A Nobel Peace Prize first for African women!

NAIROBI – Staff and directors of the Green Belt Movement founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai danced on Saturday to traditional songs to celebrate her win, as Maathai struggled to come to terms with the award.

Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday from among a record 194 nominations, including people involved with such hot-button issues as the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Maathai is the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the first Kenyan to win a Nobel.The prize carries a US$1,3 million award.”I’m still pinching myself trying to convince myself this has happened, this is real,” Maathai said at the offices of the non-governmental organisation she founded in 1977.She said she spent Friday night doing interviews with journalists and got home to find hundreds of e-mails congratulating her from all over the world.”I would like to encourage the youth not to be disappointed by the problems they face.Be encouraged by an opportunity like this, a day like this … Success doesn’t come in a day, success can wait many years,” Maathai said.Meanwhile, in Namibia, Tsukhoe Garoes, Head of the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) Sub-Division in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, said on Friday it was very fitting that the prize was announced on the day Namibia celebrated Arbor Day.”We are extremely proud.It means a lot to Africa.It is a great story for the continent,” she told The Namibian.”I hope the prize will inspire all Namibians to start planting trees.We really need more trees in the country.”Before Maathai read a speech at her organisation’s centre on Saturday, staff and directors of the Green Belt Movement feted her and then broke into song, forming a human locomotive dancing on the dry lawns of the organisation and singing in Maathai’s mother tongue, Kikuyu.Eddah Gachukia, who chaired the National Council of Women of Kenya when the Green Belt Movement started as a council project, said:”We wish more people had joined you.If Kenya had done that Kenya would look very, very different today.””We are feeling this prize belongs to all of us, to all of Africa.Thank you for earning Kenya and Africa this great recognition,” Gachukia told Maathai, who is deputy environment minister in President Mwai Kibaki’s administration.Asked whether winning the prize will embolden her to speak out more often even though she’s only a deputy minister, Maathai said she will raise her voice when necessary.”If I’m quiet, it is not that I’m afraid of articulating issues.I’m looking for opportunities that I don’t attack the government I serve in and that at the same time I can speak out clearly,” Maathai said.She now joins a club that includes Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.* Maathai started the Greenbelt Movement in 1977, while head 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 Kenya’s rulers as she combined her love of the environment with her passion for human rights.”Maathai stood up courageously against the former oppressive regime in Kenya,” the Nobel Peace Prize citation released Friday said.”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, running up and down the hills to fetch water and fire wood for her mother.But her commitment to school took her far from her village.Maathai was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate, starting with a degree in biological sciences from Mount St Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas, in 1964.She decided to start the Greenbelt Movement on a visit home to Nyeri, 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 fire wood, not having enough food for their children and I was discovering there was a lot malnutrition in this part of the country,” she said Friday.She soon discovered that despite being a fertile region, there were political and social problems contributing to the deforestation and the problems faced by women.”I did not fully understand when I started doing this, how complex a problem it was.”Maathai focused on planting trees to address the wood fuel crisis in Kenya, but the group also fought to preserve Kenya’s remaining protected forests, which corrupt government officials were stealing.In Kenya, she soon became known as “the Tree Woman” and in 1987 she founded Kenya’s Green Party.In the early 1990s, the mother of three led a group of women protesting the Moi government’s torture of political prisoners, establishing Freedom’s Corner in a downtown Nairobi park.Women would gather at the spot for protests and hunger strikes, but were often dispersed by truncheon-wielding police.”You cannot count the number of times she has been arrested and beaten by police while campaigning for environmental issues,” Makanga said.”In 1989, she fled to Tanzania to save her life while fighting construction of a multi-story building at a public park in Nairobi.”Elizabeth Guilbaud-Cox, now head of outreach for the UN Environment Programme, met Maathai during this period, after the Kenyan won UN’s Africa Leadership Prize and the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1991.”She always gives her all, she always ensures her principles are not compromised and that her commitment to the cause is always put at the forefront,” Guilbaud-Cox said.”When I dealt with her through those difficult times, she was never cowed by the scope or the magnitude of the events.”While world organisations were showering her with prizes, Kenyan officials were dismissing her activities as what happens when “a mother who is divorced and single”.”She’s worked hard and done incredible, courageous things for Kenya,” Wanjira Maathai (32) said.”It’s not been easy for the family.It’s been a very, very turbulent, emotional and traumatising experience watching her go through hell for what she believes.””But this is the crowning glory,” she added.- Nampa-AFP-Reuters-AP-Own ReporterMaathai is the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the first Kenyan to win a Nobel.The prize carries a US$1,3 million award.”I’m still pinching myself trying to convince myself this has happened, this is real,” Maathai said at the offices of the non-governmental organisation she founded in 1977.She said she spent Friday night doing interviews with journalists and got home to find hundreds of e-mails congratulating her from all over the world.”I would like to encourage the youth not to be disappointed by the problems they face.Be encouraged by an opportunity like this, a day like this … Success doesn’t come in a day, success can wait many years,” Maathai said.Meanwhile, in Namibia, Tsukhoe Garoes, Head of the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) Sub-Division in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, said on Friday it was very fitting that the prize was announced on the day Namibia celebrated Arbor Day.”We are extremely proud.It means a lot to Africa.It is a great story for the continent,” she told The Namibian.”I hope the prize will inspire all Namibians to start planting trees.We really need more trees in the country.”Before Maathai read a speech at her organisation’s centre on Saturday, staff and directors of the Green Belt Movement feted her and then broke into song, forming a human locomotive dancing on the dry lawns of the organisation and singing in Maathai’s mother tongue, Kikuyu.Eddah Gachukia, who chaired the National Council of Women of Kenya when the Green Belt Movement started as a council project, said:”We wish more people had joined you.If Kenya had done that Kenya would look very, very different today.””We are feeling this prize belongs to all of us, to all of Africa.Thank you for earning Kenya and Africa this great recognition,” Gachukia told Maathai, who is deputy environment minister in President Mwai Kibaki’s administration.Asked whether winning the prize will embolden her to speak out more often even though she’s only a deputy minister, Maathai said she will raise her voice when necessary.”If I’m quiet, it is not that I’m afraid of articulating issues.I’m looking for opportunities that I don’t attack the government I serve in and that at the same time I can speak out clearly,” Maathai said.She now joins a club that includes Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.* Maathai started the Greenbelt Movement in 1977, while head 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 Kenya’s rulers as she combined her love of the environment with her passion for human rights.”Maathai stood up courageously against the former oppressive regime in Kenya,” the Nobel Peace Prize citation released Friday said.”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, running up and down the hills to fetch water and fire wood for her mother.But her commitment to school took her far from her village.Maathai was the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate, starting with a degree in biological sciences from Mount St Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas, in 1964.She decided to start the Greenbelt Movement on a visit home to Nyeri, 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 fire wood, not having enough food for their children and I was discovering there was a lot malnutrition in this part of the country,” she said Friday.She soon discovered that despite being a fertile region, there were political and social problems contributing to the deforestation and the problems faced by women.”I did not fully understand when I started doing this, how complex a problem it was.”Maathai focused on planting trees to address the wood fuel crisis in Kenya, but the group also fought to preserve Kenya’s remaining protected forests, which corrupt government officials were stealing.In Kenya, she soon became known as “the Tree Woman” and in 1987 she founded Kenya’s Green Party.In the early 1990s, the mother of three led a group of women protesting the Moi government’s torture of political prisoners, establishing Freedom’s Corner in a downtown Nairobi park.Women would gather at the spot for protests and hunger strikes, but were often dispersed by truncheon-wielding police.”You cannot count the number of times she has been arrested and beaten by police while campaigning for environmental issues,” Makanga said.”In 1989, she fled to Tanzania to save her life while fighting construction of a multi-story building at a public park in Nairobi.”Elizabeth Guilbaud-Cox, now head of outreach for the UN Environment Programme, met Maathai during this period, after the Kenyan won UN’s Africa Leadership Prize and the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1991.”She always gives her all, she always ensures her principles are not compromised and that her commitment to the cause is always put at the forefront,” Guilbaud-Cox said.”When I dealt with her through those difficult times, she was never cowed by the scope or the magnitude of the events.”While world organisations were showering her with prizes, Kenyan officials were dismissing her activities as what happens when “a mother who is divorced and single”.”She’s worked hard and done incredible, courageous things for Kenya,” Wanjira Maathai (32) said.”It’s not been easy for the family.It’s been a very, very turbulent, emotional and traumatising experience watching her go through hell for what she believes.””But this is the crowning glory,” she added.- Nampa-AFP-Reuters-AP-Own Reporter