Planting Peace: Tall Tale Woman Wangari Maathai

One of my great heroes is Ecologist Dr. Wangari Maathai. She's just the right person to think about in the summer as we watch our tomatoes send out little yellow flowers and pea plants furl and twirl their leaves up and around to pass out their pods.

First of all, her smile is as wide as the African plains and her eyes are as welcoming as sunlight glinting off a lake. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in East Africa. She's stood up to presidents, survived prison and discouragement, endured beatings and public shaming. To listen to her talk and laugh, you would not know it.

To fix up the dust-covered, rain-starved lands and the collapsing villages she visited in Kenya, she got the women and children planting back the trees that had once grown there. The trees and the people working together started to heal the lands and hold the moisture in till the rains began coming back to parched places. The Green Belt Movement she launched has planted over 40 million trees throughout Africa. Now that's heroic, tall tale stuff to me.

She's a giant, but she's a hummingbird as well. Listen to her tell the story of the hummingbird and the forest fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHtFM1XEXas

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee thought she was so extraordinary and groundbreaking in her work that it awarded her a Peace Prize in 2004. She said:
“Through the Green Belt Movement, thousands of ordinary citizens were mobilized and empowered to take action and effect change. ... They learned to overcome fear and a sense of helplessness and moved to defend democratic rights.”

Trees growing into united voices, growing into listening, growing into peace. But not enough, trees or peace. Africa needs more. The world needs more.

Elected to Kenyan Parliament, Maathai has been a leader in her country and active with women's rights, conflict resolution, and peace-making in the United Nations and the world at large.

Amazing just isn't a big enough word for her. She asks us all to be hummingbirds and just do what we can, where we are, with what we have. So plant a tree. Plant a few. Join with some others and plant a million.

You can read all about her in a new children's book: Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola.

For more on Maathai and her Green Belt Movement, check their website: http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/a.php?id=90

Hear her speak on her work and her faith "Planting the Future" http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/plantingthefuture/
PBS ran an independent film on her in spring 2009 "Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai" :http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/takingroot/

You can a short clip of Wangari Maathai's "disobedience" to men for what she believed was right: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x295229

For a short sum up of her accomplishments:
http://www.america.gov/st/democracyhr-english/2009/March/20090309102117ebyessedo0.1575891.html