The character arc of Wangari Maathai
Born 1 April 1940 in the Kenyan highlands. Died 25 September 2011 in Nairobi. Between the two sit a girl sent to school when most were not, the first doctorate earned by any woman in East or Central Africa, a movement that put fifty million trees in the ground, beatings and jailings for confronting a government, and a Nobel Peace Prize. The line below draws that whole life in order.
Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who was Wangari Maathai?
She planted trees, and grew a democracy.
She grew up in a farming family in the Kenyan highlands, was sent to school when many girls were not, and did so well she won a scholarship to study in the United States. She came home with a science degree, earned a doctorate in Nairobi, the first woman in East or Central Africa to hold one, and became the first woman to chair a department at the University of Nairobi. It looked like a settled, distinguished academic life.
Then she listened to rural women describe their real problems: no firewood, no clean water, eroding soil, hungry children. Her answer was almost comically simple, and officials dismissed it as such. Plant trees. She founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 and paid ordinary women a few coins for every seedling that survived, and over the decades they planted more than fifty million, restoring the land and their own standing at once.
Trees turned out to be politics, because the forests were being cleared by the powerful. She was beaten unconscious, jailed, called a mad woman, and threatened, and she did not stop, linking the health of the land to honest government and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her line is worth reading for the size of the idea that carried it: something a child could do, done fifty million times.
The moments
Wangari Maathai's timeline.
The 1940s
Sent to school
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A daughter sent to the classroom when most were kept for the fields. She never wasted the chance.
The 1960s
Scholarship to America
Milestone, and it changed her direction. One of hundreds of East African students flown to United States colleges. She studied biology in Kansas.
The 1970s
First woman with a doctorate
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The first woman in East or Central Africa to earn a PhD, in veterinary anatomy.
Stay in the lecture hall, or the field
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: take the idea to the villages, taken, or keep the settled career. She said the simplest idea, planting a tree, turned out to hold everything: soil, water, women's standing and honest rule.
Founded the Green Belt Movement
Milestone, and it changed everything. She paid rural women a few coins for every seedling that lived. They would plant fifty million.
Her marriage ended publicly
Setback. A bruising public divorce and a fine for contempt. She kept the name and kept going.
The 1980s
Saved Uhuru Park
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She blocked a sixty storey tower planned for Nairobi's central park, and won, at great personal cost.
The 1990s
Beaten unconscious
Setback, and it changed her direction. Police clubbed her senseless at a hunger strike for political prisoners. She returned to the same park.
Attacked planting trees
Setback. Whipped and stoned by hired men while planting in a contested forest. The forest was saved.
The 2000s
Elected to parliament
Milestone, and it changed her direction. After the long fight, she won a seat with a landslide and joined the new government.
The Nobel Peace Prize
Milestone, and it changed everything. The first African woman to win it, for tying the health of the land to peace and honest rule.
Published Unbowed
Milestone. The memoir that carried the movement's method and her own long resistance to the world.
A UN Messenger of Peace
Milestone. A billion trees campaign she helped launch had already been met several times over.
The line ends 25 Sep 2011, in Nairobi. What it set moving has not ended: the forests she started are still spreading and the movement still plants, and every person told their idea is too small to matter is standing in the shade of her trees.
Your turn
Every story draws a unique line.
Hers took seventy one years and grew from one seedling. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about three minutes.
Sources
- Wangari Maathai, Unbowed: A Memoir, 2006.
- The Nobel Prize archive, nobelprize.org: the 2004 Peace Prize.
- The Green Belt Movement records.
- The University of Nairobi doctoral record, 1971.
- Wangari Maathai, The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience, 2003.