African Nobelist speaks out for greenery, peace
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By Kevin O'Connor STAFF WRITER - Published: April 13, 2009
Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai was talking about problems back home in Africa's "Green Belt," but a sold-out crowd of 750 Vermonters knew she could be speaking to any political issue now splitting the Green Mountains.
"For us to find peace, we have to go back and accept we have our own entities and we are different," she said. "Unless we are stupid, we need to cooperate and work together."
Some taking seats at Brattleboro's Latchis Theatre on Saturday might have wondered why the Kenyan woman was on a small-town detour from her big-city book tour, let alone how her new 336-page work, "The Challenge for Africa," pertained to them.
But the first African woman and environmentalist to win the world's top humanitarian award soon was telling not only how she spurred her homeland to plant 40 million trees, but also what lessons she learned that can help citizens, countries and causes everywhere.
"I grew up in an environment that was very beautiful, very green, very unpolluted," she recalled.
But 20 years later, Maathai saw clear-cutting destroy Kenya's landscape and livelihood, leaving rural women with little more than scarce water, eroding soil and increasing long walks for firewood.
"When you remove vegetation," she said, "you are undoing what God was doing in the Garden of Eden."
Maathai, founding the "Green Belt Movement" to reforest Africa, soon saw how political and socioeconomic factions on the continent were spending so much time fighting, no one was accomplishing anything.
"We must be fair, we must be just, we must be inclusive, we must respect the rights of others, and if we don't, sooner or later we are going to have a problem. If we allow that division to continue, it is going to be fatal."
Maathai, a trustee emerita at Brattleboro's World Learning, visited Vermont upon the invitation of Marlboro filmmakers Alan Dater and Lisa Merton, whose new documentary, "Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai," is scheduled for broadcast at 9 p.m. Wednesday on Vermont Public Television.
"I worry about the future," said Merton, acting as moderator. "Who are going to be the stewards of the land?"
Maathai agreed: "We, the human species, have a deep aspect that goes beyond the material. No matter how much money we have, we feel there is an emptiness that can only be filled by something much greater than ourselves."
Maathai is a friend of fellow Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jody Williams, who was born in Rutland, grew up in Brattleboro and graduated from college in Burlington. The two have joined with four other female laureates — Shirin Ebadi of Iran, Rigoberta Menchú Tum of Guatemala and Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Betty Williams of Northern Ireland — to create the Nobel Women's Initiative.
"Many men have mismanaged the world," Maathai said, "but it's easy for us to romanticize that if women were in charge it would be better. I'm not sure. Women need to demonstrate by doing."
She also wants to reform anyone who seeks power by polarizing the electorate.
"The issue is what shall we do to create people who are truly committed to the welfare of others? Where shall we get our Abraham Lincolns? Leaders who can stand up and sacrifice for the common good?"
The choir from the nearby Guilford Community Church, where Maathai planted a tree before her 2004 Nobel win, performed a song Saturday featuring the words of the Wendell Berry poem "Great Trees." The group then gave the laureate a piece of birch bark inscribed with the lyrics.
"Green leaves," Maathai said. "For me, that's where the spirituality is. And when we serve others, we grow."
kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com
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