transcript - interview with dr. wangari maathai

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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?


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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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 #: 531

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)


transcript - interview with dr. wangari maathai

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