ESHA's Kenya Experience: Reading: Unbowed

Having read Joseph Lekuton’s Facing the Lion, I have been eager to continue to read about Kenya from a Kenyan’s perspective. Much of what is published and readily available comes from a western point of view, often an American or European who has been transplanted, is visiting in order to do good works, or is exploring as a tourist. This makes Wangari Muta Maathai’s book, Unbowed, a particular treasure.

In Unbowed: A Memoir (New York: Anchor Books, 2006), Maathai offers her personal perspective as a Kikuyu woman born in 1940 who, through personal courage and perseverance, has made a significant impact on her country’s environmental movement and political system. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, an organization that has responded to the devastating effects of the deforestation of Kenya by engaging vast networks of rural women to plant over 40 million trees since 1977. She served in the Kenya Parliament from 2002 to 2007 and as Assistant Minister for the Environment from 2003 to 2007. In 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Maathai's memoir begins with her childhood and early schooling in the village of Ihithe and the town of Nyeri in the central highlands of Kenya and moves to her university study in the United States and Germany. She describes her emergence as a social activist in an era when voicing dissenting opinion was not welcomed by the Kenyan government and her eventual success as a national leader. Maathai gives us a window on Kenya’s recent history: the shift in culture, economy, politics, and the environment that has taken place over the first 60 of her now 70 years.

I found the writing in Unbowed to be straightforward to the point of being a bit stiff at times. The read is well worth it, however, since there are many understandings to be gleaned: from cultural practices to the impact of outsiders on a native culture, to economic stresses, to the power of democracy. Her work combines the notions of replenishing the land, empowering the rural poor, and promoting peaceful collaboration among the many ethnic and tribal groups in Kenya.

Claudia Daggett

This trailer from the PBS documentary, "Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai," gives a brief introduction to Maathai, her perspective, and her work: