Radical Utu. Besi Brillian Muhonja

experiences—of colonialism, the plight of colonized Africans, Kenyans’ agitation for independence, the postindependence situation for Kenyans and especially women, the conditions of African Americans in the United States, and the civil rights era—informed the development of her ideas and ideals, politics and activism. Regarding the civil rights movement, she said, “It shaped my concept of human rights, and it made me understand that human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for, and then you protect” (2009a).

      In 1964, Mary Josephine earned her bachelor of science degree in biology from Mount St. Scholastica and proceeded to the University of Pittsburgh for graduate studies. Back in Kenya, the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) was established as the institution that would coordinate activities of women’s groups and associations. As Kenya had moved toward independence, organizations formerly run by colonial wives and other white women had started handing over the reins to Kenyan women. These included Maendeleo ya Wanawake (MYWO), an organization Maathai would later be a part of and then at odds with, which elected its first African president in 1961. The NCWK was expressly founded to oversee some of these organizations. Maathai later led the NCWK, under whose banner she started the Green Belt Movement (GBM). The NCWK would later launch her into national politics in the 1980s. In 1962, the Kenya Association of University Women (KAUW) was founded as an affiliate of the International Federation of University Women (later renamed Graduate Women International [GWI]). The KAUW, whose membership consisted of women with university degrees from recognized institutions, would propel Maathai into the political and activist spotlight and enable her membership in the NCWK.

      As this flurry of political, social, and civic developments related to gender picked up momentum in Kenya, Mary Jo was focused on earning her master of science degree in biological sciences from the University of Pittsburgh, which she did in January 1966. Her thesis, titled “Developmental and Cytological Study of the Pineal Body of Coturnix coturnix japonica,” was adjudged “excellent” by the examining board (Maathai 2007a, 95). Toward the completion of her master’s degree, recruiters from the University College of Nairobi interviewed her in Pittsburgh and followed up with a job offer, asking her to report for duty on January 10, 1966.

      Mary Jo returned on January 6, 1966, to a nation and continent where many changes had occurred. Her intention was to take up the position of research assistant to a professor of zoology at the University College of Nairobi, as outlined in her job offer letter. However, upon reporting to work on January 10, she was informed that her promised job had been offered to someone else, which she believed was due to gender and ethnic bias (Maathai 2007a, 100–101). This marked a significant turning point in her career as an academic. She eventually found work under Professor Reinhold Hofmann in the microanatomy section of the newly established Department of Veterinary Anatomy in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University College of Nairobi.

      Two other significant changes happened in 1966. She dropped her “English” names, preferring to go again by her Gikuyu name, Wangari, and she met her future husband, Mwangi Mathai. The name change was part of a conscious embracing of her indigenous Gikuyu and African self that began the disposition of unapologetic Africanness one encounters in her work, words, and self-fashioning. She recounted her shifting sensibilities, specifically on self-identifying and the duality of names and consciousness, in a 2007 interview at the Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, saying, “Later on when I went to school and became a Christian, you were told to adopt a new name, and you were told to accept that as your first name. But it is actually your second name” (2007b). She offered the example of the fact that in Kansas she was addressed as Miss Wangari, which was when she started deconstructing the question of names and naming. She shared a realization about her various name changes: “I had been walking in a zig zag way and I decided to go back to the beginning, and I said, “My name is Wangari!” I decided that from then on, I would try to look at myself using my own mirror and would not allow people to tell me who I was” (2007b).

      Wangari Muta started her doctoral studies with encouragement from Professor Hofmann and relocated to Germany on a scholarship under the Nairobi-Giessen partnership program in 1967 to pursue doctoral research and training from the University of Giessen and the University of Munich. At the time there was only one electron microscope in Kenya. Because more were expected to arrive at Kenyan universities, she spent part of her time in Germany extending her experience working with this equipment (Maathai 2007a, 107). In 1969, after twenty months in Germany, she returned to Kenya to the position of assistant lecturer at the University College of Nairobi and to complete her PhD dissertation. In what was a busy year, she married Mwangi Mathai and was immediately thrown into her role as a politician’s wife during his unsuccessful campaign for a seat in parliament.

      This was a year of personal and national turmoil. Wangari Mathai experienced great personal loss with the passing of her brother Kibicho, the assassination of government minister Tom Mboya triggered ethnic unrest, and Kenya also became a de facto one-party state after the Kenya People’s Union (KPU) was banned. The KPU’s leader, Oginga Odinga, was arrested, leaving KANU the only party to “compete” in the elections. Later, in the 1970s through the 1990s, this situation would heavily impact Maathai’s politics and political engagements. It also directly impacted the place of her husband in politics and thus Wangari Mathai’s social location. This was the Kenya of her post-Germany return, in which she quickly found her place and voice in her roles as career woman, wife, and mother.

      Wangari Muta Mathai completed her PhD dissertation, titled “Early Development of Male Bovine Gonad,” in 1970, the year her first son, Waweru, was born. She was awarded a degree in anatomy from the University College of Nairobi in 1971 (Maathai 2007a, 112), the year she gave birth to her daughter, Wanjira. Wangari Mathai was the first woman in East and Central Africa to receive a doctoral degree. She rejoined the faculty at the university as senior lecturer of anatomy. In 1974, her second son, Muta, was born, and her husband won the parliamentary elections to become the member of parliament (MP) for Lang’ata Constituency. Here began her more active public life and advocacy, informed and motivated by her identities as academic, mother, and public servant.

      Even as she supported her husband’s political career, her own professional journey witnessed an upward trajectory in the mid-1970s. She became a senior lecturer in anatomy in 1975, chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy in 1976, and in 1977 she was promoted to associate professor (Maathai 2007a, 118). She was the first African woman in the department to hold those positions, all while enduring and fighting against constant gender bias from both students and faculty members, including some who openly or indirectly questioned her competence. Outside the university, she worked for various civic organizations, including the KAUW and the local Environment Liaison Centre. In 1974, she was invited to serve on the board of the latter, and, from 1973 to 1980, she served as director of the Nairobi branch of the Kenya Red Cross (119).

      It was in this season of her life that her interests and work began to coalesce. When her husband became an MP, Wangari Mathai facilitated the fulfillment of promises he had made to his constituents during the campaign period. Mwangi Mathai had pledged to increase employment opportunities for his constituents to alleviate skyrocketing unemployment. She shared in her memoir that after winning the elections he dropped the plan, which had been just a strategic campaign promise. She wanted to fulfill the incomplete contract her husband had entered into with his constituents. Thus, Wangari Mathai founded her first environment-related organization, Envirocare. The company not only intended to provide employment but also to attend to environmental restoration. Envirocare’s first nursery was erected in the Karura Forest. However, due to financial hitches and lack of support from her husband, once she moved the nursery production to their home, the project shut down (Maathai 2007a, 127–29). Nevertheless, her efforts did not go unnoticed. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) sponsored her trip to the June 1976 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, also known as Habitat I, in Vancouver, Canada, where participants called for greener cities, among other recommendations.

      The trip to Habitat I was a major turning point, launching Wangari Mathai on a journey that solidified her position as a scholar and activist on matters of women’s rights and empowerment, the environment, and governance. Because she was a member of the KAUW, Wangari Mathai had joined the NCWK. When she returned to Nairobi after Habitat