Fare Thee Well, Mama (Eulogizing Professor Wangari Maathai)

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“As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads (emphasis mine). But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents. Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder (emphasis mine).”

--Nobel lecture of the late Professor Wangari Maathai  (10 December 2004)

As I was walking to school today, I froze in my tracks when I heard from Maina Kageni, a commentator at Classic 105 FM, that Professor Wangari Maathai had passed on. This was hard news for me to swallow especially considering that I had honoured Wangari Maathai in this blog sometimes earlier this year. To be precise, on 5th March this year, I had written a poem to honour her and had even made an effort to send it to Greenbelt Movement Kenya for onward transmission to her. I remember feeling so good to have her read the poem. I knew she was busy as a "citizen of the earth" and that just her smile was enough though I would have saved her reply as some sort of an "autograph" had she replied to it. You could read it here.

All that Mama Wangari has done in her life is public information and I need not enumerate them here. But I had always dreamt of one day meeting her in person, shake her hand and tell her most sincerely “hongera mama” and encourage her to keep up the good fight.

I always hoped that I will sit with her and talk with her about what inspires her and draw from her cheer.

But last night, my role model, as I am told, succumbed to cancer in Nairobi Hospital. My sweet mama was no more.

This however doesn’t stop me from decorating her even in her death. For I know that mama will still watch over and smile on us, maintain her cheer. In fact, I will plant a tree and call it after her, water it and watch it grow. 

I refuse to believe that Mama is dead. She lives among us. She lives in my poems. She lives in the trees. She is the air I breath. Her soul is in Uhuru park. Her soul is roaming all over the world. My mama still lives on.


Meanwhile, the world continues to decorate her. CNN captured it thus:  World Mourns Passing of a 'true African heroine'

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Fare Thee Well, Mama

(Eulogizing Professor Wangari Maathai)

Mama, when the cowardly cells of malignance

Put you down, multiplying

Slowing down your spirit

Stilling your spin of action

How I wished they knew you

You had been in the struggle before,

Though in different circumstances

And even with greater selflessness

You would have been put down then

Why not?

They pulled your hair

They could have fooled with your air

Silence you, torture you even

So here I am, mama, writing this poem

On a chilly, sun-less Nairobi morning

Wishing to see you hug a tree

Or walk with Obama

Or planting trees

Or telling us to obey nature

Now that you are gone, mama,

You are here, your voice in the winds

Of Karura Forest

When I caress a treebark, I feel your imprint

When the birds chirp, that is you, mama

So, why should my eyes well?

I will go to the forest, feed a baboon

Wash my face in a waterfall

Then I will plant a tree for you mama

I will call her “mama” after you

I am only afraid that

There will be a 21-gun salute

To “honour” you

As if those gun powders are mulch!

Then some kind soul

Will read  a “treatise” eulogy

As if your life was spent on brickwalled forests!

Mama, I refuse to admit you are gone

Because I see you everywhere

Pity those cancerous cells

They don’t kill a “phoenix”.

Here's a youtube video titled 'I will be a hummingbird' about our sweet mama. Enjoy it.