Wangari Maathai Part 1

Summary

Summary of "The History Chicks: Wangari Maathai Part 1"

Podcast Information:
Title: The History Chicks: A Women's History Podcast
Hosts: Holly and Maria
Episode: Wangari Maathai Part 1
Release Date: March 13, 2025
Description: This episode delves into the early life of Wangari Maathai, exploring her upbringing, education, and the socio-political environment that shaped her into a prominent environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

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Introduction to Wangari Maathai

The episode opens with a vibrant introduction by the hosts, Holly and Maria, setting the stage for an engaging exploration of Wangari Maathai's life. They juxtapose significant historical events from 1977 with Wangari's symbolic act of planting seven trees, emphasizing the seeds of change she planted both literally and metaphorically ([00:47]).

Early Life and Family Background

Wangari Maathai was born on April 1, 1940, in Ihita, Kenya, as the third of six children in a polygamous household. Her father, Muta Njoougi, had four wives, leading to a complex family structure. The hosts highlight the harmonious relationship Wangari's Kikuyu community had with nature, a harmony disrupted by external forces ([01:51]).

Quote:
"Wangari Maathai understood the vital connections between living things and the earth of local community and the wider world." — Maria ([00:08])

Colonial Impact on Kenya

In the late 19th century, British colonization dramatically altered Kenya's social and economic landscape. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 saw European powers partition Africa without African representation, leading to land dispossession and cultural imposition. Wangari's ancestral lands were affected as the British encouraged settlers to cultivate fertile areas, pushing indigenous populations into reserves ([02:58]-[04:53]).

Childhood Amidst Colonialism

Growing up, Wangari witnessed the erosion of traditional practices under British rule. Her family faced economic hardships as the British imposed income taxes and exploited local labor. Despite these challenges, Wangari's father managed to retain some land in the Kikuyu Reserve, providing a semblance of stability for his immediate family ([04:53]-[09:06]).

Quote:
"People were forcibly removed from their land to native reserves while their land was being distributed." — Maria ([04:53])

Education and Early Determination

At the age of seven, Wangari began her formal education, a rare opportunity for girls in her community. Her initial encounter with literacy was both bewildering and exhilarating. A pivotal moment occurred when a cousin erased her writing, symbolizing the power and impermanence of knowledge.

Quote:
"When I finally learned to read and write, I never stopped because I could read, I could write and I could erase." — Wangari Maathai ([15:27])

MAU MAU Rebellion and Its Aftermath

The MAU MAU Rebellion (1952-1960) was a significant anti-colonial movement predominantly led by the Kikuyu. This period was marked by intense conflict, leading to the detention of thousands of Kikuyu men in concentration camps. Wangari and her family bore the brunt of this turmoil, with her mother being confined in an emergency village and Wangari herself facing periods of hiding and detainment ([17:05]-[36:35]).

Quote:
"Young women, all women, frankly, are particularly vulnerable during times of war." — Maria ([35:08])

Higher Education and the Kennedy Airlift

Recognizing the need for educated leaders, programs like the Kennedy Airlift sent top Kenyan students to study abroad. Wangari was among the selected few, embarking on a journey that would expose her to new ideas and cultures while also confronting racial discrimination in the United States.

Quote:
"Senator Kennedy became President Kennedy in January of 1961. Wangari recalled not fully understanding what exactly was going on." — Maria ([40:22])

Challenges in the United States

Wangari's experience in the U.S. was a blend of academic excellence and cultural shock. She navigated unfamiliar educational systems, faced racial segregation firsthand, and adapted to a drastically different lifestyle from her rural Kenyan upbringing. Despite these challenges, she excelled academically, graduating at the top of her class ([37:20]-[64:43]).

Quote:
"America transformed me. It taught me not to waste any opportunity and to do what can be done in a spirit of freedom and possibility." — Wangari Maathai ([65:31])

Return to Kenya and Early Career Hurdles

Upon completing her studies, Wangari returned to an independent Kenya eager to contribute to her nation's development. However, she encountered resistance due to entrenched gender biases and racial prejudices within academic institutions. Despite being offered a position at the University of Nairobi, discriminatory practices initially prevented her from securing the role. Her perseverance led her to assist a German scientist, thereby carving a path for her future endeavors ([64:43]-[68:16]).

Quote:
"Wangari was left to fend for herself. What am I gonna do? Just not in here. Not in my office is what you're gonna do is go away." — Maria ([67:50])

Notable Quotes

• "When I finally learned to read and write, I never stopped because I could read, I could write and I could erase."
  — Wangari Maathai ([15:27])

• "America transformed me. It taught me not to waste any opportunity and to do what can be done in a spirit of freedom and possibility."
  — Wangari Maathai ([65:31])

• "Wangari was left to fend for herself. What am I gonna do? Just not in here."
  — Maria ([67:50])

Conclusion

The first part of Wangari Maathai's story, as presented in this episode, highlights her resilience and commitment amidst colonial oppression and personal challenges. Her journey from a rural Kenyan village to academic prominence in the United States sets the foundation for her future role in environmental activism and social change. The hosts promise to continue her inspiring story in the next episode.

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Next Episode: Wangari Maathai Part 2 will delve deeper into her founding of the Green Belt Movement, her Nobel Peace Prize achievement, and her enduring legacy in environmental and women's rights advocacy.

Transcript

[Holly]

Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

[Maria]

And here's your 30 second summary. Wangari Maathai understood the vital connections between living things and the earth of local community and the wider world. It is true that many trees make a mighty forest. And Wangari Maathai, through her Green Belt movement, made it clear to us all that the most important change for the greater good is one that each individual makes right in their own backyard. A philosophy which would later earn her the Nobel Peace Prize. The end let's talk about Wongari Maathai.

[Holly]

But first, let's drop her into history. In 1977, the epic miniseries Roots first aired, and it earned its author, Alex Haley, a Pulitzer Prize. President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with Panama that would end US control of the canal in 1999 and guaranteed neutrality of the canal. The first five of the 13 rings of Uranus were first discovered by researchers at Cornell University. The largest lobster was caught off of Nova Scotia, weighing in at 44.4 pounds. The TV shows Fantasy island and Love Boat and the Coneheads of Saturday Night Live, as well as the original Star wars movie all premiered. The TV series Mary Tyler Moore show ended. Kerry Washington, Shakira, Liv Tyler, John Oliver and Emmanuel Macron were all born. Fannie Lou Hamer, Alice Paul and Maria Callas all died. And in 1977, with the planting of seven trees, Wangari Maathai also planted the seeds of change.

[Maria]

Wangari Muta was born on April 1, 1940, in the village of Ihita, Kenya, the third of the six children of Muta Njoougi and Wanjiri Kibicho, who history will know as Lydia. However, Papa had four wives. Mama was the second of them, and he had significantly more children. For thousands of years, the peoples of Central Africa had lived in harmony with nature and its abundance, part of a complex ecosystem, not in harmony with each other, necessarily. Wongari's people, the Kikuyu, had an often turbulent relationship with their neighbors, the Maasai. But life moved slowly. Knowledge passed from generation to generation about the seasonal bounty, the respect due to the earth and its rhythms. But that all changed a couple of generations before Wongari was born.

[Holly]

In the 1870s, 90% of Africa was controlled by Africans. But within the next 15 years, something was going to develop that was going to change all that.

[Maria]

Missionaries arrived in Africa to begin, quote, civilizing, unquote, the people of Africa. We've seen that before. Cough, cough. Hawaii followed inevitably by the unwelcome attention of European powers in 1885. At the Berlin Conference, 14 European countries and the United States met to discuss the partitioning of Africa. Notably absent any representatives from Africa. Land was divided with no understanding of cultural divides or traditional territories. This is when the famously cruel King Leopold of Belgium got hold of the Congo, a region he terrorized as his personal possession for decades. He killed over half the population there with his slave labor and torture. After 25 years of such treatment, the rest of the very notorious oppressors, that is the rest of Europe, finally got together and forced him to stop what he was doing. It's shocking that it took them that long to notice and deal with it, but the Congo got turned over to the Belgian government. Instead of being a personal possession, the land of Wongari's people was taken by the British.

[Holly]

And like in the other parts of Africa, the British brought their customs, monetary systems, they developed the lands, meaning that they took the lands of these people, just took them and divided them up for their own people. So now all of these indigenous people are not only being subjected to whatever systems that the new British rules were putting in place and any illnesses that they were bringing in, but they were also being pushed aside off of their lands where they had lived for a very, very long time.

[Maria]

So to cement their power, the British actually invited settlers to come live there. Everyone looked around and, hey, there's some well situated land here for agriculture. And how aesthetically pleasing is this? But hey, there's already people living here. It's inconvenient. Will take care of that for you. And Wangari's people were forcibly removed from their land to native reserves, which should also sound familiar, while their land was being distributed. By sheer luck, Papa's land was already in the Kikiyu Reserve, and he was allowed to keep it. British war veterans from Both World War I and World War II were given land here to thank them for their service to Britain, increasing the pressure. And by the time Wangari was born, there were tens of thousands of British holding land in Kenya. The presence of the British also put pressure on many aspects of traditional African culture. New converts to Christianity were encouraged to dress in Western clothes. The custom of shaving one's head upon marriage was discouraged. Everyone was required to go by a Christian name. In fact, Wangari was known as Miriam for the entirety of her childhood. But since she, as an adult, chose to go back to Hungari, we're going to go forward with that. Even things like cutlery dishes, household furnishings, even food changed. The staple crop of millet was replaced by corn. Or if you're British by maize or sweet corn, I guess is what you guys call it. You know, the only millet I really encountered up until a couple years ago was in birdseed.

[Holly]

I know, that's what I was thinking too. I'm like, what is millet?

[Maria]

Yeah, but, but millet porridge is really good. And I do not know how classical it is to have. I put raisins and sugar in my millet porridge anyway. The whole ancient grains is pretty cool. But anyway, millet slowly became replaced by corn and everyone began drinking tea. In this area, history was passed down through an oral tradition from telling stories and singing songs. But those songs and stories were slowly replaced by Sunday school songs and the ditt of Britain, those Africans who had learned to read and write, who had outwardly assimilated, were called atomi and were given preferential treatment. Papa was such a one, though. In no way were they considered equal to the white settlers. In days gone by, the value of exchange was quite literally a goat. For the rare incidences where you had to have a neutral currency transfer of land, a daughter's dowry, a. It was how many goats you know, is this? Well, the British instituted an income tax for men and of course had no interest in being paid in any number of goats cash, which now men had to go about figuring out how to obtain this. It wasn't something that had ever come into their lives before. Many men were forced by economic circumstances to go live apart from their families in order to earn this cash. Rural communities increasingly became more female led. Papa found work 100 miles away on the estate of Dennis Nolan Nayland. That's a hard name to say. Dennis Nolan Nayland. Unlike men who found work in a town, farm workers were encouraged to bring their entire families. Why? So there would be many hands to harvest and work the land. Of course. Papa was actually able to set up an entire compound for his family, including land Mr. Nayland set aside for him to cultivate, but with no legal rights of ownership to any of it. It's a very futile system. You know, you had to sell your crops to the, quote, lord. I mean, he wasn't a lord. I'm just thinking futilely the owner of the land. You had to sell the crops here, even if you got a better rate somewhere else. Doesn't matter.

[Holly]

It was very much like the sharecroppers, you know, they were given. Given a house and given things they needed, but they had to pay back the man who owned the plantation.

[Maria]

Do you remember we keep talking about how, like you had to take Your grain to the lo mill. And it was like a extortionate tax. That's what was happening here. Yeah.

[Holly]

Who was that? And she learned the math and she found out they were ripping them off.

[Maria]

Was it Fannie Lou Hamer? I don't remember.

[Holly]

It was indeed Fannie Lou Hamer. Thank you very much. Yes.

[Maria]

You also had to work his crops before your own. You owed him 270 days of labor a year. There was restricted movement for the employees. All the members of the family were expected to work, even very small children. Wangari's earliest memories are of being in the field watching her two baby sisters as her mother, Wirtz and Papa, was like this distant figure of authority, but her mama was like another self. In their culture, the oldest daughter was almost expected to be the mother's shadow or clone. They had a very close relationship for her whole life. Oldest daughters are still sort of seen this way. We're both oldest daughters, right?

[Holly]

Yeah.

[Maria]

Not to a degree, culturally, that Wongari's people regarded oldest daughters, but we could run the world.

[Holly]

Yeah. Wangari's accounts of her childhood, however, sound pretty idyllic. You know, living on that family compound, they called it a homestead. They had their own hut, her immediate family. And Wangari talks a lot about being out in the fields and just playing and playing by creeks and just a beautiful landscape to be a child in. It's almost magical to hear her talk about it.

[Maria]

When Wangari was about seven years old, Papa sent her and her mother and sisters back to Wangari's birthplace. Her two older brothers had been sent to a town near there so they could go to school. Papa knew the importance or the advantages of being an itomi, a person who read in colonial society. He actually sort of defied Mr. Nayland in order to send two able bodied workers away, you know, and now the rest of his second family was to join them. I mean, that's a lot. So that says a lot to Papa that he's willing to just. Nope, they're all going. An entire separate household was built on her uncle's land for the little family. So they had their own fields and houses. There were two houses, actually, and it was built by the entire village. And I love the picture of this. It's sort of like the barn raising of the American West. The neighbors realize something has to be done, and it's a major project and everyone comes together and does pieces of it because they know someday when they need such a thing, the neighbors will come for them.

[Holly]

This land is considered the highlands. It's in the shadow of Mount Kenya. The ground is extremely fertile. That's why they. For all those plantations, the temperature is very mild all year long. It's a beautiful place to live. And when she moved from the rural settlement into this village, her eyes just got big at everything that was around her. And she said, I drank in the beauty. Overwhelmed. For somebody who had lived her whole life outside and playing, this was even more beautiful to her.

[Maria]

Where she was moving to, Mama planted food crops and also a cash crop. I learned something. A cash crop called Pyrus erythrum, which is functionally daisies or chrysanthemums. I'm a little fuzzy on this. That have insecticide properties. So that was how she got money to buy things that she couldn't produce. She gave Wongari her own land to cultivate and manage, sort of as an apprentice to her mother. This is how children learned their roles is by performing the duties under the umbrella of someone else.

[Holly]

And in her memories, when Gari remembers taking this little plot of land that her mother had set aside for her and preparing the soil and planting the seeds and then going outside to watch them grow. And when they weren't growing fast enough for her, she would pull them out to see, you know, is there things going on in here? Did I do it right? You know? And her mother had to tell her, no, no, you just plant it and you just leave it. And it will, it will come up. Just take care of it.

[Maria]

She credits this land and her wonder and amazement at the seasonal changes in it as the bab basis for her entire future career. This little plot of land and the magic, it is pretty amazing to plant a seed and watch it grow. And the tomato sandwiches, for example, that you eat from your very own backyard, they have an extra oomph, don't they? I mean, they did all of you. A tomato sandwich maybe a little later in the year. The tomatoes right now, not so much.

[Holly]

Not here anyway.

[Maria]

No. The two brothers had their own little house in the family compound. And one day the oldest brother, 13 year old Nairobi Ritu, came to their mother and asked, why does Wangari not go to school with us? Food for thought For Mama, the role of a girl was to mind the household. Mama herself could not read and write, but she did see the advantages for those that could. And the uncle whose land they lived on sent his own daughter to school. And you might have to refer to quote male authority figures, but he already sent his own daughter to school. So Mama decided that she would send Wangari to School also. And there was a cost associated with this, you know, small for the will off maybe, but quite a stretch for someone of their cash poor status. Mama worked in others fields in order to earn the school fees.

[Holly]

Wangari tells the story of going off to school. She's seven. Her very first day at school, she's walking the three miles with her cousins and one of them asked her if she knew how to read or write. And she said, I don't even know what that is. So he took his little exercise composition book out and he had a pencil and he drew what looks just like lines and squiggles. And he showed it to her and he says, do you know what that said? And she said no. And he said, well, you're going to learn. This is what you're going to learn at school. And then he took an eraser and just erased the page. And that blew her mind even more. And she was so excited. She said, when I finally learned to read and write, I never stopped because I could read, I could write and I could rub. So she could erase her own work if she wanted to.

[Maria]

It was another kind of magic. So there's the magic of the fields, the magic of nature, and now the magic of the appearance and disappearance of writing. You know, I love how childhood is just full of magic and I think sometimes we forget how amazing things are. Speaking of amazing, and this is not in a good way, by the way. So eight and nine year olds are walking six miles a day, you know, three there, three back to school. And there's leopards everywhere, just everywhere, leopards. And her mother said to her, well, when you encounter a leopard, don't step on his tail. Simply say to him, I am also a leopard. Why should we disagree? Because wangari means wa ngari, means of the leopard. So I think if my 7 year old was walking 3 miles to school, full of, of a field of leopards, I might be more afraid and give her a stick instead of philosophy. You know what the courage is instilled. Young leopards exist. You have to deal with them. They're scary. Yeah, that is a lesson. Literally if you. Well, you don't know it yet. I mean Susan does, but the listeners don't know yet. But like that is something that goes through her whole life. It's amazing what you can see, like little snippets of things that happen to you in your childhood that when you're a grown up, it's part of your personality. Like things are very scary and you literally just have to find a way to psych yourself up to deal with it. Yep, it's amazing.

[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

Hungryroot.com chicks code chicks well, her school was a large group of students in a clay building with a tin roof. There were adults as well as children because this is only the second generation of indigenous people who were allowed to go to school.

[Holly]

And there they learned math, they learned basic English and basic geography. As she got more advanced in English classes at this school, the teacher would stand at the room and say something like I am going to the door. And he would cross the room to the door and point to it. I am going to the wall. And he'd point to the wall. And she said, we may not have been able to write a sentence in English, but we soon became experts at identifying basic architecture they studied in the.

[Maria]

Kikiu language and another language called Kiswah, which is an African language shared by many peoples in Africa. That way, they could all communicate in a common language across great distances. Even now, it's spoken by 80 million people. It's the official language of Kenya and Tanzania and spoken as a second language all over Africa. And I wrote down habarigani, Nzuri, sana. My pronunciation might be horrible. How are you today? I'm fine, thank you. I'm grand.

[Holly]

Now we just need to learn how to say, I don't speak this very well, like we can in French.

[Maria]

Oh, yeah. Je ne pas pas bien francais.

[Holly]

It works like a dream.

[Maria]

In addition to her studies, Wongari also performed quite heavy labor at home. It was a very manual lifestyle with no motors or electricity. Collecting firewood, harvesting crops, gathering fruit from the forest. She was taught great respect for an ancient fig tree. It was 60ft across with a flourishing and interconnected ecosyste system that was dependent on this tree. Do not gather wood from under this tree, nor harvest the fruits. This tree belongs to God. And what the people sort of knew but. But didn't fully understand the process was that these giant fig trees. Roots drive deep into underground aquifers, and they brought water to the surface. And those trees functionally created springs and streams where they could grow staple crops like arrowroot for flower, sugar cane, and bananas. The interconnectedness of nature made a deep impression on her.

[Holly]

This fig tree was also called a magumo tree, and it was very sacred to the Kikuyu people, so much so that they held their religious ceremonies under it. And when the missionaries came to Africa, they were very welcoming and invited them to also do their religious ceremonies underneath this tree as a way to welcome them. Of course, the missionaries said yes, and then, you know, twisted it down the road a little bit to say, you know, we worship in God's house. You consider that God's tree, But God's tree is building God's house. And so some of them started to come down. But this tree is so. This tree is so sacred within their culture that as recently as 2020, the President of Kenya had a highway project redirected so it wouldn't chop down one of these very large trees.

[Maria]

Man. See, I love that. I'm glad they reclaimed that, you know?

[Holly]

Yes, me too. Me too. And that stream you were talking about, she tells a story over and over again about being a small child and going into one of those streams and seeing all the tadpole eggs and trying to pick them up and put them on as a necklace, but she couldn't hold them and they would slip all over. And it was just so fun for her to, you know, just have this in her hands and then watch those eggs over time turn from the egg to a tadpole to a frog. So she was able at a very young age to see the biology of it.

[Maria]

Hard work came naturally to her. And when she was, I mean, around 10 years old, her mother had to go into the hospital for a very serious operation. I recall it was, I think an appendect, wasn't a joke and it was very serious. And mama wouldn't be around for harvest time. And Wangari thought, well, it falls to me. I am the oldest daughter and I will handle this. And it is a long saga of bullying a donkey to help her and overloading both of them to come back with all the products and the donkey rolling down a hill and struggling to get these heavy things back. And it took a lot out of her. It was like two men's worth of work. And she accomplished it by herself. And when her mother got home, she couldn't believe what she saw, which was the donkey and Wangari laying in the yard completely exhausted but having finished their task. And she's, you didn't have to do that. Oh my goodness. Like my daughter, that is too much for you. And Wangari says that what she learned from this incident is, yes, sometimes it's foolhardy to take on a project that is too big for you, but if you're single minded enough, you can accomplish great things. Well, I am here to tell you I wish I had found this decades ago, but it's never too late to start. I ditched my cotton pillowcase for Blissey's silk pillowcase. And my skin and this mermaid hair have never looked better.

[Holly]

It's true. I've been using my Blissey silk pillowcases for well over a year now. And I have seen a difference not only in my curls, that they're not as frizzy, but also in breakage, I don't have as much as I had with my cotton pillowcases. And they also are good for your skin. And just to add one more thing on that, I generally go to bed with a heavier moisturizer on my face and my cotton pillowcases would absorb it all. But the silk pillowcases, which are very cool, they always feel like the underside of the pillow. Do not. It's amazing.

[Maria]

Also, they're not precious. You know what I mean? You can throw it in the Washing machine. I always say that about dishes too. Like, well, if you make it into.

[Holly]

This house, survival is the fittest dish.

[Maria]

Yeah. So you don't have to worry. So everyone thinks silk, oh, my goodness. It's like it's precious and must be treated with care. But you know what? There to care for you.

[Holly]

And they will match any decor you have in your bedroom. There's 70 different colors and patterns, including new Wicked. I won't sing any of the songs, even though I really want to. Or Harry Potter.

[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

Your skin and hair will thank you. During Wangari's 11th year, a decision was made to send Wongari to boarding school.

[Holly]

The sleepaway school was St. Cecilia's Intermediate Primary School. It was many miles away and even bigger than her village. It was in a city. Her brother Neritu was going to the boys boarding school very nearby. It was like the brother School of St. Cecilia's and her cousin, who's also named Wangari, they were named after the same family member, was going to St. Cecilia's so there's this big party going to St. Cecilia's when her brother had an outfit made for himself for school. He made sure that they got extra fabric. And with that fabric he was able to have a dress made for her, a brand new dress that matched his outfit. New dress, new school, very exciting.

[Maria]

You know, I was very touched by something Wangari said in her autobiography. She said something like. And I'm just. This is off the top of my head like Neritu and I. I always knew we had been cut from the same cloth and now we could see it on the outside.

[Holly]

That's beautiful.

[Maria]

You know, that was pretty good. Neeritu is a standup guy too. He was in high school and he was instrumental in getting her sent to St. Cecilia's in the first place. And he took on odd jobs after school for cash to pay her school fees. And he also worked extra so that she would have money to have an allowance. Wangari also, in that autobiography, wondered what would have happened to her had her brother not taken the initiative to get her an education. Her life would have been unrecognizable to the life she actually lived. Neerutu is amazing. He is critical to this story.

[Holly]

He Also, even though she couldn't have family members visit, he would come to the school and ask people in the office how she was doing, just to check up on her. So she knew that she had somebody else that was in her corner that was not that very far away, even though she was far away from home.

[Maria]

And, you know, that actually is. There are two things I sort of don't like about this school. And you referred kind of obliquely to one of them. The nuns did not allow family visits at all. At all. And it was so that, like, influence from the traditional ways of life didn't make their way into St. Cecilia's I'm sorry to say. And then the second thing I didn't like about this school is that no one was allowed to speak their language. You were only allowed to speak English. And if you were caught speaking your native language, you had to wear a button on your clothes that it functioned like a dunce cap. It was very embarrassing. It was meant to cause shame.

[Holly]

Well, it even said on it, I am stupid. I was caught speaking in my mother tongue.

[Maria]

The children were taught that their languages were shameful. Lower class, something to try to forget. And what this did was rob the children of the connection to their heritage. You know, thousands of years of culture just, poof, dismissed. So I don't like that. I mean, it didn't seem like Wongari took it too personally, either of those things. But looking at her story from here, both of those things seem very. I mean, it's part of colonialism, isn't it, to break that little. That chain of children learning from their parents? And that's, you know, that's what was happening. There were 30 other girls in her dorm. She quickly became not only the best student in school, but a very popular companion. Her days at St. Cecilia's she remembers with great fondness. She learned a lot.

[Holly]

They were very regimented. She was up with the sun. And then they had the same breakfast every single morning. Corn porridge. Which I'm wondering now, was that millet porridge you were just talking about?

[Maria]

No, no, no, because corn replaced millet. Corn. Corn came in like a, you know, Cannonball.

[Holly]

Yeah. Okay.

[Maria]

Is that that song? I can't reckon.

[Holly]

Yeah, yeah.

[Maria]

Corn came in like a wrecking ball and. Yeah, arrivederci. Millet.

[Holly]

Right. You know, she also had to learn how to eat around weevils that were in that porridge. She says it, like, was really no big deal, but maybe just the fact that she still remembered it later in life, it was bigger. Anyway, her day went on there was chores, just like at home. Then classes, then the same lunch every day, corn and beans. Then more classes throughout the day. There was these little recess breaks where they could go outside, get some fresh air, play a little bit. Dinner. And again at dinner, they had the same thing every single day. It was more of a corn flour cake, this time with vegetables. But that was very similar to the food that she had eaten when she was at home, because the family really didn't eat a whole lot of meat. It was mostly a vegetarian diet that they had. The few. The few times that they had chicken, they had to have it when mom wasn't home because mother did not want them cooking chickens, did not want to eat chickens. And if they didn't clean the pans well enough and she saw it in there, she would just throw out the pan because, like, you can't cook that. That's not food.

[Maria]

Oh. And, you know, even in America, eating chicken wasn't. Was not like that common. I know you and I have had this conversation before about my country grandma, who admittedly is a generation older than my city grandma, but my country grandma's family absolutely only ate chicken when there was an important visitor. Because if you ate a chicken, you cut off basically your food supply of eggs. And also, that's where your pin money came from. If you were the. The wife of the house, you would sell eggs. And so killing a chicken meant giving up food and economic power. You know, it was a big deal. And I don't think that's why Mama didn't want to eat the chicken. She literally just didn't approve of eating meat. She didn't even want to eat eggs, actually, either. Man. This vegetarian diet, though, was keeping people very healthy.

[Holly]

Oh, for sure.

[Maria]

One notable thing that happened to Wangari at this school is that she was baptized into the Catholic faith and changed her name. Her baptismal name was Mary Josephine. And so from now until after she's through with college, her friends would have called her Mary Jo. But we, since we're respecting adult Wangari's wishes, are going to continue to call her Wangari. War broke out at the end of Wangari's first year. And this is going to be a vast oversimplification of the circumstances, but the resistance to British rule that was so ferociously put down before Wangari was even born had never fully died. It just went underground until this year when a guerrilla war for Kenyan independence broke out called the MAU MAU Rebellion, which ended up being, in addition to a war against the British, a Civil war. Those who lived or worked or were educated by the British had come to believe the MAU MAU were set to drag all of Africa back to a primitive and maybe even an evil Satan worshiping past. The MAU MAU were not freedom fighters to this group, but an enemy to be feared and to be resisted.

[Holly]

I found it very interesting that, I mean, there had always been little rebellions popping up ever since British rule had begun, but they hadn't been organized like they were for the MAU MAU Rebellion. But the thing that really kind of ticked off the whole situation, you had talked about it earlier how the British soldiers that were coming back from any kind of war and came to Africa were given land, but the African people who stood up and went to war for Britain came back and got nothing. They got nothing. They were not given land. They were not given any kind of special treatment or even respect. Yeah. And that's kind of what bubbled up this entire MAU MAU rebellion, is these veterans who had served were not being treated respectfully.

[Maria]

And the other Kiku people joined the battle on the MAU MAU side. So you got brother against brother among the Africans. There was mistrust between the factions, and that grew. And there was terror among the British. It was such that a million Africans were sent to, quote, detention camps, which are functionally concentration camps. Let's not put too fine a point on it. Wongari's own mother was confined in what was called an emergency village. In fact, for seven years, at one point, three out of every four Kikiyu men were in detention. All of this went on outside the high walls and guards of the convent. But young women, all women, frankly, are particularly vulnerable during times of war and during school holidays. Wangari and her rel had to hide, you know, at times in the woods from soldiers on all sides of the conflict over the course of this war, which continues honestly in the background for the rest of at least this decade, until about 1960, a hundred thousand Kikiyu died in the concentration camps. Not to mention the displacement and violence and trauma that was caused to an entire nation during this time of conflict.

[Holly]

The statistic in that that is just so startling is it's only recorded that 32 white settlers died in this time.

[Maria]

Right. And I just want to add in something here, by the way. I'm not sure if everyone remembers that scene in the Crown where Princess Elizabeth learns her father has died, you know, and she's now the queen. That little lodge, well, that is in Kenya near Nyeri, where Wangari is going to school the same year, the same year the MAU MAU uprising began. That, that is literally the reason Princess Elizabeth was there in the first place. Her father thought there should be a British presence there and he was ill and so she was sent in his place. It's called Sagana Lodge. It was at the time called Royal Lodge. And that's where Queen Elizabeth was told the news. 35 minute drive from where Wangari was literally going to school. Right then during that scene. You know what I mean?

[Holly]

Yeah, yeah. No.

[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

A very reasonable price. Those Mongolian cashmere sweaters you just mentioned, they start at $50. Have you ever bought a cashmere sweater for $50?

[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

As far as Wangari herself being affected by the Mama rebellion, now remember, she's within the walls of the school most of the time, relatively safe and unaffected by this war that's going on. But one time she did have to flee with her family when she was staying at home for a little bit. And another time when she was going between school and her home village, she was arrested and taken and held for two days in what sounds like a very dark and dirty damp camp. She was in prison for two days before most likely her father's employer, Mr. Nayland, was able to get her out of that prison.

[Maria]

Wangari graduated first in her class. At St. Cecilia's and got accepted to the only Catholic girls high school in all of ken and therefore studied with students from all over the country. She found an inspiring teacher that fueled her interest in science, which we already know from her childhood was quite evident. She was very interested in science. This teacher accepted that and fueled that and was her mentor in that subject. And Wangari quickly became one of the top students in high school.

[Holly]

And while she was in high school, she convinced a priest to set up a school where the settlers farms were, you know, where she had had her first early years of her life. Because little children would need to learn how to read and write just like she had had the opportunity to, but they were farther out.

[Maria]

It's almost like she's passing on her advantages the same way her brother had. And as a matter of fact, you know, the brother had sacrificed to give her that allowance. And she said that she ended up usually spending the allowance on the way home for things for her family. So there is a great tradition of selflessness that she has been raised with, not only in her community, but in her family. And so she used the influence she had on that priest to get a rural school built. Because you know what? Her younger sisters did not get the same opportunities that she had because the war broke out at exactly the wrong time for them to have been able to be sent away to school.

[Holly]

Right. If she had been born not. Not too much later, she would never have been able to either. Yeah.

[Maria]

By the late 1950s, it was becoming increasingly clear that the British hold on Kenya was going to come to an end. Now we saw Ghana go, didn't we? On the crown. Second crown reference in 10 minutes. Continent wide, the sentiment was it was time for self governance. Fair enough. High level talks had begun in order to build bridges with allies after the inevitable independence. The Kenyans were seeking guidance and support for the emerging nations and. And maybe even re emerging, you know, nations. I just saw a map, by the way, just Saturday at an antique store. It was a extremely colonial map of Africa. And I took a picture. Now it's like 20ft in the air, so you can't see the bottom because I am not that tall. But I think we should post it. It still had the Belgian Congo on it.

[Holly]

Oh, wow.

[Maria]

It had Swaziland still French West Africa, Italian Somaliland. It did still have Abyssinia, which always reminds me of sense and sensibility. The source of the Nile is in Abyssinia. I don't know. Anyway, so basically this is in living memory. This is fully a classroom map. Of Africa. Wow. Problematic. Wait till you see it. Well, one of the things the Africans were advised to do ahead of time was train and assemble their leaders of tomorrow. Education was the key, and a program was devised to send top high school students from all over Africa to the United States for college educations. And then they would go back to their communities in Africa as sort of lightning rods for change. And incidentally, those people would have a good feeling toward the United States. Quite an asset in a suddenly available free market. So it's not like we're always just being generous. There is actually sort of a. I mean, a generous but ulterior motive also true. As far back as just before independence, a union organizer who is named Tom Mboya was reaching out to people in the Soviet Union and China and the UK and in the United States in order to fund education for promising students in the United States. There was a group of people that all got together that were inspired by Mr. Mboya, including Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, and a man named John F. Kennedy, who at the time was a senator. Now, the senator had not only some money, he had access to his father's foundation money. Not only that, he had access to people at the State Department. Now, at first, they were putting up enormous resistance. They didn't want to be a part of this at all. He talked them into pledging money, which they may or may not have actually come up with. I don't know if they said yes to get him back out of the room. But most importantly, the State Department did not stand in the way of travel permissions for these students to travel from Kenya. Mostly. There are some other students from other parts of Africa, but. But mostly from Kenya. In addition to the big money coming from the likes of John F. Kennedy, hundreds of Americans contributed what they could. It reminds me a lot of the Statue of Liberty. A dollar, ten dollars to support the students, either by helping to pay for their air tickets or to contribute to their upkeep while they're here. You know, everybody needs books and clothes and shoes and. And that. So there were a group of employees, for example, at a Bronx post office who responded to a request from one Harry Belafonte. And they sent in not only their money, but a list with best wishes for the students that they had helped.

[Holly]

Wangari herself was dreaming of going to college. She wanted to go to a university in Uganda. It was the only one in East Africa, but she was accepted into this program. She's at the top of her class in high school. Some school is going to be lucky to get her.

[Maria]

The Kennedy Airlift, as this program began to be called, first began in the school year of 1959 with 300 candidates. When Ghari followed in the second wave the next year in 1960.

[Holly]

I always think it's interesting that at the time, there was British propaganda that was working against this Go to America program, because they're saying, oh, no, you need to come to British schools. You're going to get a far better education than you'll get in the United States. It's funny, but she was accepted to be part of the Kennedy Airlift along with a gentleman who would become Barack Obama's father. Yeah.

[Maria]

Now, this was super radical. Even a girl with a high school education was a novelty in this part of Africa. The people in her village actually were surprised that when she came home, she still helped her mother. Right. That there was like a divide, a definite divide between the educated and the not educated. Yeah. The only real pathways after high school for girls in this part of Africa were teachers and nurses training. And, you know, again, we are in 1959, so that's pretty classic all over the world.

[Holly]

Yeah. No kidding. No kidding. And if you think about it, she had such an interest in science. I guess nursing probably would have been something she would have been interested in, but she knew that there was other career paths available to her and other education in the sciences that she could get at a university.

[Maria]

So the opportunity to go to college was the greatest of honors, and it came with enormous psychological responsibility to both her family and her people. At 20, Wangari flew to New York City to meet with dignitaries at the United Nations. Imagine the sightseeing. She talks about the elevator that she could feel in her knees. You know, we're so used to elevators. I don't know that we even notice that our. You know, how the weight distribution changes. Like, notice it next time you get an elevator. To her, it was almost like knocking her down. And then the escalator was like, where does it go to? It's very concerning. Yeah.

[Holly]

Well, you know what? It's just like in severance, you know, when they're in the elevator, there's kind of that whoosh moment. It's truly like that. There's a whoosh moment.

[Maria]

Gravity well. And there was a lot in New York City. I mean, the traffic, the skyscrapers, the crowds, it was almost alien to them. There's nothing really to compare it to. So it's like, huh. But when they got on the bus, the distribution bus that was going to wind around and drop Everybody off at their colleges. She was blown away by the sheer volume of corn in the cornfields they passed. That is a very relatable extravagance that she understood the magnitude of, and that's what blew her away. The skyscrapers is like, oh, it's almost like I can't even relate to this.

[Holly]

Right.

[Maria]

I have nothing to hook onto.

[Holly]

Right.

[Maria]

Isn't this amazing? But it was the corn that really threw her for a loop, right?

[Holly]

Well, I'm going through New Jersey and Indiana. And curiously, in Indiana, which I always think of as like a northern state, they ran smack dab into another American, not so great tradition. And that would be racial discrimination. They had stopped at a cafe to get a Coke and they were told that they could not sit inside to drink it because they were black. They had to take it out. And that was a first for her as well.

[Maria]

Even people who had grown up in British occupied Kenya during wartime had a hard time understanding segregation in the United States. They were angry and left without buying anything. And definitely had some trepidation now about what might be waiting for them at their destination that they had not been briefed on before. She says over and over again that they had not been taught to understand the African American experience. It was pretty much left out.

[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

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[Maria]

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[Holly]

So she traveled halfway across the country before she got to her school. And the school that Wangari and her friend Agatha, who was a friend of hers from high school in the same program, got off at is Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas.

[Maria]

We've been there before, if you remember. It is the home of Amelia Earhart, though I'm very sorry to say Amelia Earhart had disappeared well over two decades before.

[Holly]

We also talked about it in the Harvey Girls. Cause it was the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. So I think we talked about. Let's not sing. Let's not sing. Let's not sing. No, sorry.

[Maria]

Okay.

[Holly]

Anyway, Mount St. Scholastica. Go Ravens. The school is still there. It merged with a boys college, St. Benedict's College for Men, in the 70s, but it's still here in Atchison, Kansas.

[Maria]

Wangari and Agatha received a warm welcome. That is a great relief on campus. And oddly, they were remarkably insulated from the principles of segregation. Atchison, Kansas itself was a very segregated town. Well, Gari was disturbed by the images she saw in the paper and on tv, and people struggled to explain it to her. You know, that's a red flag for your behavior, isn't it? If you cannot explain it to a complete stranger, to the principal. It reminds me also, if you've ever seen the movie Fifth Element, which, if you haven't, you know, go find it. It nothing to do with history. But in the movie the Fifth Element, there is a completely alien creature who tries to learn about human culture. And comes. She's going alphabetically and it's all super funny chicken, ha ha ha, you know. And then she gets to the W's and she encounters war and the images for war and she starts crying. And that, my friends, is the proper response. The. The humans were jaded. It's just pictures and she's very upset. And so Wongari was very upset and everyone struggled to explain to her how proper it was that segregation existed. You see, sometimes you need an outsider maybe to show you that something that you believe is wrong.

[Holly]

It really didn't take Wongari very long to declare her major, and it was biology. She had a minor in chemistry and another minor in German.

[Maria]

I think, you know, there's a large part of America for whom German was, if not a first language, a like, one language. And parts of the Midwest were very Germanic in nature. You know, now you think like Spanish and French you're going to learn in high school, but there were a lot more German classes historically in America. Well, she also studied another wide range of subjects over her years at college. You know, pe, you take a little sports, zoology, psychology, history, English, literature, which she was brand new to. She actually said that it. It was a little difficult to understand a lot of the references that people just unknowingly threw into conversation because she had no background in it at all. And it was very fascinating to her to come at that from kindergarten level.

[Holly]

Right.

[Maria]

But of course, even though she dabbled in assorted sciences, like Susan said, biology is where she ended up. Well, Senator Kennedy became President Kennedy in January of 1961. And Wangari recalled not fully understanding what exactly was going on. But. But she knew Senator Kennedy as an enlightened man with progressive ideas. And being on a Catholic campus during the inauguration of the first Catholic president, I mean, that was something else. The excitement level. Everyone was so proud to finally be represented. And, you know, she got swept up in that excitement.

[Holly]

Another big change happened when she was in college, and it was important because she's going to a Catholic university. And that was Vatican ii. It was a kind of adaptation of the Catholic faith. It took a few years, but they got rid of the Latin sermons. They changed how the Lenten meals were taken. They changed a lot of things to make them more compatible with modern living. So that must have been a very interesting thing to see when you're being taught by nuns as they're adapting to Vatican ii.

[Maria]

Well, also, Wongari was raised and taught in a much more strict system in Africa. She actually got to America even. Even before the Vatican II had percolated down. America is a lot more loosey goosey than Africa. Like, boys and girls literally dance together. Whoa, what is happening? That kind of thing. So there was a cultural element to the Catholicism. Also. I know my dad wrote, remembers that when he was growing up, you couldn't eat meat on any Friday.

[Holly]

Right.

[Maria]

And then they changed it to just Lent, which is right now, if you're listening, when this first comes out, so we've passed Mardi Gras, it's too late now.

[Holly]

Well, I think what it also did for her was let her examine her faith because she did see the differences between the faith that she had been brought up with in Africa and what they were practicing in the United States.

[Maria]

I'm sorry to say, Wangari. And really all the African students really couldn't go home to see their families. It was just too expensive. And so on school breaks, you know, you have a big question mark. It's pretty nerve wracking. But Wongari was often invited to other students homes, especially her friend Florence Conrad, who lived just outside of my hometown in Wichita. It ended up being that that was a. Do you know what I mean when I say that she was a you can get things out of the refrigerator friend.

[Holly]

Yes, I did.

[Maria]

Like those kind of friends that your kids have where like your kid doesn't even have to be home. Your kid could be away at college and that friend comes over and sleeps on your couch.

[Holly]

No, I have olives in. A certain kind of olive for one of Noah's friends in my refrigerator. He's the only one that eats it. He like reaches into the jar and just eats them.

[Maria]

So. See, I like that. And I'm so grateful to Florence Conrad's family because that was her home away from home. It was her second home in America. And how nice to have a place like that. It was like the Weasley house for Harry Potter.

[Holly]

Right, right. She also did get to experience her first snow, her first cold winter. Her first. Now you think she's growing up in Kenya. It's gotta be hot. Nothing's hot like Kansas hot because the.

[Maria]

Air is completely full of water. And their sweating is not gonna help here.

[Holly]

And it's not moving. They had breezes coming down off of Mount Kenya and they didn't have any breezes in Atchison.

[Maria]

Speaking of summer, during the summer she was able to get a job at a lab at a hospital that used to be. I mean, it's not there anymore. The location is walking distance from where I'm sitting right now in Kansas City.

[Holly]

Nice. She also had another job at a lab in St. Joseph, which I can't walk to, but I can tell you it's where the Pony express started. Yay. It's not that far from Atchison, but this is getting her practicing pressing tissue samples. And just in the scientific world when she has these jobs and she was really immersing herself in American culture and she kept a lot of her own culture while she was here. But by her third year, she was hot combing her hair. And she knew all the dances, you know, all the popular dances. She was an American college student, you know.

[Maria]

In May of 1963, the voters in Kenya voted in their future government. It was very exciting. It wasn't to take place immediately, but independence was on the horizon. And in America, Wangari was absorbing the lessons all around her on the burgeoning women's movement and civil rights movements. She was very taken with Martin Luther King's speech that free at last, free at last from August 1963. It seemed like the world was changing for the better all at once.

[Holly]

Yeah.

[Maria]

But the world reached in on November 22, 1963, when everyone reeled at the news of President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas. I admired him as a leader, she wrote. A lover of peace and a man who was very humanistic. I mourn with the Americans and with all those who know what it is to grieve, she thought, again, it's a layer of responsibility. So President Kennedy could not live to see his vision, the dreams, you know, that he had had for not only in America, but for the entire world. She's a living example of the dreams he had had for the world. So since he could not live to see the dreams, it was her responsibility to see that they came to fruition. It was another sort of, you know, throughout her life, you see this, it's almost obligation, but it doesn't seem like reluctance, you know what I mean? Like, and it's just like, and now I accept this. I accept this weight, you know?

[Holly]

Yeah.

[Maria]

Also, the nation of Kenya had its own dreams fulfilled shortly afterward. In December that same year, Kenya finally became a fully independent country. Jomo Kenyatta, former, quote, insurgent leader of the rebellion, unquote, was now its prime minister. He would later become the president, but as of right now, the title is Prime Minister.

[Holly]

Wangari thrived personally and academically at St. Scholastica. But at 24, she was facing her graduation and she needed to make another decision.

[Maria]

While she was still studying in Atchison, Kansas, she wrote a paper for a six week leadership conference that she'd been invited to attend at the University of Pittsburgh. The subject she chose for this paper has enormous relevance for her future career, that of helping women in rural areas work together for development efforts. And how interesting. Sometimes ideas need to percolate, and that is a little seed of a future idea.

[Holly]

She was very happy with the path of sciences that she was studying, so she applied to and was accepted to study for her master's degree in biology at the University of Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While at the University of Pittsburgh, she began work on her master's. And her master's was a study of the pineal gland. I learned it's a gland in the middle of our brains that helps produce melatonin and regulates our sleep. Yeah. She was able to develop a whole bunch of other skills in embryology, microanatomy, microscopy and more pressing tissue, which she had been doing in her part time job. But also being in Pittsburgh at this particular time in history was very exciting because Pittsburgh had been a processing town. They had coal processing, they had metal processing. It was filthy and the whole city was working on a cleanup, focusing on environmental restoration. So not just scrubbing the streets, but finding ways within nature to help clean the air in the city, to help keep everything cleaner and healthier for the citizens.

[Maria]

And again, we have a seed that is beginning to sprout in the dark. Behind the scenes, we have yet another idea that has begun to percolate in her mind.

[Holly]

She had been in the United States for five and a half years when it was time for her to graduate. And while she was on the first wave of students who came to the United States, there was ultimately 800 of them and they were all finishing up their degrees and going back to Kenya to do whatever they had studied in to be the leaders of the new country. And so it was time for her to go home.

[Maria]

Home. Wangari was offered a position at the University of Nairobi in the zoology department. She reflected on America as she left. And she said, there's a persistence, a seriousness and a vision to America. It seems to know where it's going and it'll go in that direction whether you like it or not. In America, if you can find your place, you can be treated very well because its people are very generous. But you have to be tenacious, innovative and strong. And you have to keep moving. The machine will grind on whether you're on board or not. She also said, America transformed me. It taught me not to waste any opportunity and to do what can be done in a spirit of freedom and possibility. I wanted to take that home to Kenya.

[Holly]

Another thing she took home was taking back something that she'd had before was her original name. She had been Miriam, she had been Mary Josephine, she'd been Mary Jo. She even at one point she had been Muta Wangari and Mary Josephine Muta. I mean, she was really playing with her name a lot when she was in the United States. But what she said when she got home is when I returned to Kenya, I Was Wangari Mutah. That's what I always should have been.

[Maria]

Right? And that is why we have not called her Miriam or Mary Jo this whole time out of respect for her, her feelings, and her reclamation of her rightful heritage.

[Holly]

Yeah.

[Maria]

There was in Kenya as she arrived, a general mood of optimism and excitement. Everything was starting fresh. The country had everything before it. And so did Wangari. She was, to her great surprise, met at the airport by an exuberant extended family. I mean, I. There's no better feeling than coming home to someone at the airport. And I know in this modern era, it is like, oh, whatever, just get an Uber. But like. Like, it really is so special when someone takes the trouble. I have to tell you, Robin always takes me to the airport and picks me up.

[Holly]

Oh, that's nice.

[Maria]

My friend Robin.

[Holly]

That's very.

[Maria]

Isn't that sweet?

[Holly]

Yes, that's very sweet.

[Maria]

I think she thinks the same thing, is that it's extra special.

[Holly]

No, I. I agree. It's very nice when I come down that escalator at the KCI to see my husband at the base of it. Yeah. But Wangari had been gone for five and a half years. That is a long time. And, you know, some of her siblings in her extended family had been young and they grew up and they looked very different. She had so much fun re meeting, you know, this big family that she had. They stayed for a few days in Nairobi at a hotel. And it was a hotel that pre independence, her family would never have been allowed to stay in. So that was just such a welcome to a very different Kenya than she had left.

[Maria]

Well, after many, many days of glorious celebrations, it was time to take up her new position. Only to realize upon her arrival for her first day, they pretended they didn't know who she was. Yeah, they. They said that her letter giving her the job had been a forgery. That was not real.

[Holly]

The guy that was hired for that position, he was still studying in Canada. He wasn't even finished with school yet. So they had somebody that could do the job right in front of them. Them in Wongari. And they said, no, this is not your job. It's given to somebody else. That's a slap in the face.

[Maria]

Turns out the head of the department, A, didn't want a Kikuyu person at all, and B, certainly didn't want a woman in his department.

[Holly]

Right.

[Maria]

And she was left to fend for herself. What am I gonna do? Just not in here. Not in my office is what you're gonna. That's what you're gonna do is go away. So what was she going to do? Well, her brother stepped in again and said, stay with me while you look. No, that Neritu is a stand up guy, isn't he? She was introduced to a German scientist who had been sent to Kenya to establish the Department of Veterinary Anatomy at the same university. He needed an assistant who knew their way around a specific kind of lab. Hello, Kansas City lab experience. And who, not holding his breath, spoke German question mark.

[Holly]

What?

[Maria]

It's like the universe had constructed this opportunity exactly for her in apology for that other thing. Sorry about that. So at last, at last, we have reached a state of equilibrium. All of Wangari's energy, spirit, bravery and determination is ready to focus on this new chapter in a brand new Kenya.

[Holly]

We're going to leave Wangari right here. We're going to break her story up into two parts, but you don't have to wait for two weeks for the second part. We're going to post it next week.

[Maria]

As part of our Women's History Month celebration. I mean, it's every, every month is Women's History Month, but we decided at the beginning of this month, since people are pretending it's not, we are going to double our efforts this one month. That's the way that we are going to reverse engineer the energy. So we will see you next time for the second part of Wangari's story. Thanks for listening.

[Holly]

Bye.

[Maria]

You know the drill. If you liked what you heard today or you learned something, please tell a few friends about us or leave a review for us on Apple podcasts or Spotify or whatever podcatcher you have chosen to use. In fact, I would go one further. Challenge yourself to go through our back catalog and find someone you've never heard of before and give her a listen. Follow us on Pinterest, where like all of our other subjects, Wangari has her very own board. And find [e-mail] if you would like to see that colonial map I just saw at the antique store. We are going to leave media until the next section, but do go at least for the map. This song at the end is worth the fight by Marie Hynes. And we will see you with part two of Wongari Story Story very, very shortly.

[Unknown]

Wipe the darkest shades away Happiness your saving grace Ignorance won't clean the slave won't find your final resting don't circle around the task at hand or take a far when you can stand Disregard the reprimand Needing more than second hand there's bigger pictures to paint More horizons to chase something better in searching, reaching burning, bleeding black and white Deeper oceans to swim unpredictable whims and you're learning, you're learning Freedom's worth the fight Dreams touched with apathy leave the legends set them free Scaling walls in disbelief oh, you can't clown what you can't dream this Bigger pictures to PA More horizons to chase Something better in search reaching, burning leading black and white deeper oceans to swim Unpredictable wins I you learn you learning Freedom's worth the fight Tied up and bound in the cords of our conviction Got my bag of tricks and pocket full of luck Watercolor paint by number A reminder of another telling me to stay in line but I'm suffocating There's bigger pictures to paint More horizons to chase Something better in searching, reaching burning bleeding black and white deeper oceans to swim Unpredictable winds and you learn and you learn it and there's bigger pictures to paint More horizons to chase something better and searching reaching burning bleeding black and white Deeper oceans to swim Unpredictable winds and you're learning, you're learning have how to cry how to live with how to change break away from it all Freedom's worth the fight.