RP370 An African Hero

 RP370 An African Hero

If Kenya's Wangari Maathai kept a trophy case for her international awards, it would be as big as a house. Yet all these awards resulted from a very simple concept: the importance of planting trees.
Her story starts in 1940, when she was born in a small village in Kenya. Her early upbringing occurred in an area rich with natural beauty and wildlife. This taught her to love nature from a very early age. In 1960, she was one of 300 Kenyans selected for a special scholarship to study in America. Ten years of rigorous study later, she became the first East African woman to receive a doctorate degree.
Wangari Maathai was active in the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) in the 1970s. Her early work with the NCWK convinced her that the environment was the key to improving the lives of poor women.
Next, she put her theory into practice. She began planting trees in 1976 and established the Green Belt Movement in 1977. By 1986, her movement had spread to the rest of the continent. To date, it has planted over 40 million trees in Africa. As if that wasn't enough, their goal for the next decade is to plant over one billion trees worldwide.
Though Ms. Maathai's activism began with the environment, it eventually expanded into political matters. This got her into trouble with Kenya's ruling elite. Between 1982 and 2001, she was beaten up, arrested, forced into hiding, and even had to barricade herself in her house at one point. However, in 2002 democracy prevailed, and Ms. Maathai was elected to Kenya's parliament. The very next year, she was appointed Assistant Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources.
In 2004, Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her efforts to promote environmental protection, women's rights, and political freedom. It marked the first time the prize was awarded to an African woman.
Africa lost one of its most brilliant activists in September 2011 when Wangari Maathai died of ovarian cancer. She may be gone, but her message of political freedom and caring for our environment live on in the Green Belt Movement.