Dr. Wangari Maathai Plants a Forest by Rebel Girls

Author:Rebel Girls
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Timbuktu Labs
Published: 2020-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Wangari was part of a group called the National Council of Women of Kenya—NCWK for short. It was made up of women across the country who wanted to help Kenya and their communities. She knew that if any group of people could figure out how to fix the problems in the countryside, this would be the one.

One Saturday, they squeezed into the tiny office that housed their many projects. A tower of papers began to topple, but Wangari caught it just before it fell. Another woman looked for a place to put a stack of books. Finding none, she set them in her lap with a sigh.

Wangari described what she had seen in Ihithe. Most had heard similar things from relatives around the country.

“We have to do something,” a woman named Vertistine said with a decisive nod.

Vertistine was also a science professor at the University of Nairobi and one of Wangari’s closest friends. She went by the nickname Vert. She was a black American woman who had moved to Nairobi with her Kenyan husband, and she spoke in an honest way that Wangari liked.

“I always ask my students, ‘What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?’ ” Vert said. “Let’s do that here. What’s the real problem facing these communities?”

“Is it that they don’t have enough money?” someone said.

“The villages have always been poor, but never like this,” said another woman.

“Should we donate food?”

“No, we should raise money.”

While the women debated, Wangari’s mind was working. The people and animals were sick because they didn’t have enough food. They didn’t have enough food because the land was not healthy, and the land had gone bad because the streams had dried up. And all that had started when they chopped down the trees.

“Trees!” she said suddenly. The other women looked at her, startled and a bit confused.

“Wangari?” Vert said. “Are you all right?”

Wangari stood up and raced to a blackboard in the corner. She drew a diagram like the one she remembered from her childhood textbook, but with arrows pointing to the center instead of around in a circle.

“Every problem comes back to one thing,” she said, scribbling furiously. “The women need firewood to cook. They need food for their cattle and goats. They need shade, and fresh fruits, and healthy streams and soil to grow their crops. And what provides all that?” She put down the chalk and stepped away from the board. In the center of her notes she had drawn a giant tree.

The room was quiet.

“Who’s going to go around planting all these trees?” a woman asked, folding her arms across her chest.

“We will,” Wangari said. “The women of Kenya. We’ll teach other women how to do it. Who knows this land better than the women who have been living on it for generations?”

“We could even pay them for every tree they keep alive, help them earn a bit of money for their families,” Vert said. Wangari smiled. Her friend got it. She always did.

Some of the women still looked doubtful.

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