Eucabeth Odhiambo - She Persisted: Wangari Maathai

She Persisted: MARIAN ANDERSON

She Persisted: VIRGINIA APGAR

She Persisted: NELLIE BLY

She Persisted: RUBY BRIDGES

She Persisted: CLAUDETTE COLVIN

She Persisted: ROSALIND FRANKLIN

She Persisted: TEMPLE GRANDIN

She Persisted: FLORENCE GRIFFITH JOYNER

She Persisted: HELEN KELLER

She Persisted: CORETTA SCOTT KING

She Persisted: CLARA LEMLICH

She Persisted: MAYA LIN

She Persisted: WANGARI MAATHAI

She Persisted: WILMA MANKILLER

She Persisted: PATSY MINK

She Persisted: SALLY RIDE

She Persisted: MARGARET CHASE SMITH

She Persisted: SONIA SOTOMAYOR

She Persisted: MARIA TALLCHIEF

She Persisted: DIANA TAURASI

She Persisted: HARRIET TUBMAN

She Persisted: OPRAH WINFREY

She Persisted: MALALA YOUSAFZAI

When Mount Kenyas snow-capped peak was covered with a blanket of clouds, the people knew the rains were coming. The rains that filled the rivers and streams. The rains that gave life. One very special life came into being during that season. Wangari Maathai was born on April 1, 1940, during the rainy period. Her childhood was woven through with the flowing rivers and streams, and the animals and people of her bountiful country.

As soon as Wangari was born, everyone sprang into action! The women formed a circle of loving care around mother and baby. They made a nourishing meal from the choicest vegetables in their gardens. Even before offering her baby milk, Wangaris mother chewed small bites of roasted bananas, sugarcane, and sweet potatoes into a smooth juice. She put the juice into her babys tiny mouth, sharing the strength of the land and their community.

Wangari was born in a small village in Kenya called Nyeri, a part of the country with lush green shrubs, ferns, and trees. There the rain fell on the nearby fields of blue-purple sugarcane, on the forested hillsides where animals like elephants, leopards, antelopes, and monkeys made their home, and on the grass-thatched roof of the separate hut where Wangaris father prepared another feast to celebrate the birth of their first daughter. The same rain that caused everything to grow seemed to welcome baby Wangari into her new world. That same rain would help provide food for her to grow like a strong tree, and bringing back the trees would be her reason to fight to heal the land.

Wangaris parents, Muta Njugi and Wanjiru Kibicho, were Kikuyu people. Life for the Kikuyu revolved around nature. They believed that Mount Kenya, also known as Kirinyaga or Place of Brightness, was a sacred place. They believed that God, Ngai, lived there and provided everything they needed: the land, the rain, the plants, and the animals. As long as the mountain stood strong and steadfast, they believed that God was with them.

Little Wangari toddled after her two older brothers and her mother, imitating everything she saw. Like most African girls at the time, Wangari learned from her mother. Known as Lydia, she sewed clothes for her family and gardened. Wangari would watch as she, with the help of woman relatives and friends, regularly roofed their grass-thatched hut.

When Wangari was growing up, Kenya was under the control of the United Kingdom. Life was hard because of the British colonists. The British didnt respect the land and traditions and imposed their own way of life on the people. People in Kenya suffered as a result. The British colonizers cut down trees to clear huge fields for farming, brought in different types of plants that ruined the soil, and hunted the animals that shared the land. The Kenyan people had to follow the laws of the landowners who now ruled them.

Instead of having small farms that grew just enough for each family, many people were displaced and had to work on large plantations run by British colonizers; others needed to work to pay the taxes introduced by the British government. Christian missionaries tried to change the beliefs of the people, preaching that God did not dwell on Mount Kenya but rather in heaven.

When Wangari was very young, her father left the village to work on a plantation in Nakuru, one hundred miles away. Not too long after that, Wangari and her mother left the forested hillside where she had been born and followed him to a vast flat valley planted with field after field of wheat and maize. When they left Nyeri, Wangari left behind everything she knew. But she was too young to worry about what it would be like where she was going. She felt safe because her mother was with her.