Politics and Society
Wangari Maathai Foundation aims to keep her spirit and values alive with KSh4 billion museum
Wangari Maathai may have passed on four years ago last Friday, September 25th, but it’s highly unlikely the spirit and the common sense that the founder of the award-winning Greenbelt Movement (GBM) embodied will die very soon.
Evidence that Wangari is still very much alive in spirit was apparent late last week when, for much of Thursday, the most trending tweet in Kenya was @thelittlethings, from Wangari’s oft-repeated quote: “It’s the little things that citizens do that will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.”
The rest of the tweet posted by the Wangari Maathai Foundation called for a response to their query, “So what’s yours?”
“Within minutes, we received tweets from all over the world, including from Oprah Winfrey, Al Gore, Jeff Koinange, [former CNN-TV commentator] and so many other friends of my mother,” noted Wanjira Maathai, Wangari’s only daughter and a founding member of the Foundation (with her brothers Waweru and Mutu) that aims to keep the spirit, vision and environmental values of Africa’s first female Nobel laureate alive by various means.
The most ambitious of them is the Wangari Maathai House which Wanjira says will be built on six acres of the land in Hardy-Karen that Wangari and GBM bought with a grant from CARE Austria to construct the GBM Training Centre.
“It was after the Kenya Government gave my mother and GBM 24 hours to get out of the NCWK [National Council of Women of Kenya] house on Moi Avenue,” said Wanjira, who recalls how, after that incident, GBM operated out of their house in the Nairobi suburb of South C.
Photo: Wild Rooster
Eventually, through Wangari’s fundraising, GBM was able to move to Kilimani, (another Nairobi suburb) where it still operates from today. The Austrians had given the grant for GBM to buy its own place, but when they heard Wangari had already solved that problem, they suggested she buy something else for GBM with the same funding.
“That is how in 1996 she was able to buy the land where we plan to construct the Wangari Maathai House,” added Wanjira, who suggested the House, effectively a museum, could cost up to KSh4 billion.
On the morning of September 25th there was a GBM march from Nairobi’s historic Jevanjee Garden to the Freedom Corner where Wangari was knocked unconscious by Kenya Police while marching in support of political prisoners detained by former Kenya President Daniel arap Moi. The march was the first phase of the commemorative celebrations of Wangari’s life. The following day, there was an Open Day, free for families, at Karura Forest, emceed by the popular Kenyan comedian Churchill. For the children, there was a treasure hunt in which the “treasures” were made out of recycled materials by Patrick Kibe of Kitengela Glass Trust. Later that afternoon, one of Kenya’s most popular musicians, the singer Juliani, gave a live concert in the forest to commemorate the way Wangari had led the people’s campaign which saved Karura from ravenous land grabbers.
But October 6th will be the Gala Night when the fundraising initiative for the Wangari Maathai House will take root as guests will get to hear about the concept, which already has a team of experts designing everything from the actual house, which will be as ‘green’ as can be, to the interior, which will be designed by the world’s leading museum designer Ralph Applebaum, to the sustainable waste management practices and sustainable energy practices, including solar panels, water recycling, and “passive” ventilation and lighting.
Photo: Wild Rooster
“It’s passive in the sense that the house will be constructed to maximize on natural ventilation and natural light,” said Wanjira, who like her mother, is a trained scientist, which is one reason she’s so good at explaining her mother’s holistic perspective on the interrelations between the environment, democracy and human rights.
“My mother used to speak about the traditional three-legged African stool as a metaphor for linkage between [environment, democracy, and human rights]. She would say that all three legs had to be strong in order for the stool to stand properly. If one leg was weak, the stool would be unstable and not serve its purpose,” said Wanjira, who noted that her mother was not just the first African woman to receive the Nobel Prize – she was also the first environmentalist and the first to bring together those three issues with a clarity and simplicity that everyone could understand.
“We want the house to embody all the values and sustainable practices that Wangari stood for,” said Wanjira, who had been a senior program officer at the Jimmy Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, before returning home in 2001 to assist her mother, whose one “small thing” has made her an example well worth emulating, but also a brand that has shown the world how one person doing one “small thing” can change the world.
