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PROFESSOR
Wangari Maathai, the Environment Ministry Assistant minister’s
efforts at conservation are legendary. And she has suffered quite
some knocks in her crusade especially during the last regime as
the head of the GreenBelt Movement, an outfit she fashioned to
get trees and more trees planted from the grassroots. She used
to take the battle to the high and mighty at the risk of her safety
and even life. Remember the battle to stop then extremely powerful
and autocratic ruling party Kanu from building a massive 60-storey
concrete structure bang at Uhuru Park where the powers that were
denigrated her as “Huyu mwanamke gitu gani”
and many more altercations with the state?
She
has had opportunity to air her views on her pet subject-conservation
- in the broadcast media and she puts her message very succinctly.
A key plank of her conservation message – a real gem in
my view – is; “God took five days creating the universe.
The Almighty took a whole five days to put the moon, sun, galaxy,
rivers, trees, oceans and all the animals together.” The
gracious lady goes on.” On the sixth day God created man.”
And then the bombshell.
Muroki
Gititu,
Nairobi
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