Dr. Wangari Maathai Plants a Forest

by Rebel Girls

  To the Rebel Girls of the world…

  Care for your beliefs as

  if they were seeds,

  then watch them grow.

  Dr. Wangari Maathai

  April 1, 1940-September 25, 2011

  Kenya

  CHAPTER ONE

  In the central highlands of Kenya, there grew a mugumo tree—a tall wild fig with bark as gray and gnarled as an elephant’s hide.

  Nearby was a stream that bubbled up straight from the earth. And that’s where, in 1947, seven-year-old Wangari Muta sat under the enormous leaves of an arrowroot plant and gazed into the waters at the reflection of her favorite tree.

  Wangari scooped a delicious drink of cool water to her mouth with her hands. Satisfied, she looked up to where the great mugumo’s branches unfurled across the sky. She remembered the first time her mother had brought her here.

  “Do you see this tree, Wangari?” her mother had said, shifting a basket to her hip and smoothing back the bright-red scarf around her hair. “You must never take anything away from it—not even the dry wood for a fire.”

  “Why, Maitũ?”

  “The mugumo isn’t a tree for people. It’s a tree of God. We don’t use it. We don’t cut it. We don’t burn it. They live for as long as they can, and when they are old enough, they fall down on their own.”

  Wangari had marveled, as she always did, at all the things her mother, Wanjirũ, knew about the way the world worked.

  Looking back at the bottom of the shallow stream, she saw sparkling beads of black, white, and brown. They were smooth and perfect, just like the beads her grandmother wore. If she could pick them up, she thought maybe she could string them together into a necklace. She reached her hand into the water ever so gently. But as soon as the beads touched her skin, they broke apart.

  What happened to them? she wondered, and not for the first time. She’d seen this before and was always surprised. Wangari knew that in a few weeks, the rest of the beads would be gone, too. Instead she’d see tiny tadpoles that would dart from her hands when she tried to catch them. A few days later, she would find the tadpoles missing. Only the occasional frog would hop nearby. It seemed like magic.

  She would have to ask her mother about this later. With questions swirling through her mind, Wangari gathered her basket, lifted it onto her back, and started for home.

  * * *

  Wangari lived in a village in Kenya called Ihithe. The path from the stream to her house led up a hill through a forest where elephants, antelopes, monkeys, and leopards roamed free. The soil felt sturdy under Wangari’s bare feet, and she kept an eye out for other footprints—and paw prints, too.

  “If you are walking on the path and you see the leopard’s tail, be careful not to step on it,” Maitũ had warned her.

  But Wangari was not frightened. The word for “leopard” in her language, Kikuyu, was ngarī. Wa-ngarī meant “belonging to the leopard.” If she ever found one, Wangari was sure the beautiful cat would recognize her as one of its own.

  As she approached the village, Wangari nodded politely at the women coming from the fields, their woven baskets brimming with roots and greens they’d plucked from the earth. The sun shone on her shoulders as she shouted and waved at other children who, like her, were carrying home their family’s firewood and water.

  Ahead of her on the dirt path, Wangari could see her mother carrying a basket of vegetables in her arms and her baby brother in a woven sling on her back. Her younger sisters toddled by her mother’s skirts.

  Her mother was the kindest person Wangari knew. She never yelled or said cross words. At the sight of her family, Wangari broke into a run, being careful not to spill the bouncing basket on her back. Together, they walked the rest of the way home.

  “Arrowroots! Thank you, Wangari,” her mother said as she set the basket on the lush grass outside their home and handed the baby, Kamunya, to Wangari.

  Wangari kissed her brother’s chubby cheeks. He giggled and gurgled in return.

  This part of the day was Wangari’s favorite. She loved when her family gathered around the evening fire, the setting sun throwing golden light over the trees and rooftops. They roasted corn and potatoes, and the smell was wonderful. Ihithe was a village of small houses with mud walls and grass roofs. The Kikuyu, Wangari’s people, always built their homes with the doors facing Mount Kenya. It was the place where God lived, Wanjirũ had explained to her children. As long as the mountain stood, it was a sign that everything would be all right.

  “Tell us a story!” one of her sisters said.

  “Yes, Maitũ!” Wangari echoed. She sat down with the baby in her lap, and the other children snuggled up next to her.

  “All right,” her mother said. She picked up one of the knobbly roots and began to shave away the tough bark with her knife.

  “One day, a long, long time ago, there was a terrible fire in the forest.”

  “In our forest, Maitũ?” Wangari broke in.

  “Not too far from here,” her mother said gently. “It was an awful fire, with flames higher than the tallest giraffe. And it was hungry. It moved through the forest eating everything in its path—the trees, the flowers, everything.”

  Wangari thought about flames encircling Ihithe, encircling her mugumo tree. She shuddered.

  “The animals ran to the highest hill and watched that fire gobbling up their land. The elephant and the leopard, the antelope and the lion: all of them, just standing there. Until someone said, ‘We have to do something!’ And do you know who that was?”

  “Who?” Wangari asked.

  “It was the hummingbird. The smallest animal of all. It flew as fast as it could down to the stream. It drank up all the water it could hold in that little mouth”—here Maitũ pretended she was drinking, which made Wangari and the other children laugh— “then flew back to that fire and threw all the water onto the flames. It went back to the stream, back to the fire. Over and over again.

  “The elephant could hold so much more water in his big nose”—Maitũ gave the baby’s nose a playful nip, producing a giggle—“but he didn’t move. The leopard could run much faster than that little hummingbird, but he didn’t move, either.”

  My leopard? Wangari thought.

  “At last the antelope cried: ‘Little hummingbird, what are you doing?’ ”

  Maitũ looked straight at Wangari as she continued, “ ‘I am doing the best I can,’ the hummingbird told them. ‘I am doing the best I can.’ ”

  The other children begged for another tale, but Wangari was lost in thought. What good was it to be big like the elephant or powerful like the leopard if you weren’t going to help when it mattered? Maybe she didn’t belong only to the leopard. She shared a name with the cat—and a spirit with the hummingbird.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wangari knelt in her mother’s garden and rubbed her fingers gently over the place where she’d buried a row of beans just the day before. She could hear the nearby thwack of her mother’s panga as it was used to cut through weeds.

  Crouching down farther until her nose almost touched the earth, she squinted at the place where she hoped little sprouts would be. Nothing. Maybe a bird had eaten them. Maybe she’d planted them the wrong way and they were growing upside down, searching for the sun. She had to know. She stuck her finger in the dirt and felt around for the seeds.

  “Wangari? What are you doing?” Maitũ stood above her, a basket of greens balanced on her hip.

  “I just wanted to see if it’d started growing yet.”

  “You have given your seeds everything they need to grow, my love—now you have to let them do it themselves. Come. Help me gather the peas.”


  Wangari always enjoyed helping her mother in her garden. A light rain began to fall, and she welcomed the cool drops on her skin as she knelt next to Wanjirũ and snapped big peapods off their stalks. She loved everything about the garden: the birds and butterflies that came when the plants were in bloom; the variety of colors and smells; the songs her mother sang as they worked together. She reached her fingers into the soil and scooped up a handful. It felt as alive as the plants that grew in it.

  She was still playing with her hands in the dirt when—pow!—a soft ball of damp earth landed against her shoulder.

  Her older brother was home! “Nderitu!” Wangari cried, waving joyously.

  Wangari was now eight years old, and Nderitu was thirteen. He was tall like their father, who was away working on a farm, and he had their mother’s kind smile. Nderitu went to boarding school in the town nearby, as many of the boys in their village did.

  Girls didn’t usually go to school—school cost money, and families needed their daughters at home to help with chores. But Wangari loved looking through Nderitu’s books, even if she couldn’t read any of the words. And unlike most of the older boys, who pretended they were too big to play with younger kids, Nderitu never complained when Wangari tagged along.

  “Go on,” her mother said. “Playing in the rain will make you grow tall and strong, just like the plants.”

  Laughing, Wangari and Nderitu ran down the path together, their bare feet beating against the packed earth. The trail led to the top of a steep hill overlooking a valley. When it rained, the hill was slick with mud—perfect for Wangari’s favorite game.

  She took a running start and slid down the hill in a seated position, shrieking as the world sped past. She tumbled to a muddy stop at the bottom, with Nderitu close behind.

  “Do you have hills like this at school?” Wangari asked when they’d both stopped laughing.

  “No,” Nderitu said. “I don’t even want to think about what my teachers would do if I came to class with muddy trousers! Besides, I have to study—there’s no time to play.”

  Wangari sighed. “I wish I could go, too.”

  They lay in the mud for a while, looking up at the cloudy sky.

  “I feel sorry for you,” Nderitu said after a while.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not as fast as me!” And with that he took off back up the hill, Wangari laughing and chasing behind.

  * * *

  A few nights later, Nderitu put down his bowl in the middle of dinner and said, “How come Wangari doesn’t go to school?”

  Wangari froze, a piece of potato halfway to her lips. Wangari looked to her mother, waiting for her to tell Nderitu to stop teasing and eat his dinner. To her surprise, Maitũ appeared to be thinking it over.

  “That’s a good question,” she said. Then she went back to her dinner as though nothing had happened.

  That night, Wangari lay awake thinking about that strange conversation. A few girls in the village went to school, but not many. It was silly of Nderitu even to have asked.

  Wasn’t it?

  * * *

  When she came back from collecting firewood the next day, the house was unexpectedly full. Her mother was there, and so was her grandfather. Her mother’s eldest brother, who they always consulted on important family decisions, was there, too. Wangari had the feeling they’d been talking about her.

  “Wangari,” her mother said, “we have made a decision. Your sisters are getting old enough to help me in the house. When the weather turns colder, you will be going to primary school.”

  Wangari sat back. School! She was going to go to school! She looked over at Nderitu, who was munching a handful of berries and seemed not to be listening to the conversation. She caught his eye and thought she saw him wink.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Wangari picked up her slate and eraser and placed them at the bottom of a wooden box her mother had brought home from the market. Wangari smiled when she thought about the first time she had used an eraser at Ihithe Primary School—how she’d nearly jumped from her seat as the marks disappeared from the slate like magic.

  That had been nearly three years ago. Wangari was eleven now, and an even bigger adventure lay ahead. She was going to St. Cecilia’s Intermediate Primary School in Nyeri, a boarding school run by Catholic nuns from Italy.

  Wangari had never spent a night away from her mother in her life, and now she was going to live in another town completely, in a dormitory with many other girls. She was leaving her garden, her village, her tree by the stream. Did they even have trees at St. Cecilia’s?

  “Wangari?”

  She turned to see Nderitu. He, too, was going back to boarding school the next morning, to a boys’ high school in the same town. Wangari tried to take comfort in the fact that he would be close by, even if they wouldn’t be allowed to visit each other.

  Nderitu held out a small parcel wrapped in newspaper. When Wangari tore off the paper, it turned out to be a dress just her size, in the same olive-green cloth as Nderitu’s school uniform.

  “I saved some money to buy fabric for new school trousers. And I bought a bit extra and had this made for you. I hope it’ll fit; I didn’t really—”

  But before he could finish, Wangari threw her arms around him.

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight to keep any tears from falling out.

  * * *

  At sunrise the next morning, Wangari got up and splashed cold water on her face. She lifted the box that contained all her belongings and slung it onto her back. Together, she, her mother, and Nderitu walked to the edge of the village. The siblings would make the four-hour walk to Nyeri alone. She would have to say goodbye to Maitũ here.

  Wangari had so much to say, yet no words would come out. How could she leave her mother if she didn’t know how to say goodbye?

  Wanjirũ lifted a gentle hand and placed it on Wangari’s forehead in blessing. Wangari closed her eyes and relaxed into the warm, familiar touch. She didn’t have to say anything. Her mother understood. Nderitu and Wangari did not speak for the first part of the journey. Wangari was afraid she’d cry if she opened her mouth. After an hour or so, they came to the widest river Wangari had ever seen. A wooden path stretched over the rushing water, like a road floating in the air.

  Wangari’s feet stayed rooted where she stood. She’d never seen a bridge before.

  “It’s all right,” her brother said. “It will hold you.”

  If she turned back now, she’d be home in time to collect firewood and could sit with her mother by the fire as if nothing had ever happened.

  But the rest of her life was just across that river.

  Wangari took a deep breath, kept her eyes straight ahead, and crossed to the other side.

  * * *

  The next day, Wangari sat in her new olive-green dress at a desk, looking out the window as she wondered what her mother and younger siblings were doing back in Ihithe. She felt a small twist in her heart.

  With a heavy thump, the teacher placed a textbook down in front of her, bringing her attention back to the classroom. When the nun’s back was turned, Wangari’s curiosity and excitement overtook her. She opened the cover of the book and breathed in the smell of the pages.

  She flipped through until her eyes caught on a diagram that showed little arrows connecting a series of drawings in the shape of a circle. At the top of the circle was a cluster of small, round eggs. Wangari’s eyes followed the arrow as it moved from the eggs to a tadpole, then to a larger tadpole with a tail and legs, then to a full-grown frog, and finally back to the eggs.

  Eggs. Tadpole. Little frog. Big frog.

  This was the story of her stream! The frogs she’d seen in one season had come from the tadpoles before that, and the eggs she saw came before them. They didn’t just appear and disappear at random. They were all part of the same life cycle, just like the babies, young children, parents, and old people in her village. Seeing the frog in her book now was like
seeing an old friend. Ihithe didn’t feel so far away anymore.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Just as tadpoles turn into frogs, Wangari grew up, too. In 1956, when she was sixteen years old, she finished St. Cecilia’s with the best grades in her class and received a wonderful prize—a scholarship to Loreto Girls’ High School, just outside Nairobi.

  Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, was often called “the Green City in the Sun.” At first, Wangari saw the city’s big buildings and decided that nickname must have been chosen by someone who had never seen a place like Ihithe. It wasn’t until a class trip to the Karura Forest, a cool, quiet place of towering bamboo trees just beyond the busy city center, that she understood where the name came from.

  Wangari’s science teacher, Mother Teresia, led the class briskly down the trail, pointing out the forest’s different trees and snapping at stragglers to hurry up. Wangari walked arm in arm with her friend Makena, who grew up in the city and didn’t share her passion for science and nature. “The trees all look the same to me!” she whispered behind Mother Teresia’s back, which made both girls giggle. “I saw a café back near the bus. Is it lunchtime yet?”

  Wangari laughed. Makena may not have been much of an outdoor person, but her instinct for finding snacks was as sharp as a lion’s.

  * * *

  One afternoon, halfway through Wangari’s final year at high school, she knocked on the door of a classroom she’d come to know very well.

  “Mother Teresia?”

  The nun looked up from a Bunsen burner, a pair of enormous safety goggles half covering a small face framed by a broad white habit.

  “Wangari!” her teacher said with delight. “Do come in. I was just preparing tomorrow’s lesson. I’ve a basin full of beakers and test tubes to wash. I assume you don’t mind if we clean while we chat?”