Wangari Maathai

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand seven.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is the environmentalist and human rights campaigner Wangari Mathai.

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Known these days as Africa's Forest Goddess for her pioneering work fighting soil erosion and poverty across the continent, she's united her passion for the power of nature with a crusade for political justice.

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Born the third of six children in the central highlands of Kenya, the family home was a traditional mud walled house with no electricity or running water. Simple beginnings for someone who went on to be the first African female to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her Greenbelt movement, which through the decades has trained thirty thousand women to plant thirty million trees, is in itself remarkable, but that's only half the story. A perilous personal fight against political dictatorship, corruption, and prejudice is the other.

Presenter1:16

Every time you provide leadership, she says, every time you speak out, you expect you may suffer for what you believe in. So, Wangari Mathai, the the suffering has at times come perilously close to both you and your family. For neither let's talk about what you believe in. It is democracy, it is the environment. Where did those beliefs germinate?

Wangari Maathai1:39

I know that growing up in the countryside, green, freshwater, fast flowing rivers.

Wangari Maathai1:47

No poverty as we came to know it later.

Wangari Maathai1:50

that image of pristine environment must have been instilled in my mind so that later on when I saw the degrading environment, I was able to see it where many other people could not see it.

Wangari Maathai2:06

And then I had this um great opportunity of going to school when many girls were not going to school.

Wangari Maathai2:13

and eventually finding myself in the middle of America,

Wangari Maathai2:17

studying in college and getting education that was not available to many girls and boys at that time in my part of the world.

Wangari Maathai2:28

These are some of the images and experiences that I know.

Speaker 12:29

Movie

Wangari Maathai2:32

molded my mind and my thoughts so that when I went back to Kenya, I was able to see what was happening to my country both environmentally

Wangari Maathai2:43

politically, economically, and be able to respond to the challenges of that day.

Presenter2:48

Amazing that in that first answer there, you've just touched on this incredible journey that you have made through your life, and we will explore that in some good detail in a moment.

Presenter2:57

I want you to fast forward to the point at which you won the Nobel Peace Prize. How did you hear about that?

Wangari Maathai3:03

Well, that was very, very surprising to many people because the Nobel Committee was actually making a very historic decision to include the concept of sustainable management of resources and to link it with the need for the respect for the rule of law and human rights and respect for the diversity that is within our societies wherever we are. That was a very important decision. Now, when I was called to be informed that I had won, I had no idea whatsoever what was coming. And I must tell you, you almost don't believe it, actually. It is impossible to understand the impact it would have on your life. And it was almost like fate would have me facing Mount Kenya.

Wangari Maathai3:56

And for anyone who have been to Kenya and have seen this mountain, it's one of the most beautiful creations. It juts out from nowhere and towers up seventeen thousand feet. And for generations,

Wangari Maathai4:12

these mountains was a spiritual inspiration. And so as I reflected on the prize that I had been given, I watched that mountain and I knew

Wangari Maathai4:24

I was trying to save it from destruction, and I actually felt like it was smiling at me, but also at the same time urging me.

Wangari Maathai4:35

On

Presenter4:36

Tell me about your first piece of music.

Wangari Maathai4:40

Now, the first piece of music is a song that

Wangari Maathai4:45

I had when I was a child. It was very interesting for me that this very young artist, still in his uh thirties, I think, recaptured that song and in listening to it made me go back to my childhood. I I love it.

Speaker 45:05

Mo muedua guater guatera ire, gua tera i muadua guatere, guatera ire. Tetagan yamos ya geda kamueduare tuariak.

Presenter5:29

Eric Wainana and Rita Raiku, your name. I said in the introduction that you were born into this uh rural environment in the Kenyan highlands. Y your parents were peasant farmers.

Wangari Maathai5:41

Uh

Presenter5:41

Uh And your father's job was was to do what? What was he planting?

Wangari Maathai5:46

Uh well, most of the crops that were planted on the farms that I remember were the beans, grains such as millet and sorghum.

Wangari Maathai5:56

There were sweet potatoes, pumpkins, these were some of the crops that I remember seeing as a child.

Presenter6:02

And as you painted it a moment ago, th this environment of great rural harmony. You you played as a child among the the greenness and the lushness of the Kenyan highlands and and absorbed all of that as you were growing up.

Wangari Maathai6:13

Yes, I did. And I particularly recall.

Wangari Maathai6:18

the images of very clean streams very close to my household and how I used to go there and play. And I particularly like to recall this because it gives me the image of the kind of

Wangari Maathai6:34

curiosity and creativity that is that is triggered by the environment when children grow in a clean, healthy, natural environment.

Presenter6:45

Now, you were part of your father's second family. Uh your family were Christian converts, but they were still practising polygamy. I mean, to our Western ears that sounds like a strange setup. How did it work?

Wangari Maathai6:53

Especially.

Wangari Maathai6:56

Well, in the beginning it was uh strange because uh my community believed in polygamy. But when the Christians came, then they demanded that there has to be monogamy.

Wangari Maathai7:06

But the first Christians actually were allowed to to stay with all their wives. It was mostly the second generation that was required to be absolutely monogamous.

Presenter7:16

So you were part of the second family. How many families, if we can categorize it in that way, did your father have?

Wangari Maathai7:22

Well, he had four wives, but all of us considered ourselves as one family.

Presenter7:28

So you lived as effectively as one family?

Wangari Maathai7:29

Yes. And I sometimes actually look at it and say it wasn't perfect, but even what we have now is not perfect. Definitely there must have jealousies. In fact, even the word co-wife did not exist. What existed was a word that can literally be translated as the one I am jealous of. So I'm sure there were jealousies among the women. But the one thing I remember very clearly is that there was a lot of harmony for children and protection for children.

Presenter8:00

You were your mother's firstborn daughter.

Wangari Maathai8:02

Yeah.

Presenter8:03

And therefore, you pretty much lived in her pocket. I mean, you were there to help her.

Wangari Maathai8:07

I was yes, that was so typical uh a role for the first child, uh girl child, that you almost became like the second woman in the in that house. Uh we developed a lifelong bond, but not so with my father, because my father I knew my father was there and I was I felt very protected and that is important for a child, but I didn't develop a very close relationship with my father.

Presenter8:33

Tell me about your second record.

Wangari Maathai8:36

The second song is from a favorite artist, Harry Berrafonte. Now we go to America, we leave Kenya, we go to America. And I said earlier that I spent some wonderful time in America, and this was the time when Harry Barrafonte was singing his Caribbean Calypso songs and the feeling of the freedom, feel free and happy of the Caribbean region.

Speaker 49:04

You guys come.

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Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch!

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Yeah.

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Is a day o.

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We like come and we wanna go home.

Speaker 49:25

Is that day?

Presenter9:31

Harry Belafonte and Deo. So then thirty million trees planted by the Greenbelt movement. Do you yourself have a sort of a personal affinity with trees?

Wangari Maathai9:42

I think that, um

Wangari Maathai9:44

Again, going back to my childhood, I cannot think of my my life, my my experiences without seeing the trees around my home. The and I lived very close to the forest, the Abadea forest, and when I went up to the ridge, I could see Mount Kenya and almost between the two mountains. It was like one continuous forest, central highlands.

Wangari Maathai10:08

were an extremely well covered section of the country.

Presenter10:15

But as you were growing up in harmony with nature, this was at the same time as huge swathes of forest were being cut down. There was this deforestation programme going on in order to plant pine and and other sort of non native trees in Kenya. Do you remember any of that?

Wangari Maathai10:30

I remember the the bonfires. They were literally huge bonfires in the Abadilla Forest as the indigenous forest was burning. Of course, I didn't think much about it, but those bonfires stayed with me.

Presenter10:42

In those early days of growing up for you then, how much understanding was there by the people that you lived among that not just was the vegetation important, but it was actually vital to the survival? W was there a a an innate respect for nature?

Wangari Maathai10:55

There was no understanding. My people had come to appreciate the nature and appreciate the environment, but without a scientific base in terms of understanding that we cannot destroy this, that by destroying we shall destroy ourselves. But unfortunately, when they are confronted by scientifically based communities that tell them that you have been unwise, you need to

Wangari Maathai11:24

Exploit your environment. You need to harvest this environment so that you can make yourself wealthy.

Wangari Maathai11:32

then they would have believed. That is the tragedy of indigenous communities anywhere, because at that time, all of us had very little understanding of the need to protect the environment. That's why we are now looking back and we are saying, in hindsight, all this development has done a lot of damage to our environment.

Presenter11:53

Tell me about your third record.

Wangari Maathai11:55

The third song

Wangari Maathai11:57

is Malaika. Malaika is a Kiswahili word for angels. And what it is is is a very popular song, it's a romantic song. It's a a young man who who laments that he has this girl that he loves, but unfortunately he's a poor boy and he is not able to pay the dowry. And so he says, If only I had the wealth that is required, I would love to marry you, my angel.

Speaker 412:26

Maleka

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Nakupenda malaika

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Maleka

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Nakupenda malaika

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Ninge kuo mariwe.

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Yinge kuwa.

Speaker 412:55

Yeah.

Presenter12:55

Angelique Kijo and Malaika. You're an eminent woman of letters now, indeed, a a professor. By my reckoning you have around around about a dozen honorary degrees too. But as a girl from your background growing up in the nineteen forties, how normal was it to actually even go to school?

Wangari Maathai13:12

It was not normal for many girls to go to school at that time. It was assumed that uh girls did not really have a career. But my two brothers were going to school already. My older brother asked my mother whether I should not be going to school like them.

Wangari Maathai13:29

She w he wanted to know, is there any reason why I don't go to school? My mother's decision to send me to school after my brother asked her that question was um a life changing experience.

Presenter13:40

You were sent away to boarding school at one point, to a school run by nuns, and uh you converted to Catholicism, you were given a different name, you were instructed to speak English. All of these things sound like

Wangari Maathai13:45

So yeah.

Presenter13:53

An incredible artificial imposition to put on a little girl. Was that how it felt at the time, or did you feel you were bettering yourself by that uh change?

Wangari Maathai14:01

Well, that is the the the the amazing thing is that that was the pattern of the colonial period. But for your parents and for yourself, we really believed that we were bettering ourselves, and we did not appreciate that some of the aspects that we were losing were detrimental to our own well being.

Presenter14:21

I mean, you were clearly a very bright child. Did you rejoice in all this learning? Did you like being taught?

Wangari Maathai14:27

I loved learning and I think that is part of the reason why I was able to go on. I enjoyed learning and for me school was a joy.

Presenter14:35

And how now do you view that quid pro quo of of giving up the essence of your identity in return for an education? Has there been a journey of

Presenter14:46

Reclaiming the essence of who you are.

Wangari Maathai14:48

Yes, indeed, there has been in a journey. And one of the journeys that I personally took was to redefine my name. And because I had changed my name so many times, the women who attended my mother called me Wangari, and that's my name. And so all the other names that I was given to become first a Protestant Christian, and then I was given another name to become a Catholic, I eventually decided that you know what, I am who I was when I first came into this world. Everything else is an adjective, I tell people, my name is Wangari. And Wangari was one of the original names of the primordial parent of my community. So I love it.

Presenter15:31

Tell me about your next record, your fourth record.

Wangari Maathai15:34

The fourth record is by another lovely and wonderful friend, Patti Ra Bell. I love her because she brings in into my life the world of the music that sounds like soul music. And I loved soul music when I was in the United States. This is where I feel the African in the black Americans, how they are able to dig deep into their soul and bring out a certain heritage that they brought with them from Africa.

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I know the sunshine through the rain still survived.

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I can't cook.

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Every day is a new rule.

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In this journey of my life

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Bernie or

Presenter16:35

I CAN'T COMPLEN, SNUNG BY PATTIA LABEL, who indeed played at the concert to celebrate your Nobel Peace Prize. You were saying there one Gary Matthias. Let's talk about your experiences in America. You've referred to it a few times. You went on this

Speaker 116:42

Type.

Presenter16:47

Programme to America. Uh you landed in America as uh a young girl from Kenya, aged about twenty. About twenty. What struck you about America?

Wangari Maathai16:54

About twenty.

Wangari Maathai16:57

Well, I only knew about America from geography classes, so I knew where states were, I knew where New York was, but I had no idea what New York meant as a city. I'd never seen so many tall buildings. They seemed like they were touching the clouds. The elevators, the experience of these fast moving elevators, they were definitely moving faster than my stomach. And I would get to the bottom and hope I would never have to get onto another elevator again. So it was absolutely fascinating. Everything I was doing then was for the very first time.

Presenter17:33

But what about segregation? Because of course that was ongoing in America at the time. Did you experience any of that, any sort of racial prejudice?

Wangari Maathai17:39

Yeah, I I think that I was uh in a in a very protected area, but it is very, very important to say that segregation was full swing in America in the sixties. And we have one experience where we were trying to get a drink and we were told we could drink outside but not in the cafe. So segregation in America was in full swing, and I know some of my colleagues who had very nasty experiences because they were black.

Presenter18:07

What's the feeling of somebody when they're told that when somebody says to you, you can't sit down with the other people in a room and drink like they drink? How does that feel?

Wangari Maathai18:14

It is an experience that only people who have been marginalized and hum humiliated can understand. But at a personal level, you feel very bad. It makes you wonder what's wrong with you. So you begin to preoccupy yourself with who you are to try to understand why you are not acceptable, what is wrong with you. And so, of course, people will tell you point blank, it's because you are black, and then what can you do about the cells beneath your skin?

Presenter18:45

Tell me about your next record, your fifth record.

Wangari Maathai18:48

Now the the next record is very significant for me because this is the song that was being sung by Martin Luther King and his colleagues during the civil strife in America in the sixties. And it was everywhere we would hear it, we would sing it. And in singing this song, We Shall Overcome, there are many more things to sing about, not just color, not just discrimination, but also the way we deal with our environment.

Speaker 419:28

Holy

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I do believe.

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That we shall overcome some day.

Presenter19:49

Joan Baez and We Shall Overcome. And during that, Wangari Matai, you seemed uh deep in thought. You seemed in another place. What what were you thinking about as you listened to that?

Wangari Maathai20:00

Well, uh that song, every time I think about it, uh I can't avoid going back to the sixties and seeing the struggles of the black people in America. And that in many ways reflects the struggles of all the people in the world who feel oppressed, who feel marginalized. And I I remembered that um

Wangari Maathai20:21

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee sent this message in the year two thousand four, one of the issues that they raised was the fact that we must learn to allow diversity in our societies. We live now in an age of information and we are not so ignorant. So let us learn that we are one.

Presenter20:45

After you'd returned to to Kenya you got married and you took on the role of uh not just a wife, but a political wife. And political wives have to behave in a certain way. How difficult was that for you?

Wangari Maathai20:52

Yeah.

Wangari Maathai20:54

How difficult was that for you? That's very, very difficult, especially when you are also trying to be a professional woman and you have to do research, you have to study, you have to teach, and at the same time you ha you have a a young family and you have a a young man partner who is also trying to be a successful politician. So it was very, very difficult for me. Almost I had three jobs all at the same time.

Presenter21:18

And there was no role model.

Wangari Maathai21:20

Yeah.

Presenter21:20

Yeah. There was no role model as a young, educated mother and wife. You had to figure it out for yourself.

Wangari Maathai21:27

Precisely, it was completely uncharted. I was trying to be.

Wangari Maathai21:32

A professional.

Wangari Maathai21:34

But at the same time, I wanted a family and I wanted children and I wanted to raise those children with a man. I didn't want to raise children without a man. And at the same time, I knew that my man wanted to be a successful politician. And I knew that if he's not a successful politician, he'll probably not like the idea that I am successful, but he is not. So I was also trying to make sure that he succeeds so that he doesn't interfere with my own pursuits. That's a complicated cocktail, isn't it?

Presenter22:03

Cocktail, isn't it?

Speaker 422:04

Uh

Wangari Maathai22:05

I mean, it's difficult. Sometimes what we women are required to do, it's just a miracle that we survive. If anything happens in that family, it's you, the woman. It's you who is not accommodating. It's you who is too ambitious. It's you who is trying to be too much inverted commerce white woman. I was trying to be too much of a white woman in black skin. And believe me, it can be very difficult because look at me, I am as black as they come.

Presenter22:34

That is a very potent put down to to give to a woman like you, to lay that at your

Wangari Maathai22:39

Absolute it's so difficult and you don't know what to do then to prove yourself. I I felt like I was doing everything I could. Eventually, of course, um uh you know, things fell apart and but looking back really sometimes fortunately we we we remained friends and we helped each other raise our children. And today when I look back I say it was mostly pressure.

Wangari Maathai23:05

It was mostly pressure.

Presenter23:07

Tell me about your next record.

Wangari Maathai23:09

Miriam Makiba, as you know, is a South African artist who, especially during the apartheid years, was singing freedom songs and encouraging us in Africa to continue struggling. She left her homeland and did a lot of campaign against apartheid, but through her songs. And this is one of those songs where she tells us, keep your eyes on tomorrow, don't give up.

Speaker 423:37

Listening to conversation, listening to petal news. All I know is what I'm feeling, all I know is what I pray. Can't give in to what they tell me, can't give in to what they say.

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Oh no, no, he's

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Roll them up for long.

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Got me on my way.

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Damn.

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My eyes on tomorrow and my feet on today

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The road never for long

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I'm not winning.

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Eyes of tomorrow and my feet of tomorrow

Presenter24:07

Miriam Makiba and Eyes on Tomorrow. You had three children, as I say. In in a way, you you gave birth to your fourth child, the Greenbelt movement, around about that time.

Wangari Maathai24:14

How did it begin? Well, that is definitely like a a fourth child. Discussion with the country women is what triggered me because they were d describing a situation that was completely different from what I had

Wangari Maathai24:31

experienced as a child. And so I could see and I could experience from their descriptions that something very drastic was going wrong with our environment. Water was no longer clean as I knew it.

Wangari Maathai24:46

The soil was disappearing, and so rivers were brown during the rainy season. Instead of rainwater being retained in the forest and coming to us slowly in form of rivers, now the water was rushing downstream because there were no vegetab there was no vegetation to hold the water. So these descriptions gave me the inspiration where I told the women, let us plant trees.

Presenter25:12

The Green Belt movement then that you started saw you pitted for many years against Daniel Adrop Moy's regime in Kenya. Um why was it that you didn't both see eye to eye? What was it that caused so much conflict?

Wangari Maathai25:27

President Moy uh cruised all the democratic space that we had.

Wangari Maathai25:33

He reduced the country into a one party political system.

Wangari Maathai25:37

And he made it impossible to have any of the basic freedoms, such as the freedom to meet, to assess, to assemble, the freedom to express oneself, the freedom to associate. And that was at the same time the time when I was trying to bring women together and discuss and learn about

Wangari Maathai25:59

how the environment gets destroyed and what we can do.

Wangari Maathai26:04

Uh you were thrown into prison.

Presenter26:04

prison more than once. What were you actually arrested and found guilty of?

Wangari Maathai26:09

Let me say that I was always conscious of the fact that whatever I do I must not break the law.

Wangari Maathai26:14

But when you have a dictatorship

Wangari Maathai26:16

You'll be arrested anyway, no matter what you do, even within the law, because dictators are the law.

Wangari Maathai26:23

One time we were trying to stop the acquisition or the privatization of the Uhuru Park, the open space in Nairobi. We are trying to say that Nairobi as a city needs a large green open space. And so we would demonstrate, we would try to ensure that the construction does not take place. So you get arrested for picketing almost. The minute you raise your voices, you'd get arrested. But fortunately, I was very fortunate for two reasons. One, as I said earlier, I always tried to work on the side of the law so that I could always say which law did I break. The second thing is I had wonderful friends who were environmentalists, some of them in influential positions. So when they would inquire about me, the government was almost unable to keep me in jail because I had not broken any law.

Presenter27:19

Interesting, you mentioned your your important friends, your friends in high places, people like Al Gore, Kofi Anna, and have supported you and your work throughout the years. In a sense, that protection was vital because it meant that you couldn't be one of the disappeared people who are watching out for you.

Wangari Maathai27:32

People who are watching out for you. Yeah. And I I owe the um my my freedom to them. When I probably would if I had stayed much longer in jail, I would have broken been broken because there was so much torture in jail that I cannot say that if I had stayed there long enough, I would have survived.

Presenter27:53

Tell me about your next record.

Wangari Maathai27:56

The next record is um Mooney River by Frank Snatter.

Wangari Maathai28:00

Anyone who has ever been outside when the moon

Wangari Maathai28:04

is standing there almost like it is standing still, and you wonder.

Wangari Maathai28:09

What happens there? What will happen in the future? And for me, moments like that, I remember this song.

Wangari Maathai28:16

it brings tears to my eyes because in many ways it is romantic, but also in other ways it takes you into this huge vacuum of the possibilities, and you realize how small you are, how insignificant you are.

Wangari Maathai28:33

in this cosmos.

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River wider than a mile.

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I'm crossing you

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In style

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Someday

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Old a dream.

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Make a food.

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You heart breaker

Presenter29:06

Frank Sinatra and Moon River. Increasingly then, Wangari Mathai, your your battles have been fought in the political arena. In two thousand and two you were elected to Parliament, you were made deputy minister for the environment. What changes have you been able to make?

Wangari Maathai29:21

But I'm happy to have been part of that wave.

Wangari Maathai29:24

that eventually got rid of the previous administration, which, as I said, had been there for twenty-four years.

Wangari Maathai29:31

And I was very excited to be for the first time part of the government and being inside rather than outside.

Wangari Maathai29:38

And one of the activities that we in my Ministry of Environment that we introduced was to say that all the forests are out of bound for people who were cultivating in the forest. And I'm very happy to say that that has given many mountains

Wangari Maathai29:55

Forested mountains, an opportunity to le self-regenerate and to start to heal themselves.

Presenter30:01

How difficult a transition has it been for you personally? Because if you're on the outside as a protester making noises about the changes that government needs to make, it is.

Presenter30:12

Of course not easy, but it's an easier goal than actually being the person making the laws, trying to enforce them, and bringing round political consensus that results in action.

Wangari Maathai30:22

One of the disappointments of being in the government, which I didn't know until I was in, was that there are two levels of ministers, that is the full ministers and there are what we call assistant ministers. What I didn't know is that assistant ministers really don't have any role in decision making. So being an assistant minister for me was very frustrating because you are not able to sit in the cabinet to persuade the government to pursue the policies that you believe are the best policies and which you have been working for all your life. Instead, another person who may not believe what you believe is the one who goes into the cabinet and eventually brings you decisions that have been made and which you either support or if you don't support, then you appear like you are fighting the very government that you are part of.

Presenter31:14

Do you think you're better at being an outsider than an insider?

Wangari Maathai31:17

No, I think it's very, very important to be an insider. You definitely can make more changes uh being an insider, but you definitely are better off as a minister than an assistant minister.

Presenter31:28

Tell me about your last record.

Wangari Maathai31:31

The last record is um Ave Maria, and it is really beautiful sometimes to just uh listen to music that is spiritual, that is elevating, because in the final analysis, no matter how much material things we we accumulate, no matter how much we worry, in the final analysis we are spiritual human beings, at least that's the way I perceive myself, that in the end all will come to

Wangari Maathai31:57

To an end, and then we shall be part of the spirit, part of the energy out there.

Speaker 432:15

God's the homeland.

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Are they a process of blessing?

Presenter32:33

All Angels and Ave Maria. Now, on this imaginary island that we're casting you on to, Wangari, we give you the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible. You get to choose one other book. What book would you take?

Wangari Maathai32:45

Well, you know, I was listening the other day to a video

Wangari Maathai32:49

and I was amazed at how many times the Koran

Wangari Maathai32:53

Talks about the environment. So I think the Quran would be a good book so that I can see what they say about the environment.

Presenter33:00

And to make life a little more bearable on this desert island, we allow you a luxury. What would your luxury be?

Wangari Maathai33:07

Oh my God, I think I'll choose I'll choose a basket of fruits.

Presenter33:12

Okay. So we'll give you a huge supply of delicious tropical fruits to give us a

Wangari Maathai33:17

Yes, yes, I would leave a happily ever after.

Presenter33:20

And now, if the waves were to crash to the shore and threaten to wash away these eight disks that you've chosen, which is the one that you would run to save?

Presenter33:30

Yeah.

Wangari Maathai33:30

What's it?

Presenter33:30

The b

Wangari Maathai33:31

Better.

Presenter33:31

Ooh.

Presenter33:33

Professor Wangari Matai, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Wangari Maathai33:37

Thank you very much.

Presenter33:46

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.