Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)

by Maathai, Wangari

  What the foresters were saying didn't seem right to me. You might need a diploma to understand a tree's growth and what the content of the seedling was, but I didn't believe the women needed all the technical knowledge the foresters were dispensing to plant trees successfully. All they needed to know was how to put the seedling in the soil and help it grow, and that didn't seem too hard. Anybody can dig a hole, put a tree in it, water it, and nurture it.

  In any case, these women were farmers. They were putting things in the ground and watching them grow all the time. Like them, I too had seen and planted seeds ever since I was a child. So I advised the women to look at the seedlings in a different way. “I don't think you need a diploma to plant a tree,” I told them. “Use your woman sense. These tree seedlings are very much like the seeds you deal with— beans and maize and millet—every day. Put them in the soil. If they're good, they'll germinate. If they're not, they won't. Simple.”

  And this is what they did. The good ones germinated and the bad ones didn't, and the ones that did looked exactly like the trees planted by the foresters! This showed us we were on the right track. Soon the women started showing one another, and before we knew it tree nurseries were springing up on farms and public land around the country. These women were our “foresters without diplomas.”

  As we went along, we constantly examined what we were doing, looking to change what didn't work as well as it could and refine what did and make it even more effective. At first, we gave the women seeds, but that made the women too dependent on us. It also meant that we'd be growing the same kinds of trees around the country. Just as we did not want exotic species instead of native trees, we also wanted, as in nature, a diversity of species and not millions of the same trees spread across Kenya. So we told the women to collect seeds in the forests and their fields and try to grow trees native to their area. We also encouraged them to experiment with different ways of ensuring the seedlings’ survival. In addition, we gave the women containers to retain the soil around the seedlings as they grew and when they were transplanted.

  Not surprisingly, the women were incredibly resourceful. They used the technology they had available and they used it well. Sometimes they laid their seedbeds on the ground and sometimes they filled broken pots with soil and placed them in a high spot out of reach of their chickens and goats, who might eat the growing trees. The women also used old pots or cans with holes punched in them to water their seedlings. I encouraged this innovation and constantly asked them to think of new ways to do things and not wait for some “official assessment” to take place.

  We also gave the women an incentive. “Whenever a seedling that you have raised is planted,” I told them, “the movement will compensate you.” This was a small amount—the equivalent then of four U.S. cents a tree—but it provided a lot of motivation. After all, these were poor women who, even though they were working all the time— tending crops and livestock, gathering firewood, carrying water, cooking, taking care of their children—had few options for paid employment.

  To help the women progress in a way they could handle, we developed a procedure with ten steps, from forming a group, locating a site for a tree nursery, and reporting on their progress to planting trees and following up to make sure they survived. “Do the first step,” I said. “If you do the first step and you succeed, let us know. Then move to the second step and the third. By the time you get to the tenth step we'll bring you your money. You'll have done a good job.”

  After the women had planted seedlings on their own farms, I suggested that they go to surrounding areas and convince others to plant trees. This was a breakthrough, because it was now communities empowering one another for their own needs and benefit. In this way, step by step, the process replicated itself several thousand times. As women and communities increased their efforts, we encouraged them to plant seedlings in rows of at least a thousand trees to form green “belts” that would restore to the earth its cloth of green. This is how the name Green Belt Movement began to be used. Not only did the “belts” hold the soil in place and provide shade and windbreaks but they also re-created habitat and enhanced the beauty of the landscape.

  Although I was a highly educated woman, it did not seem odd to me to be working with my hands, often with my knees on the ground, alongside rural women. Some politicians and others in the 1980s and 1990s ridiculed me for doing so. But I had no problem with it, and the rural women both accepted and appreciated that I was working with them to improve their lives and the environment. After all, I was a child of the same soil.

  Education, if it means anything, should not take people away from the land, but instill in them even more respect for it, because educated people are in a position to understand what is being lost. The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it. As I told the foresters, and the women, you don't need a diploma to plant a tree.

  7

  Difficult Years

  When we go through profound experiences, they change us. We risk our relationships with friends and family. They may not like the direction we have taken or may feel threatened or judged by our decisions. They may wonder what happened to the person they thought they once knew. There may not be enough space in a relationship for aspirations and beliefs or mutual interests and aims to unfold. For a couple, this is particularly so because most people marry young and are bound to grow and change in their perceptions and appreciation of life. This is probably what happened with Mwangi and me.

  We were a young couple, both well educated in America, and society expected a lot from us. We both had demanding jobs (he in Parliament, me in the university) and we were raising three young children. We were under a lot of pressure. I was also facing the challenge of venturing into what was considered a man's world. Nobody told me that men would be threatened by the high academic achievements of women like me. But Kenyan society idolizes education and considers it a panacea for all other problems. Traditionally, society also puts more value on boys than on girls: Boys are provided education before girls and boys are expected to be greater achievers than girls. Therefore, it was an unspoken problem that I and not my husband had a Ph.D. and taught in the university.

  That societal attitude toward me in regard to my husband shaped Mwangi's view of me: He saw me through the mirror given to him by society rather than through his own eyes. He was a product of the times and felt toward educated women the way most men in Kenya did then. Society's perception was part of the problem. It placed constant pressure on men to behave in certain ways. Even if their wives had more education or more achievements, they were expected to demonstrate that they were in control of their households and were not henpecked by and under the control of their wives.

  People have ways of asking a man whether he is the one “wearing the pants at home,” and having to prove that he is in charge can put a lot of pressure on a man. Such pressure can intensify to the point where it eventually wreaks havoc on a young couple and a young marriage. But nobody warned me—and it had never occurred to me—that in order for us to survive as a couple I should fake failure and deny any of my God-given talents.

  I did not recognize the source of our discontent, but looking back, I can see that tensions began early and they were often precipitated by trivialities. For instance, when we were married, I did not want to change my last name to his and continued to use my surname. This was because, besides the fact that I had a number of important documents in my surname, traditionally a Kikuyu woman retained her surname after marriage and I was aware of that. She would be called her father's daughter or by the name of her children—that is, “Mama Waweru” or “Mama Wanjira” or “Mama Muta”—to emphasize the value given to motherhood.

  The practice of using the title “Mrs.” after marriage, followed by the husband's surname, was introduced by the British and I didn't see why I had to adopt it. True, that is what everybody else in the emerging elite class did, and not doing it seemed to sugge
st that I did not quite love Mwangi and his family. Largely to demonstrate that this was not the case, I agreed, but put a hyphen between the two surnames. Eventually I stopped using the hyphen and even dropped my maiden name for day-to-day correspondence.

  When marriages fail, maturity and thoughtfulness take a backseat and emotions drive you forward. Even though I held out hope we could make it work—at least for the sake of the children, who were very small at the time—by the mid-1970s I knew that our marriage was not going well and that we could be facing difficult moments ahead.

  But all marriages have challenges and I thought that we would find our balance.

  Then one day in July 1977, I came back to the home we shared and, although I was used to Mwangi's going away on long business trips and not coming home at the end of each day, the minute I walked into the house, I could tell that things were different: There was packing material on the floor, some of the paintings on the walls were missing, and curtains, the record player, the television, and other furnishings were gone. I walked through the house and, sure enough, saw that Mwangi had taken many of the material possessions he brought to the marriage, including his clothes and special gifts from his friends.

  “What happened?” I asked the woman who cared for the children and assisted with the housework. “Papa Mathai packed all his things in his car and left,” she replied.

  I was stunned. This was real: Mwangi had made a decision to leave me. I sat down to listen to myself and reflect on the hurricane of emotions now quickly building inside me. In an instant, I ran through our life together: our courtship and wedding, the joys when the children arrived, the laughter, the quarrels and tears and now … this! I replayed the past like a film, my eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

  Then a strong force pulled me out of my chair to look for a broom. “Sweep!” an inner voice ordered me. I obeyed and walked to the kitchen, found a broom, and started sweeping the rubbish Mwangi had left behind. I swept in the kitchen and moved into the living room and then the bedroom. I swept the corridors, and out the main door I swept the dust that had been laid bare when Mwangi packed his things. As I swept, I began to realize that this might be it, that he had gone and that he might not come back. And if he did come back, what would I do?

  As I swept the last bit of dust, I made a covenant with myself: I will accept. Whatever will be, will be. I have a life to lead. I recalled words a friend had told me, the philosophy of her faith. “Life is a journey and a struggle,” she had said. “We cannot control it, but we can make the best out of any situation.” I was indeed in quite a situation. It was up to me to make the best of it.

  The days that followed were very lonely and sad. I searched my soul constantly for reasons that Mwangi had decided to leave me. I knew that he would blame me for the failure, even as the public, too, would blame me: It is always the woman's fault. I thought I had done everything: humbled myself, helped with his public role, served him, and loved him. I had tried to be a good mother, a good politician's wife, a good African woman, and a successful university teacher. Is it that those were just too many roles for one person to excel in? Did I miss something I should have paid attention to? Where did I go wrong? Because of the nature of our work, did we spend too much time apart? How could I have done so much for somebody, only to find it had not been enough to keep him with me? How was I going to cope with three children by myself? These thoughts ran over and over through my mind.

  The children did not realize a tornado had just passed through our home. I told them nothing and very little of the turmoil going through me revealed itself to them. They went through their routine that night and then I tucked them into their beds. As I did, I looked into their innocent eyes and saw them searching mine. They had so much trust in us! “Everything will be all right,” I remember telling them as I bid them good night, trying not to reveal my feelings of insecurity and loneliness. The day was finally over. It had been only a few hours since my ordeal had started, but it seemed like an eternity. I went to my bedroom, turned off the last light, lay my weary body down on what was a big, cold, and lonely bed, and cried myself to sleep.

  The following morning I felt as if a close relative had died. You know your loved one has gone, but a part of you wants to believe that perhaps you are dreaming and the person is still alive. When you think about it, however, you realize it is clear that he or she has indeed passed away and you are overwhelmed by sadness. You step out of your house and you expect everybody to be sad and mourning like you, but you find that nobody else is. The sun has risen, as it always does, cars are rushing down the streets, and people are going about their business as if nothing had happened. You want to call out and ask them why they don't know your loved one has died or that your husband has left you, but you know you can't. You wonder how they can be so unaware that such an important event has taken place in your life. “They should stop everything and cry with me!” But they don't. They have no idea what you are going through. Indeed, nobody knows or even cares.

  I faced such a wilderness and an uncharted path. Yet I was not the first woman to face this loss, and I will not be the last. I thought about my mother—and how she had pulled through her own challenges, with no education or financial security and without the exposure I had had to wider experiences. She had spent many years apart from my father, especially during the Mau Mau conflict. If anything, I owed it to her to carry on.

  One aspect that helped me was that I had become a very independent person during the course of the marriage. Due to the nature of Mwangi's work and mine, and indeed due to my own sense of responsibility, I was making many decisions independently both at the university and at home. So when he left, very little of my daily routine changed, apart from what I did for him and with him. I still woke up in the morning and went to work. What I did at work stayed the same. At the end of the day, I'd come home and cook for the children, help them with their homework, make sure they had baths, and put them to bed. I kept busy. I didn't have to ask myself or anybody else, “What am I going to do now that my husband is not here?” I did what I always had.

  What also helped me during that time was an approach I developed through my work with the Green Belt Movement. “Look,” I would say to the people working with me, “we are on a track that has not been explored before. We are on a trial-and-error basis. If what we did yesterday did not produce good results, let's not repeat it today because it's a waste of time.” Trying to think this way helped me a lot when Mwangi walked away, because I could have been devastated—completely destroyed. But I had that attitude: If you have given something your best shot and it is still not working, then what else can you do? Nothing. In my marriage, I felt I had done everything there was to be done. I had not succeeded, but I had to stop blaming myself for the failure. I also had to steel myself not to accept the inevitable recrimination from the public. Besides, as I like to tell people, “Failing is not a crime.” What is important is that if you fail you have the energy and the will to pull yourself up and keep going.

  I did make one big change, however. In the house we had shared I found myself thinking too much about Mwangi. The family photographs on the walls, the chair where he sat, and his favorite cup all reminded me of him. I decided it would be good to start anew. The children and I relocated to another university-owned house on Rose Avenue. It was in a quiet, leafy neighborhood of Nairobi not too far from State House, the president's official residence. The house had a large garden where the children could play and the property had several trees, many of them already mature fruit trees. The children were happy there and enjoyed climbing the trees and eating the fruit straight from their branches. They also found wonderful friends among the local children and spent many hours playing in the compound.

  I sometimes wonder what I would have become if Mwangi had not left me—whether I would have followed the path I have. In some ways, his leaving allowed me to choose to take the direction I did. If he had stayed, things might have been very differe
nt: The path I would have taken would have been ours and not my own. There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments. In 1979, the estrangement between my husband and me led us to the courts. I was not ready for a divorce and had hoped for reconciliation. I wanted a family and didn't want another husband. But Mwangi did not share my feelings. What came next took me by surprise. Mwangi could have chosen to keep our divorce proceedings private, as I expected and preferred. But he decided to make them public, which meant that our dirty laundry—a member of Parliament and his wife divorcing—would be aired in the press and our problems would become material for speculation and gossip. I was not ready for that, either. It was devastating.

  Western-style divorce, like many other practices that were legacies of Kenya's colonial heritage, presented a contradiction in our lives. The legal process of divorce was foreign to our society and uprooted us into an alien sphere. It forced us into a modality of working through the courts while the community outside had very different norms surrounding marriage and family structures. We had to deal with both of these worlds.

  The court system then in place to deal with estranged couples made the situation more awkward and negative than it should have been. Divorces were granted only on grounds such as cruelty, adultery, mental torture, or insanity. Not surprisingly, such a system encouraged wild accusations and, at times, outright lies. But did the lies have to be so extreme, so deliberate, and so hurtful? Mwangi accused me of adultery, of causing his high blood pressure, and of being cruel. I denied all the charges, so we had to go through a mandatory trial.