Life
Kenyans bid farewell to laureate Wangari Maathai
The Late Prof. Wangari Maathai
Maathai, best known as the Tree Mother of Africa, believed that a healthy environment helped improve lives by providing clean water and firewood for cooking, thereby decreasing conflict. The Kenyan organization she founded planted 30 million trees in hopes of improving the chances for peace, a triumph for nature that inspired the U.N. to launch a worldwide campaign that resulted in 11 billion trees planted.
Maathai died late last month after a long battle with cancer. She was 71.
“The best way we can honor her is to carry on the great work she started especially in the fields of environmental conservation, social justice, human rights and democracy,” President Kibaki said.
Maathai asked to be cremated because burying her in a wooden coffin would mean that a tree was cut, even though cremation defies Kenya’s tradition of a burial. The casket carrying her body to be cremated Saturday was bamboo-framed, made of water hyacinth and papyrus reeds and draped with a Kenyan flag.
Although the family announced days earlier that the cremation would be private, thousands of Kenyans followed the ceremony up to the gate of the crematorium to try and catch a glimpse of the moments before she was reduced to ashes. But hundreds of police kept guard and pushed the crowd back from getting too close.
More than 5,000 tree seedlings are expected to be planted in her honor Saturday.
Maathai was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. But on Friday three champions of women’s rights in Africa and the Middle East were also awarded the prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee split the prize between Tawakkul Karman, a leader of anti-government protests in Yemen; Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman to win a free presidential election in Africa; and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia, who campaigned against the use of rape as a weapon in her country’s brutal civil war.
