attempting to keep.

  Still, I kept on trying to find a way to make it work. I decided that I could raise awareness and money for Envirocare by selling seedlings. As part of seeking a market for the seedlings, I decided to attend the five-day-long annual International Show that took place in Nairobi in 1975. The show is organized to highlight innovative approaches to agriculture and raise awareness of its importance to Kenya as a whole. I brought all the seedlings from the Karura Forest nursery and arranged them in the shape of a map of Kenya, drawing attention to the regions of the country where trees were desperately needed to regenerate the land.

  After the show, because I had no proper place for people to collect the seedlings, I used our home address as the location for people to pick them up. This meant that I had to keep all the seedlings in our compound, then on Kabarnet Road near Kibera. That's when my husband really thought I was crazy, because there were trees all over the house and yard. But while some people at the show expressed interest in tree planting, particularly on their farms outside of Nairobi, they did not buy any seedlings. Neither did they come to my home for them. So the trees just sat there in the compound.

  As you can imagine, this was dispiriting, but I still thought planting trees was a good idea and that people were interested in doing it, if I could just find a way to make it take root. Several things happened that enabled me to break through the obstacles I had encountered. By this time I had become good friends with Hanne Marstrand, who was then a friend of Maurice String, then the executive director of UNEP. Like me, Hanne was interested in the work of the Red Cross and she and I worked together to address the needs of Nairobi's growing population of street children. Hanne and Maurice later married and settled in Canada. When I discussed Envirocare with Hanne and Maurice, they both thought that planting trees in Kenya was a good idea. “That's what we're trying to encourage at UNEP,” Maurice said.

  As a result of our conversations and my work with the Environment Liaison Centre, UNEP made it possible for me to attend the first UN conference on human settlements, known as Habitat I, in Vancouver, Canada, for two weeks in June 1976. Habitat I examined the spread of cities around the world and the problems associated with this, including the creation of concrete jungles and air pollution from vehicles. One of the solutions the conference participants pointed to was “greener” cities that had more trees and vegetation in them. Among the speakers at the conference who most impressed me were noted anthropologist Margaret Mead, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and the British economist and journalist Barbara Ward. This was the first time I had been to a global meeting of this kind and listened to such inspiring women leaders.

  The beautiful surroundings of British Columbia and the engaging with people who shared my evolving concern for the environment were just the tonic I needed after the disappointment of Envirocare. I returned to Kenya reenergized and determined to make my idea work. Sadly, I also returned to a water shortage in Nairobi. Most of the seedlings died and the tree nursery collapsed. My husband also had had quite enough of living with trees everywhere he looked. Envirocare had run its course.

  The concept of tree planting, however, remained alive. In 1977, two years after the women's conference in Mexico City, the National Council of Women of Kenya invited me to talk about my experiences at the Habitat I meeting and shortly afterward elected me a member of its Executive Committee as well as its Standing Committee on Environment and Habitat. Within this setting I again proposed planting trees as an activity the NCWK could take on to assist its rural members and so meet the women's needs. The membership agreed and encouraged me to put my idea into action.

  A name was needed for this new venture. I wanted to place tree planting within the spirit of Jomo Kenyatta's idea of community mobilization, which he popularized in the national slogan Harambee! (Kiswahili for “Let us all pull together”). I s
uggested to the NCWK that we call our project Save the Land Harambee. My vision was that, instead of fund-raising for this initiative, the harambee spirit would inspire Kenyans, both wealthy and poor, to plant trees to protect our country from desertification. In so doing, Kenyans would also safeguard the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers from the Sahara Desert's spread southward and the drying out of land as forests were cleared.

  My father had also planted many trees on his land in Nakuru and

  Nyeri, so I may well have inherited my affinity for trees! Planting trees for the public good also echoed the work of pioneering organizations such as Men of the Trees, founded by senior chief Josiah Njonjo and the Englishman Richard St. Barbe Baker, which since the 1920s has tried to promote planting of trees in Kenya. This organization continues to flourish in Australia and Britain, but unfortunately failed to take off in Kenya.

  On June 5, 1977, Kenya marked the worldwide celebrations of World Environment Day with a procession and tree-planting ceremony organized by the NCWK's new initiative, Save the Land Harambee. Hundreds of us, led by a boys’ marching band, walked two miles from the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in downtown Nairobi to Kamukunji Park on the outskirts of the city. There we planted seven trees. Joining us at the ceremony were the mayor, Margaret Kenyatta, the daughter of the president, government ministers, local officials, UNEP's deputy executive director, and the NCWK's then chair, Eddah Gachukia, a nominated member of Parliament. A message from President Kenyatta was read and news about the celebration made the front page of the Daily Nation, one of Kenya's main newspapers.

  I thought that we should have a theme each time we planted trees, to enhance the meaning of our actions. Kamukunji was where Jomo Kenyatta and other leading politicians held rallies, and it was used for public gatherings. I felt that Kenyans of my generation had not adequately honored our forebears and tended to idolize the leadership then in office. This was partly the result of colonialism's trivialization of those who had been leaders before the British arrived or those who had resisted the colonial administration and fought for the restoration of our land and political and economic freedom, and whom the current leaders ignored.

  Therefore on that World Environment Day we planted trees in honor of seven people from different ethnic groups, all of whom were community leaders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Wangu wa Makeri, a woman chief from Murang'a, not far from Nairobi; Waiyaki wa Hinga, the Kikuyu leader betrayed by Captain Lugard in the 1890s; Madam Ketilili from Kilifi on the north coast; Masaku Ngei, after whom the town of Machakos is named; Nabongo Mumia, a visionary chief during the early colonial period; Ole Lenana, an outstanding Maasai leader; and Gor Mahia wuod Ogalo, a Luo hero. Among the tree species we planted were the nandi flame, broad-leaved cordia, African fig tree, and East African yellow wood. These seven trees formed the first “green belt.”

  Sadly, since that day in 1977 the fate of Kamukunji has mirrored the way independent Kenya treated its history and potential. Slums have overtaken the park and the grounds are no longer as clean or well maintained as they once were. Although the Green Belt Movement still has a nursery there, the trees we planted that day fell victim to vandalism and the surrounding population's need for firewood. Only two trees survived, but both of those have thrived and are now more than thirty feet tall and their canopies provide shade for local people selling goods and resting.

  In August-September 1977, during the United Nations Conference on Desertification in Nairobi, the NCWK organized delegates to plant our second “green belt” on a farm northwest of Nairobi in Naivasha that was owned by eight hundred women. Among those who planted trees that day were Josiah Njonjo and Richard St. Barbe Baker.

  We tried to establish the Green Belt Movement in many places in Kenya. After Naivasha, we went to Nyanza near Lake Victoria in the west of the country, and then to Ukambani in Machakos and Kitui, and Kajiado to the south of Nairobi—places that receive little rain, unlike the central region. None of these projects lasted for long. I learned that if you do not have local people who are committed to the process and willing to work with their communities, the projects will not survive. For instance, the Business and Professional Women's Association wanted to start a Green Belt group in Isinya, in Maasailand, the traditional lands of the Maasai people. Generally, this area is very dry. Since the rainfall would not be sufficient for the seedlings as they grew in the nursery, we gave the community two donkeys to use to carry water for the trees. But as soon as the Business and Professional Women's Association and I left Isinya, the project faltered. This happened not only because the people initiating it were not grounded in the community, but also because of the prevailing culture.

  Traditionally, donkeys were used by the Maasai to transport their household goods from place to place, not to carry water. So to suggest that donkeys be used to cart water—and to relieve the women of some of the burden of this work, which was also one of our aims— didn't make sense to the local people. Not long after we returned to Nairobi, I learned that the members of the community had decided that the donkeys could be better used and that the women could continue to collect the water! I knew that without the donkeys there would never be enough water to sustain the trees. This showed me that we needed to make local people feel invested in the projects so they would mobilize themselves and their neighbors to take responsibility for sustaining them. It also demonstrated to me that aspects of people's lives such as culture are very important: You may think you are doing the right thing, but in the local context, you are completely off track.

  By late 1977, news of the tree-planting initiatives had spread throughout the NCWK networks and soon farmers, schools, and churches were eager to set up their own programs. That was the beginning of communities themselves taking ownership of Green Belt Movement initiatives, and I have insisted on working this way ever since. It was gratifying that after so many disappointments, my idea was taking off. But it was still an extracurricular activity for me, on top of my job at the university, my other affiliations, and raising my children.

  Luckily, I enjoyed using my potential and I had a lot of energy: Then, I could move like a gazelle; nowadays my legs are giving way. I also had a woman who helped me take care of the children and worked around the house. It was, nonetheless, difficult for me to be in so many places: I was organizing and instructing and, when we decided to establish our own tree nurseries, I went out in the field with the foresters and created them.

  With the tree planting taking root, work and expenses increased. I was constantly asking friends and others to sponsor trees. Luckily, we were beginning to get support from institutions. I managed to get some money from the NCWK, and the Canadian ambassador to Kenya gave us a car for the project activities, while Mobil Oil (Kenya) was one of the few companies that responded to my requests for funds. It provided a grant that allowed us to establish another tree nursery in Nairobi.

  Within months, the tree-planting program became so popular that the NCWK was overwhelmed by the demand for seedlings. So I paid a visit to the government's chief conservator of forests, Onesimus Mburu, and told him our plans. We were thinking big: We wanted to plant a tree for every person in Kenya—at that time, a total of fifteen million. We even had a slogan: “One person, one tree.”

  Mr. Mburu burst into laughter. “You can have all the seedlings you like,” he replied. “And you can have them free of charge.” Now it is obvious that he didn't believe that we would ever exceed his supply of seedlings. However, only a few months later, this is exactly what happened. “You'll have to pay for them,” he told me when I asked for more. “You are taking too many seedlings from the foresters.” Then it was my turn to laugh. We could not possibly afford to pay for as many as we needed. We still needed the trees, however, and it was getting increasingly difficult to get them from the Department of Forests. Although the foresters had been supportive at the beginning, I sensed some professional jealousy creeping in as the women became more
efficient at planting trees.

  Initially, we had distributed seedlings through individual farmers and groups of women who went to the nearest forester in their region to take seedlings, and the NCWK would compensate the Department of Forests for them. However, we soon had to change this policy, partly because the foresters raised fast-growing exotic species and not native trees, which grow more slowly but are better for long-term environmental health. Many of the sites from which women had to collect the seedlings were far from their farms and they usually needed a way to bring their seedlings home. Complicating things further was the fact that the foresters didn't have money or vehicles to transport the women to and from the nurseries to collect the trees. In addition, when the trees were taken from the nurseries they lost a lot of soil because they were virtually uprooted. This meant a lot of seedlings died before they could be planted.

  Our solution was to create our own supply of trees. Most of the seedlings we grew were indigenous, although a few communities did plant exotic species, which they liked because they grew very quickly. We organized meetings where foresters talked to the women about how to run their own nurseries. But these were difficult encounters. The foresters didn't understand why I was trying to teach rural women how to plant trees. “You need a professional,” they told me. “You need people with diplomas to plant trees.” But, I learned, professionals can make simple things complicated. They told the women about the gradient of the land and the entry point of the sun's rays, the depth of the seedbed, the content of the gravel, the type of soil, and all the specialized tools and inputs needed to run a successful tree nursery! Naturally, this was more than the women, nearly all of whom were poor and illiterate, could handle or even needed.