Unbowed
One Woman's Story
by Wangari Maathai
Having just read Pregs Govender’s autobiography, it was interesting to read about another strong, fearless, clever and determined (I could go on finding adjectives to describe her for pages!) woman who is not afraid to stand up for what she believes is fair. Maathai was born on a farm in colonial Kenya into a “traditional” Kikuyu family. Her life was a little "out of the ordinary" in that she was allowed to be educated–a move that led from the little village school via a Catholic convent in Nairobi to a Catholic college in the United States of America and then on to the University of Pittsburgh. Back in Nairobi, she became the first woman in East and Central Africa to receive a Ph.D.
While she was in the States, Kenya become independent and she returned 
to a country alive with hope. “I also took America back with me” she writes, “America transformed me …The spirit of freedom and possibility that America nurtured in me made me want to foster the same in Kenya, and it was in this spirit that I returned home.”
The bulk of the book is concerned with her struggle to bring freedom and “possibility” to the ordinary people in her beloved Kenya. In her fight for human rights and environmental justice in Africa she founded the Green Belt Movement, was Chairman of the National Council of Women in Kenya, and a founding member of Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood (GROOTS). She was elected to Kenya's Parliament in 2002 and became Assistant Minister in the Ministry for Environment and Natural Resources.
In 2004 she was the first African woman, and first environmentalist, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. But he
r life was far from peaceful. She survived many knocks that would have felled an ordinary person - from her original disappointment on returning to Kenya to find her promised job summarily taken away and given to a person from the same ethnic community as the chancellor of the University College of Nairobi, to several terms of imprisonment, beatings, a tough divorce and continual harassment under Moi’s dictatorship. Somehow she manages to remain unbowed.
She doesn’t blame colonialism for all her countries ills, but points out what she sees as its shortcomings (corruption, tribal and gender issues) which are not exactly the “politically correct” ones. This takes enormous courage. "Why are we robbing ourselves of a future?" she asks and exhorts Kenyans-especially the women within the Green Belt Movement-to take responsibility for the fact that misuse of the environment and corruption in government was killing Kenya's future.
"It is the people who must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. We know they are wrong, we know we are right. So we must stand up for what we believe in." For a woman who was expected to behave in a subordinate, prescribed way in a male-dominated society in the post independence period during the 70s, 80s and 90s this attitude was unexpected to say the least, and led to a lot of hostility. But when she took on the corrupt, greedy dictators, she was courting disaster. The fact that she emerges victorious is a miracle. The possibility that Africa – and indeed the world – could become a better place just might be true…
Interestingly, she avoids the subject of AIDS–which is also a huge and contentious problem, especially for women, in Kenya. Perhaps that is because of the Catholic influence?
Also interesting was the whole name shifting thing that African women do - its really cool - and
helps shape one's identity it seems. It was fascinating reading these two biographies of two insubordinate and unbowed women (Govender and Maathai) battling racism, sexism and large
scale government corruption, in the name of social justice.
Comment on Unbowed: One Woman's Story (Heinemann, 2006) by Caroline. Woodlands Bookclub Rating: 4 Book no 2109 (Sue K)
