Prof. Wangari Maathai was a woman of many firsts. A patriot, a feminist, an environmentalist, an academic and a humanist par excellence – she worked tirelessly towards ensuring a viable future for Kenya, Africa and the world.

Born in Nyeri in 1940, she commenced studies in 1964 in Biological Sciences in the USA and went on, in 1971, to obtain a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi. She thus became the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. In 1976 she joined the National Council of Women in Kenya and rose to its chairmanship in 1981-87.  Boldly opting out of an abusive marriage in 1979, she got labeled as a ‘divorcee’ with all the negative slurs that Kenya’s patriarchal society could smear her with.

Undaunted, Wangari soldiered on. In 1976 she was introduced to the idea of planting trees and thence forth this became the main focus of her life. She motivated women groups to conserve the environment and improve their quality of life. Through the Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977, she has assisted over 900,000 women to plant more than 47 million trees on their farms and in schools and church compounds. In 1986, the Movement established a Pan African Green Belt Network.

In the early 1990s she fought valiantly and saved Nairobi’s Uhuru Park from being desecrated with a Moi-inspired KANU skyscraper. Moi branded her ‘a mad woman’ and chauvinist politicians dismissed her movement as ‘a bunch of divorcees’. Two years later, she was one of the leaders of a year-long vigil alongside the ‘mothers’ of political prisoners; 51 men were released as a result. At one point she was clubbed unconscious by police; Wangari baptized the area of protest in Uhuru Park - ‘Freedom Corner’. Later she risked threats, whippings and beatings while halting the seizure of public land in  Karura Forest. In 2002 she won the Tetu Parliamentary seat and was appointed Assistant Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

Wangari’s lifelong struggle to conserve our planet earned her the Nobel Prize in 2002 and she became the first woman in Africa to be so honoured. She has received awards too numerous to list here and has been named one of the 100 heroines of the world.

In 2006 she joined the UN Environmental campaign to plant a billion trees globally. In 2010 she founded the Wangari Maathai Institute for Environmental Studies. She wrote four books documenting her life and work. The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience (2003); her autobiography, Unbowed(2006); The Challenge for Africa (2008) and Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World (2010).

Sadly, though the world applauded Wangari, the governments of both President Mwai Kibaki and former president Moi virtually ignored her sterling contributions. But the thousands of women, and men, whose lives she touched and changed; continue to pay glowing tributes to her.

Wangari passed away on 25 September, 2011. Ever mindful of conserving the land and its forests, she decreed both that her body be cremated and that no trees be cut for a wooden coffin. So as she rested serenely in a simple coffin made by loving hands from the hyacinth weed, ceremoniously we bid her farewell at her own Freedom Corner and the Kenyan Government, however belatedly, finally honoured her. On this fast browning planet, Wangari Maathai stands out as an icon for our survival.