Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmentalist and political activist,
died on September 25th, aged 71 IN MANY ways it seems odd that
Wangari Maathai's life should have been so closely associated
with struggle. Success appeared to come almost effortlessly to
her, even though her origins were humble. She was born to a
Kikuyu family of peasant farmers in Ihithe, a small village in
the central highlands of Kenya, which was then a British colony.
Though it was far from common in the 1940s for girls like her to
receive an education, Wangari was sent to primary school—at her
brother's suggestion—at the age of eight. From then on
accomplishments seemed to drop into her lap. She got to
secondary school, graduated top of her class and went on to earn
a degree in biology in Kansas, an MSc in Pittsburgh and, after
studying in Germany, a PhD on gonads in bovines in Nairobi. That
made her the first woman in east Africa to hold a doctorate.
Jobs followed, in academic and civic positions which no black
woman had filled before, an