mama miti wangari maathai and the trees of kenya

As a member of the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK), she was also becoming engaged with women’s issues. She was very aware of the changes in her native country’s landscape stemming from the legacy of the British rule-massive deforestation and overexploitation of resources. Wangari was however more than just an academic. She then joined the university as an associate professor, and went on to become chairwoman of its veterinary anatomy department in the 1970s. But as she wrote in her memoir Unbowed: The spirit of freedom and possibility that America nurtured in me made me want to foster the same in Kenya, and it was in this spirit that I returned home.Īfter she returned to Kenya, Wangari continued her studies and obtained a doctorate in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi, becoming the first African woman in East or Central Africa to hold such a degree. She went on to earn a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Scholastica College in the United States, and graduated in 1964. She was always a star student she won a scholarship to study biology at Mount St. Cecilia Intermediary, a local mission school. She always saw herself as “a child of the soil”, growing up with her mother’s belief that trees were ‘God’ and should be respected accordingly, something she made the foundation of her life’s work.

Wangari’s childhood was spent in the outdoors, playing in the fig trees and the stream around her home, and helping her mother collect firewood for the household. Her parents were farmers, and she was the third of six children. Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, a rural area in the central highlands of Kenya in 1940. This week brings to mind the story of another greening movement that was the brainchild, and life-long passion, of an incredible woman named Wangari Maathai. It is a reminder of the critical role that vegetation plays in the conservation of water and soil, and thus of life itself. It is marked by the planting of thousands of trees, through community events. The first week of July is celebrated in India as Van Mahotsav or Forest Festival.

Mama miti wangari maathai and the trees of kenya