Unbowed

Through a scholarship program for African students funded by John F. Kennedy (a senator at the time), Maathai is able to attend Mount St. Scholastica college in Atchison, Kansas. She later attends the University of Pittsburgh for graduate studies in biology. This chapter describes her first encounter with the United States; she visits New York City with her student group before traveling on to Kansas. Kansas’ flat landscape, which differs greatly from Kenya’s mountainous landscape, startles her—as does the dramatic change of seasons. She also encounters the complexities of race relations in the United States. A boss at a summer job introduces Maathai to Islam, and she is surprised by the difference between the teachings of Islam and those of her own Catholic schools.  

A number of major world events occur while Maathai is living in the United States. Kenyan independence is declared on December 12, 1963, and Jomo Kenyetta becomes Kenya’s first President. United States President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on November 22 of the same year. The Vietnam War also breaks out during this time. Maathai returns to Kenya in 1966 to accept a teaching position in the Zoology Department of the University of Nairobi. She also changes her name again, using a rearrangement of her original name: “When I returned to Kenya, I was Wangari Muta. That was what I should always have been” (96). 

Upon returning to Kenya and reuniting with her family, Maathai discovers that the University of Nairobi teaching job that she thought was promised to her has been offered to someone else. This experience teaches her that, while Kenya is newly independent, there are still tribal and sexist prejudices to contend with. She ultimately takes another teaching job in the university’s Department of Anatomy.

Maathai meets and marries Mwangi Mathai, an executive with political ambitions. Shortly afterwards, she leaves for Germany to spend two years doing PhD research at the University of Giessen. Upon returning to Kenya, she and Maathai start their family. They ultimately have three children: two sons (Waweru and Muta) and a daughter (Wanjira). Maathai supports her husband in his first failed run for Parliament, an experience that opens her eyes to sexist restrictions on how she dresses and behaves: “Like Mwangi, many [Kenyan politicians] had been educated abroad, spoke English at home and in their workplaces, wore European-style clothes, and lived in European-style houses. But they wanted to project their ‘Africanness’ through their wives, both at home and in society” (110). 

Maathai also encounters sexism at the university when she and her coworker Vertistine Mbaya agitate for equal benefits for female teachers. They ultimately succeed in being “treated like honorary male professors” (116). However, the experience teaches Maathai that sometimes even women can inherit sexist thinking and refuse to claim more rights for themselves: “Fighting battles with women can be very difficult and sad, because both society and the women themselves often make it appear that most women are happy with the little they have and have no intention of fighting for their rights” (116). 

In this chapter, Maathai explains the origins of her Green Belt Movement, which empowers rural women to plant trees in their own regions, thereby protecting both the environment and their own health and livelihood. The movement is Maathai’s battle against cash-crop farming in Kenya and the cultivation of foreign plants, which drain the soil and lead to malnutrition in rural poor populations. 

The various origins of the Green Belt Movement are like several streams leading into a river. One stream is Maathai’s involvement in the local Environment Liaison Center, which helps to ensure participation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United Nations Environmental Program. Another stream is her academic work. While doing veterinary research on cow parasites responsible for a fatal cattle disease known as “East Coast Fever,” Maathai concludes that the soil quality in the area, more so than the parasites, has caused malnutrition and poverty (121). Finally, her work with the National Council of Women acquaints her with poor female farmers and confirms her idea that foreign tree cultivation is detrimental to the local economy and rural people’s health. 

Maathai founds a business, Envirocare, an early urban version of the Green Belt Movement, after her husband runs for office and wins, in part, by promising jobs to his urban poor constituency. Maathai conceives Envirocare as a way to ensure these jobs become a reality; the conceit is that the slum citizens of her husband’s constituency, Lang’ata, will work on the gardens of the wealthier citizens, thereby saving the wealthy citizens money and ensuring the gardens’ health. However, the business fails to take off due to practical difficulties and wealthy urbanite prejudice against the poor. 

The chapter title refers to the uneducated, poor, female farmers whom Maathai helps to empower. These farmers works in tandem with professional foresters, who give the women tree-planting advice that Maathai feels is overly academic and specialized: 

“They told the women about the gradient of the land and the entry point of the sun’s rays, the depth of the seedbed, the content of the gravel, the type of soil, and all the specialized tools and inputs needed to run a successful tree nursery! Naturally, this was more than the women, nearly all of whom were poor and illiterate, could handle” (135). 

Maathai instead encourages the women to draw on their own instincts and knowledge: “Anyone can dig a hole, put a tree in the water, and nurture it” (135).  

This chapter deals with a difficult period in Maathai’s professional and personal life. Her marriage ends, and she loses her teaching job at the University of Nairobi. Behind both losses, Maathai sees sexism and cultural resentment of strong, successful women. She believes that her husband left in part because he was threatened by her career and her outspoken public persona. Maathai comes home one afternoon to discover that her husband has left her alone with three small children. 

The divorce battle in court is difficult and public; Maathai is startled by her husband’s decision to leak information to the press. Maathai eventually loses the battle—she had hoped despite everything not to dissolve her marriage—and must cope with the challenges of single motherhood. On top of this loss, she is briefly jailed on charges of slander after telling a reporter that she believes the judge for her court battle made compromised decisions. Though sentenced to six months in jail, she is released after just three days. 

Maathai adds an extra “a” to her married last name to acknowledge both her divorce and continuing bond with her husband. She takes a six-month job with the Economic Commission, which requires her to travel to Zambia, and decides that she will leave her children with their father for the duration. He remains an attentive father to the children, and they ultimately stay with him for several years before returning to her in 1985. She says that all three children will go on to attend college, as she did, in the United States. 

Maathai initially left her university job to make a failed bid at a Parliamentary position. When she attempts to return to the position, the university refuses. She believes one reason why is her now undesirable status as a divorced woman. She notes that the award, many years later, of the Nobel Peace Prize offers vindication: “[…] the university of which I was an alumna, which was pleased to see the back of me in 1982, and which ignored my achievements during the ensuing years, awarded me an honorary doctorate in science in 2005, with full honors and all pomp and circumstance” (162). 

Maathai describes her battle to become chairperson of the National Council of Women in Kenya (NCWK), an effort thwarted by President Moi, the country’s new authoritarian leader. Moi and his colleagues attempt to weaken the NCWK by siphoning off local women’s groups and supporting Maathai’s rival candidacies. Maathai believes that while Moi knows that he must be seen as supporting women, he also does not want to support a woman who is, as she is, directly opposed to his policies. Maathai ultimately wins the chairperson position but continues to do battle with the Kenyan government directly and indirectly.