Oct. 09, 2004 - 19:07 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Phenomenal Woman

Sometimes the news is overwhelming. Today it is, in a very good way. Things like this give a person the will to hope for the best.

In today's Rocky Mountain News is an Article by Tom Maliti of the Associated Press. In part:

Environmentalist from Kenya given Nobel Peace Prize

"IHURURU, KENYA - When Wangari Maathai got word she had won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, she was campaigning to protect Kenya's forests and distributing food to villagers suffering from drought -- the same work she's been doing for decades."

Maathai was in the countryside - just one hill away from her childhood home - when told she had won the $1.3 million prize, joining a club that includes Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and the Dalai Lama."

"The 64-year old Maathai, the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize in any category since the awards were first handed out in 1901, gained recent acclaim for a campaign planting 30 million trees to stave off deforestation."

"Many of the wars in Africa are fought over natural resources," Maathai told The Associated Press. "Ensuring they are not destroyed is a way of ensuring there is no conflict."

"Maathai, Kenya's deputy environment minister and a former presidential candidate, has worked for nearly half her life to protect the environment and human rights."

"During the 1980s and 1990s she also campaigned against government oppression. She founded Kenya's Green Party Movement in 1987 and was repeatedly arrested and beaten for protesting former President Daniel arap Moi's environental policies and human rights record."

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Also there is an article by Chris Tomlinson of the Associated Press this morning, in part:

Peace Prize 'crowning glory'

Kenya's Maathai endured beatings for environment

"Nairobi, Kenya - Nobel peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai founded Africa's largest community-based environmental organization not only to protect the environment but also to empower women and fight oppression."

"Maathai - the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize in any category - started the Green Belt Movement in 1977 while a member of the National Council of Women of Kenya. A year later, Daniel arap Moi became Kenya's president, ushering in an era of corrupt and dictatorial rule that often left Maathai at odds with rulers over environmental and human right issues."

"Maathai stood up courageously against the former oppressive regime in Kenya," the Nobel Committee said in awarding her the 2004 Peace Prize on Friday. "Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa."

"Born in a village near Mount Kenya in April 1940, Maathai said she had a 'very ordinary' childhood. But her commitment to education took her far from her village."

"Maathai, Kenya's deputy enironment minister, was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate, from the University of Nairobi in 1971. She also has degrees from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison Kansas and the University of Pittsburg."

"She decided to start the Green Belt Movement on a vist home to Nyeri, 60 miles north of Nairobi, in Kenya's verdant highlands. "I was hearing at the National Council of Women in Kenya complaints from women. A lot of them about not having enough firewood, not having enough food for their children, and I was discovering there was a lot of malnutrition in this part of the country," she said Friday."

"Elizabeth Guilbaud-Cox, now head of outreach for the U.N. Environment Program, met Maathai dring the 1990s. "She always gives her all, she always ensures her principles are not compromised and that the commitment to the cause is always put at the forefront, Guilbaud-Cox said."

"Maathai ran for president in 1997 and won only a few votes. Despite the disappointment, she kept up her campaign for the environment and human rights, often drawing the ire of Moi, who remained in office until 2002."

"That same year she was elected to parliament, and new President Mwai Kibaki named her assistant minister for the environment."

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What a great woman she is, to have come as far in a country, a continent where women are not quite considered as human and if they are, they are considered as property of some man or another.

What almost impossible to surmount obstacles she must have overcome. What character she has, to have stayed by her guns even under the abuse she suffered from her then government.

Often when reading about such people as that, trying to put myself in their shoes, I wonder - could I be up to that ? Could I lived the life of a person like Mother Teresa ? Of some of our early heroes and heroines here in America ?

Mind boggling it is that Maathai overcame national contempt of women, prejudice, cruelty, and other forms of torment and still got her education and forged such a career, in spite of a dictatorial president.

I have read much about the great need for potable water in Africa as well as reading about the need for and lack of firewood. Most of African people are poor and the only fuel they have is firewood, so they rely on firewood to prepare meals and heat washwater. I have read of the progress southward of the Sahel below the Sahara, a new desolate land made partly so because the very vegetation that holds land together has been cut away for firewood, in order to do the essential things for poor people to survive.

So tomorrow will be a day of celebration here for this woman who is above many humans in her efforts and philosophy. She is indeed a Phenomenal Woman . . . . . . . . .

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