A Seed in Kenya
Wangari Maathai’s Greenbelt Revolution
The streams once flourished with water were drying up. The food supply was less secure. The walks began to get further and further to get firewood for fuel and cooking. Although it just seemed as if they were missing tangible necessities, there was also disempowerment and a loss of traditions which protected the community’s resources and an ideal of mutual benefit. The women of Kenyan were running out of ways to survive and withstand the future of their children and community. It was until one woman changed the world and lives of people in her home country when she herself became educated on environmental issues.
Wangari Maathai was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. She studied in Germany and the University of Nairobi, earning her Ph.D. in veterinary anatomy, where she also became a chair member in that study. She was the first woman to attain this position in this region. Wangari Maathai was also an active member in the National Council of Women of Kenya, later being the chairman from 1981–1987. This may just seem as a person who wanted to educate themselves to create a generous living for just them, but Maathai took this knowledge and went to her home of Kenya to advocate for the past traditions and tragic consequences of a third-world country.
Although she could have just remained in the United States teaching at a high-level institution with political, financial, and resource stability, Maathai felt the deep desire to save what was left of her home in Kenya. She did not just want to focus all of her energy on helping to find political stability or a reliable food source; Maathai wanted it all and all at once.
“Women needed income and they needed resources because theirs were being depleted,” Maathai explained to Peoplemagazine. “So we decided to solve both problems together.”
As an active member in the National Council of Women of Kenya, Maathai planted a seed in the councils mind that soon spread across an entire country. Women from both urban and rural communities came to Maathai with stories of their struggles to combat the negative effects of the governments involvement in deforesting the country for farmland. In response, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which in enlightened women on ways to storm to the frontlines and overcome Kenya’s environmental struggle.
Maathai’s idea was to get women in villages to plant trees in Kenya. Although it seems too simplistic to have an actual effect on an entire nation, especially an entire continent, Maathai found the perfect idea for a place so parched from living with nothing, that they could not even fathom turning their home into a world of abundant resources and safety. You see, a seed holds many opportunities. It is a wood for fire and cooking. It is a meal for your children. It is a business. It is an income. It is so much more than the labor that the pictures claim and just show poor people trying to make their village look nice.
As these women planted trees and saw how they too could provide a living for themselves, power for themselves, the future of Kenya in the eyes of women began to change drastically. They were not stuck in a home to create children to help them walk miles for food and water. Women of Kenya finally realized that they can create political stability. A secure food source. A future for their children!
Proving to be very successful, the movement is responsible for the planting of more than 30 million trees in Kenya and providing almost 30,000 women with new adaptable skills and chances in their new life at their new home all thanks to Maathai for her passion to change a world that did not think it had the ability to. Although Wangari Maathai passed away in September of 2011, her legacy continues to thrive through The Green Belt Movement.
