transcript - interview with dr. wangari maathai
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Wangari Maathai Interview (2003)
Q: So why don’t we begin with the schools and with the idea
of education, because we’re very focused in our film on
education as the alternative to child labor, and when I say
child labor I don’t mean child work. Children need to work
—I mean work that replaces a chance to go to school. Your
Green Belt work has involved organizing, educating and
working with rural people who are themselves not
educated, and I wondered what you think the challenges
are, or what your experiences have been in trying to
convince these people that education is the future for their
children.
WM: Well, for anybody to really work for the environment, and
the big picture of the environment, it is very important for
one to understand the linkages between the big picture
and the small picture at the household level, and even at
the personal level—when something like a forest is
destroyed, for an ordinary person in the rural areas to see
the connection between that and the fact that the top soil
of his field may be taken away the next time the rains
come, or his crop yield will be very low because the rainfall
didn’t come, uh… or when it came, since the soil was gone Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 1
it did not get into the soil and therefore his crop fails, and
so he has hunger, and the government can not respond to
him, and somebody has to go about giving—feeding him.
To make that linkage requires a certain amount of
understanding and education. And so I find that the biggest
problem sometimes is to convince people that some
environmental issues that are taking place very far from
where they are, will have a negative impact on them that
some government policies that are being made somewhere
far at the capital will eventually have an impact on them at
their household level. Now illiteracy, when you are dealing
with the people who are illiterate, who don’t read, whose
level of information is low partly because it is controlled by
a government that prefers to govern people who are not
fully involved, informed, it becomes very difficult to work
with these people because they almost want to say all the
time, how does this benefit me, and if it doesn’t benefit
them immediately in a way that they can see, then they
are not interested. So how do you get them therefore—to
plant the trees, to look for seeds, to persist, to take time
because the tree is not going to grow overnight and
provide fruits, and firewood, and building material, and
Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 2
fodder. That’s where I find that in our work education
becomes very important.
Q: (inaudible—volume too low)
WM: Yeah, well perhaps it is—it would be wrong to start from
the observations that you make when you at this time in
our history, and in our economic situation. If you were to
go into the rural areas and see what is happening to the
children, it is easier to say that perhaps there is not an
understanding of the need for education. That would be
false because most parents in this country almost over-
value education. They want their children to go to
education because since formal education was introduced
into this country almost about a hundred years ago, it has
been projected as the way out of poverty, the way out of
backwardness, and towards progress. And of course the
western consumerism is usually projected as where you
will go if you go to school. So most of the children that you
will see not going to school today, except for a few
communities that because of the religion don’t send their
children to school, or because of their lifestyle such as the
pastoral communities which are mostly on the move, the Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 3
majority of farming communities who are settled uh, and
who have been exposed to formal education really want
their children to go to school. But the economic situation of
many of these families make it very difficult for them to
send their children to school, and so, they put them to
work. Of course the other aspect of it is if you have bad
governance such as we have had in this country over cash
crops such as coffee, and tea, and sugar, sugar canes.
When farmers are not paid for the—for their produce, and
they become very poor, they are not able to hire uh, extra
hands from the numerous people in the rural areas that will
be available. And therefore they tend to use their families,
uh, and this is very common on small-scale farms. So you’ll
find children there working very hard, perhaps as I say
they will not go to school, but they will definitely be put on
- on coffee. Uh, and of course there are other areas where
there are large coffee plantations which are owned by the
large-scale farmers who of course do not use machines to
attend to their large-scale farms, they hire humans, and if
you have poverty, and you have a lot of children not going
to school for the reasons that I have said, then they
become a very good source of labor because they are
cheap, they can work long hours for all the reasons we Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 4
know, but people uh, have been exploiting children and
have been very insensitive about the needs of children,
and will sometimes use children almost like they are
adults. So they will overwork them, they will underfeed
them, they will overexpose them to even pesticides and
such, and this is where of course uh, we question the
wisdom—not only the wisdom of the parents, but also the
wisdom of those farmers, and the wisdom of the
government that allows that.
Q: Do you think that of those poor children who are being
worked in this fashion, that girls in particular, bear an
additional burden?
WM; Definitely. There is no doubt about that because as we all
know, women everywhere in the world are always the
second choice. If there is an opportunity, the boy child will
always be given the priority for the many reasons that
have been written about, and in this uh, in our country, uh,
girls—we’re coming out of a culture, a culture that is just
about uh…still very much in the horizon—we may be
wearing western clothes, and we may speak in English, but
we still are very much rooted in our culture, and that
culture treats young girls almost like little women. They’re
supposed to help their mothers with all the chores that Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 5
women do, and if there is uh, if there has to be made a
choice as to who goes to school, then most likely the girl
will be sacrificed, and of course she will be expected to
work alongside her mother. So girls definitely do take the
brunt of the uh, of the disadvantage that we find among
children. And of course girls have even greater problems in
the sense that once they’re out of school and they’re
working out there, being treated like little women, they get
taken advantage of, and before you know, they are
pregnant, they, they may – if they’re lucky get married, if
they are unlucky, like thousands of them, they’re not
married, so they start raising their own families when they
are still with their own parents. So we have a lot of children
bearing children. And uh, yeah, it’s very sad for, for the
women, for the young girls, the damage is great. Now I, I
am not very sure now that the boys are any better, but this
is partly because of the economic situation that we are in,
so that when you go into the streets, the majority of the
children in the streets will be boys. In fact I remember
when this whole phenomenon started in the uh, mid-70’s,
when I started seeing children come into the streets, it was
almost only boys. But now we know that there are girls
there, out there, but there are girls who are not getting Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 6
children out there with these boys, and so just of course
have gotten out of hand completely, and of course when a
girl gets—when a girl gets a child out there in the street,
what does that really mean? They’re talking about street
families. It’s almost inconceivable that children should be
allowed to be raising families in the streets.
Q: Wouldn’t we also see young girls caring for their siblings?
In instances where one parent has been lost to AIDS, and
wouldn’t we see girls in the domestic sector?
WM: Yeah, yeah, of course. Most people—we have a
phenomenon in this country where we hire servants, uh, it
is something that uh, it’s one of the many legacies that we
got from the British colonialism in which we
institutionalized—and a lot of the people that are now
hired, especially to take care of children, are children
themselves. And so you find a lot of kids in uh, in
households as maids, and sometimes get misused by the
master in the house. Uh, uh, and of course with the high
rate of AIDS, if children are left alone, unless there is no
girl child, the girl child will more often than not be the
mother, in inverted commas, of the children that are left
behind. But I must say, when children are left behind, even Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 7
boys will sometimes become responsible for the siblings.
Uh, so it’s not unusual to see boys taking care of the other
children. But if the girls are there, they’re usually the ones
who are held responsible and almost become like the
mother.
Q: We’ve been filming in coffee plantations and the plants are
white with the residues of pesticides. In your
environmental work I feel confident that you’ve
encountered pesticides. I’m wondering what your feeling is
about the exposure of children, laboring children, to these,
and whether or not there shouldn’t at least be some
education about what they are, how they’re used, and
what the risks are. Should children be set aside from
exposure to these dangerous chemicals?
WM: Well, they should, definitely they should, but I want to say
that uh, the Green Belt Movement does have a series of
seminars, which we give to farmers, mostly farmers who
are also involved in tree planting because we want them to
understand the big picture about the environment. And we
do uh, teach them about chemicals and (clears throat), and
generally the commercial agriculture that they are
encouraged to practice. And I must say, there is a very
strong push for uh, commercial - commercial agriculture, Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 8
and utilization of uh, pesticides, and herbicides, and
everything that goes into it. Our program tries to teach
farmers to practice organic farming, and we try to teach
them to do that not only because we are very concerned
about the damage we are doing to our soils through these
chemic… agro-chemicals, but also because we know that
the, the—many of them who are—because they are
illiterate, and because much of the information, even when
available, is in English, and therefore they can not read,
they do not know what they ought to do. And even if it is in
Kiswahili, I tell people if you go into the rural areas of this
country, you don’t find people talking in English or talking
in Kiswahili. They are talking in their mother tongues, and
if they can barely read and write, they read the bible in
their mother tongue, not in English or Kiswahili. And
therefore there is almost—uh, I don’t want to say that it is
deliberate, because I really don’t think it is deliberate. It’s
almost based on ignorance that we do not train our people
and educate our people, and give them information in the
language they can at least read so that they know how to
protect themselves from these agro-chemicals. And this is
important partly because our people overvalue information
coming from abroad. They value things coming from Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 9
abroad because they have been trained to believe that
what comes from abroad is good. And so when chemicals
come, they’re good. When uh…education, whatever
education comes, it’s good. It’s not questioned. And the
government has a responsibility, and the educators have a
responsibility, and also organizations like us have a
responsibility to train our people that everything that
comes from across the borders is not necessarily good for
you and for your environment. Now until that information is
given to the people, people in the rural areas will continue
to ignorantly poison themselves and their children. No
parent would expose his child or her child to pesticides that
are dangerous to their lungs, to their - to their skins, if they
knew that this was dangerous. But they don’t—they do not
link. Again, if we go back to the issue of education, they do
not see agro-chemicals as being poison. They see them as
healing chemicals that come to do damage to the bad
insects, and the birds, and the bad weeds, but will not do
anything bad to them. They don’t make the linkage. They
do not see that they too will be damaged by these agro-
chemicals in the same way that the insects are, that the
worms are, that the weeds are. Now if they would be
educated, they would not expose their children. Now, does Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 10
the farmer, especially in the larger-scale farms, does the
farmer not know? Of course he knows because that farmer
is usually a person who has gone to school, he will have—
he will be able to read that information. None—no farmer
at that level would be illiterate. Illiterate farmers that are
out there, they are the so-called peasants. But larger-scale
farmers are higher educated, quite often politically well-
connected individuals in this country, so they know that
they are exposing their people to these dangerous
chemicals. The question is, why don’t they care? We all
know that quite often you have to curtail the greed of
businessmen and women, and it is the responsibility of the
government to ensure that these farmers are required to
protect their farmers from these kinds of pesticides and
agro-chemicals generally. If there is a law that requires
that they do so, and if there is a follow-up to make sure
that they do so, you would not have found those children
with white skins because of the exposure. But if the farmer
can get away with it, he will do so, because many
businessmen can be very uncaring in order to make profits.
Q: I feel like I should thank you for that answer for the
tobacco children in Mexico, or the sisal children in Brazil, or
the coffee children in Kenya. I want to ask you about a Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 11
different area, kind of more of a cultural area, if you will. I
wanted to ask if you see a linkage in Kenyan and African
culture—rural culture—the identity of the people between
ties to the land, historical and spiritual ties to the land, and
the notion within families that it’s fine for their children to
work, that it’s somehow is part of their being part of their
family and their community, that the working is natural,
and that somehow that might also be part of why it’s
difficult to make a change.
WM; Yeah, uh, I think it would probably be flattering to say that
Africans feel very close to the land, and therefore they
want their children to work. But that is not true. Uh, most
Africans when they—and I’m over-generalizing because I’m
talking about a huge continent, so let me talk about Kenya.
Most Kenyan families don’t want their children to work on
the land because the land—working on the land has always
been associated with not being educated, being poor,
remaining in the rural areas and not going into the cities to
look for white-collar jobs, and the glamour of being in the
city. So a lot of people uh, will not by option farm unless
they are farming as large-scale farmers. So for them, that’s
business. They’re really not working on the land, they’re
usually sitting in the office, and it’s the poor people who Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 12
are working the land. Now, having said that, it is also true
that a lot of people in this country value land, at least
some communities like the central region where you may
have gone if you—it’s filming coffee and tea, they love
land. But that is almost like a traditional way of uh, looking
at land because for them, the—our fathers, and our
grandparents, uh, who are now to my children the great-
grandparents, over-valued land. Their wealth was in land,
women, children, and livestock. But since the introduction
of the cash economy into this country, all that lost their
original value. Now we value money, and we value cash,
and we think that with money we can buy anything. So
those children who are working on the land, or those
people who are working on the land, are not working on
the land because they love the land. It is because they
want the money. They’re looking for cash which they hope
will provide them with the capacity to buy the basic needs
that they need, whether it is food, or clothing, or books, or
whatever they need, because now we are in a cash
economy. But I certainly, as an environmentalist, I’m trying
to make them re-love the land, rediscover the value of
land, take care of it, utilize it nice—profitably yes, but also
nurture it—almost rediscover the values that our Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 13
grandparents had in taking care of the land. If they really
loved the land, they would protect the soils, they wouldn’t
not want to see soil erosion taking place as massively as it
is taking place. They would not allow the forests and
especially the watershed areas to be deforested as the rate
that they are being deforested. So when I see them
working hard on the land, I know that it is not out of this
love for the land that our people used to have. Now they’re
rushing, or they are pursuing cash. And whether they get
that cash by picking coffee, by picking tea, or by working in
some kind of town, or whether they’re getting it because
they are teachers or whoever, but it is not out of love for
the land. I wish it were. Because if it were, then there
would be greater care of the land, and there would not be
as much environmental destruction as we see. And, if there
was that love for the land, there would be even great
concern for the children because after all you hand over
this land to the children. That was one of the values that
was in our grandparents, that they knew that we are
transitory, and we pass this heritage to the next
generation. Currently when I look around, it seems like we
are not thinking of the next generation. If we were thinking
about the next generation, we wouldn’t have those Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 14
children working on the farm. They would be in school
being prepared for the next gener… because they are the
next generation—being prepared for the handing over. We
wouldn’t have children sleeping in uh, on top of garbage
and dump weed uh, heaps, and sleeping literally like
animals. We wouldn’t—we wouldn’t be able to go to bed
knowing that there are children, literally thousands of
children, sleeping in dump sites because we would see—
we would recognize that that’s the next generation that is
being destroyed. Therefore, to whom would you hand over
this land? But if all you’re concerned about is today, and
cash, and how you can satisfy your greed, then of course it
doesn’t matter because it’s only you. So what we really
need to rediscover again is the, the value of the Ark,
whether it is in the form of the soil, in the form of the
mountain, in form of the rivers, in form of the forests. And
recognize that we love this because it will sustain the next
generation, and the next generation are those children that
we see with white hands, and sleeping and eating from the
dump sites.
Q: There are outside forces that affect Kenya’s present and
Kenya’s future ability to reach the, the condition and state
that you have just described. In 1982, for instance, the Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 15
World Bank imposed on Kenya a Structural Adjustment
Program, an SAP, that took a free educational system and
made it cost-sharing. And so that a country that have
ninety percent of those children in school, K-8, standard
eight, now has in many areas less than thirty percent. Uh,
could you talk a little bit about—you just finished talking
about cash, and moving from an agricultural economy that
can feed itself essentially, and build a future for itself, and
now we have a very big envelope to fill with the World
Bank for these loans—the conditions of the loans don’t
appear at least on the surface to be very good for the
children or the people of Kenya. Would you comment on
that?
WM: Yeah, well it’s very easy to blame the outsiders, to blame
the World Bank, and to blame the IMF and all the
multilateral donor agencies that have been giving Kenya
money, and it’s very easy to say that the structural
adjustment programs have uh, destroyed our economies.
They have done so, but really speaking as a Kenyan, I
would say that we have put ourselves in the soup that we
find ourselves. If we, that is our government, was to
practice good governance, if for the last thirty years or so
we have been practicing good governance, utilizing the Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 16
resources that we have, both human and material,
efficiently, without corruption, with a lot of accountability,
we would not be in the mess that we are in now. I want to
encourage you to stand by Uhuru highway, and count the
number of huge expensive vehicles that you will see
running down that highway. That is hardly a country that is
extremely poor. That is hardly a country where more than
sixty percent—or fifty percent of its people live at one
dollar a day, according to the World Bank data. We are
poor, but we are almost the ones who have put ourselves
in that situation. We borrowed money, and we borrowed
heavily, especially in the 80’s, and even in the 70’s. But
nobody has been able to say what we did with that money.
We know there is a lot of corruption, we know a lot of
people in government have enriched themselves. Some of
them are filthy rich, they don’t know what to do with their
money. And that money is partly money that we may have
borrowed from the World Bank and IMF, so while the World
Bank and IMF, and international communities are holding
us by the neck, it is partly because we have allowed
ourselves to put—to be put in that position. I was part of -
our organization, the Green Belt Movement was part of the
globe—of the year 2000 Jubilee Campaign that was Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 17
persuading the international community to cancel the
debts of the African Nations because they just can’t pay
without sacrificing their people. And part of the sacrifices
you have seen—you have seen the streets, you have see
on the farms, you have seen—if you go to Kenyatta
National Hospital, you’ll see how many people are dying
everyday. Uh, if you go to our mortuaries, they are full.
Everyday there are hundreds of people picking, they are
dead. We are paying with our own lives those debts,
because the Kenyan government insists that it must meet
the commitments to the international community, or the
international community will literally let Kenya dry. Our
government would probably not last a day if we refused to
uh, pay the commitments that we have to the international
community. But we are doing it, our government is doing it
at the expense of its own people—the way the roads are,
I’m sure you saw that. So, the question is, okay, we did put
ourselves in this position, but can the World Bank surely,
and the IMF, and all those who lent Kenya money, can they
genuinely say that they didn’t know that our government
was corrupt, that they didn’t know that we were having a
very uh, that we were having very poor governance
generally, that this money was not being used for the Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 18
purpose that it was given? If they did, the culture of any
bank system, or any lending system is that if you think that
the one you are lending to is not credible, you are not
likely to get your money back, you don’t lend. And
therefore I think that while our governments are very—are
to be held responsible for the troubles that we are in
economically, the international community bears a very
heavy responsibility because they knew. And if it is true
that some of the money was actually stolen and is banked
in some accounts, it is in the north. It is in the northern
banks, and I’m sure the northern countries know that. Why
do they protect that kind of wealth? Why can’t they take
that money and pay themselves? Because they know that
money was stolen from the people. Instead of allowing the
government to sacrifice—forcing the government to
sacrifice its own people to pay these debts, and of course
as it has been said many times, uh, these debts have
already been paid several times over, the interests have
been increased. The international community has refused
to pay adequate—adequately for our resources. The coffee
that you see people picking, and the tea that you see
people picking, they will get peanuts out of it, because the
international community doesn’t want to pay up to—but up Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 19
to a certain level. They control how much we pay, we, we
get for these primary agricultural products, and they
control what we pay for the cars that I want you to look at
at Uhuru highway. So we are completely trapped. In an
economic system, a global economic system that continues
to insist that if we want to be rich we have to open our
doors, but as we all know, no other doors are open. Only
our doors must be kept open. So we are really in a very
difficult uh, economic trap, if I may call it so, partly self-
imposed, but also definitely taken advantage of by people
who have the greater political and economic muscle to do
so.
Q: What part of that circumstance was created by having one
party? You have a one-party system, don’t you?
WM; Yeah.
Q: I’m not sure that Americans even understand what that…
WM; Well, Americans may not understand the one-party system
because they have always had several parties, at least
they have had to two major parties in America, and they
have a very strong political system that was created by
their forefathers who had a lot of vision, and who ensured
that no one person would have an overall power over the
country, and who would literally rule the country and Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 20
manage the resources of the country as if they were their
own personal property. I’m sure to the Americans it is
completely inconceivable. But that is the situation we had
here when we introduced a multi-party system. When we
became independent in 1963, we were a multi-party
system. But in the course of time we completely eliminated
all the other parties and became a one-party dictatorship.
Now the sad thing about that is once you allow one human
being—it doesn’t matter who it is—we can now - currently
we are blaming President Moi, and we are throwing all
stones at him, but it doesn’t matter who it is. If you have a
system that allows one person to be in charge, one person
to have all power over the land, he will misuse his power.
And so a lot of the misgovernance that we had in the last
thirty years or so were partly due to the one-party system.
Thank god for the last—in—since the last ten years we now
have a multi-party system, and it is partly because of the
multi-party system that things - we feel that things are
changing. We have—we have regained some of our
freedom. We have regained freedom of speech to a certain
extent, although we just had a bill passed that is going to
control the press. That’s a regression, and I hope that the
next government will not be willing to have this made into Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 21
law. Uh, we have freedoms of movement to a certain
extent. But we are still not a free country because we are
still very much controlled by a provincial administration
that is extremely oppressive. Uh, we inherited a colonial
administration that was of course designed to serve the
British Crown, not to serve the Kenyan natives.
(END TAPE 531)
WM: He, the Kenyatta is the one who actually uh, banned multi-
parties in—but he just banned them, he did not eliminate
them, uh, and then during President Moi’s time, uh, they
were completely removed, and then we became a
dictatorship. But what I was saying is that a one-party
system, it doesn’t matter where it occurs, will produce
corruption, will produce leaders who are greedy,
irresponsible, who just are interested in enriching
themselves, are not interested in the country. It’s a real
statesman who can be given all that power and use it
responsibly, and use it for the benefit of the common good
of the country. Now most of us are not uh, (unintelligible),
uh, so I want to say that most of us are not that benign,
and so it is very, very important for systems to be created, Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 22
structures, institutions to be created that ensure that
dictatorships, does not—you know, does not thrive. And I
was comparing that to the fact that in the American
system even though they have only two major parties, and
thank god there are new parties coming in like the Green
Party, uh, so that people have more choices, uh, there was
the wisdom of creating for example two houses, for
creating a president who has given us such an amount of
leeway, but he is very much controlled by the two houses,
and by many other institutions such as the judiciary so that
he just can’t do whatever he wants to do with the country.
Now in our situation, uh, we were not—in the one-party
system we were in a situation where literally the country
belonged to the president. He could do whatever he wants
to. He can—even today, he uh, he does it illegally, but he
can still issue title deeds to forests. He can give individuals
sections of forests. He can decide an open space in the
middle of the city, which is used—intended for a
playground for children. He can give that away to a friend
for political favors, as a political favor for support. And
those kinds of things will not happen in a governance
system where there are checks and balances, and where
the president knows - because the country is not his. He Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 23
has been given that responsibility, and a privilege to
govern the country on behalf of the present and the future
generations. That’s what we are trying to create. But we
are right now in this country in that process.
Q: In Kenya today, according to the International Labour
Organization’s global study, which was only issued about
two weeks ago, four million children under the age of
fourteen are working, mostly in agriculture, many in what
they call the worst forms of child labor, being put at risk,
serious risk, and Kenya is the sixth worst African nation in
terms of child labor, and Africa as a continent is just behind
Asia in the amount and variety of children laboring. What
steps do you think should be taken to try and impact this
to reduce this in the years ahead, realizing there’s a
process. What should be done? What are the things that
you, the steps that you think could be taken? Would for
instance, funding the Children’s Bill, which your Parliament
has just passed, announcing the end of cost-sharing,
putting some actual money there, help with – we’ve
spoken of the World Bank debt relief, what are the things
that can be done now to reduce this waste of human
potential?
Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 24
WM: Yeah, well as I said earlier, parents are concerned about
their children, and they want their children to grow up to
become useful, and uh, self-reliant adults. I haven’t met a
parent, except those who are destroying themselves with
alcohol and drugs, who are irresponsible towards their
children deliberately and willingly. So I think for me, the
first thing that we must do immediately, is improve our
governance, and that is what is being done. For example,
we hope that we will have elections by the end of the year.
We hope that this government will be replaced by a more
responsible team of governors who will be—who will use
the resources of this country more responsibly, and will
pass policies that are in favor of children, and generally in
favor of people, that a government that will be people-
friendly, rather than a government that exploits or
facilitates the exploitation of its own people. Now that
cannot be done by outsiders, it can only be done first and
foremost by Kenyans, and by Kenyan leaders. So that’s
what we must do. And the help that we are receiving from
the international community is the pressure on President
Moi, that he must quit because his time is over, and he
must allow for elections to be held, and that eventually we
must have a constitution that provides the checks and Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 25
balances that will allow for us to have a good governance
that will ensure that the resources of this country are used
properly. Only then can we be able to say children can
receive education, children can receive Medicare, and their
parents can be protected so that their coffee and tea is not
exploited by middlemen who leave them poor and
therefore unable to take care of their children. That for me
is what I see can be done immediately. Of course the
international community can help, but no international
community can replace the responsibility of the parents
initially, and that of their local, you know, the national
government. I do not want to say that we are overwhelmed
by the population. We are only thirty million people. We
are not that many despite what people like to say. We are
dying at a terrific speed, speed, for those who are worried
about our population. Therefore maybe in a few years time
we shall be worried about how few we are, and how few we
are who can be productive, because it is the young people
who are dying. So the population to me is not an issue.
What is an issue at the moment is good governance to be
put in place so that we have responsible people, and so
that the international community that wishes to assist can
assist in an environment where the help can be helpful, Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 26
can be useful. Because nobody can take care of children
better than parents. We can build all of the homes we
want, but you cannot produce the same kind of a child, the
same kind of an adult, the same kind of a responsible
citizen that you want out of a home where children grow
without the love and the nurturing of their parents. So
what we ought to do is to have programs that facilitate
that help, that—empower parents to take care of their
children, and to have these children growing up in
responsible homes, in unified homes, in homes where for
example drugs are not the order of the day, alcoholism is
not the order of the day, and where poverty is not so
disempowering. Now those—that environment, that
economic and political environment must be created by
our own leaders, and then the international community can
be asked for help. But I—sometimes people outside our
countries say well (clears throat), they need this, they need
that, they need the other. People cannot replace parents.
In fact sometimes I want to ask, where are the parents
whose children are in the streets? Where does the
government—why doesn’t—doesn’t the government not
ask where are the parents? Why can’t the parents be held
responsible? After all, if any parent tried to kill their Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 27
children, they are arrested, and they are charged with
murder. Abandoning children into the streets, or misusing
children as workers is a form of murder. It’s a slow death
that you are giving, a sentence of death that you’re giving
to the child. The parents should be held responsible. I think
too often we leave the parents off the hook. You brought
these children into this world, you must be held
responsible for them. You cannot allow parents to produce
children and then they go about drinking uh, themselves
uh, to the level that they can no longer take care of their
children—taking drugs so that they can no longer take care
of their children. These are responsible adults. They must
be held responsible. I think there has been too much
leniency in our government. In the traditional system, if
those children, if let me say—if my grandparents, the age
of my grandparents who did not know how to read and
write, who were moving about virtually naked with the
skins hiding their nakedness, if they were to wake up today
they would wonder what the hell happened to their world,
because in their time everybody was held responsible for
their children. You could not be allowed by the community
to produce children and then leave them alone
unattended. And I notice, for example, in the developed Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 28
countries such as America, you cannot leave children alone
in their homes—in the home. You have to constantly have
children attended to. This is the responsibility of the adults.
What has happened here is that adults have abandoned
their responsibilities, and the government has allowed
them to do so. Men have abandoned their responsibilities.
In the traditional societies, every man was required to take
care of the children he produced. He may have two wives,
three wives, or as many wives as he wanted, but he was
bound to take care of them, and to take care of all these
children that come out of those unions. Today in our
society we have changed the system. Men can be as free
as birds. They can produce in a day, and whatever, and
whenever, and with whomsoever. But nobody holds them
responsible for the children born out of the union. How
irresponsible can you hold—how irresponsible do we want
to have our people? Men must be held responsible. Women
are almost made responsible by the virtue of the fact that
they produce these children. They have to nurture them,
they have to nurse them. Sometimes, of course, women
also become irresponsible and they abandon children, they
kill children, or they leave them to go into the streets. They
too must be held responsible. Now if we had that kind of a Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 29
law, we wouldn’t have as many children in the streets
because half of those children, their mothers and fathers
are somewhere loitering around, or uh, sleeping around
because they are—they have intoxicated themselves with
alcohol or drugs. That should be unacceptable in society.
Q: I have one final question, which is actually again about
responsibility. This time, the responsibility of the world
community to two hundred million children who labor in
mines, on plantations, on fishing platforms, as street
children, as prostitutes, you name it, almost anything that
you can think of, children exploited for economic gain, and
I guess it’s part of the premise of the film, but the notion
that all children are basically the same. And that they’re
entitled to childhood, and the chance, an opportunity to
learn, instead of labor. What is your reaction to that?
WM: Well I would say that all children are of course the same,
uh…and all children should be given the same
opportunities uh, to grow up in an environment that will
nurture them and make them grow into responsible uh,
(clears throat) adulthood, and become adults who can uh,
express their potentialities, and I want to say realize their
potentialities. But that’s probably utopia, because on the
other side you can say all human beings are entitled to a Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 30
quality of life that is decent, that is worth of humans. No
matter who they are, their color, their religion, the place
where they were born, and (clears throat), if we can make
(clears throat), excuse me, if we can accept that, that all
human beings have a right to a quality life, a decent life, a
life worth humans, then of course children are also there.
But if we condemn some human beings into a life that is
depressive, that is disempowering, that is so miserable,
either because of the color they bear, either because of
where they are in the geography of the planet, either
because of their religion, then of course those people and
their children will be in that area. It is impossible to save
children alone. What we must save are communities
because children are part of communities, and so if we
were to promote a more just society, a more just human
society, a society where resources are more equitably
distributed, both at the national level in a country like
Kenya, and at a global level. If we could have uh, uh, a
notion that indeed it is not fair to force Kenya to open up
her doors to a global economy if America does not do the
same, then (clears throat) we could begin to create a
society, a global human society where there is greater
equity—not equality, but equity, and greater uh…yeah, I Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 31
think I would say where there is greater equity. And if we
have greater equity then we shall be able to take care of
the children. Because I’m giving you an example of now,
Kenya, one hundred years after Europeans arrived in this
country, we now we wear good clothes, now we speak
foreign languages, now we drive cars, we fly aeroplanes.
But today our children are eating out of dump sites like
dogs. A hundred years ago when we could not read or
write, when we did not speak foreign languages, when we
were alone here, our children were healthy, and they were
happy. So sometimes one asks, what happened? We were
supposed to have had progress, but it seems like we
regressed. We loved children, we nurtured them, we
protected them; we did not have a problem of alcoholism
or drugs. We had leaders who were responsible one
hundred years ago. But today, we are just the opposite. We
are almost like a shadow of what we used to be, yet we are
one hundred years into modernity. So what has happened?
What has modernity done? That’s why I say if my
grandparents woke up today and went into the streets and
saw those children in the dump site, and saw those young
men lying in the parks completely drugged either by
alcohol or by drugs, and went into the rural areas and saw Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 32
that poverty, and saw those children laboring in the coffee
plantations, as we say, with their white hands, and know
that they’re going to die very quickly, they would not
believe what has happened to the communities in the last
one hundred years. And so we must ask ourselves, and we
must ask our leaders, and we must ask the international
community, what kind of world are we building, and how
safe are those who think that they’re alright because their
children are not in the dump sites? I often tell people in
this country that we shall never be safe in this country,
until all of us are safe, because sooner or later we all get
into the trap, and in many ways it’s the same in the world.
We shall never really be safe, and happy, and at peace
with ourselves, and we shall never really be able to say
that our children are safe, and that they have a world
tomorrow until we can say that for all children, for all
people, for all humanity. And as an environmentalist, you
know, we say that uh, you cannot be too concerned about
the human species as if you are not concerned about the
other species. So we really have to expand our concept of
life, our concept of uh, of the planet, and understand that
we humans more than any other species have done so
much damage to ourselves—we have also done a lot of Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 33
damage to other species, and that we, unlike them, we
have a special responsibility to restore them, and most of
all to restore ourselves. By restoring, there is nothing much
I can do to myself. I have lived my life, but I can do
something to restore the future by taking care of the
children who are the future.
(END TAPE 532)
Int: Wangari MaathaiTape #: 531Page 34
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