KENYA: Somber mood as environmentalist Wangari Maathai’s body is taken for cremation

Record ID: 361134

  • Title: KENYA: Somber mood as environmentalist Wangari Maathai’s body is taken for cremation
  • Date: 9th October 2011
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (OCTOBER 08, 2011) (REUTERS) WIDE OF FREEDOM CORNER, MOURNERS WAITING FOR MAATHAI'S BODY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS LEAD BY PRESIDENT KIBAKI AND PRIME MINISTER MEETING FAMILY MEMBERS POLICE BAND (SOUNDBITE) (English) NORWEGIAN AMBASSADOR TO KENYA, PER LUDVIG MAGNUS, SAYING: "We are today saying farewell to a great and remarkable woman, gifted, visionary and h
  • Embargoed: 24th October 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Obituaries,People
  • Reuters ID: LVAOQQYO8CZJ81NU12167Z7SW8J
  • Story Text: Thousands of Kenyans lined the streets of Nairobi on Saturday to pay their last respects to Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaigns to say Kenyan forests.
    Maathai was given a state funeral at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park, where then-president Daniel arap Moi's security services beat her up for pressuring the government to release political prisoners.
    Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaigns to save Kenyan forests, died in hospital a week ago after a long struggle with ovarian cancer.
    Private prayers were said at the Lee Funeral home before her hearse was driven to Freedom corner near the city centre where a tree was planted and later tributes were read out.
    "We are today saying farewell to a great and remarkable woman, gifted, visionary and humble, with strong ethics and strong integrity from a tiniest start her forceful ideas have spread to the entire world," said Per Ludvig Magnus, the Norwegian Ambassador to Kenya.
    Maathai, 71, founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to plant trees to prevent environmental and social conditions deteriorating and hurting poor people, especially women, living in rural Kenya.
    Her movement expanded in the 1980s and 1990s to embrace wider campaigns for social, economic and political change, setting her on a collision course with the government of the then-president, Daniel arap Moi.
    Maathai's last wishes to be cremated shocked many since it is not common practice in the country.
    Maathai, who won the Peace Prize in 2004, had to endure being whipped, tear-gassed and threatened with death for her devotion to Kenya's forests and her desire to end the corruption that often spells their destruction.
    "It would have been a curse if we did not adhere to her cremation wishes. I'm happy that her will is being done," said Ben Mwangi, a Nairobi resident.
    Maathai was born in the central highlands of Kenya on April 1, 1940. She earned a master's degree in the United States before becoming the first woman in Kenya to receive a doctorate for veterinary medicine and be appointed a professor.
    "This death has brought about a very huge blow to our conservation efforts; she was the only one who really cared about it without any fear," said Harriet Muli, a Nairobi resident Maathai's movement spread across Africa and has gone on to plant more than 47 million trees to slow deforestation and erosion. She joined the U.N. Environment Programme in 2006 to launch a campaign to plant a billion trees worldwide.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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