A Tribute to an Agent for Change and Nobel Prize Winner Wangari Mathai, by Dorothy Attema

VOICE FROM THE FIELD: A TRIBUTE TO WANGARI MAATHAI
By Dorothy Attema

My name is Dorothy Attema and I come from Kenya. Currently my work is to support and encourage the empowerment of women as agents of change for peacebuilding and development with IFOR/WPP. On the 25th of September, 2011 Maathai Wangari died of cancer. The news about Wangari Maathi’s death hit me hard and made me realize how much she had contributed to clearing the path for me and other women and girls to be able to be agents for change in a world, which is still ravaged with conflicts, war and poverty.  This article will pay tribute to her and the fond memories I have of her.

You know the saying that ‘you do not know what you have until you lose it’? That is how I feel. Maathai Wangari was more than just an African, a Kenyan or a female Nobel Peace Prize winner and hero to me, she was part of my journey in to activism and a part of my life’s story. Please join me in celebrating her brave, unbreakable and persistent spirit. I thank God I lived during her time because she changed my generation by paying the price of being a role model for us no matter what the cost. 

I first heard and read stories in the newspapers about Wangari Maathai in 1989. She had written so many protest letters to many government offices and international bodies about a 60 storey building, which was supposed to be built in ´Uhuru Park´ (a recreational Park in the middle of Nairobi City). Due to her protest letters the project became the talk of the country and so many people had joined the protest. As a student then, I remember being very angry at the greed of the President. The deep anger and despair I felt was also because I wondered and highly doubted if Wangari’s efforts were going to make any difference.

I remember as if it was yesterday the face of a very angry President on TV calling her “wazimu” (crazy). “Women’s place was at home, cooking” he said. I looked at the President with all the government machinery and then looked at Wangari, so simple, and I really didn’t think her efforts would yield anything. Finally there was so much pressure on the government and the investors chickened out and left! To this day I am still amazed at how Wangari did it. She then became a household name. She had proven a woman can make a difference against all odds.

Somewhere inside me something was born – courage and confidence: It was possible for me to make a difference too. In college I became the most outspoken girl about injustices. I remember the President of our University being very surprised at my out-spokenness. Our demands were granted every time we spoke out and this confirmed to me yet again that though the society did not give women a chance, I could make a difference like Wangari did.

In 1992 Wangari was yet to graduate my thinking to a different level. By this time Kenya was going to have the first “democratic” elections but there was great resistance from the government.  Wangari again came to the headlines for exposing a list of names, including hers, of people who were supposed to be assassinated. She knew the government would come to arrest her, so she barricaded herself in her house for three days and the police could only get to her in the most dramatic way! They came with machines to cut off the grills from the windows of her house so that they could get in. It was such a national spectacle with tens of policemen surrounding her house. There was hope and excitement in the air, I would wake up in the morning and first thing I would do is follow her story in the media.

But the biggest story of my generation in Kenya was yet to unfold (Though many Kenyans do not talk about it anymore)! On the 28th of February 1992, while still out on bail, Wangari went to join a group of elderly mothers from the rural areas who were on hunger strike to pressurize the government to release their innocent sons who were languishing in jail as political prisoners. The hunger strike was at a corner of Uhuru Park which is now called ‘Freedom Corner’. Immediately the government learned Wangari had joined the mothers (a handful of women, less than 10) the President was nervous, and he decided to go stop her no matter how. So a track (truck??) full of policemen was sent to the freedom corner where they were sited. The police men threw tear gas at them and then pounced on them hitting them with clubs (three were hospitalized after the incident). This is when it happened! The unthinkable! Wangari persuaded the women to strip naked in a traditional expression of protest to the violence. And they did it! They all stripped naked and the policemen ran away! I remember how sad the whole country was blaming former President Moi for pushing these elderly women to a point of stripping naked.

Wangari Maathai was fearless; I remember her insisting on signing her police report with blood from her head wound which the very police had inflicted on her. Long before the world knew her, she again graduated my thinking to the next level by supporting these poor illiterate mothers whose sons were all released from prison. If women stand together they can make a difference, no matter what their status.

When I left college I joined the pro-democracy movement and started holding civic education trainings in churches in remote villages of the central province of Kenya. By then you could only hold any kind of meeting without a permit in churches. Every time I would come out from such a meeting there would be two policemen standing outside waiting for me. They would not talk to me but they would make sure that I would see them following me. I remember the first time I realized that I was being followed by policemen I was gripped by fear. But then I thought to myself if they could not kill Wangari and the other women, who were doing more than I was, then all they wanted was to just intimidate me. Instead of fear, courage arose in me and I have never looked back. Wangari had opened the door of courage and fearlessness in me. She demonstrated that women are agents of change for me in so many levels.

Nicola Graydon (Ecologist Magazine, 2005) writes the following to describe Wangari:
‘Her [Wangari Maathai] gestures have often been flamboyant, in-your-face protests, unthinkable for most women in Kenya’s traditional, patriarchal society. She broke taboos, risking ostracism and derision in the process. In 1992 she persuaded other women to strip naked in downtown Nairobi. She said that in taking off their clothes, the women ‘resorted to something they knew traditionally would act on the men… They stripped to show their nakedness to their sons. It is a curse to see your mother’s naked’.