I reread Wangari Maathai's memoir Unbowed: One Woman's Story and i pause to reflect on her words, as she agitated for equal pay:
"…sometimes you have to hold on to what you believe in because not everybody wishes you well or will give you what you deserve - not even your fellow women. Indeed, I found myself wanting to be more than the equal of some of the men i knew. I had higher aspirations and did not want to be compared with men of lesser ability and capacity. I wanted to be me". p. 117
When a friend recently asked me: Who is the Wangari Maathai of our generation? I hmm'd and ee'd and came up blank. It is not to say that there are no passionate women environmentalists out there. Rather, it is the scale of Wangari Maathai's commitment that defines her powerful legacy. She did the legwork. She made huge sacrifices. She did not stand around hoping that someone else would be brave enough to rally to the call. She stepped up and did her little thing with a big heart!
She was relentless in her vision of environmental protection and upholding justice to the point of harassment and humiliation by the State and ridicule from fellow citizen. She never gave up. She stayed true to what she believed was right. Her spirit was formidable even as many schemed to saw her down. She stood firm, like the trees she valiantly defended.
She breathed and lived her philosophy. Even her house, that we went by during our primary school days, was all green! Everyone knew her home was the one covered in foliage. Then we saw her speaking boldly against the oppressive regime, protesting with mothers of detained sons, even as brutal police beat her and pulled out her braids, being jailed…and everyone said she was crazy.
In classic female persecution, attacks against her had little respect for her person or cause. Her private life was dissected in public in the misguided belief that it would break her. They forgot she was the buried seed that would sprout, and continue to do so in many generations after her. She bore the marks of a great visionary: leading in service and inspiration.
"I knew that the government was using me as a mirror in which other women would look at themselves. They were being asked to decide if that image was who they would like to be. Because i couldn't go into the women's hearts and tell them, "It's alright. I haven't done anything wrong. It's them, not me". It was okay for me to be called crazy and told i had insects in my head: That is the way people using their own mirror saw me. But i offered women a different mirror - my own. What is important, indeed necessary, is to hold up your own mirror to see yourself as you really are". p. 197
Wangari Maathai was a patriot whose life every Kenyan should be proud to refer to. She remains a remarkable example for girls and women on breaking away from the societal lie of female subjugation: that a "good woman" is one who does not rock the patriarchal boat and is not "bad-mannered" enough to dare speak up against injustice!
History never remembers good women. Nanjala Nyabola aptly reminds us of this in her article: Wangari Maathai was not a good woman. Kenya needs more of them.
